Sour Crime Donuts, page 15
I laughed. “Neither have I. People always wonder that. Maybe it wasn’t a poor goose, maybe the river and town were named by someone who had never seen a goose.”
“So, I guess you know that there’s a second bridge that goes over the railway tracks?”
“I’ve been up there.”
“The driveway to my place is after the second bridge, the first turn on the left. My neighbors use the same driveway. After it divides, the right branch goes to my neighbors’ house, which is closer to the road. The left branch goes farther back and ends at my place.”
“That sounds easy enough. I can be there a little after six.”
“Great!” As always, Izzy seemed more excited than other people would be in the same situation. “And for sure, bring your darling cat!”
Chapter 23
After work, I put Dep and a small box of donuts into my car. I was sure that Izzy wouldn’t mind if I came to dinner in my Deputy Donut shorts and shirt. Besides, by not going home to change first, I would have time to take Izzy’s preferred “scenic route.” I drove up County Road C and turned left on H.
Between grasses the color of straw, the farm track leading to the creek looked undisturbed, as if no one had driven along it recently or had collected an autoinjector that might or might not have had anything to do with Adam’s death.
Without Izzy waiting on the side of the road, I couldn’t tell for sure where her property was. Coming from the east, no one would be able to see the break in the nearly solid line of pines where the trail led up to the meadows. There was no police tape, and I might not have been certain where Izzy’s future property was if it hadn’t been for the small green and white sign stuck haphazardly into the ground among weeds on the land sloping upward beyond the ditch. I slowed. SAVE OUR TREES, the sign said, above the acronym TWIG. I crept a little farther, stopped, and craned my neck so I could see back over my right shoulder. I could just barely make out the trail winding upward between pines.
I continued slowly along the road. It curved toward the right and started downhill. A miniature cascade of water tumbled from the woods above the road and ran into the ditch. It must have been almost below the dammed-up pond where Izzy had come upon Adam’s body. I caught a glimpse of a break in the pines—another former driveway, possibly also from early settler days? County Road H continued downward, and I realized that it skirted the hill where Izzy’s property was near the top. Evergreens lined both sides of the road, occasionally blocking the sun’s rays. A blue jay darted between treetops.
At the end of H, I turned right, onto Pioneer Trail. It took me gradually into the Gooseleg River valley. Crossing the bridge over the river, I caught glimpses of rapids, like froths of lace decorating the water’s velvety teal surface. The railroad tracks mostly followed the river, but the elbow in the river was sharp, and the tracks made a wide, gentle curve around it. The farthest part of the arc looked about a half mile inland from the river. My tires rumbling over expansion joints, I crossed the second bridge. That bridge sloped down onto level land, and I turned left onto the driveway leading to Izzy’s place.
Branches arched over the driveway, and the nearly weedless grass on both sides had been recently mown. Everything seemed green and tranquil. I took the narrower left branch of the driveway. No one had cut the weeds close to this section. Butterflies flitted among the white and lavender asters and the deep yellow goldenrod that took advantage of sunlight filtering through the leafy canopy.
The driveway led into a clearing surrounded by tall trees. At the far side of the clearing, a bright red caboose sat on a set of railroad tracks. Tubs of flowers lined the edge of a deck along the length of the caboose. To the left, green beans twined up poles, tomatoes ripened, and the rounded sides of butternut and pattypan squash showed above floppy leaves. Near the other end of the caboose, a small greenhouse, plastic tarps draped over a framework of two-by-fours, held pots containing plants that I couldn’t identify through the semitranslucent plastic.
Izzy’s car was parked in the shade of a massive oak.
Grinning and waving, Izzy stood up from a chair beside an umbrella table on the deck. She ran down the steps and called out, “Park anywhere!” She was still wearing the outfit she’d had on in Deputy Donut, a red T-shirt, cutoffs, and sandals.
I pulled in beside her car, attached Dep’s leash to her harness, and let her walk, stopping to investigate bugs and random blades of grass, across the lawn. Izzy bent, cooed to Dep, and petted her.
I gazed around the serene oasis. “Wow, Izzy, you do go for the unusual, don’t you? This place is charming, and right out of a storybook.”
She straightened and beamed. “Isn’t it wonderful? I’m only renting, but I hope to stay here for a long time. I love it.”
I handed her the box of donuts. “I didn’t want to go home for wine.”
“Yum. I like these better, and I’m not even going to share them with you. I’ll have them for breakfast in the morning. Come on up, and I’ll show you around.”
To my left, unseen vehicles rattled over the nearest bridge. I couldn’t hear the river or anything on the bridge crossing it. Behind me and to the right, I heard the da-bop, da-bop, da-bop of a tennis game, shouts of jubilation when someone must have scored a point, and excited woofs from what sounded like an enormous dog. “My neighbors,” Izzy explained. “They’re very nice. They don’t bother me, and the tennis and swimming pool noises are happy ones. And the dog is a lovable galumph who can flatten tomato plants in a second.”
Judging by the voices, the teenaged boys she’d mentioned were probably the ones playing tennis. “Are those the neighbors who helped eat your donuts?” The woods hid the house from me, and the tennis court couldn’t have been very close to Izzy’s charming caboose and yard.
“Yes. They own this place, and they let me have a garden and erect my pet greenhouse.”
I grasped Dep’s leash more firmly. “Pets?”
“I don’t have animals, but that greenhouse is like a pet for the bigger ones I plan.”
“Were you doing all of this gardening before your grandfather sent you money?”
“That’s how I knew what I wanted to do with it.”
Walking to the deck took time. Again Dep attempted to sniff out beetles or other crawly things.
Izzy led me along the deck past the umbrella table, which was set for two, to the steel porch at the east end of the caboose. “Would you and Dep like a tour of my tiny house?”
“I’d love one. I’ll carry Dep to keep her out of trouble.”
Izzy scratched Dep’s chin. “You wouldn’t cause trouble, would you, sweetie?” Dep purred. Izzy opened the door into a minuscule but perfect kitchen. The caboose was about nine feet wide inside, with no hallways. We went from the kitchen to a combination office and living room with a two-seater sofa, a table big enough for two place settings and for working at the laptop computer on it, a comfy-looking desk chair, and a second chair. Izzy explained, “In case two of us need to eat indoors.” I could see her imagining Landon folding himself into the small space. Bookcases hung on the walls between the caboose’s original windows. The books I noticed were mostly about nature and gardening.
Beyond a pocket door, Izzy’s bedroom featured a bunk bed, the kind with a double bed at the bottom and a single bed on top. “My landlords set this up so that a family could stay here. The loveseat in the living room can be opened into a small bed, too. And look at this. It’s probably original to the caboose. Maybe they kept food in it?” A full-length metal cabinet served as her closet. She opened a door beyond the bed. “And here’s the bathroom.” It was big enough for a toilet, sink, shower, small linen closet, and a stacked washer and dryer. She opened the caboose’s back door to another steel porch, again part of the original caboose. “And if I get muddy in the garden, I can come in this way and wash up in the bathroom. And look at this!” She closed the back door and slid an enormous bolt into an equally huge steel loop. “Originally, the caboose’s door bolts would have been on the outside. They moved them inside. I can lock the place from outside or inside, but if I want to feel doubly secure, I can throw these bolts.”
Everything in the tiny home was beautifully designed and finished. “I see why you love it here.”
“Not just the caboose, which I adore, but also the setting. The beauty is relaxing, I can think and make plans without people bothering me. If I want company, I can visit my neighbors, go into town, or come down to Fallingbrook. And it doesn’t take long for the police to search a tiny home and be confident that they didn’t miss even a crumb.”
Still carrying Dep, I followed Izzy back to the kitchen. “I hope that never happens again.”
“How likely would that be? Is it okay if we eat outside?”
“That would be great.”
Izzy opened the oven door. “The pizza came shortly before you arrived. I stuck it into the oven, which isn’t turned on but has good insulation, to keep it warm.”
“I’ll take Dep outside and come back to help carry things.” Out on the deck, I looped Dep’s leash around a leg of the umbrella table. Izzy put the pizza box and a pie server on the table, and then I followed her back to the kitchen.
She took a bowl out of the fridge. “I’m not much of a cook, but the salad is fresh from my garden, picked today. What would you like to drink?” She listed options, including a hoppy, sparkling, non-alcoholic drink from a local craft brewery.
Knowing how delicious the beer-like beverage was, I chose that, and she handed me two cans of it.
We took them and the salad to the table.
Sliding gooey, cheese-covered slices onto our plates, Izzy apologized. “You’d have made it yourself, from scratch.”
“Not like this.” I pointed at the charred blisters on the crust. “I don’t have a wood-fired oven. I’d order this, too, if I lived near Gooseleg.”
The boys must have ended their tennis game and taken the dog inside. The traffic on the railway bridge, what little there had been, diminished, and now the loudest sounds were cicadas singing in trees and crows shouting dares at one another. Dep’s leash, still looped around the table leg, was long enough to allow her to jump into my lap. She curled into a ball and purred.
Izzy and I demolished the pizza and salad, and then Izzy brought out bowls of fresh raspberries and cream for dessert. “The raspberry canes are on the far side of the garden.”
I tasted the berries. “Sweet, tart, and scrumptious. What a great place you have!” I glanced in the direction of the train tracks and river, but all I could see were trees. “I haven’t heard a train. Do they go by often?”
“That line is hardly used anymore. The most likely time to hear one is around two in the morning. I love the sound of it, so I don’t mind, even when it makes that haunting wail for the crossing way up the river. It echoes from hill to hill.”
We cleared our dishes, took them inside, and washed and put them away, and then Izzy offered, “Would you like to see the few planted peach pits that the police didn’t take away?”
“Sure.”
She ushered Dep and me into the greenhouse, which had barely enough room for two humans to turn from one set of shelves to the ones across from them. Dep stuck her head underneath a bottom shelf. Izzy picked up a pot, dug into it with a teaspoon-sized trowel, and popped out a peach stone, its indentations clogged with dirt. “See? None of them had sprouted, and the shells weren’t even cracked. However, they took all of the kernels I’d painstakingly removed from their shells. Luckily, they left me a few of these.” She pushed the stone into the soil, tamped it down, and set the pot on the shelf. “I would never grind up the inner part of a peach pit. I want to grow trees, not destroy their seeds. That makes no sense.”
“Where did you put the shells that you took off the kernels?”
She pointed toward the woods behind the caboose. “I carried them down a path back there and buried them. Don’t look so horrified! I told the pointy-nosed detective where I’d put them, and we all, including my lawyers, tramped back there, and the detective’s people dug them up, along with some of the other things I’d composted there recently, like corn cobs that take a long time to decompose. I have a compost bin for things that disintegrate quickly, like the peach skins I got from behind your shop.” She fanned her face. “You’re turning red. Sorry it’s so warm in here.”
I looked down at my cat, luxuriously rolling around. “I think Dep likes it.”
“I dried catnip in here last summer. Let’s go back to the deck. I’ll bring out my laptop, and we can develop a plan for figuring out who might have ground up some peach seeds and put them into donuts that he or she fed Adam. Plus, I suspect from the disappointment on that pointy-nosed detective’s face when he couldn’t find any almonds in my kitchen that someone might have added almonds to the donuts. Though, why they would, I don’t know. Those donuts were delicious. Oh, and I guess there was a spice the investigators were searching for, too, as if the donuts we found on my property had a spice in them that you didn’t put in your donuts?” Although she posed it as a question, I didn’t answer, and she made another hint. “Whatever it was, they didn’t find it here.”
“Hmm.” I still didn’t let on that I believed they’d been looking for cardamom.
Walking across the lawn toward the deck, she repeated that Adam had had no hope of preventing the sale of the property to her. “And even if he could have, like if he could have successfully pressured the current owner to back out of the contract, I could have found another property that I’d like almost as much or maybe even better. All I’d have lost is time.”
I didn’t point out that, if what she’d told me before was true about her grandfather expecting her to show him in a year that she’d begun a viable business, losing time could have been crucial.
She brought out her laptop plus a pitcher of ice water with lemon slices in it. She went back for glasses and then poured the drinks.
She pulled a couple of pieces of paper from her pocket. With a sly look at me from beneath her eyelashes, she set a couple of cutouts on the table. One was a tall man with the initial J on his T-shirt. The other was a short woman wearing a green T-shirt emblazoned with TWIG.
I burst out laughing. We sat down in front of the laptop. After making certain that both of us could read the screen, Izzy started a spreadsheet with columns for Jerry Creavus and Ramona Schleehart.
I asked, “Should we have a column for the mysterious Landon?”
Izzy made a face but gave him one, too. Then, with her hands in fists, she straightened her arms above her keyboard. “I’m not making a column for myself or for you folks at Deputy Donut. That would be ridiculous. We need to focus on these three people, well, really, on Jerry and Ramona.”
Izzy typed Jerry’s name into a search engine. He belonged to every service club in Fallingbrook and had been mayor for several years. He owned a small and fairly primitive hunting camp on a wooded acreage that he sometimes rented to outsiders. I considered telling Izzy that Jerry also owned the vacant building next to Deputy Donut, but I decided that the information probably wasn’t helpful.
On the spreadsheet, Izzy typed a comment under Jerry’s name. “Potential competition in renting out vacation cabins.” She looked up at me. “Maybe Jerry was hoping that Adam would buy his property. But Jerry could have offered it to Adam. Maybe he did, and Adam turned it down. That could have made Jerry mad.”
Dep leaped into my lap. I stroked her. “Mad enough to kill?”
Izzy added that idea to Jerry’s column. “Who knows? But Jerry must want to stay on as mayor, and Adam posed a threat to him that way. I don’t know what other income Jerry has besides what he gets as mayor. Legitimate income, that is.” She made a note in Jerry’s column about Jerry not wanting Adam to become mayor.
She moved the cursor to Ramona’s column and typed in Ramona’s fear that Adam might one day cut down trees to build a resort. Izzy opened the search engine again. “Let’s see what Ramona has been up to.”
I didn’t tell Izzy about Jerry’s allegations against Ramona, and there was nothing online about Ramona’s having been suspected of giving someone an insulin overdose. We found that she’d always participated in causes related to the environment, and ever since she retired from nursing, she’d been even more active in her environmental work.
I knew that Jerry was single. It appeared that Ramona was, too.
Izzy made the two paper dolls dance along the edge of the table. “Maybe it’s time for a little matchmaking, even if she is almost twenty years older than he is. Maybe having a younger boyfriend would improve her outlook on life. I don’t understand why she has to be so grumpy all the time. Is that any way to get people to join your cause? But maybe she’s friendlier when she’s talking to people in her organizations.”
“She isn’t, at least not much.” I told Izzy about the TWIG meeting on Monday evening.
Izzy made the TWIG paper doll take a bow. “I wish I’d known about it. I’d have come, too.”
Reluctantly, it seemed, she typed the name Landon into the search engine. That brought up thousands of entries. Adding Duluth didn’t lower the number much. She joked, “See, there’s nothing nefarious about him.” She plunked an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm. “Our spreadsheet isn’t helping a lot.”
Again, I couldn’t tell Izzy that I’d surmised from Vic that neither Jerry nor Ramona had alibis for the time that Adam probably died. Our “joint” effort at sleuthing was mostly Izzy coming up with the ideas and adding them to her spreadsheet. She pointed at the column she’d set up for Landon. “What if he gave the donuts he bought to someone else, someone we don’t know about, who was Adam’s sworn enemy?”
“Like your cousin Hope? He offered to share them with her.”
“But then she said something rude about your donuts.” Izzy turned to me, excited. “So, she could have done something to those donuts and fed them to Adam!” Izzy slumped in her chair. “How can I say that about my own cousin? For one thing, why would she do that?”
