Bad Bites: Donut Mystery #16 (The Donut Mysteries) (14 page)

Chapter 19

“Jake, are you okay?” I asked with relief as I reached for the towel
Shelly was holding.
 
“Get out of
those wet things.”

“I’m fine,” he said as he took off his jacket and boots.
 
The hat was missing.
 
“A breeze kicked up and blew that thing
right off my head.
 
I’ll be glad to
replace it once this is all over.”

“Don’t worry about it, Jake, a guest left it three seasons ago.
 
What’s it like out there?”

“It’s pretty brutal,” he admitted.
 
“It’s as bad as we thought.
 
The
road’s completely gone.”

“Do you mean that it’s under water?” Grace asked.

“No, I mean that it’s gone.
 
The stream took it completely out.”
 
He turned to Shelly.
 
“It’s
not going to be easy to fix it, from the look of it.
 
I’ve got a hunch that your season is
over.”

Shelly slumped down a little.
 
“Then so is the lodge.”

“Come on.
 
You can always start
from scratch next season,” I said encouragingly.

“Not without the paying guests I’ll have to turn away the rest of this
one.
 
I was on the edge of
bankruptcy before the storm hit.
 
This storm just drove the last nail in my coffin.”
 
She looked around at the old place.
 
“You know what?
 
The bank is welcome to it.
 
I’ve struggled to make it work for
years, but most folks just don’t seem to care about the isolation we offer
anymore.
 
My sister has been after
me to retire to the Outer Banks and come live with her, and I think I’m going
to take her up on it when we get out of here.”

“Maybe you should sleep on it,” I said.
 
“I know that things look bleak right
now, but in the morning light, there might be a way out for you.”

“Suzanne, it’s okay, really.
 
In a way, it’s kind of a relief.”

I decided to keep my mouth shut.
 
After all, I knew better than anyone what a thin profit margin most
small businesses worked with.
 
If I
lost a month’s worth of sales, I’d have to shutter Donut Hearts myself.

“That begs one question, though, doesn’t it?” Grace asked.
 
“Where’s Vince Dade?”

“Well, he didn’t walk out of here,” Jake said.
 
“I know that for a fact.
 
From the look of it, that road’s been
gone a while.
 
I suspect it washed
out just after he and Kevin made it across.”

“So that means that he’s somewhere inside the lodge,” Shelly said.
 
“I honestly don’t know where he might be
hiding, though.”

“Who says that he’s hiding?” Jake asked as he toweled off his hair.
 
“We need to round everybody up and
inspect their rooms whether they like it or not.”

“What do you expect to find?” Shelly asked, clearly concerned with
whatever Jake’s answer might be.

“I try not to expect anything,” he said.
 
“I deal with facts, not guesses and suppositions.
 
Come on, let’s go.”

“You three go on.
 
I think
I’ll hang back and get started on dinner,” Shelly said.

I didn’t expect Jake to offer any resistance to the idea, but yet again,
he surprised me.
 
“If you don’t
mind, I’d rather you come with us, at least for now.”

Shelly looked surprised by his suggestion.
 
“I can assure you that I’m perfectly
safe in my own kitchen, Jake.”

“You’re probably right, but what is it going to hurt to indulge me?”

She shrugged.
 
“Fine.
 
I suppose that it can wait.”

Jake smiled.
 
“Then let’s
go.
 
Until you hear from me, no one
should leave the group.”

“Do you think that we’re all really in danger?” Shelly asked.

“We’d be fools not to entertain the possibility,” Grace replied, and then
she looked at me.
 
“What?
 
It’s true, isn’t it?”

“I never denied it,” I said.
 

“Good,” she replied.

“Ladies, if we’re finished here, let’s get started on the rest of our
search,” Jake said.

“We’re right behind you,” I said as Jake headed for Nathan and Maggie
Hoff’s room first.

I wondered what we might find there, given the way the couple had been
interacting since they’d arrived.
 
A
murder/suicide wasn’t out of the question in my mind, a dark thought indeed.

At least we didn’t have to break their door down.
 

“What can we do for you?” Nathan asked as he opened the door partway.

“Is your wife here with you?” Jake asked him.

“Of course she is.
 
Where else
would she be?”
 
A frown crossed his
lips.
 
“Why do you ask?”

“We need everyone in the main area by the fireplace right now,” Jake
ordered.

“Who is it?” we heard Maggie call out from inside the room.
 
“What do they want?”
 
As she got closer to the door, she
added, “What is this, a lynch mob?”

“Nobody’s going to lynch anyone.
 
We’re here for your safety,” Jake said.

“Why should I believe you?”

I could see my boyfriend tense a little at her jibe.
 
Like most people, he wasn’t all that
keen on having his orders challenged.
 
I decided to step in before things escalated.
 
“Maggie, the road is gone, and it’s hard
to say when we’ll ever get out of here.
 
We’re trying to figure things out.”

“Are you telling me that we’re trapped?”
 
Her voice was shrill, and Jake glanced
back at me.
 
I was expecting some
sort of reprimand, but instead, he just smiled.

“I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” Jake told her.

“How else could you possibly see this situation?” she asked him.

Jake replied, “I’m sure that it’s only temporary, but for the time being,
we’re all sticking together.”

“Where are Vince and Kevin, then?” Nathan asked Jake as he looked at us
all milling about in the hallway.

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Grace said.
 
“This is Kevin’s door, right?” she
asked.

“It is,” Shelly replied.

Before Jake could say anything, she knocked loudly on it.

Kevin opened the door after a full minute, and from his disheveled
appearance, if I had to guess, I’d say that he’d been napping when Grace had
knocked.
 
“What’s going on?”

“There’s a meeting in the lobby by the big fireplace,” she said.
 
“Come on.”

“Not interested,” he said as he tried to close the door.

Jake reached out from beyond Kevin’s line of sight and grabbed the door
before it could close.
 
“That wasn’t
a request.”

Kevin looked as though he wanted to protest further, but something about
Jake’s tone of voice must have told him that would be fruitless.
 
“Fine.
 
Give me a second.”

“Take all the time you need,” Jake said.
 
“We’ll wait.”

Kevin shrugged, and as he tried to close his door, Jake kept his grip on
it firmly.
 
“Do whatever you need
to, but this stays open.”

“I have to take a leak, okay?” Kevin asked, letting some of his
irritation slip through.

“I don’t care what you do, but this door isn’t closing,” Jake said.

“Oh, forget it,” Kevin said angrily.
 
“I’ll do it later.”

Jake just shrugged, clearly not caring one way or the other.

“That just leaves our original missing guest,” Shelly said.
 
“And honestly, I can’t imagine where
Vince might be.”

“Are you telling us that he still hasn’t shown up?” Maggie asked.

“Do you see him anywhere?” Kevin asked, openly sassing her.
 
Was that a smile that crossed Nathan’s
lips for a moment?
 
I doubted that
he’d ever had the guts to respond to his wife that way, but it appeared that he
enjoyed it when someone else did.

“He’s probably out there somewhere,” Maggie said as she waved a hand toward
a window.
 
I glanced out and saw
that the rain was still pounding down, and I wondered what the water level in
the storm shelter was doing.
 
In a
way, I was almost afraid to think about it.

“He’s not, though,” Jake said.

“How can you possibly know that, Inspector?” Maggie demanded to know.

“It’s Chief,” Jake said, “and I know because we’re on our own little island
now with the way the stream has cut us off.
 
It didn’t take that long to check; trust
me.”

“Then logic demands that he’s in here somewhere,” Kevin said.

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Jake said, “but where?”
 
He turned to Shelly and asked, “Are you
absolutely certain that you’ve checked every place in the lodge where someone
might be hiding?”

“I assure you, we’ve searched it all.”
 
Almost as an afterthought, she added,
“Everywhere but my bedroom, of course, and I can assure you that he’s not in there.”

“Let’s go look anyway,” Jake said.
 
“Where exactly is it?”

“I was teasing,” Shelly said.
 
“Surely you don’t think that Vince is holed up in my room.”

“Well, he has to be somewhere.
 
Just indulge me, okay?”

“Are we all going?” Grace asked.

“Why not?” I replied.
 
“The
more the merrier.”

There were a few grumbles, but everyone knew that arguing with Jake was
going to be pointless, so we all followed Shelly as she led the way through the
kitchen and around the far hallway to a small set of stairs.
 
I’d missed them completely before.
 
Once we were all upstairs, I saw that a
small door had been tucked into one eave.

Shelly unlocked her door and swung it open.
 
“See?
 
There’s no one here.”

She was about to close it again when I thought I saw something—or someone—move
on the floor.

Chapter 20

“Hang on,” I said as I hurried past Shelly to verify what I thought I’d
just seen.

Lying on the floor beside the bed and away from the line of sight through
the doorway, I found Vince Dade.
 

He was tied up, there was duct tape across his mouth, and he appeared to
be as mad as a wet cat, but at least he was still alive.

Chapter 21

“I’m not going to lie to you.
 
This is going to sting a little,” Jake said as he reached down and
ripped the duct tape off Vince’s mouth in one swift motion.

“Oww!” Vince shouted.
 
The
ropes holding him were fairly loose, and it appeared that he’d nearly worked
his way free by the time we’d found him.
 
I finished untying them for him, and his first action was to rub his
mouth carefully.
 
“I’m going to kill
whoever did this to me.”

“Does that mean that you didn’t see who tied you up?” I asked.
 
If Jake minded me butting in, he didn’t
say anything.
 
Clearly he was just
as curious about the answer to my question himself.

“I didn’t see a thing.
 
Whoever
did it hit me from behind,” Vince said with disgust as he felt the back of his
head and tried to stand.
 
He didn’t
make it all the way, and ended up sitting down hard on Shelly’s bed.

Jake tenderly probed the spot himself, and Vince winced a little as he
did.
 
“Hey, take it easy.”

“Sorry,” Jake said, but there was no sincerity in the apology.
 
“What were you doing up here in the
first place?
 
Nobody attacked you
and then dragged you up the stairs, I’m pretty sure of that.”

Vince looked a little guilty as he finally managed to stand up and
explained, “I thought Shelly might have a two-way radio or something up
here.
 
I wanted out of here, and I
didn’t know what else to do.”

“You could have just asked me instead of breaking into my room,” Shelly
said with a frown.

“He didn’t have to break in,” I said, and then I stared hard at the man.
 
“Come on.
 
Hand it over, Vince.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said glumly.

“The master key,” I insisted as I held out my hand.

“Fine.
 
You can have it, for
all of the good that it did me,” he said, but as he reached into his pocket, he
suddenly frowned.
 
“You’re kidding
me.”

“You don’t have it?” Jake asked.

“Oh, I admit that I had it at one time, but whoever clobbered me must
have taken it when I was out cold.”

“This is not good,” Grace said softly.
 
Her words had more impact than if she’d
shouted them, but it wasn’t anything that the rest of us weren’t feeling as
well.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Maggie asked gently.
 
There was softness, a real sense of vulnerability
in her voice that I hadn’t heard before.
 
The woman was clearly frightened, and why wouldn’t she be?
 
We were stranded out in the wilderness
with a killer, and there looked to be little hope that we’d manage to get away
before something else very bad happened to at least one of us.

“We need to reconvene downstairs,” Jake said.
 
“There’s not enough room in here for all
of us.
 
Can you make it on your own,
Vince, or do you need some help?”

“I’ll manage,” he growled out, so we all headed downstairs.
 
As Vince started to move, though, he
headed straight for Kevin Leeds before he could get away.
 
“You did this to me, didn’t you?” Vince
asked fiercely as he punched the man’s chest with a meaty index finger.

“I didn’t do a thing to you,” Kevin protested.
 
“Have you lost your mind?”

“Then it must have been you!” Vince said as he spun and grabbed Nathan’s shirt
front instead.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nathan said as he tried to free
himself from Vince’s grip.

“Get your hands off my husband this instant,” Maggie ordered.

“Why, are you the one who clobbered me?
 
It could have been a woman, and it
wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if it was you,” Vince snapped at her.

“Enough!” Jake ordered, and then he got really close to Vince before he
spoke again.
 
“If you don’t get
yourself under control, I’m going to tie you up myself and gag you with more
than duct tape.
 
Is that clear?”

Vince bristled a little at the threat, but then he relaxed a touch.
 
“Fine.
 
I’m okay.”

“I mean it, Vince,” Jake said strongly.

“Let’s just all go downstairs,” Vince suggested.
 
It was clear that he was still angry,
but it was just as obvious that he thought he’d have better luck confronting
members of our group later.
 
I
really couldn’t blame him.
 
If
someone had conked me on the head, tied me up, and taped my mouth shut, I’d be
pretty upset about it, too.

Downstairs, we all found spots near the fireplace just as Jake had
suggested.
 

It was growing late in the day now, and full darkness was nearly upon
us.
 
The flickering light from the
fireplace cast ghostly shadows across the room.
 
In a different set of circumstances, it might
have been delightful, but there was an ominous feeling to the moment that
carried a sense of foreboding, and there was nothing more that I wished for
than being far, far away from this lodge prison.

“I’m hungry,” Nathan said after a few moments.
 
“Is anyone else hungry?”

“This is no time to think about food,” Maggie scolded her husband.

“I’ve been wanting to eat for what feels like hours,” Kevin Leeds
replied.

Maggie shook her head in disgust as she looked at Kevin, but he just
smiled in response.

“Why don’t I go ahead and fix us something tasty that’s quicker than what
I had in mind before?” Shelly asked as she stood.
 
“We can eat in an hour.”

“If you go, then we all go,” Jake said.
 
“No one’s leaving my sight.”

“What if we have to go to the can?” Kevin asked.
 
“Are you coming then, too?”

“What’s wrong, do you have a shy bladder?” Vince asked him, clearly
taunting the man a little.

“No, but that doesn’t mean that I like an audience, either,” Kevin said,
and then he turned to Jake.
 
“So,
what about it?”

“The men will go together, and the women will do the same thing,” he
said.

“Well, I’m going right now,” Kevin said as he stood.

“Ladies, should we go as well?” Grace asked.

“Why not?” I asked.
 
“Let’s
reconvene in the kitchen, okay?
 
We
all need to eat something, and the sooner the better.”

“See you there in a few minutes,” Jake said to me, and then we split off
into two groups.

Fifteen minutes later, we were all gathered in the kitchen.
 
Camp lights illuminated the working
surfaces, but there was darkness everywhere else, and to my surprise, I found
myself missing the light from the fireplace in the other room.

“This is going to be challenging,” Shelly said as she surveyed her
workspace.

“We don’t have to have anything elaborate.
 
Do you have the makings for sandwiches?”
Jake asked her.
 
“I’m talking cold
cuts, peanut butter, and bread.
 
That’s all we need.”

“Certainly, but I can do much better than that, given a little time,” Shelly
said.

“Do I have to remind you that we aren’t at summer camp or off on some
kind of corporate retreat?
 
Anybody
who doesn’t want a sandwich can just go without eating,” Jake said curtly.

“Fine.
 
I have bottles of
water and soda as well.
 
You’re
right.
 
That’s probably best.
 
Let me at least set up a buffet line.”

I could see that Jake was about to protest, but apparently this wasn’t a
battle worth fighting.
 
“Okay, but
make it quick, okay?”
 
I noticed
that he was trying to watch everyone in the place at the same time, an
impossible task in the broad light of day, let alone this shadow-filled room.
 
I tried to help, but I could barely keep
my focus on one person before another one moved.

After Shelly was satisfied with her offerings, including three types of
bread, every condiment known to man, a nice spread of chips and vegetables, and
a deli platter full of cold cuts and cheeses, we were ready to eat.
 

I noticed that there were nice plates at the head of the line, and I commented
about them to her.

“Just because we’re eating picnic food doesn’t mean we have to use paper
plates,” she said.
 
“Don’t you
approve?”

“On the contrary, I think it’s a nice touch.”

I hung back with Jake, and we watched as each guest went through the line.
 
When it was just Jake, Grace, Shelly,
and me, I whispered, “Did you find anything out in your interviews?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said.
 
“Would you mind making me a sandwich
when you make yours so I can go keep an eye on them?
 
You know what I like.”

“I’d better by now,” I said with a smile.
 
“Go on.”

“Thanks,” Jake said, and then he took the time to give me a quick peck on
the lips before he rejoined the others.

After he was gone, Shelly said, “He really loves you, doesn’t he?”

“Believe me, the feeling is mutual,” I said as I started building our
sandwiches.

“So why doesn’t he propose already?” Shelly asked.

Grace nearly dropped her plate when Shelly said that.
 
She looked at me with a straight face as
she asked, “That’s a good question, Suzanne.
 
Why hasn’t your long-term boyfriend
proposed to you yet?”

“Don’t you start,” I said with a forced smile.
 
It wasn’t a subject I was ready to
discuss with anyone, not my best friend or the lodge owner.

“Sorry I asked,” Shelly added quickly.
 
“I didn’t realize that it was a sore
subject.”

“It’s not,” I said.
 
“It’s
just complicated.”

“He loves you,” Shelly said.
 
“You clearly love him.
 
I
just don’t get it.
 
You think you
have all the time in the world, but you don’t.
 
Trust me, I know from experience that
you have to grab life by the horns and not let go.”

“I’m sorry you lost Chester,” I said sympathetically.

“Do you know what I’m sorry for?
 
That I didn’t say yes when he asked me to marry him six months ago.”

It was my turn to nearly drop my own plate.
 
“Chester proposed to you?
 
I didn’t know.”

“No one was supposed to, not even Phillip,” Shelly said with a shrug.

“Why did you turn him down?” Grace asked her, a question I was wondering
about myself.

“I wasn’t positive that he was truly finished with Maggie, so I wanted to
wait until he retired so I could get him as far away from her as I could manage,”
she said.
 
“How silly was that of
me?
 
Now I’ve lost him forever.”

As Shelly started to cry, I did my best to comfort her.
 
No one doubted that Chester would be
dead now regardless of his marital status, but she did have a point.
 
What
were
we waiting for?
 
Once we were free
of our current predicament, it might be time to finally talk to Jake about our
future.

But it just wasn’t the right moment now.

Grace interrupted my thoughts by asking Shelly, “Are you saying that you
knew about him fooling around with Maggie all along?”

The lodge owner just shrugged.
 
“I knew about it, but that doesn’t mean that I liked it.
 
The two of them both swore to me that it
was over, but I could never be sure, you know?
 
In the end, I finally decided that it
wasn’t worth fighting about.”

I had to wonder if infidelity wasn’t worth an argument, then what
was?
 
Then again, it was her life,
not mine.
 
The moment I’d discovered
that my husband had cheated on me, I’d kicked him to the curb, but I knew that
everyone was different.

Grace apparently wasn’t so accepting, either.
 
“You’re kidding, right?
 
You just put up with it?”

“It’s not as clear-cut as it may sound.
 
I’m getting older every day,” Shelly
said.
 
“Besides, we all have flaws.”

“Maybe so, but that’s a pretty hard one to swallow,” my best friend said.

“Live to be a lonely old woman my age and then we’ll talk about it,”
Shelly said ruefully.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t believe that’s going to matter,” Grace said.
 
“I’d rather be alone than with someone
who would do that to me.”

I wasn’t surprised by my best friend’s opinion, though I was caught off guard
by her willingness, even eagerness, to share it with us.

“Then we’re just different that way,” Shelly said, clearly not willing to
or interested in justifying her position any further.
 
“I used to see the world in black and
white, but the older I get, the grayer everything around me becomes.”

I wasn’t sure how Grace would react to that, but she must have been
finished with the discussion, because she just shrugged as she went back to her
sandwich construction.

We didn’t talk about it anymore, but then again, we didn’t have to.