Custard Crime: Donut Mystery #14 (The Donut Mysteries) (16 page)

“I’m sorry, but when he withheld the truth, all bets
were off as far as I was concerned.
 
Besides, he told Jake about it after I confronted him, so where’s the
harm?”

“The harm is that you may have done irreparable
damage to your relationship with your stepfather.”

That kind of burned me up, and the filter that told
me to keep my mouth shut was clearly not working at the moment.
 
“Just because he’s your husband doesn’t
make him my stepfather.”
 
I
regretted the words the moment they escaped my lips, but there was no getting
them back now.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
I didn’t mean it to sound so harsh, but
that doesn’t mean that it’s not true.”

“Nevertheless, the sentiment clearly expressed how
you truly feel.
 
We’ll talk later,”
she said.

“Hang on.
 
Don’t hang up.”
 
But it was
too late.
 

Momma had already broken the connection, and I knew
better than to call her back, at least not until I gave us both time to collect
ourselves.
 
Could I bring myself to
apologize?
 
What I’d said was true
enough.
 
The chief was her husband,
and I was fine with that, but I wasn’t sure that I’d ever be able to embrace
him as my stepfather.
 
It wasn’t
like I was eleven years old.
 
I was
a grown woman, divorced myself, for goodness sake.
 
So why did I feel so awful for how I’d
just behaved, no matter how justified I felt?

“Wow, that was really ugly,” Grace said as she
stroked my arm lightly.
 
“Are you
okay?”

“I’ve been better,” I said.
 
“I’m going to have to find a way to make
things right, but now is not the time.
 
We have a case to investigate.”

“Are you sure that you shouldn’t go to your mother’s
right now and try to resolve this between you?
 
Isn’t sooner better than later?”

“Not in this case.
 
Come on.
 
Let’s forget about my mother and her
husband and focus on Evelyn’s murder.
 
Who should we tackle first, Conrad or Violet?”

“I say we talk to good old Connie,” Grace said.

“Any reason in particular?” I asked her as we headed
back to where we’d parked the Jeep.

“Just call it a hunch,” Grace said.

“That’s good enough for me,” I said.

As we drove to Union Square, it was time to bring
Grace up to date about what I’d found in Evelyn’s house during our search
before we’d been interrupted by the police chief’s unexpected visit.

I handed her my cellphone.
 

“Do you want me to call someone for you?” Grace asked,
looking a little confused.

“No.
 
Look
at the most recent photos I took,” I suggested.

“Suzanne, I don’t want to see pictures of donuts
you’d made again.”

“That was one time,” I protested, “and I was trying
to get your opinion on an icing color.
 
I’m talking about some shots I took inside Evelyn’s that you might be
interested in.”

“Now you’re talking,” she said as she pulled up my
most recent shots.
 
After studying
the entries in Evelyn’s appointment book, Grace asked, “What’s this supposed to
be?”

I glanced at it, but I didn’t feel all that
comfortable about taking my eyes off the road.
 
“Let me pull over and check,” I
said.
 
I found a spot where it was
safe, pulled over, and then I took the phone from Grace.
 
“Okay, if we turn it this way and I tap
the screen once, it might be a little clearer.”
 
The note from Violet showed up legibly
when I did that, so I handed the phone back to Grace.

“Wow, is it just me, or is Violet a little bat-crap
crazy?”

“It’s not just you,” I said as I moved to another
picture.
 
“This one is from Conrad,”
I said as I showed her the shot of the necklace and card.

“It’s not all that nice a necklace, is it?” Grace
asked as she studied the image displayed.

“How can you tell just by looking at a picture of it
on a cellphone?”

“Hey, I’ve trained myself in distinguishing the finer
things,” she said.
 
“Where did you
find this?”

“In one of her jacket pockets,” I said.

“So, it clearly didn’t mean much to Evelyn, either.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It never even made it into her jewelry box,” Grace
said.
 
“What else do you have?”

“How about this?” I asked as I reached over and
flipped to the final relevant photo, the one of the torn birthday card from her
cousin, Julie.

Grace glanced at it.
 
“Where did you find this?”

“In the trashcan,” I said.

“And was it in one piece when you discovered it
there?”

“Actually, it was ripped in half,” I said.

“So, Julie was out of favor with Evelyn when she was
murdered.”

“I think that it’s safe to assume that.
 
What does it mean, though?”

“That we have more digging to do, but at least we
have some ammo now.
 
I’m sorry to
say that I didn’t find anything during my part of our search.”

“I’m not surprised.
 
After all, you got the toughest area.”

“At least we’ve got these,” she said.

As I pulled back out onto the road, Grace and I
started chatting about the best ways to approach our suspects, but we still
hadn’t been able to come up with anything spectacular by the time we pulled
into Union Square.
 
As usual, it
appeared that we’d be playing this one by ear.

It was probably for the best.
 
Grace and I were never all that great at
outlining our plans.
 
We usually believed
that operating by the seats of our pants was the best way to investigate.
 
Normally, all that a preset idea did was
lock us into a particular course of action, whether it was the best way to move
forward or not.
 
When we ad-libbed
things, we were much more capable of going wherever the investigation led us
instead of clinging to any preconceived notions we might be going in with.

At the moment, our plan was to have no plan at all,
an oxymoron if ever there was one.

Chapter 15

“You must be Connie Swoop,” I said as I extended a
hand to the man we were looking for when Grace and I walked onto a car lot in
Union Square.
 
He matched the
description I’d been given to a tee, down to the carefully styled but
unnaturally tinted brown hair, the slick business suit, and a pair of dress
shoes sporting an impossible shine.
 

It was clear that he wasn’t all that thrilled with
the nickname, but he was too good a salesman to get too upset about it.
 
“Actually, it’s Conrad,” he said through
a set of overly brightened teeth.
 
“And
you two lovely ladies are?”

I decided to ignore his question and follow up with
one of my own.
 
I’d seen politicians
do it often enough, so how hard could it be?
 
“Really?
 
You don’t like that?
 
Funny, I could have sworn that I heard
it was Connie.
 
At least that’s how
Evelyn Martin always referred to you.”

His features hardened for a split second before he
recovered his aplomb.
 
“Were you
friends with Evelyn?
 
It was tragic,
the accident that happened to her.”

“It was no accident,” Grace said, “or hadn’t you
heard?”

Conrad pretended to falter, but I didn’t believe
it.
 
He stuttered out, “Are you
saying that someone pushed her on purpose?”

“That’s the prevailing theory,” I said.
 
“When’s the last time that you saw her,
Conrad?”
 
I made sure to emphasize
the name as I said it.

The salesman frowned for a moment before
answering.
 
“It had to be three days
ago.
 
We were going to go out to
dinner, but I’m sorry to say that we were interrupted before we could really
get started.”

“What happened?” Grace asked.

“A woman that I see occasionally somehow got the
wrong impression about our relationship, and she confronted me at my home while
Evelyn was visiting.”

“What was her name?” Grace asked.

“I don’t believe that’s any of your business,” he
answered.

“I’m guessing it was Violet Frasier.
 
Am I right?” I asked.

“Bingo.”
 
Wow,
he gave that up pretty quickly.
 
The
real question was, was he being helpful, or was he trying to get us distracted
before we could focus too hard on him?
 

“We plan to talk to her as well,” I said, “but since
we’re here speaking with you, we’d like to know where you were yesterday
morning.
 
If you were working here,
I’m sure that someone can alibi you.”

“Yesterday was my day off,” he said.
 
“I spent it driving in the mountains.”

“Alone?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, clearly getting irritated with our
line of questions.
 
“Who exactly are
you?”

It was time to tell him.
 
“I’m Suzanne Hart,” I said, “and this is
my best friend, Grace Gauge.”

“I didn’t
think
that you two were with law enforcement,” Conrad said a little
disdainfully.
 
“What business is it
of yours where I was?”

“We had close ties with Evelyn,” I said.
 
It was stretching the truth, but Conrad
didn’t know that.

“Funny, she never mentioned either one of you to me.”

“Maybe she just forgot, like you forgot to tell Violet
and Evelyn about each other.
 
Neither one of them knew that you were dating the other one, did
they?
 
You said that Violet was
upset, but I’m pretty sure that Evelyn wasn’t all that pleased about it when
she found out, either.”

“She understood, once I explained the situation to
her.”

“Is that why you bought her that cheap gold
necklace?” I asked, playing a hunch.
 
“Were you trying to make it up to her?”

Conrad looked sharply at me.
 
“How did you know about that?”

“I told you that we were close, remember?”

“That necklace was given out of love and affection,
nothing more.”

“Did you happen to give a duplicate one to Violet?”
Grace asked.
 
It was a question that
wouldn’t have even occurred to me to ask, but I was glad that she’d thought of
it.
 
One look at Conrad’s face told
me that she’d scored a direct hit.

“That’s nobody’s business,” he said brusquely.
 
“Now, unless one of you is here looking
for a new vehicle, I’d appreciate it if you’d move on.”

“Who knows?” I asked.
 
“I might replace my Jeep soon.”
 
To anyone who knew me, it was clearly a
lie.
 
I was as devoted to that
vehicle as I was to my friends and family.
 
Well, not quite that much, but it was still pretty close.

“What were you looking to spend?” he asked.
 
“We’ve got a lovely little Subaru with
low miles on it that you might like.
 
Why don’t we take it for a spin?”

There was no way I was getting into a car with this
guy, with or without Grace, and I had a hunch he wouldn’t let me take it out on
my own, even if I had been serious about buying it.

“Sorry, but I need to trust the man I’ll be working
with first,” I said.
 
“Are you
trustworthy, Conrad?”

“Ask just about anybody,” he said.
 
“I’m a man of principle, and my word is
my bond.”

“If that’s true, then why didn’t you pay Evelyn back
the money that she loaned you?” Grace asked him sweetly.

He frowned again.
 
“I don’t know where you’re getting your
information from, but I paid Evelyn back every penny I borrowed from her, with
interest.”

“When did this supposedly happen?” I asked him.

“Last week.”

“Can you prove that?” Grace asked him.

“I don’t have to, not to you, and not to the police.”

“I don’t know, Connie,” Grace said as she shook her
head sadly.
 
“It sounds as though
there’s nobody to dispute your version of what happened but Evelyn, and unless
we hold a séance, she’s not going to be telling her side of the story.”

“That’s it,” Conrad said angrily.
 
“You’re obviously not looking for a car,
and what’s worse, you’re trying to pin whatever happened to Evelyn on me.
 
Well, I’m not going to stand here and
take it.
 
You both need to leave.”

“Or what?” I asked him.

“Or you’ll regret it,” he answered in a tone of voice
that chilled my blood.

Either Conrad Swoop was bluffing, or he was about to
commit an act of violence against my best friend and me.
 
All I knew was that it wasn’t the right
time to find out which plan he had in mind.
 
“Come on, Grace.
 
Let’s go.”

“But we’re not finished with him, yet,” she said.

“We are for now,” I answered.

“For good,” he replied.