Sour Crime Donuts, page 16
“Could Hope be jealous because your grandfather contacted you after a long time and sent you money?”
“I suppose it’s possible, but Hope might not know that he gave me money or even that he’s in touch with me again. I’m glad that he is. Maybe he’s forgiven my father for refusing to work for him.”
“But if Hope did know that your grandfather is no longer estranged from you, and she’s jealous about it, she has a reason to harm someone—anyone—on your property. She might expect you to be blamed, and your grandfather might never speak to you again.”
“That sounds like a roundabout way to sabotage someone.”
“It does. I’m just thinking outside the boxes on our spreadsheet. And finding a way to show that your Landon is innocent.”
“That’s a plus, I guess. I wonder if Hope still works for our grandfather.” Izzy searched for the name “Hope Korinth” and showed me the results. “Just as I suspected, she’s still at one of his companies. But look at this—she’s now Executive Director of Marketing in one division of one of the companies. Whoop-de-do. And she told me her boyfriend’s last name. It starts with an S.”
“Sitherby.”
“That’s it.” She typed it into the search engine. “He’s worked his way up as a chef. It looks like he owned a restaurant called Hot Pepper in upstate New York. It doesn’t say if he still owns it, but it looks like he has since worked in at least one other restaurant, Purple Pepper.”
“He said he wanted to name the restaurant he’s planning something like Sweet Pepper.”
“I’ll add him and Hope to my spreadsheet, but I don’t have much to say about them. She might have killed Adam because she’s jealous of me, or Glenn might have killed Adam because he . . . because he wants to do a favor for his girlfriend?” And then she made the same suggestion I’d made to Brent, though it had seemed far-fetched at the time. “A chef would be able to copy other people’s donuts without needing the recipe, right?”
“Probably.”
After Izzy finished adding those clues to cells in her spreadsheet, I asked, “Can you search for Hot Pepper and Purple Pepper restaurants?”
She did and sagged back in her chair. “Purple Pepper might still be open. I can’t tell. Reviews are mediocre and none are recent. Hot Pepper closed over five years ago. But it had great reviews.”
“You’ll have a fantastic meal tomorrow.”
“You and your husband could sort of drop in on land-lordly business right before dinner. I bet they’d ask you to stay.”
“That’s a great, if devious, idea. Don’t you think that a chef will have everything planned down to the last bite? He won’t have extra servings for drop-ins.”
“Restaurants do.”
“True, and with luck, Brent will have finished the investigation by then.” I patted the kitty nestled in my lap and thought, If so, we’ll probably want a nice, quiet evening at home together. I said aloud, “Speaking of which, I should get going in case he finishes whatever he’s doing earlier than most evenings lately.” I plucked Dep off my lap. Still hugging her, I unfastened her leash from the table leg.
Izzy walked us to my car and helped insert my recalcitrant kitty into her carrier. Dep did not approve.
I started down the tree-shadowed driveway and glanced into the rearview mirror. Looking small and alone back there in her cutoffs, T-shirt, and sandals, Izzy waved. The driveway curved slightly toward her neighbors’ place, and I could no longer see her.
I remembered the little girl telling me a tearful goodbye that day, years ago, at Fallingbrook Falls. “I’ll come back someday, okay, Emily?”
And she had, finally, but it would never be the same.
Because of the overhanging trees, it was already dusk on that driveway, including the wider section. I turned on my headlights. At Pioneer Trail, I stopped. I was about to turn right, toward the bridges, and go back the way I’d come, past the property where Adam had died.
I checked to my left for approaching vehicles.
There were none, but a car with its bright red taillights shining was on the right shoulder about fifty feet away. I couldn’t see the car well, but it was a dark color, and the lit plate on the back had those greenish swaths across the top and bottom, like it could have been from Minnesota.
Chapter 24
The car’s brake lights flashed on and then off. Someone was in the driver’s seat.
That person could have noticed my headlights and my white car nosing out toward the road. I shifted into reverse and eased away until my car was, just barely, hidden by trees.
I’d possibly called attention to myself with the maneuver. I turned off the engine to extinguish the lights. The sudden lack of glow at the end of the driveway was probably obvious, too, if the person in the car was paying attention to what was going on behind him.
I flicked off the interior lights, opened the door, and left it gaping. Listening for sounds of the dark car turning and rushing toward me, I ran on tiptoe almost to the road and peeked around a tree trunk. I hoped that none of my shirt, even whiter than my car, showed.
The dark car edged out onto the road, allowing me to see more of it from the side. It definitely resembled the car Landon had been driving. And from what little I could see of the silhouette of the driver’s head, I thought the driver was a man, possibly Landon. If there were passengers, I couldn’t see them.
Ready to pivot and run to my car if the other one turned toward me, I watched until he started driving east, away from me.
I ran back to my car, slammed myself inside, and started the engine. With only my daytime running lights on, I drove to Pioneer Trail and stopped.
The dark car was gaining speed toward Gooseleg. To my right, a black pickup truck came down off the bridge. I waited for it to pass and then swung into the lane behind it. I stayed below the speed limit, and the distance between us increased. As soon as the two vehicles were far enough ahead, I turned on my headlights and accelerated to approximately the speed the pickup was going. I kept up that pace until, ahead of me, the sedan and pickup entered downtown Gooseleg and slowed down. I braked, too.
Gooseleg was smaller than Fallingbrook. Focusing on the dark sedan in front of the pickup truck, I caught glimpses of some of the town’s businesses. A pub’s patio was crowded, with candles already lit on tables. A laughing couple carried flat white boxes out of Izzy’s favorite pizza shop. I passed a barbershop, a library, and a tiny museum, all of them dark and closed for the evening.
On the other side of Gooseleg’s business section, homes on large lots lined the road. The dark sedan turned right, but because of the pickup truck and a bright yellow convertible that had slipped in between me and the pickup, I couldn’t see the dark sedan’s entire side or the license plate. The car was gray, shiny, and new. I couldn’t rule out that it was the one I’d seen Landon driving.
I slowed and put on my right turn signal.
A sign at the intersection warned that the road was a dead end.
I didn’t turn. I wasn’t about to drive into a trap, and if Landon had not already recognized my car, I wasn’t about to put myself into a spot where he might get a better look at it and at me.
My heart beat hard, and my shoulders tensed. Why had the man, whoever he was, been near Izzy’s driveway? And why, more than a week ago, had Landon been walking on the property she was buying? What was his connection with Izzy’s cousin, and why had Hope said she barely knew him?
Izzy might have a black belt in karate, but was she safe from the man she called Mr. Mystery, the man she wanted to know better? Was Hope safe from him?
I had my car phone Izzy. I told her what I’d seen and added, “This might be a good time for you to bolt yourself inside.”
She promised that she would.
Biting my lip, I drove on. Now that I was on the east side of Gooseleg, I was on the shorter route home, and there was no point in driving past the hillside where Adam had died. It was nearly dark, and I wasn’t likely to see more than TWIG’s crookedly placed sign.
I passed scrubby fields and wooded hillsides. Ponds were almost as dark and calm as polished onyx. No vehicles were ahead of or behind me, and when I stopped at County Road C, none were coming in either direction. Dep moaned, but softly. I turned south, toward home. The moon was a white crescent high in the pale indigo and still starless sky.
I had the road to myself, so when I saw an intersection ahead, I slowed. The road leading off to the right was County Road J. I turned and pulled onto J’s shoulder. According to my car’s navigation system, J curved west and then south, skirting Chicory Lake, and ending a mile or so beyond the state forest boundary without intersecting with H or going close to Izzy’s property. Before County Road J dead-ended, a minor road or track led south from it. I enlarged the map. It didn’t show that track meeting the one that ran north from H, but they could have connected, if only as a path tramped out by deer and other animals. The stream didn’t appear to be much farther from J than it was from H.
Stars began to show in the deepening blue sky. Brent wouldn’t be home for hours. I drove along J for several miles until I reached the track that might lead down to the valley where Dep and I had found the autoinjector. I turned left and let my headlights illuminate this dirt road.
It appeared to be a former driveway, packed earth, but navigable, with flattish ground farther down a slight slope near a huddle of shrubs. I should be able to turn the car around down there. “Though,” I told my cat, rustling in her carrier on the seat behind me, “we can back out if we have to.”
“Merrowl.”
The shrubs were farther away and taller than I’d thought—lilacs, leggy and not blooming at this time of year, but recognizable by the way their heart-shaped leaves angled downward. Years ago, someone must have planted them on three sides of what was now a weed-strewn yard surrounding the remains of a foundation. A heap of stones might have once formed a chimney. An old-fashioned water pump was missing the end of its handle. I shut off my car’s engine, headlights, and interior lights, got out, and stood beside my open driver’s door. Silent and listening, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the near darkness.
A bullfrog croaked in a pond that had to be nearby. Dep had been silent for a few seconds, but now she responded with a croak of her own. I smiled.
Not using my phone’s light, and feeling with the toes of my sneakers for tripping hazards, I stepped carefully down the stony, rutted track. Beyond the lilacs, the former driveway curved and then headed south, down the hill toward the creek. It was a trail fit only for ATVs and hikers. In daylight, I might have tried taking Dep for a walk down it.
With my light still off, I started back toward my car and my cat.
I almost missed the soft clank in the woods to my left, on the other side of an overgrown pasture. I quickly turned my head. Had I seen a light move, or had that been only a trick of my imagination? I picked my way to the car and locked myself inside with Dep. With my headlights on, I bumped my way to County Road J, and then I drove toward County Road C, probably more quickly than I needed to.
Who had been back there in the woods? Was Landon camping? The day we’d first encountered him, had he turned north on that dirt road to go all the way up to the woods back there, risking at least the undercarriage of his rental car? And what about this evening? Unless there was a shortcut from Gooseleg to County Road J that I hadn’t seen on my map, he couldn’t have beaten me to that forlorn former farm and the woods beside it.
I was almost at the intersection of J and C when a dark sedan sped south on C.
Landon?
I told myself that I couldn’t possibly be seeing Landon everywhere, and too much time had elapsed since the car had turned onto that dead-end road in Gooseleg for its driver to have successfully followed me down C, where no one had been behind me. Besides, there had to be hundreds or thousands of late-model dark sedans in northern Wisconsin.
I took my time turning onto County Road C, and by the time I did, the sedan’s taillights were far ahead. I opened my window and enjoyed the warm, fresh night air. Dep must have approved. She barely made a noise. I drove at the speed limit. The car ahead disappeared around a curve, and again Dep and I had the road, and the night, to ourselves.
The road swooped downward through the northern part of the Chicory Lake State Forest, crossed the bridge over the western end of Chicory Lake, passed Brent’s and my nearest neighbor, a lakeside canoe and horse and carriage rental place, and then rose up the hill. Near the top, our driveway was on the left.
I turned onto it. Behind me, Dep announced that we were nearly home.
Solar-powered lights lined the driveway, and other lights came on as we approached the chalet. Brent’s SUV wasn’t there.
Hugging Dep close, I carried her into the house. She purred.
We were still up when Brent came home. I gave him a big hug and asked, “Have you eaten?”
“We didn’t take time for more than a few snacks. Vic wants to wrap up the investigation quickly.”
Tutting, I grabbed garden scissors. “Change into something comfy, and I’ll be right back.” I went out to our vegetable garden. What would Izzy think of my harvesting a tomato, a cucumber, and a red pepper in the dark? Probably that it was entirely normal.
In the kitchen, I cut up the veggies for a salad for Brent and arranged julienned ham, roast beef, Wisconsin Swiss cheese, and a handful of pepitas on the veggies. I drizzled Italian dressing over it all. Brent came back into the kitchen in shorts and a T-shirt. He ruffled my hair and gave me a kiss. “That’s exactly what I wanted, but didn’t know I wanted.”
“Wine?”
“A little.”
“How about a very dry red?”
“Perfect.”
I got out a glass for each of us. He opened the wine, and we went out to the catio. Dep came, too.
Brent looked tense. While he ate, I stood behind him and massaged his shoulders. “Mmm,” he said. “I don’t know how I survived police work before we were married.”
I kissed the back of his neck and then sat beside him. I told him about visiting Izzy. Although Vic had searched her place, Brent hadn’t heard that she lived in a caboose. “It’s wonderful,” I said. “So very Izzy. When I left, though, I spotted a car that might have been the one Landon’s driving. But maybe you’ll tell me that you were with him somewhere else around eight this evening.”
“We haven’t located him. Where did you last see him?”
I described the dead-end street in Gooseleg. “But then, later, I saw a car that could have been his, speeding southward on County Road C near County Road J.”
Naturally, he picked up on my use of the word “later.” “What were you doing in the meantime?”
I took out my phone and showed him a map. “I was looking for a connection between H and J that goes down into that valley where Dep and I found the autoinjector. A trail might go all the way through there, but it’s not navigable with a car. Not with mine at night, anyway.”
“Not with yours at any time. The trail, such as it is, does go all the way through. Forensics hasn’t linked that autoinjector to anyone, and they might not.”
“I didn’t stick around. I thought someone might have been camping in the woods west of that abandoned home site.”
“It’s a common occurrence there, not something to worry about.”
“I wasn’t planning to go back, anyway.”
“Just as well.”
“Did you talk to Izzy’s cousin yet and worm any information out of her about who Landon is?”
“She told me the same thing she told you—she doesn’t know him well.”
“Which I strongly doubt. And what did she say about the donuts he bought?”
“She walked less than a block with him and doesn’t know what he did with them.”
“I hope you find him soon.”
“We will. And in case you’re wondering, Hope and Glenn were together Sunday afternoon and evening. Hope raved about the dinner he spent the day making.”
“Hope invited Izzy to dinner at their place tomorrow evening, so she’ll also get a taste of Glenn’s expert cooking. Izzy and I looked him up this evening. He managed a restaurant in upstate New York. And Hope works in New York City. Maybe she met him through his restaurant or her job.”
“Who needs a chef when they have an Emily?”
I leaned against him. “Or a Brent, who is every bit as good a cook as anyone out there.”
Chapter 25
The next afternoon at Deputy Donut, I was behind the serving counter when Hope came in. The lime-sherbet tint of her linen sundress looked like it could lower the temperature outside by several degrees. The dress and her sandals were simple yet elegant, and I suspected they’d come from chic and expensive New York boutiques. And her expression was at least as cool as the color of the dress.
She came straight to the serving counter. “Emma.” Her voice was low and controlled.
I didn’t correct her. Instead, I offered, “Would you like a coffee? Tea?”
“I can’t stay. The smell of frying and sugar makes me bilious. I understand that you and my cousin Isabella are friends?” She made it into a question.
“Yes.”
“Glenn and I have invited her to dinner tonight. Glenn is the most marvelous chef. Would you like to join us?”
It might be a chance to learn more about the mysterious Landon. Plus, who could pass up a meal prepared by a chef? And I wanted to see how the ever-bubbly Izzy would interact with her iceberg of a cousin. Maybe Hope would thaw a little. “I’d love to come.”
“Drinks at seven, then. You know where to find us.” Her mouth formed something like a smile. It looked almost painful.
She hadn’t mentioned Brent. I wondered if she had connected her landlord Brent Fyne with the Detective Fyne who had talked to her the day before. Maybe she had, and she had purposely not included him. Even the most law-abiding people were sometimes intimidated by detectives and other police officers. Or maybe she understood that Brent would probably have to work late and wouldn’t be able to attend.
