Chocolate Crunch Murder (7 page)

“What about it? Have you got information for me?”

“You could say that. I was just called out to Randy’s Burger Bar for a break-in,” he said. His lips turned down at the corners for a second. “I had to deal with that woman in her wheelchair again. Mama Morton.”

“Weird how everyone calls her Mama. She doesn’t seem like the nurturing type.”

“You can say that again,” Ryan replied.

Heather glanced at the coffee machine but didn’t get up to make them a cup.

Ryan touched his healing black eye, then laughed out loud. “She called the cops for a disturbance, and I decided to go because there’s an active investigation going on. Turns out, she wasn't paranoid. Someone forced the door into the storage room.”

“No way,” Heather said, running her hand across her lips. “I saw that the door had been forced the last time I was there. Splinters chipped from the jamb and the door itself.”

“Yeah, I asked the old lady about it. She said that it was none of her business what her good for nothing grandson had done with his restaurant,” Ryan replied, wiggling his head and mimicking Mama Morton’s voice.

“That’s a lie. She was intimately involved with his business. She had papers which pertained to them in her place.”

“I don’t want to know how you know that. But I checked our records, and it’s not the first complaint that’s been made. It looks like someone’s been breaking into the burger bar on a regular basis. We just don’t know who.”

Heather sighed. It didn’t exactly give her a shiny, new lead, but it was something. “I don’t suppose you want to stick around and help us with the donut fest?”

“Sorry, love, I can’t. But isn’t that Eva at the front door?”

The kindest elderly woman in Hillsides knocked on the glass and waved, beaming from ear to ear.

“Just the person I wanted to see,” Heather replied, grinning right back.

Donut Delights glowed beneath the lights
. The tables were laden with boxes upon boxes of Chocolate Crunch Donuts. The sun peeked its golden head above the horizon, adding to the shine on the golden floorboards.

“Is it over?” Amy asked, from one of the wrought iron chairs. “Did we do it?”

“We did it. All five hundred. We’ll have to send them out in about an hour,” Heather replied. She was beyond yawning.

Eva had retired at midnight the previous night. Heather had forced Jung and Ken out the door for their health, and Maricela and Angelica had left voluntarily just before 1 Am.

The rest of the donuts? The last two hundred? That’d been all Ames and Heather.

“We make a great team,” Heather said, then broke into a humming session – Morning Has Broken by Cat Stevens. She couldn’t shake the nerves, or maybe the humming had become a force of habit.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’m too tired to high five you right now. Let’s mental high five. Think about it right now,” Amy said.

“Okay.”

“Are you thinking about it?” Amy asked.

“Yeah.”

“Great. Then we’ve just high fived. Man, I don’t ever want to get out of this chair. I think I’ll just camp out here from now on.” Amy dropped her head back and faked a snore.

“But then you’d miss leg day,” Heather replied.

Amy burst into a wheezing chuckle. Her entire body shook from the mirth. “You’ve got jokes, eh?”

The door to Donut Delights opened, and Jung stepped into the store. He ran a hand through his dark, slicked-back hair and stared at the boxes.

“You did,” he said, choked out more like.

“Are you okay?” Heather asked.

“You look white as a ghost, dude. I don’t mean to criticize, I know I look like death warmed up right now,” Amy said, adding her typically ‘Ames’ viewpoint to the batter, as usual.

“I need to talk to you,” Jung whispered. “Alone.”

“Whatever you say to me, you can say in front of Amy. She’s on my team, always.”

“And forever. Like Shania Twain,” Amy said. “Ooh, not my best reference.”

“You’re tired,” Heather said, “give yourself a break.”

Jung shut the door behind him and made to lock it, then hesitated.

“You can lock it if it makes you feel better,” Heather said. She couldn’t force herself out of her chair, even though she was concerned. Why was Jung jumpy, this time?

The cops had finished their interrogation ages ago. A week back. Maybe the grief over Randy’s death had finally caught up with him.

Jung locked the door and faced Heather. “The cops are going to come after me again. I just know it.”

“What? Why?” Heather asked.

“Aren’t they after you already?” Amy closed one eye and tilted her head to the side.

Heather wasn’t close enough to nudge her bestie in the ribs. She tried the mental thing but got no reaction.

Jung wrung his hands and stepped toward them, then stopped again. “I just received news that I’m the sole beneficiary of Randy’s life insurance policy.”

“What?”

“It’s going to pay out a lot of money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars to me.”

Amy gasped. Heather echoed her.

“Why? What on earth? Why didn’t he leave it to his mother? Did you know about this before it happened?” Heather asked. She finally mustered the energy to sit straight. She rose from her seat and walked to Jung. “Jung, did you know about this? Because that’s something you should’ve told the police.”

“I swear, I didn’t know. From what the insurance company guy told me, it was a last minute change,” Jung said.

“What do you mean?” Amy shifted in her chair. All her yawns had disappeared.

“I mean, Randy had his grandmother as the beneficiary until a week before his death. Then he changed it to me.” Jung’s eyes glistened. He grabbed his belt loops and tugged at them. “Do you realize how this looks? It looks like I – like I was the one who, you know, who killed him.”

Amy pressed her lips together.

Heather’s tired mind ticked through the possibilities.

On one hand, it looked bad for her assistant. Jung could’ve convinced Randy to change his policy, then killed him for it. But Jung didn’t need huge amounts of cash for anything. That motivation wasn’t too strong.

On the other hand, it looked pretty bad for Randy’s grandmother too. The arguments, the strange letters asking Randy to pay up and Mama Morton’s insistence that he was good for nothing.

She’d also lied to the police.

Randy might’ve gotten fed up, changed the policy because he suspected Morton was up to something, then paid for it later. The grumpy granny might’ve had a partner in crime. Someone strong enough to strangle a man of Randy’s stature.

“Don’t jump to any conclusions, just yet,” Heather said. “Just know that we believe you’re innocent and that I will get to the bottom of this, no matter what.”

“Come snow or sleet or – what’s that saying, again?” Amy asked.

“But the cops –”

Heather grabbed her employee by the shoulder and squeezed, gently. “The worst thing you can do right now is panic. I promise, if you keep a clear head about this, everything will be fine. Don’t run. Just wait for the cops to come to you.”

“Better yet, go to them first,” Amy said.

A crash rang out from the back of the bakery. The clang of metal on metal.

“It’s the cops!” Jung hissed. “The cops have come for me. They’re going to throw me in jail, for life. I didn’t do it, Heather, I swear.”

“Cool it, dude,” Amy said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Heather let go of her assistant and turned to face the office. “That wasn’t a cop. They don’t come through back doors.” Not necessarily true. Davidson had pranced into her kitchen, not so long ago.

Excitement trickled through Heather’s veins. Another mystery. Adrenaline thrown into the mix.

More banging and clanging, then a scraping noise. A man spoke from the back of the building, loud enough for them to hear.

“There are two of them,” Amy whispered. She rose from her seat and walked over to Heather’s side. “Shall we?”

“Oh yes,” Heather said, “we shall. Follow me.”

Heather and Amy crept through the store. They circled the glass counter from opposite ends, gazes trained on the office door. Was the intruder inside? Or had the noises come from the back?

“Only one way to find out,” Heather said, under her breath. She wrapped her palm around the door knob, its coolness pressing against her skin.

She glanced at Amy. They nodded at the same moment.

Heather opened the door and charged into her office, gaze darting from corner to corner. Amy followed and raised her fists – had she been taking karate at the gym too?

The desk and chairs stared back at them, the sole occupants of the office. Apart from Heather’s lonely laptop, which hummed on the desk pad, still shining after she’d abandoned it, email open, yesterday morning.

“Well that’s weird,” Amy whispered. “I know all three of us are tired, but we couldn’t have hallucinated those noises as a group. Could we? Is that a thing that happens?”

Heather shook her head, wordlessly. That was not a thing that happened to her knowledge.

“Then what was that?”

Another clang thundered from the back of the building. The women froze and stared at the office window.

Heather pressed a finger to her lips, then tiptoed to her desk. She opened her drawer, brought out her handbag then fished around in it. Her fingers closed around the hard plastic end of her Taser.

She brought it out, clicked off the safety button, then gestured to the window panes.

The sun had banished the last vestiges of a gray dawn. Traffic zoomed by in the road out front.

“Got to be more than that,” a man said, from beneath the window. “Got be much more. Tastes so good.”

Heather and Amy shared a quizzical glance. They stalked to the window and stood either side of it. Ames pulled a Charlie’s Angels pose to lighten the mood. Heather snorted and pressed a fist to her nose.

“I can figure them out. If I can taste enough of them, I can figure them out,” the man grumbled on, in his flat monotone.

Heather peered out the window and stifled a gasp.

Amy did the same and stifled a chuckle instead.

Geoff Lawless stood beneath the sill, hunched over the Donut Delights trash cans, sifting through half empty donut boxes. He picked up a couple of scraps and inserted them between his lips, then chewed.

Amy made a gagging face.

“Not enough crumbs. Where are all the donuts? What does she do with them? She’s hiding them so I can’t work out the recipes, that’s it.”

Heather’s jaw dropped. That was what Geoff was after? Did he want to work out her recipes and steal them? The man couldn’t figure things out on his own, couldn’t make his recipes and draw in loyal customers for himself.

Shoot, he probably thought they hadn’t come in yet. If he’d been a real baker, Geoff would’ve realized that work at Donut Delights started as early as 5 am some mornings.

“How does she do it? Choc Crunch, hah,” Geoff said, then held up a chocolate coated hazelnut. “I found one.” He gobbled it down, then smacked his lips. “Still not enough, where are all the donuts?” He scratched underneath his chin, rasping his nails along his beard.

Heather couldn’t take another second of his creepy scavenging. She clunked the window open and stuck her head out. “Why don’t you just ask me face to face, recipe thief?”

She’d bet her bottom dollar that Jelly Polinski had stolen her grandmother’s recipes for him, after all, and she’d paid dearly for it.

Geoff Lawless threw his hands up in the air and did a dance. He gasped, shuddered and took a step back.

“I’ll tell you what I do with any leftover stock,” Heather said, “but you won’t like the outcome.”

Geoff didn’t answer, just stared at her, a deer caught in the head lights.

“I don’t throw away food, Geoff. There are plenty of people who need sustenance and can’t afford to pay for it. Whatever I don’t sell, I give to the needy at soup kitchens or the residents of Hillside Manor for their treats. Does that answer your question?”

Amy poked her head out of the window beside Heather. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Can’t you come up with any recipes on your own?”

Geoff took one step back, then another.

“Here we go again,” Heather said.

“Oh, he’s going, he’s going,” Amy put in.

Geoff turned on his heel and sprinted off down the alley. He reached the end and burst onto the sidewalk, eliciting screams from a group of schoolgirls who’d gathered to exchange pics on their cells or look for Pokémon or somethin’.

“And he’s gone,” Amy said. “You’ve got to give it to him. He keeps the acts fresh.”

“If you call rifling through old donut boxes in search of stale crumbs fresh.” Heather yawned, then turned from the window.

Amy shut it behind her. “Speaking of donuts. We’ve got a massive order to ship.”