Jessica Beck - Donut Shop 18 - Dangerous Dough (5 page)

“Then let’s get
to it, shall we?
 
Who should be
first on our list?”

After a moment’s
thought, I said, “We should absolutely go after the civilians first.
 
I’ve got a hunch that the cops are going
to be a lot harder to crack.
 
Besides, Jake told me that we should keep as low a profile as possible
for as long as we can.”

“That sounds like
a plan to me, then.
 
Let’s start
with Shannon.
 
Ex-wives are my
specialty, you know.”

As I started
driving to the address Maisie had given us, I said, “I’m glad you feel that way,
because I always dread talking to them, myself,” I said.

“Why on earth should
you?
 
Who couldn’t love a bitter ex
that can’t wait to dish dirt on their former love?”

“I don’t
know.
 
It’s all kind of depressing
to me,” I said.

“That’s because
you’re a newlywed,” Grace said with a grin.
 
“You want the entire world to be full of
love and rainbows right now, and why shouldn’t you?
 
You’re still on your honeymoon, after
all.”

“Grace, please
tell me that you’re not really as cynical as you sounded just then.”

“I’m not,” she
replied.
 
“I just haven’t had the
luck with men that you’ve had.”

I decided not to
remind her of my disastrous marriage to Max.
 
“Things are looking up with Stephen,
aren’t they?” I asked as I pulled into the complex where Shannon lived.

“They are indeed,
even if his new job is making it harder between us.
 
He’s under a lot of stress right now,
and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to help him.
 
Do you have any advice?”

I laughed.
 
“I learned a long time ago not to give
anyone advice when it comes to their love lives.
 
That’s a road full of potholes and speed
bumps.”

Grace laughed
right along with me.
 
“Point taken.”

“That being
said,” I added, “all you can really do is just be there for him.”
 
I glanced over and saw that Grace was
grinning at me.
 
“What’s so funny
about that?”

“The advice is
solid enough,” she said as we got out of my Jeep.
 
“You just contradicted yourself by
giving it.”

“What can I say?
 
I’m allowed to break my own rules every
now and then, especially when it comes to you.”

“Thanks for
making the exception,” she said.
 
“We
should keep in mind that Shannon might not be entirely sympathetic to our cause
of finding her ex’s killer, so she might not be entirely cooperative.
 
Any suggestions on how we handle it if
she tries to shut us down?”

“If she won’t
help us willingly, we really don’t have any choice but to imply that the police
might be looking at her if we can’t give them something.”

“I like it.
 
There’s nothing like the fear of reprisal
to get someone to spill their secrets.”

“It’s just a
backup plan, though,” I reminded her.

“Got it.
 
Let’s do this.”

As I reached out
to ring Shannon’s apartment bell, I couldn’t help wondering again if Grace
wasn’t enjoying this a little too much.
 
I often worried that she didn’t take what we did seriously enough.
 
I supposed that it was easy to forget
that we were dealing with potential killers during our interviews, but I felt
the need to remind her every so often.
 
She enjoyed the cat-and-mouse nature of the questioning and then the
digging, and maybe that was what made her so good at it.
 
I wasn’t always willing to push our
suspects as much as she did.
 
That
was probably what made us such a good team.
 
Grace was our brashness, while I tried
to be more methodical in our approaches.
 

At least it had
worked for us so far.

Chapter 6

When Shannon
Wright opened the door to her apartment, it was as though she were making a
grand entrance into a hotel ballroom.
 
She was lovely—there was no denying it—but in a shallow, superficial way.
Underneath her expression, it was clear to me that there was nothing but ice.
 
I had to admit that her dress was
exquisite, showing off her rather spectacular figure to its greatest advantage,
and her makeup had been expertly applied.
 
All in all, she presented herself as a brightly wrapped package, but I
had to wonder if there was anything of substance inside.

“Hello?” she
asked.
 
“May I help you?”

“We’re hear to
discuss Alex Tyler’s murder with you,” Grace said right out of the gate.
 
There was no hesitation in her voice as
she spoke or any sign that she didn’t have complete conviction that Shannon
would talk to us.

“Murder?
 
I understood that it was a heart
attack,” Shannon said with just the slightest hesitation in her voice.

“That’s what they
thought at first, but after the medical examiner’s report, they know that he
was poisoned,” I offered.

Alex Tyler’s ex
shuddered slightly.
 
“Horrid.
 
That’s just horrid.
 
I’m afraid I don’t know what it has to
do with me, though.”

“Once upon a time
you were married to the man, weren’t you?” Grace asked her.

“It felt as
though it was a lifetime ago.
 
I
hadn’t seen him in ages.”

“When exactly
might that have been?” I asked her.

It was worth a
shot, but after a moment, it was clear that there was no way she was going to answer
that without asking a question of her own first.
 
“I’m sorry, but we haven’t been
introduced.”

“I’m Suzanne Hart,
and this is Grace Gauge.
 
We’re
working on the investigation.”

Shannon seemed
startled by my statement, as well she might be, since we had no official
status.
 
“Not with the Granite
Meadows police.
 
I know that much.”

“The truth is
that right now we’re collecting information for the special investigator in
April Springs,” Grace said.
 
That
was twelve shades from the truth since Jake had told me that he couldn’t
officially sanction what we were doing, and I was about to correct it when I
was interrupted.

“I can’t help
you.
 
I don’t know anything about
it,” Shannon said, and then she started to close the door in our faces.

“You know, it
won’t look good that you aren’t cooperating,” Grace said solemnly.

“I can assure you
that I don’t care how it looks,” Shannon retorted.

“So, for the
record, you have opted not to cooperate; is that correct?” I asked her.

That brought a
frown to her lips.
 
“For what it’s
worth, Alex was a bore while we were married, and nothing changed
afterwards.
 
If you need someone to
speak with about his most recent activities, you should really talk to Maisie
Fleming.”

That caught me by
surprise.
 
“Maisie?
 
Why should we speak with her?”

Shannon scowled
as she explained, “She always kept quite a pretty close eye on my former
husband.
 
As a matter of fact, she
confronted me soon after our divorce, telling me that I’d never deserved
him.
 
As if she did.
 
The woman was obsessed with Alex, and
I’m sure that her ardor hadn’t receded over the months since we split.”

“It was just a
harmless crush, though, wasn’t it?” I asked, trying to picture Maisie as a
stalker.

“I chose the word
‘obsessed’ most carefully.
 
Don’t be
taken in by her harmless demeanor.
 
The woman is more dangerous than she appears to be.
 
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have plans.”

I wasn’t sure
that she really did, but if something
had
been scheduled, I doubted that it would include us.

Once we were dismissed,
I turned to Grace as we walked back to my Jeep.
 
“Do you believe anything she said about
Maisie?”

“I kind of do,”
Grace said.
 
“You saw Maisie’s
place.
 
What kind of woman around
our age turns her entire apartment into a winter wonderland?
 
It’s clear that she’s easily obsessed by
things.
 
How hard is it to make the
jump to believing that she was obsessed with Alex, too?”

“I hadn’t thought
of it that way,” I said.
 
“That’s
worth some consideration.”

“Save your
thinking for the drive back home,” Grace said.
 
“We have a known criminal to interview
next.”

“Where do you
suppose we’ll find Deke Marsh?” I asked.

“I’m guessing the
closest bar might not be a bad place to start,” Grace replied.

“It’s as good a
guess as any,” I answered.

We found a place
on the edge of town, and Grace and I walked in together.
 
It was dark, and music blared from the
jukebox as we approached the bartender.
 
There were maybe half a dozen men and women there, but nobody even
looked up from their drinks as we approached him.

“We’re looking
for Deke Marsh,” I said.

“Sorry, never
heard of him,” the bartender answered curtly as he went back to polishing the
counter in front of him.

“Are you sure?”
Grace asked, and I saw her waving a twenty-dollar bill in the air.

“Unless you want
to use that to buy yourself a drink, you can put it away.
 
Twenty bucks isn’t going to change my
answer.”

Grace was unfazed
by his response.
 
“How about a
hundred?”

I saw the
bartender glance quickly toward one of the booths, and then he turned back to
us.
 
“Nope, not a hundred, either.”

“Thank you for
your time,” I said as I tugged on Grace’s arm.

“Suzanne, I’m not
finished with him,” she protested as I pulled her back toward the door.

“You did all that
you needed to do,” I whispered as we walked out together.
 
Once we were out the door, I pulled
Grace off to one side where we weren’t immediately visible from the exit.

“What are we
doing now?” Grace asked me plaintively.

“We’re waiting.”

We stood there a
full thirty seconds before anything happened, though it felt much longer to me.
 
I could see that Grace was about to
speak as the door opened, so I shushed her.
 
A man stepped outside, scanned the
parking lot, and then began exploring his more immediate vicinity.

Evidently we
hadn’t hidden as well as I’d hoped, because he started walking toward us the
instant he saw us.
 
“That was pretty
slick, ladies,” he said as he approached.

“Deke Marsh, I
presume?” I asked as I took a step forward to meet him.

“That
depends.
 
Who’s asking?”

“We’re here looking
into Alex Tyler’s murder,” I answered.

The man looked
genuinely surprised by the statement.
 
“Murder?
 
I heard it was a
heart attack.”

“As a matter of
fact, it was poison,” I said.

The former
convict shook his head in obvious disgust.
 
“Poison is for cowards.
 
Even
Tyler deserved better than that.”

“We heard that
you’d been stalking him since you got out,” I said.
 
Grace was leaving this one up to
me.
 
I wasn’t sure if that was a
good thing or not.

“Somebody’s been
lying to you,” he said.

“Our source is
pretty credible,” I answered, though I wasn’t sure anymore if that was actually
true.
 
Shannon had seeded some doubt
in my mind about Maisie’s trustworthiness, but I didn’t need to tell Deke Marsh
that.

“Maybe so, but
they got this one wrong.”

“Are you saying
that you didn’t resent being arrested and thrown in prison?” Grace asked,
finally deciding that it was time to speak up.

“First of all, it
was jail, not prison.”

“What’s the
difference?” Grace asked.

Deke Marsh
laughed.
 
“I’ve done time in both,
and believe me, there’s a difference.”

“What’s the
second point?” I asked him.

“I served a month
before I got out because of the DA’s screw-up.
 
I never claimed that I didn’t do
it.
 
Was I happy that good old Alex
decided to reform and arrest me?
 
Not
so much.
 
I admit that I had a score
to settle with him, but somebody took care of him before I got my chance.”

“Reform?
 
What is that supposed to mean?” I asked
him.
 
The cop I’d known had been by
the book, to the letter, and though I hadn’t liked him, I couldn’t imagine him
doing anything corrupt.

“When he was
here, he took payoffs just like some of his other pals on the force, and then
all of a sudden he started turning them down and getting all righteous about it.
 
That made a lot of folks upset with him,
on both sides of the law.”

“You’re trying to
get us to believe that the police force in Granite Meadows all take bribes?”

“Not all of them,
just a few,” he said with a shrug.
 
“A bought cop should stay bought, if you ask me.”

“Why should we
believe you?” Grace asked him.

“Ladies, I don’t
give a flip what you believe.
 
Now
if you’ll excuse me, I have things that need to be taken care of.
 
Good night.”

After he drove
away in a late-model sedan, I asked Grace, “Did you notice that he didn’t ask
us who we were or why we were asking him questions about Alex?”

“I noticed,”
Grace said.
 
“Do you believe anything
he just told us?”

“What, about the
cops here being dirty?
 
I don’t
know.
 
I’ll tell you one thing: I can’t
imagine it ever happening in April Springs.”

“This isn’t April
Springs, though, is it?” Grace asked me.

“We need to talk
to Jake about this before we do anything else,” I said.
 
“He’ll know how we should handle it.”

“Do we really
need to do that before we talk to Alex’s ex-partner on the force?”

“We do,” I
said.
 
“We’re heading back to April
Springs right now.
 
Is that okay
with you?”

“I’m fine with
it.
 
It will give me a chance to
knock out some paperwork when we get back.
 
I may be on vacation, but some of that work has to be done regardless.”

“Then we’ll take this
back up tomorrow after I close the donut shop for the day and have a chance to
talk to Jake about what we’ve discovered so far.”

“I’ll be ready,”
Grace said.
 
“Are you absolutely
sure that you want to go back to the donut shop so soon after your
honeymoon?
 
I’ll bet Emma and Sharon
wouldn’t mind staying on a few more days.”

“Are you
kidding?
 
I can’t wait to get back
to work.
 
I’ve really missed getting
my hands in the batter and the dough.”

“You’ve really
found your perfect niche, haven’t you?”

“I have,” I
admitted.
 
“Face it; you love what
you do, too.”

“Sure, but look
at how much I make.
 
Add the fact
that I can pretty much name my own hours most days, and what’s not to love?”

“I feel the same
way about running Donut Hearts,” I said.

“Then we’re both
exactly where we belong.”

After dropping
Grace off at her place, I headed the last few dozen feet down the road to the
cottage that I was now sharing with Jake.
 
I knew that the odds weren’t good that he’d be there now.
 
After all, he was running his own investigation.

I wasn’t
expecting to find anyone else there, though.