Custard Crime: Donut Mystery #14 (The Donut Mysteries) (5 page)

“I’d never call your food the least of anything,”
Jake said with a smile.

Instead of responding to him, Trish turned to
me.
 
“You know, this one might just
be a keeper.”

“That’s the direction that I’m leaning myself, but
it’s still too soon to say just yet,” I answered her with a smile.

“Well, make up your mind before too long.
 
There might be other women around here
who could possibly be interested in having a state police inspector of their
own.”
 
Trish winked at Jake as she
said the last bit, and he managed to blush a little.

“Sorry I can’t be more accommodating, but this one’s
all mine,” I said as I put my arm in his.

“Hey, I’m still sitting right here, remember?” Jake
asked.

“Nobody’s about to forget that,” Trish said.
 
“You two figure out what you’d like to
eat and I’ll be with you in a shake.
 
Two sweet teas to start?”

I looked at Jake, who nodded happily.
 
“That sounds great, but don’t give
either one of us refills, no matter how much we beg for them.”

“Suzanne, that’s just inhumane,” Trish said with a
grin, “but I understand.”

Once we were left alone to study our menus, I thought
that we’d be free to enjoy a meal together without interruption.

But then again, I hadn’t counted on Gabby Williams
marching up to our table, either.
 

Evidently she wasn’t the least bit afraid of Trish’s
warning.

Then again, I wasn’t sure who I’d put my money on if
Trish and Gabby ever decided to fight it out.
 
Trish was young and scrappy, but Gabby
had a will of iron, and a tongue that could cut through flesh with its barbs.
 
Either way, if it ever did occur, I
didn’t want to be within a country mile of it.

Chapter 6

“Hello, Gabby.
 
I don’t know if you just heard Trish or not, but you should understand
that Jake and I are here to grab a bite to eat and have a little privacy.”
 
I’d learned years before that Gabby
didn’t understand subtlety.
 
She ran
the shop next to mine, ReNEWed, a place where folks could get gently used
clothing for a decent price.
 
Gabby
was also the biggest gossipmonger in four counties, as well as being civilly acidic
in just about every social situation.

“I don’t blame you one single bit,” Gabby said as she
sat down across from us.
 
As she
looked around the diner, she added, “They can be a real pain sometimes, can’t
they?”
 
She then turned to stare at
Jake for a full ten seconds before she said, “I understand that you’re in
charge of finding Evelyn Martin’s killer.”

“That’s right,” Jake said.

“Have you made any progress yet?”

Jake looked a little surprised by how abrupt she
was.
 
“I’m not at liberty to discuss
that.”

Gabby grinned.
 
“Sure, I get it.
 
In
cop-speak, that means you’ve got nothing.
 
Well, this is your lucky day, Inspector.
 
I’ve got not one, but two hot leads for
you.”

“I’m always happy to listen to information from
concerned citizens,” Jake said in a calm, level voice.

I tried to warn him off from encouraging her, but he
must have missed my signal.
 
I knew
that Gabby might indeed have valuable information for the investigation, but if
she started talking now, our meal would be ruined.
 
Besides, it wasn’t as though she
wouldn’t share it with us later, especially if it was too good for her to keep
to herself for very long.

“Okay, then maybe you should get out your pencil and
paper and take notes,” Gabby said.
 
“First off, you need to look at Robby Chastain, and I mean hard.”

“Robby?
 
Are you sure?” I asked her.
 
I couldn’t imagine anyone naming Robby a murder suspect.
 
I’d known the man nearly my entire life,
and I couldn’t see him killing anyone.

Gabby iced me with a quick glance.
 
“Suzanne, if you’d take your head out of
your donuts for a minute or two, you’d know that Robby and Evelyn were in the
middle of a battle over an oak tree on their property line.
 
Robby’s been wanting to cut that thing
down for years, but Evelyn told him if he tried it, she’d burn his house to the
ground in retaliation.”

“That sounds like a bit of an overreaction on her
part,” Jake said.

“You didn’t know Evelyn.
 
She always was fire and ice.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asked her.

“Either you were her best friend in the world, or you
were her greatest enemy.
 
There was
no in-between with that woman.”

“May I ask, how did she feel about you?” Jake asked
her.

“We were best buds,” Gabby said.
 
“Why else do you think I’m trying to
help you find her killer?”

“He probably just thought that you were a concerned
citizen,” I said with a smile that I knew was pushing my luck, but I didn’t
care.
 
After all, she was
interrupting my time with Jake with what I suspected were overblown
exaggerations and innuendoes.

Gabby waved a hand in the air in my direction as if
dismissing me from the conversation.
 
“We both know better than that.
 
Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if Robby got tired of Evelyn’s insults
and decided to eliminate her altogether.”

“All of this over a tree?” Jake asked incredulously.

“Oh, there had been more things than that between
them over the years.
 
The tree was
just the final tipping point.”

“Can you be more specific about their past
interactions?” Jake asked her.

“Inspector, I’m not going to do your
entire
job for you,” Gabby said
disdainfully.
 

I noticed that Trish had started to walk toward us,
but when she saw Gabby sitting with us, she did a quick U-turn and headed back
to the register.
 
There weren’t many
folks in town that could back the Boxcar owner down, but Gabby was evidently one
of them.
 
Great.
 
Now we were never going to get to eat.

“You said that you had two leads to share with me,”
Jake reminded her.

“Don’t get your undies in a knot,” Gabby said.
 
“I’m getting to that.
 
The second person you need to look at is
Julie Gray.”

“I don’t know her,” I said.
 
“She doesn’t live in April Springs, does
she?”

“Union Square,” Gabby said.

“What does she have to do with Evelyn’s murder?” Jake
asked her.

“You didn’t know?” Gabby asked, feigning
surprise.
 
“She’s Evelyn’s second cousin.”

“And how exactly is that relevant to the
investigation?” Jake asked her.

“From what Evelyn told me, Julie was her closest living
relative, and unless she changed her mind in the last few days before she died,
I got the distinct impression that Julie was set to inherit everything that
Evelyn had.”

“Is that very substantial?” I asked.
 
“I thought that Evelyn was pretty much
broke.”

“Oh, she had money, and I’m talking serious cash,”
Gabby said.
 
“She just didn’t want
anyone in town to know about it.”

“Was Chief Martin even aware of it?” I asked.

“No, this all happened after they split.
 
Evelyn inherited five hundred thousand
dollars from her great aunt last month, and the kicker was that Julie didn’t
get a dime of it in the old lady’s will.
 
She resented Evelyn for it, and she didn’t mind who knew it.
 
If she’s the one who did it, it wasn’t just
so she could get Evelyn’s meager possessions.
 
She wanted the bigger prize of all that
money Evelyn had just gotten herself.”

“I’ll look into both of your tips,” Jake said, and
then he stood and offered his hand.
 
“Thank you for the information.
 
I appreciate it.”

He stood there in silence with his hand extended and
a simple smile on his face as he waited for Gabby to respond.
 
I wasn’t sure who to bet on, but I was
thrilled when Gabby finally gave in, stood, and took Jake’s hand in hers.
 
“I must say, you’re a little more
formidable than I thought you’d be,” Gabby conceded with a frown.

Jake just laughed, and to my surprise, Gabby joined
in before she walked away.

After she was gone, I asked Jake, “What was that all
about?”

“What are you talking about?” he asked as he sat back
down and continued to study the menu.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.
 
That last bit at the end when you got
her to leave,” I said.

“Suzanne, it’s going to take more than someone like
Gabby Williams to back me down, no matter how formidable this town might think
she is.
 
I wanted her to know that I
wasn’t going to put up with it, and she got the message, loud and clear.”

“Why do I feel as though I should be taking notes on
how to handle her in the future?” I asked him with a smile.

“No notes necessary.
 
Just watch and learn,” he said with a
smile, and then Jake signaled to Trish.

She joined us quickly, and when she got to our table,
she asked, “What would you two like?”

Jake pointed to me first, and I ordered a burger and
fries.
 
After I was finished, he
held up two fingers as he added, “We’ll take two.”

“Coming right up,” Trish said as she hurried away to
place our order.

Evidently the way Jake had handled Gabby had not gone
unnoticed among the current patrons of the Boxcar Grill.
 
No one else dared approach us after
Gabby’s abrupt dismissal, something that I was most thankful for.

While we waited for our food, Jake asked me quietly,
“Suzanne, what do you think of Gabby’s information?”

“Well, I suppose that it’s fair to say that we’re
friends in the oddest sort of way, but I’m by no means the woman’s biggest
fan.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“I wasn’t finished answering yet.
 
There’s something you should know about
her.
 
If Gabby tells you something,
you should take it seriously.
 
She
has more leads in this town than anyone else, so if she smells smoke, you can
bet your badge that there’s a fire somewhere nearby.
 
There may only be a kernel of truth within
everything that she says, but you can rest assured that it’s there if you dig
hard enough for it.”

“That’s good to know.
 
Do you know Robby Chastain personally?”

“Sure,” I said.
 
“He used to be an electrician.
 
The day that man retired from his job, he invested every dime of money
he had and every ounce of energy into making his yard a showplace.
 
It’s no wonder that tree drove him
crazy.
 
I know exactly which one
Gabby had to have been talking about.
 
It’s an old beaten-down oak clearly in its last days.
 
To be honest with you, it looks as
though a light breeze would knock it over, but for some reason, Evelyn was
attached to it.”

Jake shook his head.
 
“I still can’t believe that it’s motive
enough to commit murder.”

“You heard Gabby.
 
There’s more history to the story than
that.”

“The question is, how do we uncover the rest of it?”
he asked me.

“Excuse me.
 
Did you mean ‘we’ as in ‘you and me’ or ‘we, the police’?”

He shrugged before he spoke.
 
“Well, I doubt that I can drag the man
into the interrogation room and ask him about it,” Jake said.
 
“What you said earlier might be valid
after all.
 
Suzanne, I know that you
and Grace have solved cases in the past, ones that baffled Chief Martin.
 
I’m not discounting your ability to get
facts that law enforcement can’t.”

“Oh, stop,” I said with a smile.
 
“You’re making my head swell.”

“That being said,” Jake continued, ignoring my
comment, “I don’t want you pushing anyone too far.
 
Your job is to provide me with
information.
 
I don’t want you and
Grace taking any chances on your own, do you understand that?”

“We both know that I can’t guarantee that,” I said, “especially
since one of our suspects is going to be a killer.”

“I know that, but you don’t have to press your luck.”

“So then, do we have your permission to dig into this
case?” I asked, wanting to make sure that we were clear on it.

“Conditionally, yes,” he said a little reluctantly.

“Hey, we’ll take what we can get,” I said.
 
“Thank you for the faith that you’re
putting in us.”

“Just don’t make me regret it, okay?” Jake asked.

“We’ll do our best.
 
Wow, is that our food already?” I asked
him as I saw Trish approach carrying a large tray.

“I hope so.
 
I’m starving,” he said.

It was indeed our meal, and as we ate, we discussed a
dozen different things, but none of the topics was murder.
 
It was a nice respite from what we’d
been talking about before, and I was glad for it.
 
After we ate, Jake pulled out his wallet
as he grabbed the bill.