Maple Frosted Murder (Donut Hole 2)
Read Maple Frosted Murder (Donut Hole 2) Online
Authors: Susan Gillard
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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, places, events
and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a
fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual
events is purely coincidental.
Copyright 2016 by
Guardian
Publishing Group
- All rights reserved.
All rights Reserved. No part of this publication or the
information in it may be quoted from or reproduced in any form by means such as
printing, scanning, photocopying or otherwise without prior written permission
of the copyright holder.
Table of Contents
“Uh-oh…look
who’s here,” Maricela said quietly, nudging Heather with her elbow.
At
almost the same instant, an angry, male voice shouted, “Heather Janke! Where
are you?”
Glancing
toward the front of her shop, Donut Delights, Heather saw a short, stocky man
in his sixties, the fringe of gray hair surrounding his bald pate disheveled,
his face florid. Veins in his neck stood out, and she hoped he wasn’t going to
have a heart attack. Well, at least not here in her store.
“What
do you want, Stan?” she sighed, shucking her thin plastic gloves and hurrying
around the counter to meet him.
“There
you are!” Stan shouted, despite the fact that she was now standing a mere two
feet in front of him.
“Yes,
here I am,” she said, meeting his gaze straight on, hands on her hips, mindful
of the customers seated at her tables who, she was sure, were staring at the
two of them and the drama that seemed to be unfolding. “If you have something
to say to me, we can talk in my office.”
“What
I have to say can be said right here,” Stan growled.
“Stan,
this may be a public place, but that doesn’t mean you can just waltz in here
and disturb my customers.”
“Oh,
yeah?” he demanded. “I can’t talk to you in a public place, but you can try to
put me out of business?”
“I’m
not trying to put you out of business, Stan,” she said. “We’ve had this
conversation before.”
“And
we’re going to have it again, and we’ll keep having it until you cease and
desist!” he bellowed.
“No,
Stan,” she said, holding his gaze, her voice very firm, “we’re not. We are
done talking about it. Both of us. Anywhere and everywhere, and especially
here and now.”
“You
can’t tell me what I can and can’t talk about!”
“That’s
true,” she said reasonably. “But I can call the police if you insist on
creating a public disturbance.”
“You’d
just love to do that, wouldn’t you?” he sneered. “You’d just love that.”
For
a long moment, they stood frozen, neither one of them looking away. Then, he
turned toward the door. “You got your way this time,” he snarled, jerking the
door open. “But you’ll be hearing from my attorney. This is not over!” He
punctuated his last sentence by jabbing his finger toward her before turning
and stomping away.
In
the silence that followed, Heather could almost feel her customers’ shocked
gazes upon her. How do I salvage this?
“Okay,
everybody,” she said pleasantly, clapping her hands together once. “Let’s see
if we can put a little sweetness back into this day. Anybody who would like
another donut, please come select any one you’d like. On the house.”
As
she returned to her spot behind the counter, she smiled to see a few customers
pushing back their chairs and making a line in front of the glass display
case. “What can I get for you?” she asked the first woman in line.
For
the next few minutes, Heather was kept busy serving customers, trying to stop
her hands from shaking from adrenaline and forcing herself to keep a smile on
her face when what she wanted to do was scream.
Finally,
all customers were satisfied, and Heather could retreat to the kitchen area.
“How dare he?” she hissed in a low voice to Maricela, who was assembling the
topping ingredients for Ice Cream Sundae donuts—caramel, chocolate, chopped
nuts, sprinkles, and pieces of sugar cone. “How dare he come into my shop and
make accusations against me in front of my customers? Who does he think he
is?”
“You
don’t even have to try to put him out of business,” Maricela said, shrugging.
“He’s doing that himself.”
“What
do you mean?”
“He
treats his employees like dirt. I don’t know why anybody wants to work for
him. And without employees, pffft!—there goes your business.”
“His
donuts are crummy, too,” Heather said in a low voice. “I realize he’s running
a franchise from a national chain, but I highly doubt his donuts exemplify
company standards.”
“Jelly
donuts with half a teaspoon of jelly? Glazed donuts that taste stale? I doubt
it, too.”
“Maybe
it was just an off day the day we bought donuts from him,” Heather said.
“That’s
not what I hear.” Maricela set a bowl down on the large, stainless steel
counter and looked at her. “Haven’t you heard how many customers come in here
saying they tried ‘that other donut shop’ and won’t ever go there again?
Saying they’ll never go anywhere else but here?” She shook her head. “He’s
creating his own problems.”
“Yeah,
but he thinks I’m causing his problems,” Heather said.
“You
can’t help what he thinks. As mi abuela used to say, you can’t control what
goes on inside anybody else’s head. You just have to do what you need to do,
and let people think what they want.”
“I
just wish he would stop spreading it all over town,” she said.
***
“Yeah,
that’s a bummer,” Amy agreed. Heather was sitting on her couch, feet up on the
coffee table, listening to her best friend’s voice coming over the line. “What
are you going to do about it?”
“What
can I do about it? There’s not a whole lot I can do except throw him out of my
shop when he gets disruptive.”
“You
can sue him for libel or slander or something. Whatever it is when the person
says things about you.”
“Slander,
I think. Or maybe libel. But I can’t, because he doesn’t say anything
specific enough. He didn’t even say anything specific in those ads he took out
against me in the Herald.”
“Those
sounded like a two-year-old with sour grapes,” Amy said.
“More
like a sixty-two-year-old.”
“So
the guy never grew up,” Amy said. “Don’t worry about people like him. You
know karma. If you’re a jerk, eventually it’ll come back to bite you.”
“We
can only hope.”
“So
are you still coming to the art show tonight?” Amy said after a pause.
“Oh,
shoot. I forgot that was tonight. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s
okay. You can come on one of the other nights.”
“But
this is opening night. And you’re one of the featured artists.”
“I
wouldn’t be able to talk to you much anyway. Gotta mingle, you know. Sell
some of my art so I have something to live on next month.”
“You’ll
do fine,” Heather said. “You always do. But I’m just—this just makes me so
mad. I don’t think I’m up for mingling with a bunch of people I don’t know. I
just don’t think I could paste a smile on my face right now.”
“So
come this weekend. Then you can see me in all my glory, holding court in my
little alcove and expounding upon the meaning of my art while my legions of
adoring fans—and hopefully customers—look on.”
“I
definitely wouldn’t want to miss that.”
“Saturday
it is, then. Listen, I have to run. Gotta look good for tonight.”
“Are
you sure you don’t mind? I really don’t want to let you down.”
“I
really don’t mind,” Amy said. “Gotta run, okay? I’ll text you and let you
know how it goes.”
Heather
set the phone down next to her on the couch and leaned her head back. How
amazing was it to have a best friend who understood when you needed to stay
home and stew, and who was okay with that?
***
But
by that night, when she lay in bed tossing and turning, she still hadn’t made
peace with the situation. How could she, when Stan wouldn’t let it die?
She
flopped over onto her side, punched her feather pillow into a marshmallow
shape, and let her head sink into its softness. Wished she were punching Stan
instead of her pillow.
Don’t
let Stan ruin a perfectly good night’s sleep, she admonished herself. So he’s
a jerk. So he’s a big jerk. So what? There have always been jerks in this
world, there are jerks now, and there always will be jerks.
What
was it Amy had said—that karma would come back to bite Stan? Let karma do its
job, then. She was going to sleep.
***
“Good
morning, Dave!” she said, holding the back door open. “At your service, sir,
so you can go do your business.” With a low, sweeping bow, she gestured into
the back yard.
Dave
threw her a “What is up with you this morning?” look before scampering outside,
his little, furry body wiggling as he began sniffing out the perfect spot in
the yard to do what he had to do.
Closing
the back door, she grabbed her second cup of coffee from the counter and took a
long swallow. She felt the kind of hyper she often felt when she hadn’t gotten
good sleep the night before.
Was
it the lack of sleep, or was it the coffee? she wondered, frowning quizzically
at the cup before deciding it didn’t really matter and taking another long
swallow. She would need the caffeine to get her through the day.
At
least she didn’t have to be at Donut Delights at 3:00 a.m., she thought thirty
minutes later as she got into her car and buckled up. That was the advantage
of being the owner of the donut shop. You could hire fantastic people like
Maricela, her cousin, Angelica, and newest employee, Jung, to be there before
dawn and get things going.
She
sighed in relief, glad to finally have a full complement of employees she could
not only work well with, but could trust. Six months ago, two of her employees
had conspired to steal several of her proprietary family recipes for gourmet
donuts and go into business for themselves.
Heather
shook her head decisively and turned on the radio. She didn’t like to think
about how that whole situation had turned out.
Her
favorite station blasted easy pop from the speakers. She jammed along with it,
singing at the top of her lungs and not caring who might notice. When the
station went to commercials a few minutes later, she turned down the volume.
Wait,
what was that? What had they just said?
She
reached out and cranked the volume back up so she could hear the news shorts
being announced. “…in his donut shop early this morning. Apparently, his body
was discovered by an employee, Tom Young, who arrived in the early morning to
begin work. When Mr. Young went to the deep freezer for some ingredients he
needed to make sausage kolaches, he discovered his employer’s body. Mr. Young
said….”
Heather
heard only enough of the rest of the announcement to know that they gave very
little additional information. She swerved her blue Honda into the nearest
parking lot, swung into a yellow-lined space, and jolted to a stop.
Somebody
had killed Stan and stuffed his body in the deep freeze?
Fumbling
in her purse for her cell phone, she found it, located one of her contacts, and
pressed “call.”
One
ring. Two rings.
“Shepherd,”
came the familiar voice.
She
felt oddly comforted just hearing his voice on the phone. “Detective Shepherd,
this is Heather Janke,” she said.
“Just
the person I wanted to talk to,” he said.
“I
am?”
“You
are, indeed. I’m on my way to Donut Delights even as we speak.”
“I’m
uh—I’m not there. I’m sitting parked in a parking lot. I just heard the news
about Stan on the radio.”