Christmas Donut Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 31 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

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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 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 1

  “It’s the last week. Are you ready, Mrs. Shepherd?” Amy Givens placed her fists on her hips and tilted her head to one side. The Santa hat, perched atop her short blonde hair, slid to the side.

  “I was born ready,” Heather replied, in a gruff tone and wriggled her eyebrows. She’d pinned her own Santa hat in place that morning.

  Ames relaxed and circled the glass counter, then sat down beside her best friend. The plush stool sighed beneath her.

  “So, you’ve got all your gifts, then,” she said. “No last minute Christmas shopping before the big day?”

  “Nope. I’m prepared this year,” Heather said and hazarded a wink.

  Amy rubbed her palms together “I can’t wait to see the look on your face when you open yours.”

  Heather averted her eyes and focused on the happy customers in her store instead of her best friend. She’d never been comfortable with receiving gifts. Instead, she preferred doling them out.

  Giving gifts gave her the same satisfaction others experienced when opening those gifts.

  The atmosphere in Donut Delights suited the Christmas season. Children giggled at their tables, most of them clutched donuts in their grubby fingers, and their parents chatted in Christmas sweaters.

  Wind hustled people down the street outside. One woman shivered and glanced up at the Donut Delights sign. She made a beeline for the glass front door and entered a second later.

  “This weather is our best friend,” Heather said.

  Amy puffed her cheeks out. “Financially, yeah,” she said and massaged the small of her back. “But after this holiday season, I’m going to need a vacation.”

  Heather chuckled under her breath, then turned her gaze to their newest customer. “Good morning,” she said. “How may I help?”

  The woman shrugged off her warm, winter coat and gazed at the collection of red and green sprinkled beauties beneath the countertop. “Oh wow. What are those?”

  “They’re our latest creation. Christmas donuts,” Heather replied. “A light vanilla based, filled with juicy cranberries and topped with a white almond or choc almond glaze. The green and red sprinkles are just to Christmas it up a bit.”

  The woman’s jaw dropped. “This isn’t a regular donut store, is it?”

  “You must be from out of town,” Amy replied, and the corners of her lips twitched upward. A delighted smile lit up her face.

  “I’m from Chicago,” the woman replied, and slipped her handbag off her shoulder. “I’ll take two of those Christmas Donuts and an espresso if you’ve got it.”

  Amy hopped off her seat and didn’t groan, for once. The prospect of serving a new customer always cheered her up. That first bite of a Donut Delights product was an event to behold.

  Heather stepped back and let Amy take over.

  She scanned the interior of her store and grinned at Eva over by the window. The elderly woman frowned back.

  That was highly unusual. Eva Schneider didn’t do ‘grumpy.’ She wasn’t that type of lady.

  Heather patted Amy on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Sure. I’ve got this.” Amy popped a fancy cardboard box into its correct shape, and their new customer made an appreciative ‘ooh’ sound.

  Heather swept past the side of the counter and wended between the tables in the center of the store.

  Eva’s frown didn’t shift, but her gaze fixed on the newspaper in front of her. She scratched her delicate cheek with a single, gnarled finger, then hooked it through the ear of her mug and lifted it to her mouth.

  “Everything all right, Eva?” Heather asked, and stopped beside the table. She pressed her fingertips to the glass top.

  “Oh!” Eva said, and jerked. A few drops of coffee spilled over the lip of her plain white mug. “Oh, you startled me, dear. I’m sorry.” She put the cup down in a hurry.

  “Let me handle it,” Heather said. She grabbed a handful of napkins, then dabbed at the spill.

  “I’ve just been reading the paper, Heather, dear. I found something which is quite horrible,” Eva said. “And which might interest you.”

  “There’s only one type of horrible thing that interests me,” Heather said. “And it’s not Cupcake’s litterbox.”

  “Take a seat,” Eva whispered, and shifted the newspaper closer to the other side of the table.

  Heather lowered herself into the cushioned, wrought-iron chair. She placed her arms on the glass top and focused on the headline of the newspaper. The Hillside Reporter never pulled punches.

  “Hillside entrepreneur dies in own home, a week before Christmas,” Heather read, out loud.

  “That’s right,” Eva said, and patted the family portrait in black and white, just below the title. “It’s this guy. Victor Hardbody.”

  “Wait, what?” Heather scanned the story. Murdered in the evening. Entire family was home, but no one heard a thing. “Why don’t I know about this? I should be working this case.”

  “Perhaps, Ryan and the police department didn’t need a consultant this time around?” Eva asked, but those wrinkles on her forehead hadn’t smoothed an iota.

  “I’ll get to the bottom of this,” Heather said. She pushed the newspaper aside, and her skin grazed the smooth page. She dug into the front pocket of her apron and brought out her cell.

  Two seconds later, she had it up to her ear. Impatience jostled through her mind. Why wouldn’t he have told her? Ryan shared everything with Heather, whether it was an annoyance or a favorite food.

  He’d certainly never kept a case from her before.

  “Detective Shepherd.”

  “Care to explain why I haven’t been called in on this case?” Heather asked, and squinted at the headline again. “A Mr. Hardbody, I believe?”

  “I hoped you w
ouldn’t find out about that,” Ryan said. “The Cap already asked me to give you a call to help us out. But –” He cut off and cleared his throat twice, in rapid succession.

  “But what?”

  “Hon, it’s almost Christmas. You’re basically working two jobs and looking after Lilly like a pro mom. I just think you deserve a break,” Ryan said.

  Heather stared at the family portrait. A wife, father, and two teenage boys. One of them wore his hair in a black fringe which dangled in front of his eyes.

  “And I think you need to meet me at the Hardbody residence in half an hour, husband,” she replied, at last.

  “Heather –”

  “Ryan.” That was all she had to say.

  Eva held her thumbs above the table.

  “Yeah, all right. Half an hour.”

  Chapter 2

  Ryan led Heather down the long carpeted hall, which led from the front door of the Hardbody mansion. They took a sharp right, then a left, and halted in front of a pine door, punctuated by four, small window panes.

  Hoskins hovered just beyond it, visible by the single globe which swung from the ceiling in the room beyond.

  “What is this?” Heather asked.

  “It’s a crime scene,” Ryan replied, then winked at her. He’d been in his cheekiest mood ever since the start of the holiday season.

  Christmas cheered him up. Or maybe it was because he had a full family this year.

  “You know what I mean, Shepherd,” Heather said and nudged him with her elbow.

  He opened the door, and it creaked away from them on bronze hinges.

  Hoskins lifted a candy bar in greeting. “How’s it going, Shepherds?”

  “Fine,” Heather and Ryan said, in unison.

  This had to be the first time the fat cop had ever given Heather a greeting without a hint of sarcasm. It was pleasant.

  “What, no donuts?” Hoskins asked.

  Scratch that. Just another regular day at the ‘office.’

  “It’s a basement,” Ryan said and stepped down two short steps into the lowered section of the room. His shoes scraped on cement and halted beneath that swinging globe.

  The light spread out in a circle from the center and stretched toward the corners. It didn’t quite make it, but the window high on the wall provided a little light from the fabulous Hillside afternoon beyond it.

  Clouds swirled behind those panes, a view of a gray sky and a flock of birds sailing across it. One of the glass sections had been knocked out – the bottom left corner.

  “A basement,” Heather said, and opened her tote bag. She fished out her tablet. “This is where it happened?”

  Hoskins huffed at her refusal to answer his questions – or maybe, it had to do with the lack of donuts. Perhaps, the remark had transcended sexism and become realism. Could it be that Hoskins, devourer of treats, really did want a box of donuts during the investigation?

  “Right here,” Ryan said, and pointed to the spot beside an arrangement of cardboard boxes, their tops open. A Santa Claus figurine peered out of it.

  “How?”

  “He was strangled,” Hoskins said, he made a gesture with his free hand. “With a string of Christmas lights.”

  “That’s – uh, wow. Isn’t it a little late to put up Christmas decorations?”

  “Better late than never, I guess,” Ryan said.

  “Not in this case,” Heather muttered. She unlocked the screen of her tablet and tapped through to her notepad app. She typed with one hand – she’d gotten plenty of practice of late.

  “So far, we have three suspects,” Ryan said and held up the corresponding number of fingers. “The wife, Jennifer ‘Softie’ Hardbody, the son –”

  “Softie?” Heather asked, and typed the name out. “Softie Hardbody.” She couldn’t keep the disbelief from her tone. For heaven’s sake, could the Hillside nicknames get any weirder?

  Hoskins snorted.

  Ryan’s lips writhed in place. “That’s right. Softie Hardbody. She was upstairs in the bedroom at the time of the murder, according to her alibi. She was the one who discovered his body a few hours after he was killed.”

  “And the other suspects?” Heather asked.

  “The two sons, who were in their rooms respectively. Kenny Hardbody, and Junior Hardbody,” Ryan said. “Although, they did say they hung out together at some point during the evening, though neither can confirm the time.”

  Heather tapped the information onto her screen. “I see. And it’s not possible an intruder could’ve broken in?” She pointed at the broken window pane.

  “We thought the same,” Ryan said and nodded toward the chubby detective, who’d just unwrapped his second candy bar. “But check this out.” He beckoned to her.

  Heather hurried over to the window and rose onto her tiptoes. Glass littered the outside of the sill. And scattered across the grass below it.

  “Notice anything?” Ryan asked.

  “The spray pattern,” Heather said, and pointed to the shards of glass outside. “Someone knocked this out from inside here.”

  “Which means, someone in the house wanted to make it look like an intruder came in,” Ryan replied. “But didn’t quite manage.”

  Heather rested on her heels. She scanned the rest of the murky basement and nodded toward another door at the other end of the room. “What’s that?”

  “It’s locked up tight, and no one in the family had the key, apart from the father. We found it on his body. Took it for fingerprinting just in case,” Ryan said. “That door leads into the first garage.”

  “How many garages do they have?” Heather muttered, and shook her head. Amy would’ve had a field day with this one. She’d never understood the lifestyle of the rich, elite in Hillside.

  Ah well, at least this house didn’t smell like the last socialite’s home.

  Ryan sighed and tapped the top of the Santa decoration’s ceramic hat. “Well, they took the lights out of here. The murder weapon. We’re hoping to get some kind of DNA, though I’m not sure what. Get this, the lights were plugged in at the time of the murder.”

  “That must’ve caused, uh, quite the spectacle,” Heather said and grimaced. She didn’t want to picture it.

  “Yeah,” Hoskins said and chewed through his candy bar. Chomp, chomp, schlurp. “He had burn marks on his neck. The thing shorted.”

  “The lights?”

  “Yeah, whole darn string shorted. Almost caused a fire, but whoever did it pulled the plug in time,” Hoskins said.

  An idea struck Heather between the ideas. “Interesting,” she said. “That means – well, it could be possible that our murderer has a similar pattern of burn marks.”

  Ryan wriggled his lips from side-to-side. “I don’t know. It was more of red welt around the vic’s neck. I’m not sure it would be noticeable on the killer. But hey, I won’t say no to a lead on this one.”

  “I guess, there’s only one thing left to do, then,” Heather said, and ignored the sense of foreboding in her belly – a mixture of disgust at Hoskins’ noisy eating and the thrill of fear which crept up her spine.

  Another case. A murder so near to Christmas.

  “And what’s that?” Hoskins asked, and a bit of chocolate dropped from his mouth. He caught it at the last second and saved it from compromising the crime scene.

  Heather raised her gaze to the ceiling. “Interview the suspects.”

  “Right,” Hoskins said and swept the candy bar through the space above his head. “I’ll be done here, uh, combing the scene.”

  Ryan patted the detective on his meaty shoulder. “Try not to eat any of the evidence, Hossy.”

  Chapter 3

  Kenny Hardbody was the kind of college kid who got the best seat in class, even though he didn’t want it. Girls gave him their number, instead of him asking. His coiffed blond hair stood dead still, regardless of the HVAC which tumbled warm air from a vent in the top left corner of the living room.

  He languished on the
French Heritage Jules sofa, his blue polo shirt, matched the gray fabric behind it.

  Expensive taste didn’t begin to describe the living room. The furniture alone probably cost more than the Donut Delights kitchen and all its utensils put together.

  Heather kept her awe on the inside. She placed her tablet on her lap and tapped the first suspect’s name onto the top of the screen. She took her time about it.

  Kenny Hardbody was a young man who wouldn’t like to be kept waiting.

  Heather would do exactly that. The higher the frustration rose in her suspect, the easier he’d be to interview.

  Kenny cleared his throat and shifted on the luxurious sofa. He glanced back at the massive windows behind him, then at Heather again. “Is this going to take long?”

  Heather raised her index finger to silence him and tapped a few more words. She sighed, crossed her ankles, and finally met his gaze.

  “Mr. Hardbody,” she said.

  “You can call me Kenny,” he replied, and brought up a smile which’d probably melted the hearts of a million college girls, not to mention his professors.

  “Mr. Hardbody,” Heather repeated, and didn’t change her tone a whit. Let him stew on that. “Let me start out by saying, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” the young man replied, stiffly. He shook his wrist, and his Breitling watch tumbled forward. “My father will be missed.”

  Nope, not even a little sympathy or sorrow in Kenny’s tone.

  “I hoped to interview your brother, as well, but he’s out of the house, is that correct?” Heather asked.

  “Yeah, he couldn’t take the pain of losing dad. He skipped. He’ll be back later,” Kenny said and shrugged. “I guess this is difficult for him. More difficult for him than it is for me.”

  “And why’s that?” Heather tapped notes, furiously.

  “Because he didn’t get on with dad. They were always fighting over his studies,” Kenny said. “Dad wanted Junior to do what I do.”

  Heather raised an eyebrow at her young suspect.

  “Electrical engineering,” Kenny replied. “Anyway, they weren’t on the best terms.”

  “Did your brother fight with your father?” Heather asked.