Mint Chip Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 6 (7 page)

“You pick out the wedding band,” he
said.  “Anything you want, and it’s yours.”

Staring at the ring on her finger,
Heather tilted her hand this way and that, watching the light play off the
brilliance of the diamond.  “I can’t believe this,” she said with a laugh.  “We’re
really going to get married.”

“Yes, we really are,” Ryan said.  “And
the sooner, the better.  Take all the time you want to make plans.  Just don’t
take too long.  In fact, let’s get married right now.  I could call a friend,
who just happens to be a Justice of the Peace.”

At the hopeful, little-boy look on his
face, Heather laughed out loud and threw her arms around him.  “I love you so
much,” she just had time to say before his lips found hers again.

***

Later that night, just before she
finally went to sleep in her own bed, Heather picked up her phone.  Navigating
her way through her favorite app, she selected a new ringtone to use as her
default ringtone. 

“Here Comes the Sun” had served her
well for awhile.  But it was time for a change.  Now, if someone called her,
her phone would play “Here Comes the Bride.”

Heather set her phone to “silent,”
turned off the bedside lamp, and snuggled beneath the covers, a smile on her
face.

The next morning at 8:30, tired but
still ecstatic, Heather entered the kitchen of Donut Delights.  Somehow,
despite her excitement, she’d fallen asleep last night.  But it had taken
awhile.  As a result, she’d actually slept until the alarm woke her up.

“Good morning,” Angelica greeted her. 
“Hey!  What is that on your hand?”  She crossed the kitchen in three strides
and seized Heather’s left hand.  “It’s a ring!  He finally asked you to marry
him.  You’re getting married.  Congratulations.”  She threw her arms around
Heather in a bear hug.

Almost before Heather knew it, they
were all hugging: she, Angelica, Maricela, Jung, and Ken.  “Congratulations!”
Maricela said.  “It’s about time!”

They all laughed.  “I still can’t
believe it!” Heather said.

“When did this happen?”

“Last night.”

“So tell us all about it.  How did he
propose?  What did he say?”

“Well, he invited me to dinner, which
he cooked himself,” Heather said.  “Salad with the best dressing I’ve ever
tasted, steak with a white wine mushroom sauce, and French bread.  He proposed
after dinner.  He said I would make him the happiest man in the world if I
would marry him.”

“He cooks and he’s romantic,” Angelica
said.  “He’s perfect for you.”

“Thanks, everybody,” Heather said.

“So when’s the wedding?”

“We haven’t set a date yet,” she
said.  “But you guys will be among the first to know.  You all have to be
there.”

“Of course we’ll be there,” Angelica
said.  “We will sit in the front row and cry how beautiful you are.  Boo-hoo!” 
She rubbed her eyes, pretending to cry.

Again, they laughed.  “Much as I’d
love to talk about this all day long,” Heather said, “I guess we’d better get
to work.”

A female customer stood waiting rather
impatiently at the front counter.  Heather grabbed a hair net and stuffed her
hair into it as she walked up front.  “Good morning.  May I help you?”

Despite the woman’s perfect makeup,
she looked tired.  “I need a dozen Southern Pecan Pie donuts and a dozen Ice
Cream Sundae donuts,” she said abruptly.

“Yes, ma’am,” Heather said, grabbing a
flat, white cardboard box from beneath the counter and assembling it by popping
the sides up and locking the tabs in place. 

“And don’t just smash them together,”
the woman added.  “I want them to look nice when I get where I’m going.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Heather said again,
noticing that the artfully applied makeup was actually concealing bags under
the woman’s eyes.  Maybe she was cranky because she was so tired.

Heather finished with the first box of
donuts and placed it on the counter in front of the customer.  As she reached
for a second box to assemble, she saw the woman try unsuccessfully to stifle a
yawn.  “Long day?” Heather said politely.

“Not that it’s any of your business,
but no,” the woman said.  “It’s the pageant circuit.  Competing in beauty
pageants is exhausting.”

Heather tried not to let her surprise
show on her face.  The woman looked to be in her early 40’s.  As far as Heather
knew, there weren’t a whole slew of beauty pageants for 40-year-old women.

“Fortunately,” her customer continued,
“Emily wins every pageant she enters.”

Wait a minute, Heather thought.  Her
daughter’s name was Emily?  Was this woman Lana Sturmer?

“Congratulations to Emily,” Heather
said.  “She must be beautiful.”

“She is,” the woman said.  “It was too
bad that stupid hairdresser messed up her hair right before the Miss Harper
County pageant.  Otherwise, she would have won that one, too.”

“She didn’t win?” Heather asked,
beginning to place donuts in the second box.

“She was runner-up.”

“That’s great.”

“First runner-up is still first
loser.  That—that woman—deserved what she got.”

“You mean the hairdresser who was
murdered recently?” Heather asked innocently.

“Yes.  The one who was bludgeoned to
death with her own flat iron.”

“Wow.  I didn’t know those things were
heavy enough to kill somebody with.”

“Apparently so.  At least, that’s what
the paper said.”

“Hmm.  Well, that’s too bad.”

“If you say so,” the woman said with a
sniff.

Yep, Heather thought.  That has to be
Lana Sturmer.  Who else in town has both a daughter who wins beauty pageants
and an attitude like that?

She finished preparing Lana’s order
and rang it up at the register.  When she announced the total, Lana pulled cash
from her purse and thrust it at Heather.  She snatched the change Heather
handed her, stuffed it in her wallet, grabbed the boxes of donuts, and stalked
toward the door.

“Whew,” Heather said as the door
closed behind her.

“Who in the world was that?” Maricela
asked.

“Lana Sturmer,” Heather said.  “Excuse
me a minute.  I have to text Ryan and tell him I talked to her.”

She hurried into her office, retrieved
her phone from her purse in the bottom desk drawer, and rattled off a quick
text.  I just met Lana Sturmer.  I think.  She came into the shop and ordered
donuts.  She brought up the murder.  But I didn’t ask her any questions.  Just
thought you should know.

She laid the phone on her desk, leaned
back in her chair, and swiveled it back and forth, waiting for his return
text.  It arrived a couple minutes later.  Thanks, babe.  Hey, did I tell you
that you looked beautiful last night?

Heather smiled.  You might have, she
texted.  But you can always tell me again.

You looked beautiful, he answered. 
Love you.

Love you too.  She hit “send,” dropped
her phone back into her purse, and returned to the kitchen, still smiling.

***

“Ooh, what do you think of this one?” 
Amy pointed to the picture on the right-hand page.

“Too low-cut,” Heather said.  What was
with wedding gowns these days, anyway?

“Girl, it doesn’t hurt to show a
little cleavage,” Amy said.

“Cleavage?  At a wedding?”

“Okay, maybe not,” Amy said, flipping
the page in the bridal magazine.  “How about this one?”

“Too frilly,” she said.  “I don’t want
to look like it’s my quinceañera.  It’s my wedding.  My second wedding, no
less.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t look
stylish.”

“And who gets to decide what’s
stylish?  Some of these are just plain ugly.”

“True,” Amy conceded.  “So let’s find
you one that’s stylish in a way that you like.  And in a way that flatters your
gorgeous figure.”

“What gorgeous figure?”

“Yours, girlfriend,” Amy said.  “Give
yourself some credit, huh?”

She flipped another page.  “Oh, now
here’s one.  This one would look fantastic on you.” 

“Wow,” Heather breathed.  “That’s
gorgeous.”  The sheath dress had an asymmetrical neckline with a wide band at
the waist.  Sheer fabric rose from the top of the band to gather over one
shoulder and flow down the model’s back to the floor, even longer than the
dress’s short train.

“Think this might be the one?” Amy
asked.

“Maybe so,”
Heather said in awe.

Amy folded down the upper corner of
the page.  “We’ll come back to this one,” she said.  “So are you going to get
your dress heirloomed?”

“I don’t know.  I hadn’t thought that
far ahead.  Probably so.”

“You have to think about stuff like
that.  Do you know yet how much time you have to think about it?”

“We haven’t set a date yet, if that’s
what you’re asking,” Heather said.

 “But we’re thinking sometime around
New Year’s.”

“That’s only two and a half months
away,” Amy said, fixing her with a stern glance.  “You do realize that, right?”

“Why wait?” Heather protested.  “It’s
not like this is a first wedding for either of us.  It won’t be as big and
fancy as the first time around.  Simple, yet elegant.  That’s what I’m going
for.”

“What about Ryan?  What does he want?”

“Ryan just wants to get married,” she
said.  “He’d just run down to the Justice of the Peace if I would go for that.”

“But you won’t,” Amy said firmly. 
“That’s totally not romantic.  And second wedding or not, you want a wedding to
remember.”

“I’d remember the Justice of the
Peace,” Heather teased.

“Yeah, but not in a good way.”

“True.”

“So if this really is the dress,
you’ve gotten the second most important part out of the way,” Amy said.

“The first most important part being
finding a groom?” Heather asked.

“You got it,” Amy said.

***

Long after Amy had left, leaving the
stack of bridal magazines piled on Heather’s coffee table, Heather sat on the
couch flipping through their glossy pages.  Every now and then, she folded down
a page corner to mark a dress she wanted to come back to and look at a second
time. 

But her thoughts weren’t entirely on
what she was seeing.  Finally, she gave up, laid the open magazine down on the
coffee table, and turned her attention to trying to figure out what was
bothering her.

Something kept stirring at the back of
her mind, some thought or idea that wouldn’t quite come into focus.  What was
it?

Starting with getting up that morning,
Heather mentally reviewed the events of her day.  As she worked forward toward
arriving at Donut Delights, the nagging feeling got stronger.  When she got to
her encounter with Lana Sturmer, alarm bells began going off.  Why?

Lana had looked pretty tired that
morning.  Her unpleasant attitude might have had no more significance than
that.  But wait…

Heather sat up straight as the idea
began to come into focus.  Lana had said she was tired because the pageant
circuit was exhausting.  But hadn’t the Miss Harper County pageant been over
for several days?  Shouldn’t she have had time to relax by now?

On the other hand, maybe Emily was
preparing for an upcoming pageant.  Maybe that’s what Lana had meant.

But that possibility didn’t feel
right.  Heather thought about googling pageants in the area but realized that
would probably come too close to Ryan’s definition of getting involved in the
investigation.  Instead, she texted him, “Hi, handsome.  Please call me when
you get a chance.  I have an idea you might want to check out if you haven’t
already.”

But even though she waited several
minutes, no ping announced a response from Ryan. 

She’d been sitting long enough, first
looking at magazines with Amy, then continuing to peruse them on her own.  She
didn’t feel like sitting around waiting for Ryan to call.  He’d call as soon as
he could.  She might as well find something to do in the meantime.

“Hey, Dave,” she called to her dog,
who was sleeping on his doggie bed in the corner.  Dave lifted his head and
blinked at her.  “You want to go for a walk?”

At the word ‘walk,’ Dave lumbered to
his feet, shook himself all over, and trotted eagerly to the back door.  “Sure,
you know what that means,” Heather said, lifting his leash off the hook by the
door and clipping it to his collar.  She stuck her cell phone in her pocket and
grabbed her keys from her purse on the counter.  “Okay, let’s go.”

As Dave led her enthusiastically down
the steps, she felt a twinge of guilt for not taking him on walks more often.  It
was just so much easier to let him out in the back yard to do his business.  It
was a big yard, and if he wanted to run around and play while he was out there,
he had plenty of room. 

“Maybe we’ll start going on more walks
anyway,” Heather told him, as if he’d been privy to her thoughts.  “Although
winter’s coming, so who knows?”

They followed the driveway to the
sidewalk, then turned right and walked to the corner.  Turning right again,
they passed the front of Heather’s house and continued down the block. 

It was dusk, and Heather knew they
didn’t have much time before the sun would go down completely.  Well, maybe
just a short walk this time.  Next time, they could go longer.

Her cell phone vibrated, then began to
play the Wedding March.  Heather wondered if she would ever get tired of
hearing that song.  “Hang on just a second, Dave,” she said, stopping to fish
the phone out of her pocket.

Dave didn’t mind.  He found an
interesting tree nearby and marked his territory while she answered the phone. 
“Hello?”

“Hey, Beautiful, it’s me.  I got your
text.  What did you want me to check out?”

“Well, you know how I was talking to
Lana Sturmer this morning?”

“Yeah.”

Dave finished his business and tugged
on the leash as he started forward.  Heather followed him. 

“Well, I was just thinking.  She said
she was tired because the pageant circuit was so exhausting.  But the last
pageant Emily competed in was several days ago.  She should have had time to
rest by now, if that was the problem.”

“Maybe Emily’s preparing for an
upcoming pageant,” Ryan said.

“That’s what I was thinking.  So I was
wondering if you knew if there were any pageants coming up in this area anytime
soon.”

“I don’t know,” he said.  “But I can
look.”

“Thanks,” she said. 

“No problem.  So what did you think of
Ms. Sturmer?”

“Lisa was right.  Lana has an
attitude.  Imperious.  I think that would be the word for it.  And she’s cold,
too.  She made some comment about how Kelly got what she deserved for messing
up Emily’s hair.”

“What exactly did she say?” Ryan
asked.

“Something like, ‘That woman deserved
what she got.’  And I said something like, ‘You mean the one who was
murdered?’  And she said, ‘Yeah, the one who got bludgeoned to death with her
own flat iron.  And then—”

“What did she say?”  Ryan’s voice was
suddenly tense.  Excited.

“That Kelly deserved what she got?”
Heather asked.

“No!  The part after that.”

“About how Kelly was bludgeoned with
her own flat iron?”

“Heather, where are you?” Ryan
demanded, his words spilling over each other.  “Are you at home?”

“No, I’m out walking Dave,” she said. 
“Ryan, what’s going on?  What’s the big deal?”

“Lana Sturmer shouldn’t have known
that the murder weapon was a flat iron,” Ryan said.

“Apparently she reads the paper.  She
said the paper said it was a flat iron.”

“The paper never said that,” Ryan
said, his voice intense.  “Heather, how far are you from home?”

“Couple blocks.  But Ryan, she said it
was in the paper.  She must have read it.”

“I’m telling you it wasn’t in the paper,”
Ryan insisted.  “The murder weapon was the one detail we were keeping back from
the media.  I checked every inch of that paper every day to make sure it hadn’t
leaked.”

Heather felt a cold chill creeping
over her.  “What are you saying?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

In the distance, a dark-colored car
rounded the corner and drove slowly up the block in her direction

.

“I’m saying there’s no way she could
have known about the murder weapon unless she was the one who killed Kelly. 
And if she ever finds out that the flat iron wasn’t actually mentioned in the
paper, she could come after you.”

“What do I do?” Heather asked.

But his answer was drowned out in a
squeal of tires.  Whirling toward the sound, she could see nothing but the
headlights blinding her as the dark car jumped the curb and sped straight
toward her.

Heather screamed and threw herself to
the side.