Lemon Larceny (The Donut Mysteries) (26 page)

After Momma left
the room, I decided to get my aunt’s journal out again anyway.
 
After all, it could hardly upset my
mother if I read it while she was in the other room.
 
As I skimmed through the journal, I noticed
that the book itself had page numbers, and as I flipped past the entries, the
numbers became more and more pronounced.
 

Could there be a
clue that wasn’t directly written into the book in my aunt’s handwriting?

I put the journal
aside for a moment and read the clue Momma had found inside the doll’s
locket.
 

It said, “J:P24,
S5,” but I still didn’t know what it meant.

Unless the J
stood for her journal.
 
That could
be why she split the clues that she’d given us.

Putting the note
down beside me, I picked up my aunt’s journal again and flipped to page
24.
 
My finger was shaking a little
as I counted down to the fifth sentence.
 
If I was right, this might just yield me the clue I needed to find her
killer.

The sentence simply
read,

Anna and Greta are great friends.

Was Aunt Jean
trying to tell me that she’d narrowed the hunt down for the person who was
trying to kill her to one of these two women?
 
I still had them on my list of suspects,
along with two men as well, but I wasn’t willing to write off the sheriff and
the attorney as two of my prime suspects, not based on the weakest of clues,
anyway.
 
I wasn’t even certain that
I’d understood what Aunt Jean had been trying to tell us, but even if I was
spot-on, it didn’t mean that my aunt knew who was after her for sure.

 
I was still thinking about the possibility that one of the two women
had killed my aunt when the doorbell rang.
 
I had no idea who could be visiting us, but I was still surprised when I
looked through the peephole and saw the police chief looking back.

“Hey, Chief.
 
Come on in.”

“Thanks,” he said
as he removed his hat and started twirling it in his hands.
 
“Suzanne, we need to talk.”

“What about?” I
asked him, wondering if Momma would come back into the room anytime soon.

“It’s about your
aunt, actually,” he said.
 
“I’ve
been hearing some stories that you and your mother are going around town asking
folks for their alibis.
 
Is that
true?”

“Not exactly,” I
said.

“Then what have
you been doing?”

“We’ve been
discussing Aunt Jean with several of the folks who live in town, trying to get
a little closure on our loss,” I said, keeping to the explanation Momma and I
had been using for the past two days.

“That’s pure baloney,”
the chief said.

“Excuse me?”

“I just don’t buy
it.
 
For some reason, you two have
got it into your heads that Jean was murdered; at least that’s the way that
you’ve been acting.”

I got angry at
that comment, something that rarely helped, but I couldn’t control myself.
 
My mother and I were the only ones
seeking justice for my aunt’s death!
 
This police chief didn’t even believe it was murder!
 
I had my reasons to believe that he
still belonged on my list of suspects, but I didn’t care at that moment.
 
I’d been trying to bury my grief in the
investigation, but I just couldn’t keep it down any longer.
 
“That’s because it
was
murder.
 
If you
weren’t such a backwoods hick of a law enforcement officer, you’d know it,
too.”

I saw anger flash
in his eyes for a moment until he restrained himself.
 
In a soft but steely voice, he asked,
“Do you have any proof that backs that up?”

“Follow me,” I
said as I led him up the steps.
 
Confronting him alone was probably one of the dumbest things I’d ever
done in my life, but at that moment, I didn’t care.

“See that?” I
asked as I pointed to where the fishing line had dug into the soft wood of the
baluster.

“What?
 
There’s nothing there.”

“Look closer,” I
ordered him.
 
Feel it with your
fingertips.”

He knelt down and
did as I suggested.
 
After a few
moments, without any prompting from me, he searched the opposite baluster and
found what I’d found.
 
After he
stood up again, he said, “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Just that
someone strung fishing line between the balusters to trip my aunt and send her
crashing down the stairs, you mean?”

“That’s a mighty big
leap you’re making there.”

“We found
something else, too.”

“What?” he asked
me.
 
Was I tipping our hand to the
police chief or a killer?

“I found a
half-empty spool of fishing line in the pantry.”

He frowned at
that news.
 
“That could just be a
coincidence.”

“It’s possible,
but I doubt that it’s likely,” I replied.

“What does your
boyfriend think of your theory?
 
And
don’t bother lying to me and trying to tell me that you haven’t told him,
because I won’t believe you.”

“As a matter of
fact, he agrees with us,” I said.

“Why am I not
surprised to hear that?”

“Think what you
will of
my
detective skills, but Jake
Bishop is a fine law enforcement officer.”

“I know that,”
the chief said with resignation in his voice.
 
“In my defense, I gave the stairs a
cursory examination when I first got here.
 
I’m willing to admit that I didn’t see what you showed me.”

He sounded so
defeated that I suddenly started to feel sorry for him.
 
“Don’t beat yourself up about it.
 
I didn’t spot it myself until I put the
baluster under a powerful beam of light from my flashlight.”

“That’s no
excuse.
 
I still should have caught
it.”

Was he sincere,
or was he just acting?
 
I still
wasn’t sure, so I decided to push my luck a little further.
 
“By the way, your alibi didn’t check out
after all.”

“What?” he
asked.
 
“Somebody’s lying to
you.
 
If I said that I was at
Burt’s, then that’s where I was.”

“Funny, but we
spoke with a waitress at the diner, and she said that you skipped eating
breakfast there entirely the morning my aunt died.”

“
She
said that?
 
Who exactly did you talk to?”

“I don’t want to
get anyone in trouble, but she was most emphatic,” I said.

“Don’t bother
telling me.
 
It was Tammy, wasn’t
it?”

I admitted as
much.
 
“If you weren’t eating
breakfast there, then where were you, and why are you hiding it?”

“I was there all
right,” he said, the resignation thick in his voice.
 
“I was eating in back with Burt,
though.
 
The truth is that Tammy has
a crush on me.
 
It’s embarrassing
the way she flirts with me, and I wasn’t in the mood for her antics that
morning.
 
Burt invited me to eat
with him in back, and his waitresses never come into the kitchen.
 
He puts all of the plates on the
pass-through, and they pick the orders up from there.
 
I found a spot out of her line of vision
and spent my time there swapping lies with Burt.
 
Ask him if you don’t believe me.”

“We will,” I
said.
 
The story sounded good, but
that didn’t necessarily make it true.

“Do it now,
Suzanne.
 
I won’t have this hanging
over my head a minute more than I have to.
 
Here, I’ll call him myself.”

“If you don’t
mind, I’ll do it,” I said as I reached for a phone book.

“What’s wrong
with my phone?” he asked, and then Chief Kessler smiled.
 
“You don’t trust me that I’ll actually
dial Burt’s number.”

“No offense,” I
said as I looked up the diner number and started to dial.

“None taken,” the
chief said, his smile never wavering.
 
“I’m beginning to think that you might actually know what you’re doing
after all.”

“It’s easy enough
to underestimate me,” I said.
 
“I
may be a donutmaker by trade, but I’ve learned a thing or two since I started
investigating murder.”

I dialed the
diner number, and a woman answered.
 

“May I speak with
Burt, please?” I asked.

“Sorry.
 
He’s on his way out the door.
 
Is there something that I can help you with?”

“Tell him this
will just take a second.
 
I’m with
the police chief.”

“Hang on,” she
said, and as she put the phone down on the counter, I could hear the ringing of
forks and knives in the background, the murmur of a half dozen different
conversations, and the banging of pots and pans.

“This is Burt,”
he said.
 
“Whatever it is you want,
you’d better make it dance.”

“Hi, Burt, this
is Suzanne Hart.
 
Where did Chief
Kessler have breakfast the morning they found Jean Maxwell’s body?”

“Why do you want
to know?”

“It’s not that
hard a question,” I said.
 
“Just
answer it.”

“You told my
waitress that you were with the chief.”

“I am.”

“Then put him
on,” Burt said.

“He wants to talk
to you,” I said.
 
“No prompting on
your part.”

“I wouldn’t dream
of it,” Chief Kessler said.

“It’s me,” he
said a moment later.
 
“Tell her the
truth.”
 
Then he handed the phone
back to me and shrugged.

“He was in the
kitchen with me for two hours that morning,” Burt said when I came back onto
the line.

“Why is that?”

“One of my
waitresses has a crush on him, and he was ducking her,” Burt said.
 
“Let me talk to the chief again.”

“Okay.”

I handed him the
phone, and a moment later, I saw him smile.
 
He hung up after that and handed it back
to me.

“What did he
say?” I asked.

“He wanted to know
who I’d ticked off, and I’d managed to do it,” the chief said with a grin.

“What did he
think the phone call was about?”

“You don’t know
Burt.
 
He’s a fine man, but he
doesn’t have much of an imagination.
 
I doubt he gave it two good thoughts.
 
Are you satisfied now?”

“As much as I can
be,” I said.

“Good.
 
I’m glad that we got that settled.
 
If you trust me now, even a little, tell
me what you’ve got.”

Momma chose that
moment to walk back in.
 
“I thought
I heard voices in here, Suzanne.
 
Hello, Chief.
 
What brings
you by?”

“Your daughter
was just about to share with me her latest insights about who might have killed
your sister.”

Momma glanced at
me, and I nodded.
 
I loved how quick
she was.
 
She managed to assimilate
all of the new information and accept it immediately.
 
That was one of the things I admired
most about her; she was rarely if ever indecisive about anything.

“We could always
use another point of view.
 
Let’s
get started then, shall we?” she asked.

Chapter 22

“We have three
active suspects now,” I said, not mentioning that the police chief had just
removed himself from our list.
 
“We’re fairly certain that one of them killed my aunt.”

“How can you be
so sure of that?”

“Whoever threw
that brick through the window made a fatal mistake,” I said.

“How so?” the
chief said.

“They might as
well have taken out a billboard announcing that one of them was the real
killer.
 
Why else try to scare us
off like that?
 
A lot of people
would have been upset when it happened, but I took it as a sign of encouragement.”

The chief smiled
softly.
 
“You’re not a typical
donutmaker, are you?”

“I wouldn’t
know.
 
I haven’t met many folks who
do what I do for a living.”

“Okay, based on
what you told me before, I’m guessing your list consists of Adam, Anna, and
Greta, but could you give me motives that are a little more specific than
listing some of the seven deadly sins?”

“We can do that
now,” I said.
 
“We know that Anna
has been badgering Jean to sell this place to her for years, but lately it
escalated to the point of harassment.
 
With Jean out of the way, Anna could have figured that she’d have a
better chance getting it from me, but my aunt gave her even more incentive than
that.”

“What did she
do?” Chief Kessler asked.

“She added a
provision to her will that if I didn’t survive until midnight tonight, Anna
would get the place outright.”

“Why would your
aunt do that to you?” he asked me.

Momma answered
for me.
 
“My sister most likely believed
that it would sharpen Suzanne’s focus, and make the killer more motivated to
expose themselves.”