Sour Crime Donuts, page 26
His laugh was low and warm. “I know that, too.”
“You’re impossible, but I suppose you’re going to tell me that you know that, too.”
He must have decided that kissing me was a better option. I didn’t mind.
Chapter 42
By the following Monday morning, I still hadn’t heard from Izzy. Deputy Donut was crowded. Sitting at their regular tables, the Knitpickers and retired men joked with one another.
Jerry Creavus came in, sat with the retired men, and effectively put an end to the fake bickering they enjoyed. He delivered monologues, giving them reasons why they should vote for him, although, since Adam’s death, no one was running against him.
Or was someone about to? Ramona Schleehart came in by herself. She wore a TWIG T-shirt, but she didn’t have any of her followers with her. She glared at Jerry and sat down with her back to him and almost touching him. I went to her table and asked what she’d like.
“Do you have organic fair-trade coffee?” Clearly expecting me to say that we didn’t, she asked the question with a gotcha tone.
“Today’s special coffee is an organic fair-trade medium roast from Timor. It’s mild with a sweet finish.”
“I’d like a mug of that.” She said it almost grudgingly. “And are you still selling those peachy sour cream donuts?”
“Not quite. We’ve made basically the same recipe and added cardamom to it.” Glenn’s addition had made the donuts better, I thought, though we still made ours with wheat flour, and we didn’t add almond flour or ground-up peach pits.
“Bring me two to eat with the coffee.”
“Glad to.” I started toward the kitchen.
The front door swung open. Grinning hugely, Izzy danced in. She wore cutoffs, a blue T-shirt with green peppers printed on it, and sneakers. Her curls were even more unruly than mine. “Emily! Sorry for not answering your messages.”
“That’s okay. How are you?”
“Wonderful. Guess what happened this morning?”
I didn’t want to make an incorrect guess. “What?”
“I closed on the property! It’s all mine!”
I congratulated her. Jerry Creavus turned toward her. “Will you continue to allow people to hunt and fish there?”
Izzy made a sad face, but those hazel eyes sparkled with excitement. “I’m afraid not. It will be a working farm, and you know, greenhouses tend to be a little too fragile to withstand bullets or whatever. I hope you can find another place.”
He waved his hand in a magnanimous gesture of dismissal. “Don’t you worry about it. We have lots of other places. Did Emily give you my card? I wanted to arrange a meeting some evening.”
Izzy looked at me.
I shook my head. “I haven’t seen her since . . . I mean, I didn’t get a chance.”
Jerry puffed out his chest. “I thought I’d create a working group of young entrepreneurs to advise me as mayor. Emily can come, too, and bring donuts.”
Izzy appeared to consider the idea. “Can I get back to you?”
Jerry laid his hand flat on the table. “You sure can. I look forward to seeing your business thrive and grow.” He threw a triumphant look at Ramona.
Izzy obviously noticed. She asked Ramona, “Would you and other members of TWIG be able to tour the place with me? I’d like advice on which trees absolutely must stay, like if there are endangered or rare species there.”
“They should all stay, but I’m sure that I can round up a few people to give you advice.” Ramona’s voice was gruff, but I thought I detected a suspicion of a smile battling with her usual frown.
Izzy followed me to the serving counter. Filling Jerry’s and Ramona’s orders took a little longer than usual because Olivia and Jocelyn joined us, and Izzy happily repeated her news. “And can I have a box of peachy sour cream donuts? I’ll share them with my lawyers, the sisters who let me stay with them while I was recovering.”
I again explained the change we’d made to the recipe. “Do you still want them, Izzy?”
“Absolutely!”
Finally, I took Ramona’s and Jerry’s orders to them.
I thought Izzy was about to leave, but she asked if she could visit Dep for a few minutes.
“Sure.” I took Izzy to the office and shut us in.
Letting out anticipatory chirps, Dep ran down her ramp to greet us. Or maybe she was greeting the cardamom in the donuts in Izzy’s box.
Izzy edged onto the couch, put the box behind her back, and lifted Dep, purring loudly and looking nearly boneless, onto her lap. Izzy stroked the little cat. “Emily, Hope asked me to collect her jewelry from your house and send it to her. In return, I can have whatever else she and Glenn left behind.” She wrinkled her nose and let the corners of her mouth droop in revulsion. “When’s a good time for me to come to your place and clear out Hope’s things?”
“Brent and I will be there tidying this evening. The police have already picked up Glenn’s phone, computer, and that expensive knife. And they packaged his other possessions for when he gets out. They also gave Hope the gold necklace they found in his rental car. As she must have told you, she hired someone to take her directly from the Fallingbrook police station to the airport in Duluth. We canceled the code we’d given Glenn for unlocking our doors, and she didn’t want to stick around until the place was cleared as a crime scene. The police offered her the chance to go inside and get her things, but she didn’t seem to want to visit the house with them watching her every move. The memories of her time there with Glenn, especially the night he attacked her and tried to kill her, would have to be painful.” I lightened the mood with a guess that was only slightly less insulting than some of Hope’s comments during the night of the dinner party. “Or maybe she was afraid she’d have to clean up the kitchen.”
“Did you end up doing that?”
“Brent and I did, after the investigators finished. Hope told Brent she’d send someone for her things.”
“That would be me, the snot-nosed, bratty cousin.”
“Not to speak ill of your family, but she’s the brat.”
“Always was, always will be. See you this evening. Bye, Dep.” I let Izzy and her box of donuts out the back door.
At the house on Maple Street that evening, the first thing Izzy noticed was Dep rolling invitingly on the couch. The second thing Izzy noticed was the hole in the couch’s backrest. She pointed. “Did Hope puncture that with her stilettos?”
“Glenn did it with his chef’s knife.” I described the scene.
Izzy praised most of us who had been present that early morning but concluded with disgust, “My cousin-in-law is a real gem. Speaking of which, let’s go see what gems Hope brought with her. Like maybe a wedding ring to go with that marriage certificate you said you found.”
Dep helped us search. Hope hadn’t brought much jewelry. None of the rings looked like wedding or engagement rings, but some of the jewelry did look, as the gold necklace had, valuable.
Izzy didn’t want any of the beautiful and expensive clothes. “They’ll fit you, too, Emily.”
“I . . . no, thanks. How about giving them to charity?”
“I have a great idea. My lawyer friends help at a women’s shelter. Someone’s going to get a windfall of designer clothing.”
We packaged the jewelry for Izzy to take to an insured courier, and then we put Hope’s clothes and shoes into boxes, which involved lifting Dep out of the boxes each time we wanted to fold a garment into one.
When we finished, it was dark outside. Brent, Izzy, and I carried everything to Izzy’s brand-new all-wheel-drive SUV, one that looked capable of climbing up into her property even before she had the driveway graded. “Courtesy of my grandfather,” she told us. “Landon told him everything that happened, and Grampa sent me another huge check, with more to come. He’s letting Hope keep her job, but he decided that her plans to lend a murderer money to open a restaurant so that, as Grampa says, ‘he can poison more people’ didn’t pass muster. Maybe Grampa will change his mind, but for now, he says that Hope had better make good use of the money he gave her, because although she might inherit through her father, she’s not inheriting anything directly from him.”
I stowed a carton into the SUV’s open rear hatch and inhaled that probably too-intoxicating new-car smell. “And are you inheriting?”
She shoved her box in with the others. “I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. I’m going to make my greenhouse dream a reality. Best of all, though, I got my Grampa back, and my dad got his father back.”
“How’s Landon?”
“Back in New York. The money Grampa gave me and is promising me more of has turned into a nightmare. Landon informed me that after telling Grampa that I was the one who deserved to inherit, he—Landon, that is—can’t continue to see me. He doesn’t want to look like a gold digger.”
Brent put an arm around me, and I patted Izzy’s back. “I’m sorry, Izzy.”
She looked straight at me. Tears might have glimmered in her eyes, but she raised her chin. “It’s not over. I told him he’s not allowed to make that decision by himself. It’s our future and our decision. I’ll use some of my newfound wealth to fly to New York as often as I have to, just to make him change his mind. And”—she waved her hand toward the north—“I’m naming the pond where he saved my life Mystery Pond in his honor. So, he has to come back. Oh, and when children come to tour, I’ll hide treasures in Emily’s Cave. See you two around.” She got into her car.
Watching her drive away, Brent asked me, “Do you think she’ll get what she wants?”
“I don’t think it. I know it. By next summer, Landon will be wearing denim overalls and a straw hat and working in her greenhouses. And maybe they’ll hold their wedding on that hillside and invite us.”
We turned and faced the house. We’d replaced the porch lightbulb that Glenn had removed. It cast a warm glow over the old yellow bricks, the porch floorboards, and the antique door and screen. The entire effect, now that Hope and Glenn were gone, was again charming and welcoming.
However . . .
I slipped an arm around Brent. “You know what? This house contains a lot of memories, wonderful ones with Alec and wonderful ones with you. But I don’t know about keeping it and continuing to rent it to other people. Maybe it’s time to move on. We’ll still have our memories.”
My husband surrounded me in a gentle hug. “You don’t have to decide right now.”
“I don’t have to decide by myself. Unlike Landon and his chivalrous notions, you and I will decide together.”
And maybe it would depend on whether or not we started a family. I still wasn’t pregnant. But, I reminded myself, I was a surprise late in my own parents’ life. It could still happen. And to help the miracle along, I would find the courage to book an appointment with the clinic in Milwaukee.
I hugged Brent tighter and lifted my face toward his.
A bright light streaked across the part of the sky I could see between maple leaves. I leaned back and pointed. “Look!”
Brent managed to see it before it burned up. “A meteor,” he said, and kissed me.
RECIPES
Baked Peachy Sour Cream Donuts
(Makes 10 donuts and/or cupcakes—cupcakes will be denser than normal cupcakes. For the baked donuts, you will need a nonstick donut baking pan. They have donut-shaped baking cavities.)
Vegetable oil for greasing the pan
½ cup 14 percent butterfat sour cream
1 extra-large egg, room temperature
½ teaspoon peach extract (lemon extract or almond extract can be substituted)
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ cup sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 medium to large fresh peach, pitted and small-diced (you don’t need to peel it.)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease nonstick donut baking pan.
In one bowl, whisk together the sour cream, egg, peach or vanilla extract, vegetable oil, and sugar until well blended.
In a larger bowl, stir the flour, cardamom, and baking soda with a fork until well blended.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well.
Stir in the diced peaches.
Spoon the batter into the donut-shaped cavities in the donut baking pan, filling them halfway.
Bake 12 to 15 minutes, until tops are golden and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
Invert the pan on a cooling rack.
When the donuts have cooled, gently loosen them with a silicone spatula and remove.
Frost the rounded sides (the bottoms of the donuts when they were being baked) with Peachy Sour Cream Frosting (see page 295).
Optional: Decorate the tops with thin slices of fresh peach.
To vary: substitute diced fresh strawberries for the peaches and use lemon extract.
If you don’t have a donut baking pan, bake as cupcakes in cupcake papers and pan for 15 to 20 minutes or until the tops are golden and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Emily’s home donut baking pan makes only 6 donuts, so Emily bakes the rest of the batter in cupcake papers in cupcake tins.
Peachy Sour Cream Frosting
(Frosts 6 to 10 donuts or cupcakes)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted or pushed through sieve
teaspoon peach extract (lemon or vanilla extract can be substituted)
¼ cup 14 percent butterfat sour cream
In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter.
Beat the sugar into the butter until blended.
Stir in the peach extract
Stir in the sour cream
If the frosting is too thick, stir in more sour cream. If it’s too thin, stir in more powdered sugar.
Store the frosting in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use it. If any frosted donuts are left over, store them in the refrigerator.
Spiced-Tea Baked Donuts
Use the recipe for Baked Peachy Sour Cream Donuts, but omit the peaches. Instead of peach extract, add 1 teaspoon strongly brewed Darjeeling tea. In addition to the cardamom, add teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, ginger, and nutmeg—vary to taste.
Frost with Peachy Sour Cream Frosting, substituting ½ teaspoon strongly brewed Darjeeling tea for the peach extract. Sprinkle tops with cinnamon.
Chilled Sour Cream Peach Soup
(Serves 4)
4 large fresh peaches, sliced
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup peach juice (orange or apple juice can be substituted)
2 tablespoons 14 percent butterfat sour cream (plain or vanilla Greek or Icelandic yogurt can be substituted)
Ground cardamom
In an electric blender, pulse the peaches, sugar, juice, and sour cream until well mixed.
Chill.
When ready to serve, place in bowls and sprinkle ground cardamom over each bowl.
Peach and Pinto Bean Salad
Because only a minimum amount of stovetop heat is used, this salad is a good one to prepare on a hot day as a main course. It is best when local peaches are in season. Where possible, use homegrown or local basil, peppers, and scallion, which will also be in season.
(Serves 3 as a main course, 6 or more as a side dish.)
⅓ cup pecans, toasted and chopped
1 lime
1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic—from a jar is fine, as it’s milder than fresh garlic
½ teaspoon salt or to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil
Pinch of chili flakes or to taste
1 (19-ounce) can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
3 medium fresh peaches, pitted and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 head romaine lettuce, chopped
1 scallion, green part only, sliced on diagonal
1 handful fresh basil leaves, roughly torn or chopped
1 tablespoon mild red hot peppers or sweet pepper, finely chopped
Toast the pecans. In a dry frying pan, toast the pecans on medium-high, stirring continuously until they begin to brown lightly. Remove from the heat and the pan and set aside to cool.
Make the dressing. Zest and juice the lime and place the zest and the juice together in a small bowl. Add the garlic, salt, olive oil, and chili flakes. Whisk until combined.
Make the salad. Place the beans, peaches, lettuce, scallion top, chopped basil, and red pepper into a large bowl. Chop the toasted pecans and add. Drizzle the dressing over the salad. Toss and serve.
Broiled Peaches with Sour Cream
This recipe can be increased to serve many people, depending on how big your broiler is.
Fresh peaches
Unsalted butter, about teaspoon per peach
Brown sugar, about ¼ teaspoon per peach
Sour cream
Cinnamon
Fresh mint leaves (optional)
Halve the peaches, remove the pits, and put the halves, flat side up, on a baking tray. Place a small dab (about teaspoon) of unsalted butter and ¼ teaspoon brown sugar in each indentation. Place under the broiler for about 5 minutes.
Remove from the broiler, place peach halves in bowls, and top with a dollop of sour cream and a dash of cinnamon. Garnish with mint leaves and serve immediately.
Ginger Bolton, Sour Crime Donuts
