Glazed Murder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Critical Praise for
Glazed Murder

 

 

"The perfect comfort read: a delicious murder, a likeable heroine, quirky Southern characters--and donut recipes!"

 

 

--Rhys Bowen, Agatha and Anthony award-
winning author of the Molly Murphy
and Royal Spyness mysteries

 

"If you like donuts--and who doesn't?--you'll love this mystery. It's like a trip to your favorite coffee shop, but without the calories!"

 

 

--Leslie Meier, author of the Lucy Stone
mysteries
New Year's Eve Murder
and
Wedding
Day Murder

 

"Jessica Beck's
Glazed Murder
is a delight. Suzanne Hart is a lovable amateur sleuth who has a hilariously protective mother
and
great donut recipes! Readers will have a blast with this book."

 

 

--Diane Mott Davidson,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Fatally Flaky

 

 

 

 

 

GLAZED

 

Murder

 

 

Jessica Beck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTE:
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

 

 

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

GLAZED MURDER

 

Copyright (c) 2010 by Jessica Beck.

 

Excerpt from
Fatally Frosted
copyright (c) 2010 by Jessica Beck.

 

All rights reserved.

 

For information address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

 

EAN: 978-0-312-94610-4

 

Printed in the United States of America

 

St. Martin's Paperbacks edition / April 2010

 

St. Martin's Paperbacks are published by St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

 

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

 

 

 

 

 

To Ruby Hall,
mother and artist extraordinaire
.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Donuts. Is there anything they can't do?"

 

 

--Matt Groening,
creator of
The Simpsons

 

 

 

 

 

GLAZED

 

Murder

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 1

 

 

Trust me when I say that I usually lead a pretty ordinary life. It's not every day that I stumble across a body while I'm working at Donut Hearts, my handmade-donut and premium-blend coffee shop perched on the edge of the downtown district of April Springs, North Carolina, population 5,001.

 

But this was anything but ordinary.

 

Someone had dumped a body in front of my shop in the darkness of night as I watched, and then sped off into the shadows before I could react to what I'd seen.

 

I work the graveyard shift at the shop, there's no other way to put it. My hours are off-kilter in relation to the rest of the world, from 2 A.M. when I mix the first batch of dough until I sweep up and lock the doors sometime around noon. It kills all possibilities of dating after 8 P.M., but I haven't been all that interested in going out since my divorce from my ex-husband, Max, the great impersonator. He's an actor,
and prides himself on his ability to fake his way through any role--including husband--something I found out much to my consternation. The man had been so smooth when he'd lied to me during our marriage that I doubted a polygraph could have picked up his deceit. He had an unsteady income doing nationally distributed commercials now and then, and I'd been urging him to try his luck in Hollywood, not because of his talent--of which there was little--but because it would get him out of my hair once and for all. No such luck. He refused to leave April Springs, the small town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains where we'd both grown up, and I wasn't about to budge, either.

 

Sorry, that's a tangent I'm in no mood to take. Let's get back to what happened. I watched in stunned silence as something heavy was dumped out of a speeding car just after I walked into the shop. As a matter of fact, my hand was on the switch to light the DONUT HEARTS sign when I heard the noise outside. At twelve past two in the morning, I was used to having the world to myself. Emma Blake--my assistant at the donut shop and my honorary niece--never made it in until two-thirty, and she wasn't coming in today at all, since it was her day off. On the one day of the week I was opening by myself and working in the shop all morning alone, the world had conspired to throw my life into turmoil.

 

The presence of the car itself had been enough to make me look up when I heard it outside. We don't get much traffic on Springs Drive that time of morning. Before I could grasp what I'd seen, I flipped the switch up, lighting the world just outside my shop and
turning the shadowy lump lying on the street into what was clearly a body. All I'd really caught of the person dumping the body had been a face covered with a black ski mask, and the flash of a faded tiger embossed on a dark, hooded sweatshirt. The car door slammed the second I spotted him, and the killer drove off before I could manage to do much more than scream as it disappeared into the darkness.

 

"Did you check for a pulse when you found him, Mrs. Hart?" the young police officer asked as I finished brewing a pot of our specialty coffee blend. I usually need a jump start in the morning before I start on the dough, and today it was true, more than ever.

 

"I told you before, Officer Moore, it's 'miss,' and you should call me 'Suzanne'. I ran outside after I called you'all, but I'm not sure I could find a pulse if I had to." I shivered a little as I remembered my fingers probing the man's neck as he lay sprawled facedown on the pavement. When I'd rolled him over to try to help him, I'd nearly lost it when I realized it was Patrick Blaine. Patrick came by for donuts once a week since I'd taken over the shop, and I'd grown quite fond of him over the years. He didn't look peaceful at all now, like they sometimes show in the movies. I hadn't been all that surprised when there'd been no indications that he was still alive. His face grimaced in a death mask that nearly made him unrecognizable. He'd joked with me about being my honorary uncle, and now he lay dead in the street in front of my shop.

 

Officer Moore asked, "Did you catch a glimpse of the driver at all?"

 

I frowned, then finally admitted, "Not enough to identify who it was. It was dark out, and whoever was driving wore a ski mask and a hooded sweatshirt." I paused, and then added, "There was a faded tiger on the front of it; at least I think that's what it was. It could have been a dog. Or maybe even a race car. I don't know, I only saw it for a second."

 

Moore nodded, jotting again in his notebook. He was a hearty, robust young man, with jet-black hair and eyes that nearly matched. "And you don't know what kind of car you saw, is that right?"

 

I shrugged. "I'm sorry. It was dark, and it all happened so fast. Is there a chance Patrick is still alive?"

 

I fought the urge to look outside at the activity around the body. I'd seen the paramedics arrive just as the police cruiser pulled into the parking lot in front of the shop. Donut Hearts was now in the building that had once been the train depot, back when the tracks had run through the edge of town. They had long been abandoned, but the twin rails were still there, hiding sometimes beneath the brush. The only other remnant of their presence was across Springs Drive where the Boxcar grill sat, a converted train car that now served as a diner. My eyes drifted back to the street outside the shop. Honestly, I wasn't sure I wanted to see what the paramedics were doing, especially if they were zippering my friend into a black body bag.

 

Officer Moore, barely into his twenties, shook his head curtly. "No worries there. He was dead before he hit the ground."

 

His casual tone of voice struck me as a little too callous to be coming from someone ten years younger
than me. "How can you be so sure? I knelt down in the street beside him and I couldn't tell."

 

The officer said slowly, "I know a gunshot trauma when I see it. The guy was practically a ghost, he was so white. He had to have bled out in the car. You must have noticed it yourself."

 

I gulped my coffee, then said, "I saw him, but I thought the lights might be playing tricks on my eyes." Officer Moore might be used to seeing dead bodies--though I doubted he'd been on the force long enough to run up against many of them--but it was a new and entirely unwelcome sight for me. I make donuts, plain and simple, and have ever since I bought the shop with my divorce settlement. Max had made a successful national commercial at exactly the wrong time, at least as far as our divorce was concerned. I'd caught him at one of the rare moments in his life when he'd been solvent, right after finding him in bed with Darlene Higgins, our once-upon-a-time prom queen and now a beautician at Wilma Gentry's Cutnip.

 

That's when I did three crazy things in the span of a month, after the official end of my marriage: I moved back in with my momma; I changed my last name to the one I'd been born with; and I bought the donut shop. It was a series of rash decisions that came when I needed to reestablish myself in the world as Suzanne Hart, not Max Thornburg's wife.

 

The young cop finally flipped his notebook closed and finished filling in a multicopy form. I glanced at it as he held it out to me, along with a pen.

 

"Just sign here and I'll give you a copy for your records."

 

I did as I was told, and shook my head at the man's precision. The time on the report was 2:37, not 2:40 or even 2:30. His seven would have looked like a one if it hadn't been for the bar he'd put through the middle of it. You'd think police officers would be required to have good penmanship, given how much writing they must do in the course of a day filling out paperwork and making reports. I signed the form and handed it back to him.

 

After he glanced at my signature, he pulled off a copy from the bottom and handed it to me. "That's all I need for now. Thanks for your cooperation."

 

"I did what anyone would do," I said as I walked him to the door.