Sweet Suspects (The Donut Mysteries) (22 page)

Grace looked at it.
 
“I remember that.
 
Billy was so drunk he fell out of bed the day we graduated and gave himself a black eye.
 
Remember?”

“I remember the story,” I said.
 
“But what if he made himself look the fool so no one would realize what had
really
happened?”

“Do you think that he killed those women back then?” Grace asked.

“Think about it.
 
Did you ever see his car again after that?”

“It’s all coming back to me now,” Grace said.
 
“He had to ride to graduation with his parents because he said he’d left his car someplace with the keys in it and it had been stolen.
 
I thought it was just one more stupid thing he’d done.
 
I never dreamed that he was covering up a pair of murders.”

“We need to call Chief Martin,” I said as I pushed the papers aside.

“Suzanne, we still don’t know which man is the murderer,” Grace said.

“That may be, but if what’s in Billy’s envelope is true, he’s
already
a killer.”

I got the chief, and I was about to tell him what we knew when he cut me off.
 
“I can’t talk,” he said in a near-whisper.
 
“We’re getting ready to take Tom Hancock down.”

“Where are you?”

“Out at his parents’ cabin on the lake,” he whispered.
 
“He doesn’t even know that we’re here.”

“There’s something else you need to know,” I said.

“No time right now.
 
We’re getting ready to move,” he said, and then he hung up on me.
 

“What just happened?” Grace asked.

“They’re about to arrest Tom Hancock at his parents’ lake house,” I explained.

“Do they think he’s the killer?”

“They must, but
I’ve
got a hunch that Billy did it,” I said.
 
“Tom might do some jail time for what he did, but Billy’s crimes are a lot more serious, motive enough to kill Zane to protect himself.”

“We don’t know where Billy is, though,” Grace said.
 
“Do you think there’s a chance that he’s still at the hotel after what happened with Janet?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but we have to look for him.”

“I’m just as willing to run into a burning building as you are, but shouldn’t we have some backup here, Suzanne?”

“We can’t call Jake, he’s on that case all the way across the state, and George is visiting Polly in Raleigh.
 
He’s trying to woo her back here.
 
I’m afraid that we’re on our own, Grace, and we can’t really wait around for reinforcements.”

“Okay then,” she said after taking a deep breath.
 
“Let’s go find Billy ourselves.”

In the end, we didn’t have to go as far as we’d feared we’d have to in order to track the man down, because he was waiting outside the donut shop for us both when we started to leave.

And what made matters worse was that there was a knife in his hand.

Chapter 19

“Get back inside,” Billy ordered us as he jabbed the knife in our direction.
 
It was no steak knife, either.
 
It was some kind of large hunting knife, with razor-sharp edges that caught the sunlight.
 
I shivered as I imagined what it would do to bare skin.

“Take it easy,” I said, trying to calm him down a little.

He wasn’t interested in that at all.
 
“Suzanne, you have four seconds to get that door open,” he said, “or one of you is going to get cut right here and now.”

I fumbled as I tried to put the key in the lock, hearing an ominous countdown in my head as the seconds slipped past.

“Time’s up,” he said coldly just as the key made it in.

“I got it,” I said as I pulled the door open.

“Get inside then,” he ordered.

We did as he asked, and I prayed that someone had seen what had happened.
 
It was broad daylight, and we were being abducted at knifepoint on Springs Drive!
 
How had no one seen it happen?
 
When I did something stupid or embarrassing in front of my donut shop, it seemed as though the entire town was watching, but now, when I needed them the most, they were nowhere to be found.

“What do you want from us?” Grace asked, her voice cracking a little as she spoke.
 
I looked into her eyes and saw that she was petrified, more afraid than I’d ever seen her in my life.

“I’m not an idiot.
 
If we stay out here, someone’s going to see us,” he said.
 
“Get into the kitchen.
 
Now!”

We did as he ordered, and as I walked into the tight room, I tried to think of something I could use as a weapon to fight back with.
 
If he’d had a gun, our odds would have been quite a bit worse, but surely there was something back there I could use to fight him off.

Unfortunately, everything was put away.
 
Emma had done too good a job cleaning up the kitchen, and the only thing close enough to grab was the heavy donut dropper I used to make our cake donuts.
 
I knew from experience that if I could swing it hard enough, it would become a deadly weapon in its own right.
 
There was a heavy indentation on the wall that proved that.

But how was I going to be able to get the time I needed to grab it and swing it at Billy’s knife?

I’d just have to stall him until I could think of something.

“You didn’t kill Zane so that you could have Janet for yourself, did you?” I asked him.

He shook his head and snarled.
 
“Why would I want
her
?
 
She was just one more way for me to get to Zane.
 
He’s
the one who put it all together about what I’d done the night before we all graduated, and he claimed that he had substantial evidence on me.
 
Where’s that envelope?”

“What envelope?” I asked.
 
I’d put it under the counter in the kitchen when we’d left, hoping that would be enough to keep it safe.

“Why do you think I’m here?” he asked.
 
“I saw you leave the gym with two envelopes.
 
It was pretty careless taking them out in plain sight like you did.
 
Where were they hidden, anyway?
 
I looked everywhere for them after I got rid of Zane.”

Grace spoke up.
 
“They were in one of the empty lockers at the school.
 
Zane put new locks on four of them so he could hide the evidence in plain sight.”

Billy nodded and even smiled a little.
 
“That was crafty of him.
 
How did
you
figure it out?
 
I’ve been beating in my brains trying to find those papers.”

“It took us awhile,” I said.

“Let’s see what we’ve got then,” Billy said.

Once he had those papers, I knew that Grace and I were as good as dead.
 
There’d be no reason for him to keep us alive once he had them, so I had to act before I turned them over to him.
 
“I still can’t believe that you killed Zane.
 
You were drunk at the reunion.
 
I know that firsthand.
 
You approached me early on, remember, and you absolutely reeked of alcohol, Billy.”

“I didn’t take a single sip all night,” he said.
 
“I did, however, spill an entire drink on my clothes to make it appear that I was too drunk to kill Zane.”

“So you’d been planning it all along,” I said.

“Not really.
 
I meant to get his hiding place out of him first, but he taunted me one too many times, so I stabbed him with that spear.”

“Why did you use that as your murder weapon?” Grace asked him.

“I was outside waiting for Zane to leave when I saw Tom Hancock come out of the gym carrying it.
 
When he threw it in the trash, I knew that it would make a perfect murder weapon.
 
Better yet, it even had his fingerprints on it!
 
I slipped on my gloves and grabbed it, but as I was hiding, Zane left the reunion and started off toward your donut shop.
 
I couldn’t exactly call out to him to get him to wait up, so I stalked him to the bench where he finally sat down.
 
He laughed at me when I told him if he gave me the evidence he had on me, I’d let him live.
 
I kind of lost my head, and before I realized what was happening, I stabbed him.
 
I didn’t mean to do it that hard, but it went right through him, and then he was dead.
 
I was hoping that he had the evidence against me on him, but all I found was a lot of cash.
 
Evidently
somebody
decided to pay him off.”
 
He frowned at that, and then Billy said, “Enough talking.
 
Let’s have that envelope.
 
And don’t try to tell me it’s not here, because I saw you with it earlier.”

It was time to act.
 
Instead of walking to the shelf where the envelopes were, I headed toward the heavy donut dropper instead.

Grace must have realized what I was doing, because just as I reached it, she shouted, “Look out!”

Billy stared at her as though she’d lost her mind, and I grabbed the steel dropper.
 
It was heavy in my hands, but I swung it with all my might.

I wanted to break his arm with it.

Billy turned in time to stop me from doing that, but the knife did go flying out of his hand when I made contact.

I started to swing at him again, but I couldn’t manage it before he attacked me.

Billy had me pinned against the wall, and I could see the rage filling his eyes.
 
Using his forearm, he pressed it harder and harder against my throat, and I felt my head begin to spin.
 

The dropper fell from my hand as I fought with everything I had to keep him from choking the life out of me.

And then I heard the sound of an impact, and just as suddenly as the killing pressure had started, his hands fell away from me and he dropped silently to the floor.

I tried to catch my breath as I looked over at Grace, who still held the donut dropper in her hand.
 
There were bits of blood and hair on one edge of it, and I wondered if Billy Briscoe was dead.

“You’re right, Suzanne,” she said. “That thing weighs a ton.”

“Thanks for saving me,” I said in a choked whisper.

“I’m the one who should be thanking you.
 
If you hadn’t attacked him, we
both
would have been dead,” Grace said as she pulled out her cellphone.

“Is he dead?” I asked as I nudged Billy with my foot.

Grace knelt down for a moment, and then she stood up as she said, “He’s still breathing.”

“Call the chief,” I said as I stumbled to one of the stools in the kitchen.

“In a second,” Grace said as she pushed the knife well out of his reach.
 
Then she handed the dropper to me and added, “Just in case he gets up.”

“I don’t think he’ll be getting up for quite awhile,” I said.

Still, I was relieved when we heard the first police siren, and I had recovered enough from the attack to let the chief in when he came to the door.

“Tom didn’t kill Zane,” he said after I opened the door.

“No, but he’s a bad guy, too.
 
We’ve got evidence on him and Billy both in the kitchen.”

“Is Billy still out cold?” he asked.

“No, he’s awake, but he keeps complaining about having a splitting headache,” I said with a grin.
 
“Grace clocked him pretty good.”

“I’m just glad that you two are all right,” the chief said as more officers came in.

“I’m going to be hoarse for a little bit, but all in all, we’re both just dandy,” I said.

My cellphone rang at that moment, and I saw that it was Jake.

“How did you know?” I asked before I even thought about it.

“How did I know what?” he asked.
 
“I just wanted to tell you that we caught our killer.”

“That’s brilliant,” I said.

“Suzanne, what’s wrong with your voice?”

I knew there was no way I’d be able to lie to him about what had happened.
 
After I brought him up to speed, I finished by saying, “There’s no need to hurry back.
 
Everything’s fine here.
 
How did you catch your killer, anyway?”

“It disgusts me to admit it, but it was pure dumb luck.
 
The man was driving without his seatbelt, and a cop pulled him over when he spotted it.
 
He had a bloody knife poking out from under his seat, and we were able to identify it as the murder weapon.”

“Hey, as long as he’s in jail, right?”

“I guess so, but I still would have liked to have caught him myself,” Jake said.
 
“Anyway, there’s nothing left for me to do here.
 
I’m heading your way, so expect me in four hours.”

“But you’re six hours away from April Springs,” I said.

“Sure I am, if I don’t have lights and a siren at my disposal,” Jake replied.
 
“I’m glad that you two are okay.”

“So am I,” I said.
 
“Drive safely.”

“Suzanne, I can be quick or I can be safe, but I can’t be both,” he said, a little of the good humor coming back into his voice.

“I can wait a little bit longer, then.
 
I choose safe.”

“Spoilsport,” he said with a laugh, and then he hung up.

After Billy was in custody, Grace and I stayed behind at the donut shop for a minute.
 
We’d have to go to Chief Martin’s office to make our statements, but he was letting us come in my Jeep.
 
The police chief had already gathered up the knife and the blackmail evidence, so the donut shop looked to be in perfect order again.

As we walked outside and I locked the place up, Grace said, “Well, I’ve made up my mind.”

“About what?” I asked.

“I’m going to make full restitution for what I stole,” she said.

“Grace, it was a long time ago.
 
Besides, there’s nobody left in the Dunbar family to give the money to, unless you’re thinking about giving it to Janet.”