Mint Chip Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 6 (2 page)

Amy picked up her white napkin-wrapped
bundle of silverware and pointed it at Heather.  “But your boyfriend is a
detective.”

“I haven’t talked to him about it
yet,” Heather said, watching Amy pick up the salt shaker and shake a ridiculous
amount of salt onto their basket of chips.  “I went to pick up my dry cleaning,
and I saw that something was going on.  But I don’t know what.”

“Well, you’ll have to tell me as soon
as you find out.”  Amy dipped a chip into her pot of salsa, bit off the corner
with the salsa on it, chewed, and swallowed.  “
Anyways, I have some great news.  I have a date tonight!
I just need to find a new hairdresser in time.”

“Oooh!  With whom?” Heather asked.

“You’ve never met him,” Amy said,
waving her hand as if brushing the topic away.  “He’s just a guy I met at my
last art show.  No big deal.”

“No big deal, but you just have to
have your hair done for tonight?”

“Well…yes.  I mean, just because this
isn’t any big deal doesn’t mean I don’t want to look my best.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said
this was ‘no big deal,’” Heather said, raising her eyebrows and watching Amy
try to look nonchalant.  “‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’”

“Well, I mean, it’s just Chris.”

“‘Just Chris?’  Does ‘just Chris’ have
a last name?”

“Bennett,” Amy said.  “Chris
Bennett.”  She glanced around the restaurant, as if trying to find something
else to talk about.

“Amy, come on.  This is me, remember?”

“I know,” Amy said, suddenly looking
miserable.  “Okay, I give.  Chris is a big deal.”

“That’s great!” Heather said.  “Isn’t
it?”

“I don’t know,” Amy said.  “I just
really like him.  More than I’ve liked any guy in a really long time.” 

“So what’s the problem?”

Amy shrugged.  Her brown eyes seemed
to be struggling to meet Heather’s gaze.  “I guess I’m just afraid this
relationship will turn out like all the other ones.  Gone.  Finished.  Kaput.” 
She sighed.  “And I really want this one to last.”

“Do you think Chris is ‘the one?’”
Heather asked.

“I don’t know,” Amy said.  “But I
think he might be.”

The first notes of “Here Comes the
Sun” floated out of Heather’s purse.  She ignored the ringtone.  “That’s
awesome, Amy,” she said.  “You deserve somebody who’s just as wonderful as you
are.”

“Thanks,” Amy said. 

“So is he wonderful?” Heather asked
with a smile.

Amy smiled, too.  “He’s amazing,” she
said simply.

“So you need to get your hair cut
before tonight, before your date with The A
mazing
Chris.  You want the name of the girl
I go to?  I’m sure she’d try to squeeze you in today if there’s any way she
can.”

“Maybe.  I just wonder how much longer
Shear Beauty is going to be closed.  I’ve been going to Kelly for 10 years.  I
don’t really want to switch.”

“Here Comes the Sun” had stopped
playing several seconds ago.  Now, the notification tone went off on Heather’s
phone.  “Just let me check that a sec,” she said, reaching into her purse.  She
withdrew her phone, saw that she had received a text, and read it.  Oh, no.

“What’s the matter?” Amy asked. 

Heather looked up from the phone
screen to meet Amy’s eyes.  “I think you better plan on finding another
hairstylist,” she said.  “Not just today, but…forever.”

“Why?  What’s the matter with Kelly?”

The words seemed unreal even as they
rolled from her lips.  “She’s dead,” Heather said.

Heather’s doorbell was one of those
old-fashioned ones where it rang as long as you turned it.  Most people usually
caused it to produce one long ring.  But when three short rings sounded, she
knew that it was Ryan at the door.

Shucking both her oven mitts onto the
counter, she glanced at the table, where she’d just set the lasagna in the
midst of two place settings next to a glass dish of garlic-and-parmesan green
beans.  Oh!  Spoons!

She grabbed two serving spoons from
the silverware drawer and stuck one in the corner of the lasagna pan and the
other in the dish of green beans.  No, wait.  A spatula.  She whirled back
toward the drawer just beneath the silverware drawer, yanked it open, and
snatched out a spatula.  Exchanging it for the lasagna spoon, she tossed the
spoon toward the sink and heard it clatter
as she hurried
toward the front door.

Ryan stood on her wide, wraparound
front porch, holding a bouquet of flowers wrapped in green florist’s paper. 
Yellow and orange blooms peeked from the top of the spray, surrounded by oak
leaves in hues of green, orange, and dark red.  As he stepped inside, he handed
her the bouquet.

“Thank you,” she said, surprised.  “To
what do I owe this royal treatment?”

“To the fact that I didn’t start
treating you royally soon enough,” Ryan said.

“Well, thank you,” she repeated, her
tongue suddenly feeling thick and awkward.  “Let me just put these in some water.”

She headed for the kitchen with Ryan
following, then busied herself locating a vase beneath the sink, running water
in it, and plunking the flowers in.  “This looks delicious,” Ryan said from
behind her.

She turned and found him eyeing the
lasagna.  “Everything will be ready in a few minutes,” she said.  “We’re just
waiting on the garlic bread.”

“I can’t wait,” he said.  “Need help
with anything?”

“No thanks,” she said, setting the
vase of flowers on the ledge that divided her kitchen from her living room.  “Getting
the garlic bread out of the oven is a one-person job.  Have a seat.”

Ryan pulled out a chair and sat down. 
“You expect me to sit here without eating this?” he teased, pointing to the
lasagna.

“Yes, I do,” she said.  “Patience, sir,
patience
.”  She flipped
on the oven light and glanced inside at the foil-wrapped loaf of French bread
she’d prepared earlier with liberal amounts of garlic and butter.

“I’ve been patient all day,” Ryan
groaned.  “I wanted to see you.”

“Well, now you see me,” she said,
spreading out her hands, palms up.  “Here you are, and here I am.  Now what?”

The next thing she knew, she was
caught up in Ryan’s embrace, his lips finding hers.  She returned his kiss for
a moment, then stepped back.  “Three minutes,” she said.

Ryan looked bewildered.  “What?”

“Three more minutes on the garlic
bread.  We don’t want it to burn.”

“I don’t care if it burns,” Ryan said,
drawing her back toward him and attempting to cover her lips with his own.  “I
don’t care if the fire department has to come put it out.  I—”

“Well, I do,” she said, smiling,
teasingly pushing him away.  “I love garlic bread.  Not that I need any more
carbs after all the carbs I ate at lunch.”

Ryan flopped back into his seat.  “You
had lunch with Amy?”

“Yep.  Dos Chicos.” 

“I missed lunch today.”

“Working on the murder at Shear
Beauty?” she asked.

“Yeah.”  Ryan paused, then shook his
head.

“What happened?”

“There’s not much I can tell you on
this one,” Ryan said.  “Only what you’re going to read in the paper or what you
probably already heard on the news.”

“I
didn’t watch the news.  What would I hear?  Or read in the paper?”  She glanced
at the oven timer and saw it counting down the seconds in the last minute. 
Heather put on one of her oven mitts, opened the oven door, and pulled the tray
of garlic bread out.  She set it on the stovetop, took off the oven mitt, and
began gingerly picking apart the aluminum foil along the seam she’d made when
she wrapped it.

“Kelly Carlson was bludgeoned to death
in her shop,” Ryan said.  “Her assistant found her this morning when she got to
work.”

“When was she killed?” Heather asked,
placing several slices of garlic bread in a silver bread basket.

“Probably last night.”

“Any idea who did it?”

“We’re checking out a possibility,” he
said. 

“Which you can’t tell me about?”
Heather asked, sitting down across from him.

“Right.”

“Okay,” she said.  “Just tell me
whenever you can.”

“I will,” he said.  “Thanks for
understanding.”

She smiled at him in response.  “Want
some lasagna?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” he
sighed.  He held his plate for her as she cut and served him a large piece with
the spatula, then used her clean fork to cut the strings of cheese that led from
his plate to the baking dish and pile them on his lasagna.

As Ryan served himself green beans and
garlic bread, Heather filled her plate as well, taking a small piece of the
lasagna as a concession to lunch’s caloric excess.  “Mmm, these beans are
delicious,” Ryan said around a mouthful.

“Thanks,” she said.  “Just a little
olive oil and garlic, a little parmesan cheese, and voila.”

“This is better than Giovanni’s,” he
said, referring to the restaurant they most frequently patronized.  “Better
than my lasagna, too.”

“You cook?  Why did I think you didn’t
like to cook much?”

“Because I don’t,” he said.  “But
that’s not because I can’t cook.  I’m actually a great cook.  It’s just that I
don’t have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen.  And somehow, it doesn’t seem
worth it to go to a lot of trouble for just one person.”

“I know what you mean,” she said.

“Our next date,” he said, punctuating
his words with jabs of the fork toward her, “I’ll cook for you.”

“You’re on,” she said.  “What’s your
specialty?”

“You’ll have to wait and find out,” he
said, as a whine sounded from right next to the table.  They both glanced
toward the floor to see Dave, Heather’s fluffy, white mixed-breed dog, looking
up at Ryan with pleading eyes.  “No way, Dave,” Ryan said.  “This is mine. 
Dogs don’t eat lasagna, anyway.”

“Um, actually,” Heather said, giving
him her best guilty look, “they do, sometimes.”

“Dave eats lasagna?”

“And Chinese food.  Except he doesn’t
like vegetables.  Just the meat.”

“A dog after my own heart,” Ryan
said.  “But he’s still not getting my lasagna.”

“Don’t you ever let Bella eat anything
besides cat food?” Heather asked.

Now it was Ryan’s turn to look
guilty.  “We’re talking about Dave,” he said with mock seriousness.  “You leave
Bella out of this.”

“That’s what I thought,” Heather said
smugly, and dug into her meal.

***

That night, after Heather had let Dave
out into the backyard, waited for him to do his business, and let him back in,
she walked into the living room and picked up the remote.  “It’s okay, Dave,”
she said to her dog, who was looking at her with his head cocked to one side,
the way he always did when he didn’t understand some departure from their
normal routine.  “I just want to watch part of the news.  Probably just the
first part.”

Heather took up her favorite position
on the couch, slouching low against the cushions with her feet up on the coffee
table in front of her, and pushed the button to turn the TV on.  She had to
wait through the opening graphics and intro before the scene changed to show
the two news anchors sitting at their desk and looking seriously into the
camera.

“At the top of the news tonight,” Jane
Duvall said, each blond hair perfectly in place and makeup highlighting her
flawless features, looking every bit the beauty queen she had once been, “is
the story of the murder of a Hillside businesswoman.”

As she continued, the camera cut to an
exterior shot of Shear Beauty, showing the yellow crime scene tape and an
officer standing guard.  “Kelly Carlson was the owner of Shear Beauty, a
popular hair salon on Lakeridge Road.  This morning, she was found bludgeoned
to death in her shop when her assistant arrived for work.  Police do not yet
have a suspect, but they are following up on potential leads.  And they—and the
victim’s family—are asking for the public’s help in solving this crime.”

Then, suddenly, Ryan’s face filled the
screen above the words Detective Ryan Shepherd, Hillside PD.  Someone
off-camera was holding a microphone for him.  “We can’t release very many
details at this time,” Ryan said.  “We’re still very early in the
investigation.  However, we were able to notify Ms. Carlson’s family this
morning, and they have asked us to release her name and to ask anyone who has
any information regarding this crime to please contact the Hillside Police Department.”

Heather snatched up her phone and
tapped out a text—you’re on television!—and pressed send
.

“We will keep you updated as this
story unfolds,” Jane Duvall said, wrapping up.  “Brad?”  She turned to her
co-anchor, who now held a sheaf of papers in front of him as he launched into
the next story.

Heather’s phone pinged with an
incoming message.  She read it and smiled. 

I hate being on television.

“Okay, Dave, that’s it,” Heather said,
pointing the remote toward the TV and turning it off.  “That’s all I needed.” 
Dave stood up from his doggie bed in the corner, waited for her to check to
make sure the front door was locked and then turn off the lights, and followed
her down the hall toward her bedroom.

As she changed into flannel pajama
pants and a T-shirt, Dave jumped up onto her bed and curled up into a sleepy
ball.  “So it’s my bed tonight, is it?” Heather asked.  “Okay, stay there.”

She headed into the tiny bathroom off
her room, turned on the water, and waited for it to get warm so she could wash
her face.  Even though she rarely wore makeup, she still made it a point to go
through the ritual of cleansing her face every night.  It was good for her
skin, and besides, the warm water was a nice, relaxing touch as she readied
herself for bed.  

When she had hung her washcloth back
up, she squeezed toothpaste onto her toothbrush and began to brush her teeth,
staring at her reflection in the mirror.  Something was niggling at the back of
her mind.  What was it?

Bludgeoned inside the shop.  That was
it.  Kelly Carlson had been bludgeoned inside her shop.  That meant she had
probably known her killer—or at least let him or her in. 

Or maybe the killer just walked
through the front door, Heather told herself, playing devil’s advocate.  Maybe
the killer was a customer.

Heather spit her mouthful of
toothpaste foam into the sink.  The police were probably checking out all of
Kelly’s customers from yesterday, she realized, or at least the evening
customers, to see if one of them might have killed her.

But somehow, she had a feeling the
police wouldn’t find any useful information by pursuing that possibility.  It
seemed more likely that the killer wouldn’t be on Kelly’s appointment book. 
Which led Heather back to the probability that Kelly had known her killer and
let the person in.  Because whether the killer had been present in the shop and
had stayed after the last customer left, or whether Kelly had let him or her in
later, the fact remained that she probably wouldn’t have done either of those
two things without knowing the person.

Heather sighed as she turned off the
bedroom light and slipped between the covers of her bed.  Sometimes, she really
didn’t envy Ryan having to figure things out.

Speaking of Ryan…

She felt her cheeks heating up and knew
that if anyone could have seen her at that moment, they would have seen her
blushing as she wondered what it might be like to be married again and to share
a bed with Ryan someday.

She turned over to face the empty side
of the bed.  What would it be like to have someone sleeping on a pillow right
next to her?  She’d have to move out of the middle of the bed, of course, and
only take up her half.

Heather scooted over to the side of
the bed nearest her nightstand.  She lay there for a minute and decided she
could live with sleeping on only one half of the mattress. 

But what about other practical
considerations?
She
wondered. 
Did Ryan snore?  Did he hog the covers?

She turned back onto her other side,
facing the nightstand this time as she always did, and smiled.

One day, perhaps, she would find out
the answers to those questions.