Bad Bites: Donut Mystery #16 (The Donut Mysteries) (13 page)

“What else was he planning on doing?” I asked.

“I have no idea.
 
I’m just
glad I got this,” Kevin said as he tucked the bill back into his wallet.
 
It might just be the only ten-dollar
bill he’d ever held in his hands that would never get spent.

“How about you, Nathan?” I asked the remaining suspect there.
 
“How long did you know Chester?”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t know the man at all.”

His answer surprised me.
 
“Really?
 
April Springs is a
pretty small place.
 
How could your
paths not have crossed in all of the years that you’ve lived here?”

Nathan hastily explained, “I don’t mean that I didn’t know who he was, I
was just saying that we never had a personal relationship other than nodding to
each other on the street.
 
Suzanne,
there are a great many folks in town that I don’t interact with on a daily
basis.”

“Didn’t you ever go to the library?” Kevin asked him.

“I’ve never been much for reading,” Nathan said.
 
“Sports are my things.”
 
It figured.
 
He was a washed-up football player, so I
didn’t have any problem believing that was what he was interested in.

“You know, there are a great many excellent books written about sports,”
Kevin said.

“I like to watch them on television, not read about them,” Nathan
replied.
 
Evidently he was a man of
limited attention span.
 
That wasn’t
a requirement to watch sports, though.
 
Jake loved to read, but he also enjoyed watching football, so I knew
that the two weren’t mutually exclusive, but evidently they were in Nathan
Hoff’s mind.
 
I watched the men as
they spoke.
 
Kevin had a small
silver rectangle in his hands, and he was flipping it back and forth as he
talked.
 
It slipped for a moment and
tumbled out of his hands, and before he could scoop it up again, I realized
that it was a cigarette lighter, something I hadn’t seen in a while.
 
I was about to look away when I noticed
what was engraved on the side of it.
 
BURN BABY BURN was etched there, along with a silhouette of flames.
 
He grabbed it up and shoved it into his
pockets, but I wasn’t going to let it go at that.

“That’s an unusual object you’ve got there,” I said to him.

“What’s that?”

“Your lighter.”

He shrugged.
 
“It was a
gift.
 
I don’t even smoke anymore,
but I still like to carry it around with me.”

“May I ask where you got it?”

Instead of answering me, he stood and started to pace.
 
“How long is this going to take, anyway?”

“Why, do you have something better to do?” Nathan asked him wryly.
 
“Is there a book you’re just dying to
read?”

“Nathan, I don’t know why you’re not more worried than you appear to be,”
Kevin replied.

“Why should I be concerned about anything?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because your wife is in there talking to a cop
about the possibility that she’s a murderer?” Kevin asked.

“Believe me when I tell you that my wife is more than capable of taking
care of herself,” Nathan said.

“Whatever,” Kevin replied.

I was about to say something when the dining room door opened and Maggie
came storming out.
 
She was tucking
something back into her purse as she raced out.
 
What was it, a parking ticket or
something?
 
I wanted to ask her
about it, but this wasn’t the time or the place.

“We’re not finished, Maggie,” Jake said as he followed her out of the
dining room.

“You may not be, but I am,” she said.
 
“Nathan, we’re going to our room.”

To my surprise, her husband didn’t budge.
 
“Sorry, but I can’t do that.
 
The inspector hasn’t spoken with me
yet.”

“Actually, right now it’s Chief,” Jake said.
 
“Come on in, Nathan.
 
You’re next.”

When the man stood, it was clear that he wasn’t even torn about the
decision.
 
I watched Maggie closely
as her husband left the room.
 
She
was clearly unhappy about the situation, but there wasn’t much that she could
do about it.
 
Maggie stood there a
moment longer, and then she hurried down the hallway toward the room she was
sharing with her husband.

Kevin watched her go, and I heard him mumble something under his breath.

“Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,” I said.

He looked surprised when he realized that I’d been listening.
 
“It was nothing.”

“Really?
 
Because it sure
didn’t sound like nothing from where I was sitting.”

Kevin shrugged, and then he explained, “I just said that I was glad that
she wasn’t my wife.
 
She might be a
pretty woman, but I’m willing to bet that she’s an absolute pain to live with.”

“I’m sure that we all have our moments,” I said.

“Maybe, but that’s baggage that I wouldn’t be willing to carry, no matter
how pretty the suitcase was.”

Shelly and Grace came out of the kitchen.
 
As the lodge owner looked around the
room, she asked, “Where did everybody go?”

“Jake is in the dining room talking to Nathan, Maggie’s in their room,
Vince left half an hour ago to find a restroom, and Kevin and I are just
sitting here, waiting for Jake.
 
How’s it coming in the kitchen?”

“We’re still getting things ready,” Grace said.
 
“I told Shelly that I wanted to pop in
here, and she decided to join me.”
 
My friend didn’t look all that pleased by the idea, but clearly she
hadn’t had any say in the matter.

“There will be time to finish prepping the meal later,” Shelly said as
she took a seat.
 
“Besides, I just
wanted to enjoy the fire a little.”

I glanced at the fireplace as she added another log to it.
 
“It’s quite lovely, isn’t it?”

Shelly nodded.
 
“The man who
laid it is in his eighties, and he’s still working on fireplaces to this
day.
 
I met him once in town, and
let me tell you, he’s quite the character.”

Nathan walked out just then, and I realized that his interview had been
shorter than the one his wife had gone through.
 
Why was the man’s wallet in his
hand?
 
What had Jake asked for, his
identification, or had Nathan just volunteered something that I’d missed?
 
I couldn’t wait to find out what Jake
had learned in his interview sessions.

“Finished so soon?” I asked.

“Not exactly.
 
It’s more
likely just to be continued,” Jake said.

Nathan ignored us all.
 
His
face was ashen, and his lips were two thin lines.
 
I wasn’t sure what Jake had said to him,
but it had obviously upset him.

“Let’s go, Kevin.
 
Come on in,”
Jake said, and then he looked around the room.
 
“Where did Vince wander off to?”

“He said that he was going off in search of a restroom,” I said.

“Find him for me, would you?
 
He’s next.”

“Will do,” I said as Kevin walked past Jake into the dining room.

“Would you like some company?” Grace asked me as I headed for the guest rooms.

“Always,” I said.

The second we were out of earshot of the others, Grace whispered, “That
was weird.”

“What part of it?
 
If you ask
me, everything that’s been happening has been odd.”

“I’m talking about my time in the kitchen with Shelly.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Well, first off, she wanted to know everything we’d found out about
Chester’s murder so far,” Grace said.

“That’s only natural, isn’t it?
 
After all, they were very close.”

“That’s the thing,” Grace explained.
 
“She didn’t seem to give a hoot about the other suspects.
 
All she wanted to know was what clues
we’d uncovered so far, and what they meant.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” I said a little uncertainly.
 
“What made it so odd?”

“It was almost as though she expected us to know something that we
didn’t.
 
I don’t know.
 
It felt as though she was trying to hide
something from us.”

“She wouldn’t be the first suspect who did it, and that doesn’t even
include the killers we’ve tracked in the past.
 
Sometimes it feels as though everyone we
talk to is ashamed of something.
 
It
makes it hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”

“I have a feeling that we’re all a little bit of each one,” Grace said.

“Me, too,” I agreed.

“Anyway, after that, she disappeared for at least ten minutes looking for
some utensil or something in the other room.”

“You were supposed to stay together,” I reminded her.

“I know that, but I couldn’t exactly drop what I was doing and follow her
around.”
 
Another bolt of lightning
hit outside, followed quickly by the roar of thunder.
 
That had been too close for comfort.

“It’s not letting up, is it?” she asked me.

“Well, at least it’s not snow,” I said.

“I’d take that over this,” Grace said with a tremor in her voice.
 
“Cold and rain don’t mix well in my
book.
 
I’d rather be somewhere warm
and tropical.”

“After this is all over, maybe I’ll join you,” I said with a smile.
 

We were at Vince’s room now.
 
The door was closed, and I started to knock when Grace reached over and tried
the doorknob.

“What are you doing?” I asked her in a soft hiss.

“I just wanted to see if he’d locked it,” she said.
 
“He did.”

I finished the motion of my knock, but there was no answer from inside.

I repeated it, this time louder and more insistent, but there was still
no response.

Was Vince ignoring us, gone, or had something bad happened to him?

No matter what the reason it might be, Grace and I needed to find out
which one applied to this situation.
 

Chapter 17

“What should we do?” Grace asked me.
 
“Should we break the door down?”

“No, we don’t need to do anything that drastic just yet.
 
Shelly’s bound to have a master key that
fits every room in the lodge.”

“Good thinking,” Grace replied as she started back to the main room.

Shelly was stoking the fire when we walked in.
 
“Do you happen to have a master key to
the lodge?” I asked her.

“Of course I do.
 
Why, what’s
going on?”

“Vince Dade won’t answer our knocks,” I said.

Shelly frowned for a moment.
 
“Perhaps he’s just taking a nap.”

“Or maybe it’s something more dire than that,” Grace suggested.
 
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“Either way, he’s not answering our knocks.
 
Could you grab the key and come with
us?”

Shelly still wasn’t happy about the situation.
 
“Shouldn’t we get Jake first and ask him
what we should do?”

“Not until we find out what’s going on for ourselves,” I said
firmly.
 
Part of it was that I
didn’t want to disturb Jake while he was interviewing a suspect, but another
part of me realized that it was because Grace and I had started this search
together, and we wanted to see it through, no matter what.

“Fine.
 
Let me get my key,”
she said as she headed off for the kitchen.

“Do you really keep it in there?” I asked her.

“Not in the kitchen itself, but I have a little office off the pantry I
like to use sometimes.”

“What about the one in the lobby?” I asked her.
 
I’d seen it coming in, a small
cubicle-sized room just off the registration area.

“I use that sometimes as well, but most of the real work gets done back
here.”
 
Shelly made her way through
the kitchen, but before she opened the small door near the pantry, she paused,
and I saw that it was already partially opened.
 
“That’s odd.”

“What is?” I asked her.

“This door always stays closed, and I mean always,” she said.
 
Shelly seemed almost frightened to open
it, so I stepped up and pushed the door all the way open.
 
I was half expecting to see Vince Dade’s
lifeless body lying on the floor, but there was no sign of a corpse anywhere
and no room in the small space to hide one, for that matter.

Shelly stared at an empty nail.
 
“Now I’m really worried.”
 
She pointed to the nail as she added, “That’s where I keep the master
key, and it’s gone.
 
Whoever has it
can go anywhere they want to in the lodge.
 
No door in the entire place is truly locked now.”

Chapter 18

“This is not good,” Grace said worriedly.

“You can say that again,” I replied, and then I turned back to the lodge
owner.
 
“Shelly, are sure that it
was there earlier?”

“I never keep it on me,” Shelly said.
 
“As a matter of fact, I can’t remember
the last time I had to use the master key, but I know that it was there this
morning, because I saw it hanging from its nail where it always is.
 
What are we going to do now?”

“I think it’s time to get Jake,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Grace asked me.
 
Clearly she wanted to continue our investigation a little further
without my boyfriend, but I knew when it was time to call in reinforcements.

“I’m positive,” I said.
 
“Let’s go get him.”

The three of us walked out of the kitchen and through the main space
together, and I knocked firmly on the dining room door.

Jake opened it a minute later, clearly unhappy about me interrupting
him.
 
“What is it, Suzanne?
 
Can’t it wait?”

“Sorry, but this is important.
 
Vince Dade isn’t answering our knocks.”

He frowned a little.
 
“Is that
all?
 
Maybe he’s taking a nap.”

“Not after the way we were just knocking,” Grace added.
 
“That’s not all, though.”

“What else happened?” Jake asked.

“The master key is gone,” Shelly said.
 
“Someone must have stolen it in the past
couple of hours.”

That got Jake’s attention.
 
“Are you sure that you didn’t just misplace it?”

“I’m positive.
 
I saw it right
where it belonged earlier today, and now it’s gone.”

Jake nodded.
 
“Okay.
 
Don’t worry.
 
I’m sure that it will turn up.”
 
He turned back to Kevin.
 
“We’ll finish this later.”

“Fine by me,” he said.
 
“If
you need me, I’ll be in my room, with the door locked.”
  
Almost as an afterthought, he
added, “Not that it’s probably going to do me much good.”

We all followed him into the hallway, and Jake knocked on Vince’s door
himself.
 
After there was no answer,
he jiggled the door handle, but it was still locked.

“We already tried that,” Grace said.

“And it didn’t hurt anything to try it again,” Jake said as he turned to
Shelly.
 
“Is there any other way
into that room without breaking the door down?”

“Not that I know of,” she said.
 
“Go on; do what you have to.
 
I can always replace the lock if I have to.
 
Vince might be in trouble in there, and
that’s all that matters.”

“Okay.
 
Everybody stand over
there.”

Jake braced himself against the wall opposite the door, but instead of
using his shoulder as I’d expected, he kicked it solidly right where the latch mechanism
met the door.

It opened with a jolt as the door swung open violently on its hinges, and
we all looked inside to see what was really going on in Vince Dade’s room.

“No one’s here,” Jake said after he looked carefully around the room and
the accompanying bathroom.

“Where could he be, then?” I asked.
 
“It’s still storming outside, so I doubt that he just decided to go out
for a walk.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Jake said as he checked the door that
he’d just kicked in.
 
“Sorry about
that.”

Shelly shrugged.
 
“I’ve got a
man who can fix it.
 
Right now I’m
more worried about my guest.”

“Where should we look?” I asked her.

“The place isn’t all that big,” Shelly said.
 
“Let me grab the rest of the room
keys.
 
I’d like to search the empty
rooms we haven’t used, too.”

“You do that, and we’ll check around ourselves,” Grace said.

Jake nodded.
 
“Good
enough.
 
I’m going to grab my jacket
and head outside.”

I could hear the rain pounding down from where I stood.
 
“Are you honestly going out in that?”

“I don’t have much choice, Suzanne.
 
If he’s not in here, then he’s got to be somewhere outside.”

“Then I’m going with you,” I said firmly.

Jake shook his head, though I could see him trying to hide the hint of a
smile.
 
“Thanks, but there’s no
sense in both of us getting soaked to the bone.
 
Besides, you and Grace need to stay
together.”

“If I’m watching her back, who’s going to be watching yours?” I asked.

“I don’t mind being alone, Jake.
 
Suzanne should go with you,” Grace answered.

There was a firmer edge to his voice when he spoke again.
 
“As much as I appreciate the concern for
my well-being you both are showing, this isn’t open for debate.”
 

I knew better than to go against his wishes on this.
 
“Let me at least grab your jacket for
you.”

“I have boots,” Shelly volunteered.
 
“Surely there’s a pair that will fit you.
 
They’re by the back door.
 
As a matter of fact, that might be a
good place to start looking.”

Jake didn’t need her to fill in the blanks for him.
 
“You’re thinking that a pair might
already missing.”

“It’s worth a look,” Shelly said, and all four of us hurried to the back
door, our flashlights bobbing in an odd pattern.
 

It surprised me that the other guests hadn’t come out when they’d heard Vince’s
door being broken down.
 
Maybe
Nathan and Maggie were too involved in their own drama to pay us any attention,
or maybe they just didn’t care.
 
It
was easy enough to believe that they each had a motive for killing
Chester.
 
Infidelity was about as
personal an affront as possible in most folks’ minds.
 
As for Kevin, who knew what was going on
in that man’s head?
 
I mean,
seriously, who holds a grudge so long over a measly ten bucks, principle or
not?
 
He was a bit of a wild card in
my mind, and predicting what might or might not drive him to commit murder was
beyond me.
 
At least Vince Dade had
a solid motive for killing Chester Martin if he’d been lying to me earlier
about welcoming a scapegoat for his land-fraud scheme.
 
The entire town believed that he’d been
burned, both financially and emotionally, and he might have been out for
revenge, no matter how long ago the offense had occurred.
 
But that didn’t explain where he was
right now, and with this many suspects nearby, I hated the thought of one of
them being out of our sight for any appreciable time at all.

“I can’t say for sure, but it seems that a pair of men’s boots might be
missing,” Shelly said as she studied the pile of boots jammed into a closet by
the back door.

“Can’t you say for sure by looking?” Jake asked.

Shelly looked a little embarrassed to admit, “Over the course of a
season, you’d be amazed by how many people walk off with our things.
 
On any given day, it’s tough to keep an
inventory of everything we have on hand with my small staff.
 
We had a guest one year who stole light bulbs,
and not just from the room, either.
 
It took me two hours to find all of the empty sockets in the place.”

“Then I need to go out and have a look around for myself,” Jake said.

I’d stopped long enough to grab Jake’s jacket from his room.
 
“Here, take it.
 
You’re going to need this.”

“And a hat might be in order, too,” Shelly said as she grabbed one from a
peg on the closet door.
 
“That might
help keep you a little dry.”

Jake put on his jacket, and after a moment’s hesitation, he reluctantly
took the hat as well.
 
“If I’m not
back in thirty minutes, lock the doors and wait for reinforcements.
 
Somebody’s bound to come along sooner or
later.”

“No,” I said.
 
“Sorry, but that’s
not going to happen.”

Jake was displeased with me; it was clear in the way he looked at me, but
I wasn’t about to back down.
 
“Suzanne, don’t forget.
 
I’m
the one who is in charge of this investigation.”

“I’m not denying it, but if you’re one minute late, I’m going to come
looking for you, orders or not.”

Before Jake could comment, Grace said, “And I’ll be right behind
her.
 
Honestly, you can’t make
demands on us if you’re not here to enforce them,” she said with a grin.

It was touch and go for a few seconds, but Jake finally shrugged.
 
“Then I’ll be sure to come back in
plenty of time.”

“We’ll be waiting for you,” I said as I kissed him good-bye.
 
It was brief but effective.

“See you soon,” he said as he started to open the door.

“One way or another, you can count on it,” I answered.

We all watched him fade away into the downpour, his flashlight beam
quickly being swallowed up by the gloomy day.
 
The late afternoon was darker than it
should have been even with the storm.

Shelly must have been thinking the same thing.
 
“We’re perched between two mountains, so
our sunlight doesn’t last a long time on a good day, and what’s going on out
there is far from that.
 
I need to
grab those keys and check the other rooms.
 
Are you two coming with me?”

When I didn’t answer, Grace said, “Suzanne, we’re going to drive
ourselves crazy if just we stand here by the door waiting for him.
 
That half an hour is going to seem like
three days.”

“There’s only twenty-eight minutes left,” I said as I checked my watch.

“Still.”

“You’re right,” I replied.
 
“Let’s get busy.”

After checking all of the empty guest rooms, we did a thorough search of
the rest of the lodge, including the door that led to the storm shelter.

Shelly opened it and played the beam of her flashlight down the stairs,
and Grace and I looked down as well.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Grace asked.

It was quite an understatement.
 
I could see water already touching the bottom step, seeping in from the
outside at an alarming rate.
 
“Has
it ever been that high before?” I asked Shelly.

She looked a little pale from the sight of it.
 
“Not since I’ve owned the place.
 
There’s a lot of water down there.”

“It won’t come up this high,” I said, though I wasn’t sure of that fact
at all.

“I thought if I’d ignore it, it would be fine.
 
Basically I haven’t had the money to
seal the shelter off, so I’ve just been hoping that it wouldn’t ever come to
this.
 
What an idiot I was.”

“I’m sure that you did what you could with what you had,” I said, trying
to be reassuring, but the rising water level worried me, too.
 
What would happen if the rain continued
at the pace it was falling now?
 
Would we all be driven out by the rising floodwaters?
 
And what about the stream outside?
 
I was certain that it posed a risk to us
as well.

It was a delayed risk, though.
 
We had even more pressing issues now.

Where was Vince, and more importantly, what was keeping Jake?
 
I glanced at my watch for the five thousandth
time since he’d left, and I saw that he had only three minutes left before I
was going after him.

That depended on if I was going to wait that long for him.
 
I suddenly couldn’t stand the thought of
Jake being out there somewhere, hurt and helpless, unable to come back.
 
If I gave him the full amount of time
that I’d promised to earlier, it might already be too late by the time I got to
him.
 
I decided that this time, it
would be better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

“I’m grabbing my coat and I’m heading outside,” I said.

“But you promised Jake you would wait thirty minutes,” Shelly said as she
glanced at her watch.

“I’ll apologize when I find him,” I replied.

“Wait for me, then,” Grace said.
 
“I’m going, too.”

“You two don’t mind if I stay here, do you?” Shelly asked as Grace and I
prepared ourselves to go outside.

“This is where you need to be.
 
Somebody has to hold down the fort,” I said.

I found a pair of nondescript olive boots that didn’t fall off my feet,
and Grace grabbed a pair of black boots dappled with daisies.
 
Leave it to her to be stylish even when
we were on what I hoped was not a rescue mission.

We never made it outside, though.

Just as we were about to leave, the outside door swung open, and I held
my breath, waiting to see who was about to step through.