M&M Surprise Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 17 (2 page)

“This is the only lead?” Amy asked,
and flicked Dave’s leash. The motion travelled down the thin cord and jangled
his collar.

Dave sat down on her foot as a reward.

“Not the only lead, but the solid one.
When in doubt, look to the grieving widow,” Heather replied.

The hotel on the corner of Smith
Street and Acacia Road stared at them, its windows clear, but shuttered by
heavy drapes within. An ‘OPEN’ sign hung in the glass front door.

Hillside Hotel & Spa served the
classiest of visitors to the town. Sure, they didn’t get five star treatment
but it was better than the motels dotted around Hillside. Three start would
have to do.

“A spa. We’re going to have to get a
treatment here some time. Full facial. Massage. The works.” Amy sighed and
rubbed the back of her neck. “All these late nights are getting to us both.”

Heather stifled a yawn behind her
fist. “You can say that again.”

“All these late –”

“Ames.” Heather raised her finger and
waggled it. “Don’t start with your shenanigans today. We’re supposed to be in a
somber mood. You know, grieving for the widow Henson.”

“What’s her name anyway?” Amy asked,
and booted Dave off her foot. He wagged his tail at her, tongue lolling from
the corner of his mouth.

“Lori,” Heather replied. “That’s what
the town gossips say. And the newspaper printed her name after the death.”

“So much for maintaining the privacy
of Kyle’s family, am I right?” Amy pursed her lips.

“It’s Hillside,” Heather said. “People
don’t think the same here. We’re all kinda special in our own way.”

“Not gonna argue with that.”

Heather walked to the hotel door, then
placed her palm against the silver bar and wrenched it open. She poked her head
inside.

A young woman, eyelids bedazzled in
pink glitter eyeshadow, blinked and looked up from her Cosmo. “Can I help you?”

“May,” Amy whispered in Heather’s ear.
“Don’t say I don’t learn anything.”

“Hi there, are pets allowed on these
premises?” Heather asked.

The Cosmo girl smacked her pink lips
and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Dogs and cats. No pet snakes, though.”

“What about rats?” Amy asked, and
Heather nudged her in the tummy. Amy made an ‘oof’ noise, then chuckled.

Heather walked over the threshold and
up to the counter. “We’re here to talk to Lori Henson. Could you tell me what
room she’s in?”

“I’m afraid Mrs. Henson is
unavailable,” the receptionist replied. “She asked not to be disturbed.”

“She’s expecting us.” Amy bent and
picked up Dave, to drive the cuteness factor through the roof.

“I – oh, I’ll have to call ahead,” the
receptionist replied.

Heather eyed her nametag. “Lucy, we’re
here to offer the widow Henson our condolences. I’m not sure –”

“The widow Henson? Is that what
they’re calling me now?” A woman spoke from the stairs in the corner.

Heather spun to face her.

Lori Henson’s hair shone by the light
of the wall sconces – an auburn hue, burnished, flashy – and she swished that
do back and glared at them. “What do you want?”

Heather glanced at Lucy the
receptionist, hazarded a smile, then walked over to Lori. She stopped in front
of the short, middle-aged woman and put up her ‘customer’ smile.

“Hi,” she said, “I’m Heather
Shepherd.”

“Oh,” Lori replied. “Am I supposed to
be impressed by that? Are you one of the village elders?”

“Uh, village elders?” Amy muttered.
Dave barked and snuggled his snout beneath her chin.

Lori didn’t look at either of them.
Her gaze didn’t waver an inch.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Heather
replied, and kept her smile in place –the battle for that would soon be lost.

“Kyle told me about this one horse
town ages ago. Hillside this and Hillside that. Ugh, I should’ve figured it
would be this, this…” Lori broke off and pressed her lips into a thin line.

“I wanted to talk to you about your
husband, actually. If that’s okay.”

“What are you, a cop?” Lori asked.
“Because I won’t talk to cops without my lawyer present. He’s driving in from
Dallas. You’ll have to wait.” She adjusted the straps on her handbag.

“I’m not an officer,” Heather said. “I
just make it a habit of researching these cases. I like to help people.”

“Aint that cute,” Lori said, then
sneered.

The smile finally slipped from
Heather’s lips.

“Look, I don’t know what yo tell you.
Kyle and I didn’t exactly have the perfect marriage. He loved his sports more
than he loved spending time with me.” Lori shrugged, and finally broke eye
contact. She glanced at Amy and Dave, then back to Heather again.

“Did Kyle bring any arrows for the
competition?” Heather asked. She tucked her arms behind her back and clasped
her hands together.

Rudeness didn’t sit well with her.

“Arrows? No. He was the judge. He
didn’t need arrows,” Lori replied. “Are you done yet? I have an appointment at
the spa.”

Dave growled low in his throat then
let out a high-pitched bark. Amy shushed him and clicked her tongue.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Henson –”

“You don’t need to call me that. Call
me Lori. Hearing his name instead of mine gives me the creeps,” Lori said, then
mock-shivered.

“Why?” Heather asked.

“Because he was having an affair,” she
replied, loudly.

Lucy the Cosmo girl flinched and
dropped her magazine.

“Oh,” Heather said. Well, that was
awkward. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be. I came to terms with it years
ago. I’ll give you a hint, Mrs. Shepherd, since you’re into researching as you
put it. You want to find my husband’s killer? Talk to that floozy Jessica
Laverne. She’ll tell you what you need to know.”

“Thank you for your time,” Heather
replied.

Lori rolled her eyes and pushed past
her, then turned and disappeared down the hall, swaying her luxurious hair to
and fro.

“Wow. Gotta love these tourists,” Amy
said.

Heather sucked in a breath. Her mind
whirred and clicked, sleuthin’ thoughts dissecting themselves over and over.
Jessica Laverne, huh? What did the lead competitor in the archery competition
have to do with the head judge?

“C’mon, Ames, let’s get back to the
store. We’ve got some work to do.”

“This way guys!” Heather called and
beckoned to her staff.

They bundled out of the back of Ken’s
old van, Donut Delights boxes stacked in their arms.

“I can’t see,” Maricela said.

“I’ll take some of your boxes,” Ken
replied. He shut the car door, locked it, then hurried to Maricela and took
three large boxes from her arms. He held them against his stomach and chest,
grinning at her over them.

She blushed slightly, cleared her
throat, then looked away.

“We’re going to drop them at
reception, and then we’ll head back to the store and get started on those
online orders.”

“This is like a field trip,” Jung said
– the fact that he wasn’t a suspect in this case had helped his disposition, a
lot. He grinned at Heather’s other assistants, then shifted the boxes in his
arms.

Amy jostled around the back of the
van, wrestling four donut boxes into place. “If field trips take you to
retirement homes, then yeah, I guess so,” she said.

The grounds at Hillside Manor sprawled
behind them, grass greener than emeralds. A central fountain tinkled water into
a shallow pool, and the drive twisted past it and stopped in front of the grand
stairs which led to the lobby.

They’d decided to donate the leftover
donuts they’d made for the competition to the elderly folks up here.

“This place is gorgeous,” Ken said.

“Better than abuelito’s house.”
Angelica stood beside her cousin, Maricela, grasping her donut boxes and
staring up at the manor.

They walked up the path together, and
Heather dropped back to Jung’s position at the back of the group. She took a
few boxes from him, then matched his pace.

“How are you feeling?” Heather asked.
“About the competition being canceled, I mean.”

“It’s only postponed, for now,” Jung
replied, but a frown crept across his forehead. “Right?”

“I hope so. I’d really like to watch
you shoot,” Heather said. “Is shoot the right word for it, when it’s arrows?
Archery?”

“I guess so.”

They fell into silence, surrounded by
the twitter of birds in the trees and Amy’s laughter at the head of the group.

“Jung, I need to ask you a few
questions. Would that be okay?” Heather asked, at last. Thoughts of Jinx
Laverne and Lori Henson swirled through her mind. What did Lori have to hide?

Hating her husband hardly seemed like
a good tactic right after he’d been murdered.

“Anything for you, boss,” Jung
replied.

“What do you know about Jessica
Laverne?” Heather asked.

“Jinx? She’s the favorite to win in
the competition if it ever happens.” Jung snorted. “She’s sweet and everything,
but there’s something I don’t like about her. It’s like the niceness is an act.
Maybe I’m a little jealous.”

“Do you know what type of arrows she
uses?” Heather asked. It was a stretch, but Kyle had been shot with a carbon
arrow.

“Uh, I think graphite? It’s better
than the aluminum kind I use, but then, she can afford it. There was a rumor
that she was going to get into the Olympics, once, but then something went
wrong, and it never happened.” They stopped in front of the stairs.

The others hurried through the big,
wooden front door ahead of them.

“What happened?”

“Well, Jinx was being coached by Kyle
at the time, then all of a sudden she just quit. Or he fired her. No one knows
what happened, but her hopes for being in the Olympics kind of dropped off
after that.” Jung shifted the boxes, then glanced back at Ken’s van in the
distance.

Heather crunched gravel underfoot.
“Wow, so Kyle was Jessica’s coach?”

“Yeah, but that was ages ago. Years
and years, when she was still in Hillside High, and he was the head coach
there. He disappeared after that too. He just left town and never came back.”
Jung sighed. “I got a couple of good years of coaching from him before he left,
at least.”

Heather turned the facts over in her
mind. Jessica Laverne had been coached by the head judge of the competition.
Shouldn’t there have been a rule against that? Perhaps not.

What if Jinx had been bitter about
missing out on her shot at the Olympics and had taken it out on Kyle. Surely,
no one held onto a grudge for that long, though.

“Do you know what happened between
them? Kyle and Jinx, I mean.”

“Not really. I just know that one
second she was the golden girl and the next she was off the team and out of the
limelight. Her parents kicked up a fuss too.” Jung bent and placed the donut
boxes on the top stair.

Amy hurried out, collected them, then
disappeared inside Hillside Manor again.

“Any idea who’s Jinx’s new coach?”
Heather asked. Perhaps, she could squeeze a little information out of them.

“Yeah. His name is Coach Hardy. He’s
some big shot up in Dallas, but he came down with her for the competition.”
Jung laughed. “Weird. All these big time folks coming down to Hillside for our
archery competition.”

Heather turned and put her boxes on
the top stair, too. She tapped her chin and stared at them, envisioning targets
and arrows. “Weird. Or maybe, somebody had a debt to pay.”

The assistants piled out of the front
doors to collect more donut boxes from the van.

“And?” Amy asked. “You think you can
slack off just because you’re the boss? Shake a leg, woman.”

Heather swatted her bestie on the arm,
then picked up her share of the boxes. She scooted up the front stairs and into
the cool interior of the Manor. Her mind raced alongside her heart.

Heather retied her apron straps and
hummed I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston. The bangs from next door
drowned her out, but it made her throat warm. She inhaled through her nostrils,
then hummed the breaths out through her mouth.

Donut Delights was empty. She didn’t
like that, but it was a necessary evil until the construction had ceased, and
they could open the new and improved store.

“All right,” she said and clicked her
fingers in time to the drills next door. “We’ve received two orders for donuts
today, so far. Three boxes of Strawberry Cremes, and then the second order is
for one box of Choc Crunches, two boxes of M&M Surprises, and five boxes of
Pistachio Glazed Donuts.” She closed her eyes for a second and brought the
image of the email order to the front of her mind. “Yeah, that’s it.”

“That’s not too much,” Ken said.

“Not like the millions we had to do a
couple of weeks ago.” Jung sat down at one of the wrought irons tables, then
pressed his palms to his ears. “I need to get earphones.”

“I won’t need everyone here to help
with them, today. Two of you can take the day off.”

The assistants glanced around and
sized up the competition.

Amy raised her arm. “I’m staying. I’d
rather be here, making donuts, than home with my Beaches DVD.”

“That’s a first,” Heather replied, but
winked to show she didn’t mean it.

“I’ll stay too.” Ken waved from the
corner.

“And me!” Maricela gave two thumbs up.

“Great,” Heather replied. She pointed
to the kitchen doors. “You guys can go through and get started on the batter
for the Strawberry Cremes.”

Amy, Maricela, and Ken filed through
the kitchen doors, together, and Heather walked to the front of the store. She
winced at the hammering, then swallowed and steeled herself.

It’d be a long afternoon if she
couldn’t get used to the noise.

She opened the door for Jung and
Angelica, waved them off, then closed it and made to lock.

A hand slapped against the glass, flat
against the Donut Delights logo.

Heather shrieked and grabbed at her
throat.

“Oops! Sorry, Au-Heather, I didn’t
mean to scare you,” Lilly said, from the other side of the door. She dropped
her arm to her side, then swung it back and forth. “Can I come in? I just
wanted to talk.”

“Sure,” Heather replied. She opened up
and held the door for the young girl.

Lilly waltzed into the store –
literally, she’d been taking ballroom dancing lessons at the local youth center
– and stopped dead center. “Where is everyone?” She asked.

The drill started up next door, and
she plugged her ears with her fingers.

Heather closed the front door, then
locked it beneath the tinkling bell.

“Everyone’s in the kitchen,” she
yelled. “They’re working on a few online orders. Would you like to help?”

“Yes please,” Lilly screeched back.
The noise dropped off, and her shout echoed through the bakery. “Oops again.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Great. But no stealing the glaze. If
I spot a sticky finger, young lady, I’ll –”

“I know, I know,” Lilly replied, then
wrinkled her nose.

“Wait a second, aren’t you supposed to
be in school?”

“Heather, it’s a Saturday,” Lilly said
and giggled. She raised her arms above her head. “I’m so glad it’s weekend.”

“Sick of school?”

“No, I get to spend as little time as
possible at the Foster Folks’ house,” Lilly replied. She smoothed her hand over
her long dark hair.

“What? I thought you loved it with
them.” Heather’s sleuth sense tingled. “What’s happened?”

Lilly sighed and dropped her arms
again. “Nothing,” she said. “Let’s go make the donuts.”

“Lilly,” Heather said, and injected a
warning tone into her words. “Come on, you know you can tell me anything.”

“It’s no big deal. It’s just Colleen’s
got like a distant cousin or something visiting for the archery competition,
and she’s kind of mean.” Lilly flopped down in a wrought iron chair, then
drummed her heels on the golden boards. “Elizabeth.” She pulled a face.

“Elizabeth?”

“Yeah, she’s irritated about the
competition being canceled or whatever. She keeps calling me names and making
me get her coffee and stuff.” Lilly balled up her fists in her lap. “I don’t
like that.”

“You need to tell Colleen if she’s
bullying you, Lils.”

“Yeah, what am I going to say? Colleen
will probably think I’m silly or something. Elizabeth lied to her the other day
and told her I ate the cupcakes she made for dessert and Colleen believed her.
I told her I didn’t, but she still punished me. No video games for a week.” Now
that Lilly had started, the rant bubbled from her lips. “And she’s even that
good at archery stuff anyway. She keeps fiddling with her arrows, but she
doesn’t ever use them. Agh, I hate it. Okay, now I’m being mean.”

Heather walked to the girl, then
crouched down in front of her. “Hey, it’s okay. I know this is tough on you.”

“I don’t know what to do, Heather. I
don’t like seeing her. And we all have to sit down at the dinner table
together. It just stinks.” Lilly sighed. “I can handle it, though. I’ll be
okay.”

Heather wrapped her arms around Lilly
and drew her into a hug. “You’re such a brave person, Lils. But I want you to
promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“If this Elizabeth woman ever makes
you feel uncomfortable or sad, call me. I’m going to speak to Colleen about
this anyway, but if she continues…”

“No, no, please don’t call her. She’s
already angry with me for the whole cupcake thing. She’ll probably get madder.”
Lilly drew back from the hug and gave Heather a puppy dog eyed expression to
rival Dave’s. “Please?”

Another mystery woman come for the
archery competition. Did this Elizabeth have a connection to the deceased
judge?

Heather exhaled, slowly. “All right.
But you call me if it happens again. Okay?”

“Got it,” Lilly replied, then clapped
her hands. “Can we go make some donuts now?”

“You bet!” Heather helped her off the
chair, and they walked to the kitchen together.