Maple Frosted Murder (Donut Hole 2) Read online

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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

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 1

  “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, hol
ding 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.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Shepherd said. “Meet me at your shop.”

  “Well, I—okay,” she said. “I’m about two or three minutes away.”

  “I’m closer,” he said. “I’ll wait until you get there.”

  “I usually park in back. You won’t see me.”

  “I know where you park,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”

  Heather hung up and dropped the phone back into her purse. He knew where she parked? Well…okay. She supposed that as a detective, he’d have to notice things.

  She put the car in reverse, backed out, and left the parking lot. Waited for a break in traffic and pulled out into the street. Turned right, toward Donut Delights.

  And toward a meeting with Detective Ryan Shepherd about a murder.

  Again.

  Chapter 2

  Sure enough, when she pulled into her usual parking space at the rear of her shop, Shepherd’s car was already waiting nearby. As she got out and went up the steps to the tiny back porch, he followed her.

  Neither one of them spoke until she had unlocked the door and preceded him inside. “Why don’t you wait in my office?” she said, gesturing in that direction. “I’ll be right there.”

  Shepherd nodded and headed that direction as she grabbed a tray, set two small plates on it, and placed one Southern Pecan Pie donut on each plate. She added two cups of coffee, tossed some packets of Splenda, sugar, and creamer onto the tray, and carried the whole thing into her office.

  “Here,” she said, setting the tray on her desk and closing the door behind her. “On the house.”

  Shepherd glanced down at the donut, then up at her. She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. The silence stretched out longer.

  “You could at least say ‘thank you,’” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said, still making no move to touch the donut.

  “What?” she said. “What’s the problem?”

  “Is this some kind of a ‘give the cop coffee and a donut’ thing?”

  “Just eat the donut and be grateful,” she said, dropping into her chair.

  Shepherd raised an eyebrow at her and picked up the donut. He took one delicate bite out of it, chewed slowly, and swallowed. “It’s good,” he said grudgingly.

  “Of course, it’s good,” she said. “It’s a gourmet donut. Best donut you’ll get within a hundred miles. It’s even won prizes.”

  “There are competitions for donuts?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Jeez. Forget it. Don’t eat it if you don’t want to.”

  “I want to,” he said, taking another bite.

  She waited for him to chew and swallow that bite, too, before she said, “So what exactly did you want to talk to me about?”

  “How long have you known Stan Dombrowski?” he asked.

  “Four years. Ever since I moved back home and opened my shop.”

  “What’s your relationship been like?”

  “Adversarial. Like his relationships with everyone else seem to be.”

  “Why is yours adversarial?”

  “One thing after another,” she said. “First, he came over and told me we didn’t need another donut shop in town. Told me I couldn’t possibly make it economically with the prices I was charging. Said people in Hillside don’t need gourmet donuts because we aren’t a hoity-toity community. Said people here like the good ol’ standbys just fine.”

  “What else happened between the two of you?”

  “S
ometimes, he would come harangue me about my prices—as if it was any of his business. Other times, he’d come in and complain about the quality of my donuts—as if he ever had any. Once, he filed a complaint on me that someone had gotten sick from eating here. The health inspector, who, fortunately, was sympathetic to me, told me it was Stan. Whenever he would see me somewhere in town, which, thank God, wasn’t often, he’d make it a point to snub me. Lately, he’d started taking out ads in the Herald touting his shop as having the best donuts in town. ‘Donuts you can trust the quality of.’ That sort of thing.”

  “And you took that as being directed against you?”