Sour Crime Donuts, page 13
Jocelyn added, “She didn’t seem to know Landon’s name. And he didn’t use hers, either, though Adam Nofftry did, so Landon probably heard it from him. But Adam called her Isabella, and she seems to prefer Izzy, at least for people she knows. Then, on Sunday afternoon, Izzy was in here most of the afternoon. That Landon guy came in, but although Izzy watched him, and he must have seen her there”—she pointed at the table where Izzy liked to sit—“they didn’t speak to each other.”
Vic tapped his pen on the glass tabletop. “Could they have been trying to look like they didn’t know each other?”
Tom cleared his throat. “I was at the deep fryers and didn’t notice any of this.”
I pictured the scene as I remembered it. “I didn’t get the impression that they were pretending not to know each other. When Landon came into Deputy Donut on Sunday, Izzy stared at him until that other woman came in and called him Landon. Then Izzy stopped watching him. Later she said she was disappointed because he seemed to have a girlfriend.”
Vic stared at me as if willing me to say I believed that Izzy and Landon knew each other before he showed up on the property she was buying. It was a reasonable guess, but I thought it was wrong. I gave him my other theory. “Izzy claims that a grandfather gave her a lot of money. I wonder if Landon somehow found out about it and has come to the area to find her and maybe attach some of those funds to himself.”
Vic actually seemed to take my idea seriously. “That wouldn’t be unusual.” He wrote in his notebook, and then looked up and told us, “You can reach me through Brent. If Landon comes in again, would you let Brent know?”
We said we would.
Tom added, “But we won’t try any tricks to stall him. If he leaves, we’ll tell you which direction he went and leave the rest to you.”
Jocelyn winked at me. Tom’s hint to us wasn’t subtle.
Vic muttered, “We can hope that this Landon is the one person who didn’t cause all of the donuts he bought here and the box they came in to suddenly and conveniently disappear.”
I leaned forward. “I know that Izzy doesn’t have an alibi for the entire time that Adam might have died. She was with her neighbors for part of the time, and with me for another part of it, but there were short stretches when she was on or near that hill by herself. Do our mayor and that TWIG chairperson, Ramona Schleehart, have alibis for Sunday afternoon?”
As if annoyed at me, Vic clipped his words. “People often don’t have them. People are often alone at home or in their offices. That doesn’t prove anything.” He closed his notebook and stood. “We’ll leave you four to continue closing up shop.” He nodded toward Brent, and Brent stood, too.
Jocelyn jumped out of her seat and opened the door for them.
Slipping his notebook and pen into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, Brent smiled at me. “Don’t expect me early.”
I smiled back. “Okay.”
Dep stared at us all from the back of the office couch. Brent waved at her and followed Vic out onto the street.
Brent arrived home earlier than we’d expected, and before I began planning dinner. I told him what Tom had said about Adam’s having owned a series of resorts.
Brent loosened his tie. “It’s an investigator’s nightmare. Adam doesn’t seem to have had a recognizable brand. The names he gave the resorts are all different, and he seemed to change the name of his company whenever he started a new business venture. Frequently. And many of them were co-owned by other companies. We have forensics accountants untangling it all. They’ll succeed, eventually.”
“Does he have heirs, family? Like maybe Jerry Creavus, Ramona Schleehart, or a mysterious man named Landon?”
“This will sound odd. We haven’t found any relatives or a will. And he doesn’t have many assets, as far as we can tell. He’s squandered his profits over the years, and I’m not even sure that he could have found anyone to lend him enough for the property he wanted.”
“He had a nice SUV.”
“Leased.”
“Jerry said he was a newcomer to the area. Where did he live?”
“He was renting a modest house south of downtown Fallingbrook. He usually moves into a trailer on his recently acquired properties until an owner’s suite is ready for him. Oh, and by the way, neighbors saw him at his rental home the night before he died, which fits with the medical examiner’s report. He was lying dead beside that pond only a short time before you heard Izzy scream. They can’t pinpoint the exact time of death like they can on TV crime shows.”
“I still can’t believe that Izzy could have harmed him.”
“You could be right. After talking to you folks at Deputy Donut this evening, we went up to Gooseleg. Izzy’s neighbors were at home. They confirmed that Izzy was with them until about a half hour or less before she called you after seeing Adam’s dusty SUV. They said that since the garbage was about to be collected, she took the donut box when she left and said she would put it out by the road with the rest of the garbage that she and her landlords had already put out. They don’t know if she did put it there, and of course we can’t know who actually collected it.”
“So, Izzy’s cleared of suspicion regarding Adam’s murder?”
“Not for certain. She’d have had to go home right after she left Deputy Donut, make some extra donuts, take the originals to her neighbors, sit with them for a half hour eating donuts, go back to her place, put the new donuts into the old box, speed down to her property, force Adam to eat the donuts, and hide the box with leftover donuts in it for you to find. It’s possible that she did all of that in a couple of hours, but not likely. She’s not a prime suspect.”
“Who is?”
“We don’t have one.” He took off his suit jacket. “I’ll change into shorts and T-shirt, and then how about if I make dinner? Something decadent like steak, french fries, and wine?”
I stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “I’d like that.”
Chapter 20
When Jerry arrived in Deputy Donut the next morning, I expected him to sit with the retired men or make the rounds of the room talking to potential voters.
Instead, he took a seat by himself next to the office. Maybe, now that he was running unopposed for mayor, he was curtailing some of his campaigning.
I headed toward him. Dep sat on the back of the couch, most likely staring cross-eyed at Jerry, but when she saw me near her window, she stood and stretched. Then she leaped down to the couch cushions and probably from there to the floor beside the door, expecting me to come in and play with or cuddle her.
Undoubtedly disappointing her, I didn’t go into the office. I described the day’s special coffee to Jerry. “It’s not one of the single-origin coffees we usually offer. Today we’re making dirty chai latte.”
“Dirty?”
“Not really. It’s basically tea with spices, a shot of espresso, and foamed milk. To go with it today, we’ve made spiced-tea donuts.”
“ ‘Try anything once,’ I always say. Sure, bring me a mug of the dirty chai and a couple of those donuts.”
Several minutes later, I set his mug and plate in front of him.
He waved his hand over the top of the mug and inhaled. “This smells incredible. Do you have a moment, Emily? I have an idea that will interest you.” With his foot, he pushed the other chair at his table into the aisle. “Have a seat.”
“Okay, unless it gets busy in here.” Not entirely comfortable with him, I perched on the edge of the chair and folded my hands in my lap.
“Do you have children, Emily?”
My face heated. Where was he going with this? “No.”
“What about the other women who work here?”
“They don’t, either.”
“Supposing that one of you did, and you wanted to continue working here while keeping close track of them. What if a day care opened right next door?” He pointed at our north wall.
“It would be convenient, but there’s no outdoor space where children could play. There’s a sidewalk wide enough for a patio in front, buildings on both sides, and a parking lot in back, a parking lot in a whole chain of them behind our store and other businesses.”
“Part of those parking lots could be rezoned into parkland. I get complaints about people speeding through those lots as an alternative to driving on Wisconsin Street. Several of the businesses along here would like to have the chain of parking lots broken up into smaller lots divided by green spaces. What do you think of that idea, Emily?”
“I like it. The lots back there are almost never full, and if there were a day care, parents would be dropping off their kids and picking them up, so only the staff might need parking spaces for more than a few minutes at a time.”
He leaned closer. “We think alike. Now, here’s another idea. The day care could be directly connected to Deputy Donut if you knocked out part of a wall, and then Deputy Donut employees and maybe customers, too, could check on the children without going outside.”
Considering his suggestion, I couldn’t help wrinkling my forehead. Our storeroom and the stairs to the basement were along our north wall. We couldn’t break through the wall where the stairs were. If we knocked out a doorway between the two buildings, we would lose space in the storeroom. “I’m not sure that would work.”
“Well, think about it. Or here’s another idea. At some point, you might want to expand your dining area. You can’t take up space to the south, since the driveway out there provides a way to and from the parking lots. Or maybe it could be turned into a little green space, if you and Thrills and Frills no longer wanted to have a driveway between your shops. There are infinite possibilities!”
“Yes, but—”
He waggled a finger at me. “You’re wondering how you could start using the space beyond your north wall. Well, I’ll tell you. I own that building, and I’m thinking of selling it. I’d offer you and Tom a favorable price. I’d like to see a good, attractive business like a day care or your expanded coffee shop go in there. It’s been vacant for much too long.” He told me the square footage. “And I’d be giving you and Tom a deal, if you were to buy it now and save me all the bother of advertising it, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Well . . .”
“Y’know, expanding your shop would bring in income that would more than pay for the additional space.”
I wasn’t sure he was right. “I’ll discuss it with Tom and let you know. But for now, more customers have come in, so I’ll need to help serve them.” I jumped to my feet more eagerly than was probably polite.
“Totally understandable. You have a good business head on your shoulders.” He handed me his card. “My number’s on there. Call and let me know what you and Tom decide.”
I left him and circulated among our customers. Predictably, so did Jerry, but while I was offering donuts, fritters, coffee, and tea, he was offering people a chance to work on his mayoralty campaign. I heard him tell the Knitpickers, “Downtown Fallingbrook could use more parkland and less parking.”
Priscilla snapped, “I don’t want to have to walk farther from my car than I already do.”
I didn’t get a chance to talk to Tom until after we’d closed and were in the kitchen together mixing up dough for the next day. Olivia and Jocelyn were tidying the dining room. I told Tom about Jerry’s proposal.
“Interesting,” Tom said, “and I think he has some good ideas about breaking up the parking lots. But you and I know our financial situation. We’re doing fine, better all the time, but many businesses go under after they expand too fast and borrow too much.”
I covered my bowl of dough. “I don’t want to borrow, and I don’t think there’s any other way to do it. The day care idea is interesting, but someone else can take that on. I don’t want to. So, should I tell Jerry that we definitely don’t want to buy his building?”
Tom slid our bowls of dough into the proofing cabinet, where they’d be kept at the right temperature and humidity all night. “Right. I saw inside it a couple of years ago, and whoever buys it is going to need to do a lot of repairing, no matter what business they put in there. He hasn’t been able to rent or sell it, and I’m not surprised that he’s trying a hard sell to unload it.”
I gazed toward our building’s north wall. “Do you know what I’d like? The chef who’s renting Brent’s and my house is considering opening a fine dining restaurant in the area. I’d love one in downtown Fallingbrook.”
Smile crinkles appeared at the corners of Tom’s eyes. “That would be nice.”
“I’ll tell Glenn about the opportunity. During our lease negotiations, he gave me his phone number, but it’s about time for me to go over there and check on things and mow the lawn.”
Before I left work, I wrote a note for Glenn with Jerry’s phone number and the information that Jerry wanted to sell the building next to Deputy Donut. I didn’t bother with an envelope. I folded the paper in fourths and scribbled Glenn’s name on it. Then I left Dep behind and walked the route I’d often taken with her on her leash. A few blocks south on Wisconsin Street, I turned west on Maple Street into a neighborhood that had been laid out in the Victorian era. The older, larger homes were closest to Wisconsin Street. Tall maples and oaks still shaded the sidewalks, and front yards displayed long-popular shrubs like mock orange, bridal veil, and forsythia.
The house we were renting to Glenn was darling, yellow brick with ivory gingerbread trim, a broad and welcoming front porch, and a gothic gable window on the second story. Someone had been deadheading the nasturtiums in the window boxes hanging from the front porch railing, and a cheerful bouquet of marigolds was on the glass-topped wicker table between two white-painted wicker chairs on the porch.
And someone had mowed the tiny square of grass in the front yard, recently, judging by the pungent fragrance. Glenn was obviously a good tenant.
Admiring the stained glass windows above the large living room window and in the top of the ornate door, I climbed up to the porch and rang the bell.
No one answered. I slipped the note for Glenn into the mailbox.
Someone unlocked the inner door, opened it a crack, and left the screen closed. “We don’t want any.” The voice was female, and very cold.
Chapter 21
Suddenly, I was remembering standing on this very porch on a sunny afternoon with Alec and a real estate agent. From the living room, a voice had croaked, “Go away!”
I’d taken a step backward. Alec had cupped his hand around my elbow, a light touch, communicating love and courage.
Another woman had shouted, “Just a minute!” Seconds later, a young woman wheeled an elderly, blanket-swathed woman onto the porch. The woman in the wheelchair looked half-asleep.
Alec and I had spent lots of time touring the house. When we came outside, I told the woman in the wheelchair, “We love your house.”
Her answer was gracious. “That’s nice, dear.”
And now, here I was again on that porch, and a different woman was telling me to go away. I called through the screen, “I’m Emily Fyne, and I just came by to see if Glenn needed anything. I was going to mow the lawn, but it doesn’t need it. Does Glenn want me to mow the back?”
“He looks after all of that.” Her voice was still cold, and now also disdainful.
“Is he here?”
“No.” The front door was closing.
“I put a note in the mailbox for him.” I didn’t know who she was, and maybe Glenn hadn’t told her his landlady’s name. I quickly said, “I’m renting this house to Glenn.”
The front door stopped closing. “Why didn’t you say? He’s paid his rent.”
“The note is not about this property. It’s just something I thought he’d like to know . . .” Would Glenn want me divulging details about his restaurant plans to this unknown woman? I merely added, “About restaurants.”
She opened the inner door just enough to unhook the screen door. The antique hook and its eye had come with the house. We had kept them because they were vintage, and we felt they belonged. We’d seldom used them, though, and had hooked the door to the jamb only when we wanted to keep the front door open for fresh air and needed to keep the screen door from banging in the wind.
Why had this woman hooked the screen door when the (distinctly non-Victorian) keyless entry to the inner door locked itself after only a few seconds of being closed? It had been locked when I arrived—I’d heard her turn the deadbolt.
She wasn’t trying to keep Glenn out, was she? If so, it wouldn’t work. The code I’d programmed for him also opened the overhead garage doors and the garage’s side door. He could go through one of those doors into the garage and through its rear door to the walled yard, and then he could use the same code to unlock the door from the patio into the sunroom at the back of the house.
“Restaurants?” she repeated. “Well, in that case . . .” She stepped out onto the porch.
I backed up, not only because she was about to barge into me. Although she wore jeans and a silk blouse instead of a skirt and matching jacket, and her dark hair was not sleeked back but fell in waves to her shoulders, I recognized her. “You came into my donut shop.”
“Your donut shop? I guess in a tiny town like this it’s easy to own half the town. Anyway, I don’t do donuts.” She pulled the note out of the mailbox.
“Co-own,” I clarified. “I co-own this house and Deputy Donut.”
The haughty mouth twitched with something like difficult-to-contain amusement.
Trying not to show my annoyance, I told her, “You came into our shop and spoke to one of our customers. You called him Landon.”
“Did I?”
Afraid she was going to disappear into the house before I could grill her about the mysterious Landon, I quickly made up a story. “That man might have left something behind in our shop. Do you know his last name?”
“No. Maybe it’s Landon. Did you say he left something behind?” Her eyes were hard. She could probably tell I was lying.
