Beyond a Reasonable Donut

  Books by Ginger Bolton

  SURVIVAL OF THE FRITTERS

  GOODBYE CRULLER WORLD

  JEALOUSY FILLED DONUTS

  BOSTON SCREAM MURDER

  BEYOND A REASONABLE DONUT

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

  BEYOND A REASONABLE DONUT

  GINGER BOLTON

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  RECIPES

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2021 by Janet Bolin

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  The K logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-2558-5

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2558-5

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-2558-1

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my helpful writer and critiquer friends, including Cathy Astolfo, Alison Bruce, Melodie Campbell, Nancy O’Neill, Joan O’Callaghan, Cam Watts, Krista Davis, Daryl Wood Gerber, Laurie Cass, Kaye George, and Allison Brook.

  Sgt. Michael Boothby, Toronto Police Service (Retired) again reminded me kindly that police do and do not do certain things and act in certain ways. I’m not sure my characters always obey Mike (or me) but I owe Mike many thanks.

  Again, I recommend the Malice Domestic Conference to everyone who loves traditional mysteries and getting together with other writers and readers. The organizers and volunteers deserve our appreciation.

  My thanks go to agent John Talbot. Without his help, I wouldn’t be having all this fun in the world of Deputy Donut.

  It also would not have happened without my editor at Kensington Publishing Corp., John Scognamiglio. I owe you, John.

  In fact, I owe all of the staff at Kensington. Carly Sommer-stein is in the background making certain that my manuscripts end up as (gasp!) real books. She finds me some amazing copy editors, and I thank them, too. Larissa Ackerman not only helps usher my books out into the real world, she and Michelle Addo coordinate and organize the Kensington CozyClub Mini-Conventions. We might show up in a city near you, and it will be fun for all of us. Thank you, Larissa and Michelle. Kristine Mills designs my covers. I love them! Thank you, Kristine. And Kensington arranged for artist Mary Ann Lasher to paint the pictures that go on those covers. I wish she could see the awe and the smile on my face when I catch my first glimpse of them.

  Thank you to my family and friends who understand that writers are people who can’t help writing.

  And thank you to everyone I’ve missed, especially readers. Thank you for being willing to believe, as I do, that Deputy Donut actually exists.

  Chapter 1

  Maybe I shouldn’t have driven our Deputy Donut delivery car to the fairground in Fallingbrook that August morning. The sturdy Ford sedan had been through a lot in its seventy-plus years. With luck, it would survive creeping down this grassy hill even though its springs squeaked with every bump and hollow. I eased it around a grove of spindly trees.

  On the passenger side of the wide front seat, Nina pointed ahead. “Emily! Look!”

  A village of colorful tents, food trucks, and amusement rides had sprouted up on the flats below us. A jaunty banner fluttered above an opening in the orange plastic fencing surrounding the site. “FAKER’S DOZEN CARNIVAL,” Nina read aloud. “GOOD LUCK ON FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH!” Laughing, she turned toward me. “That sounds like a dare.”

  I cranked down my window, letting in sunny breezes and the smell of freshly mown grass. “Or a threat.”

  “Mirrors to break, black cats to cross paths, salt to spill, and ladders to walk under!” Although in her midtwenties, my enthusiastic assistant was bouncing almost more than the car was. “Too bad we’ll be selling fritters all day. We could go play with the ladders. I just had a new fourteen-foot-tall one delivered, and now I can safely reach the top of my biggest canvas ever. I walk underneath ladders all the time, and I’m one of the luckiest people in northern Wisconsin, maybe in the whole world! I still can’t believe that the Arthur C. Arthurs Gallery is giving me a one-person show.”

  I was almost as excited as she was about her show at the prestigious art gallery in Madison. “It’s not luck,” I reminded her. “Did you finish your paintings in time for the movers last night?”

  “All but one, so they crated the others and took them away. All I have to do is put the finishing touches on the biggest and, I hope, most expensive one. And don’t worry. I scheduled time for the preparations for Samantha and Hooligan’s wedding on Wednesday. The florist has already ordered the flowers. We’ll decorate the tent Wednesday morning, and then I’ll help you, Samantha, and Misty with your hair and makeup before I scoot into my seat to watch you all walk down the aisle. I can hardly wait! Samantha and Hooligan are a perfect couple, and it was sweet of them to ask me to design the flowers.”

  I steered toward an opening in the fencing. “They’re thrilled to have a real artist doing it.”

  “They’re paying me too much.”

  “I doubt that.” I knew that Nina was worth every cent, and she could use the extra funds, besides. She worked full-time at Deputy Donut, but the combination loft apartment and artist’s studio she rented had to be expensive, as were art supplies. And she hadn’t yet sold many paintings. She’d been saving for that ladder for about a year.

  A tall and imposing woman stepped in front of our pretend police car, thrust out her hand, and yelled, “Stop!” Her bright pink, purple, and yellow floral dress, broad-brimmed straw hat, and black sandals might have given the impression that she was a genteel lady on her way to a garden party. Her severe black vest and belligerent stance—inches from our chrome front bumper—ruined the impression. I stopped the car. Now that we were close to the carnival’s food stands, I smelled popcorn and candy floss.

  The woman studied her clipboard. EVENT MANAGER was embroidere
d in white letters on the black vest. She had to be Marsha Fitchelder, the organizer of the Faker’s Dozen Carnival. She bent down and peered into the car and then looked back and forth from us to her clipboard as if comparing us to the photos on our vendor’s application. The hats we’d worn for our carnival identification photographs, imitation police hats with fake fur donuts taking the place of badges, were on our heads. Still, Marsha should be able to see my dark brown, curly hair and Nina’s lighter brown, shorter hair beneath the caps. Maybe, since Marsha was in dazzling sunlight and we were inside the car, she couldn’t quite make out that my eyes were blue and Nina’s were brown, but she should have been able to see Nina’s high, sharp cheekbones and her amazingly long eyelashes. And although we weren’t standing up, it must have been clear that Nina was tall while I, as Nina liked to tease, could barely see over the old Ford’s big steering wheel. I hoped Marsha wasn’t going to haul out a scale and make us prove we were the weights we’d claimed to be.

  “ID,” she demanded.

  We handed her our driver’s licenses. She stared at them, examined our faces, and gave me a suspicious glare. “You don’t look all of thirty-two.” Marsha was quick at figuring out ages from birth dates. She must have been doing it all morning.

  I thanked her and held out my hand. “I am.”

  She plopped both licenses into it. “But your assistant looks twenty-six, like she is on her license.”

  Attempting to ignore Nina’s unladylike and very fake coughing fit, I smiled my best customer-relations smile. “We’re from Deputy Donut.” That should have been apparent from more than our hats. A huge plastic donut with white plastic frosting dotted with tiny lights masquerading as sprinkles was mounted flat on the car’s roof where the light bar would be on a real police cruiser. And in case that enormous fake donut didn’t make it clear, our Deputy Donut logo, the black silhouette of a cat wearing a rakishly tilted hat like ours, decorated the white front doors of the black car.

  Marsha stuck out her lower lip. “You can’t drive in here.”

  I stated what I thought was obvious. “We’re exhibitors.”

  “I know that!” She gestured toward the way we’d come. “You have to park back there in the parking lot.”

  I checked the rearview mirror. “Back there” was far away, high on that lumpy hill I’d just driven down. And we’d brought large pails of ingredients. I asked politely, “Can we unload first?”

  Marsha’s face was close to mine. She’d been eating peanuts. “That was supposed to be done last night.”

  I gripped the wheel more tightly. “The large things were brought then, but—”

  Marsha interrupted me. “Today, you carry in whatever you didn’t have the foresight to deliver last night.”

  I pleaded, “Can we unload here, and then leave the car up there on the hill?”

  Marsha either growled or cleared her throat. “Not in front of the entrance.” She pointed toward my left. “You can take one of the spots over there, but they’re reserved for dignitaries, so you’ll have to unload quickly and then park where you were supposed to. We open at ten and it’s already nine.”

  She stalked back to the middle of the entryway and stood there with her feet apart, her arms folded, a scowl on her face, and breezes rippling the hem of her flowered dress.

  Nina whispered, “Is that her real personality or is that one of the day’s faker’s dozen pranks, like she’s faking being ornery?”

  “That would be funny. She’s doing a good job of it.”

  “Who are the dignitaries she’s expecting?”

  “On Friday the thirteenth? They could be anyone or anything.”

  “Today is going to be fun.” The always-cheerful Nina was not being sarcastic.

  Leaving space for about three limos between our donut-topped car and Marsha, I parked in front of a RESERVED sign zip-tied to the orange fencing. I asked Nina, “Wouldn’t you rather be at home, painting in your loft?”

  “Of course not! If we weren’t here today, we’d be serving donuts and coffee at Deputy Donut, and that’s always fun. Besides, I have to wait for paint to dry before I add to my”—she made air quotes—“masterpiece.” I could tell from the tremor in her voice that she loved that almost-completed masterpiece.

  We each carried two heavy pails of fritter batter past Marsha. She was haranguing the driver of a red cube van and didn’t seem to notice our polite greetings.

  The walk was long, but we finally arrived at a big red-and-white-striped tent decorated with a Deputy Donut banner draped across the front. The banner, created for the Faker’s Dozen Carnival, featured the black cat from our logo, horseshoes, four-leaf clovers, and donuts. The night before, my father-in-law and business partner, Tom, had persuaded some of his retired police-officer colleagues to help him and the staff from a rental company wrestle three large deep fryers, a fridge, and three sets of stainless-steel counters and cabinets into our tent. The carnival had provided a capacious sink with hot and cold running water. Nina and I put the batter into the nicely cold fridge and went back for more.

  Marsha was not at her station. A windowless black van had appeared between the entryway and our donut car.

  I muttered to Nina, “Did that van escape from a morgue parking lot?”

  She giggled. “Usually our first-responder friends attend events with their fire trucks, ambulances, and police cruisers, just to be ready. A van from the morgue is carrying preparedness a little far.”

  I intoned in a sinister voice, “Maybe not on Friday the thirteenth.”

  We walked around the back of the van. On the other side of our car, Marsha was beside a tiny pink car with MIME MOBILE written in purple on the door.

  Marsha shook a finger. “You can’t leave your car here!” She wasn’t talking to us. She was glowering at a tall, thin woman wearing a black beanie on her fluffy orange hair, a red-and-white-striped T-shirt, pink sandals, and baggy black shorts held up by chartreuse suspenders.

  The thin woman turned toward us. She was made up like a sorrowful clown, her face powdery white with a dramatic, downturned red mouth, a red dot on the tip of her nose, and thick black eyelashes painted on her cheeks and forehead. She wore white gloves with red fingernails inked on them. Without a word, she mimicked Marsha’s stance and finger-shaking.

  I restrained a smile. People who had been heading toward the entryway had gathered around us. They laughed.

  Marsha’s face reddened. “Don’t you shake your finger at me! Move that car.”

  The mime sidled closer to Marsha, peered down at Marsha’s clipboard for a few seconds, and then pretended to hold a clipboard of her own. She ran her gloved finger down the top page of her invisible clipboard, jabbed her finger down on it, looked straight at Nina and me, and pointed two fingers at her eyes and then at us as if to warn she was watching us. Then she made a circle with both hands and planted the circle on her forehead, obviously imitating the donuts on our hats. Holding her stomach with both hands, she bent over and acted like she was laughing uproariously, without the roar.

  Our hats were funny, but I didn’t think they were that funny.

  Marsha clutched her clipboard close to her chest and ordered, “Now move that car!”

  The mime made the exaggerated shrug of a person who could do nothing about a tragic situation, patted the car, and motioned with her hands as if outlining an even smaller car.

  Marsha balled her free hand into a fist and put it on her hip. “I don’t care how small it is. It’s in the area designated for dignitaries.”

  With great exaggeration, the mime cradled an invisible clipboard lovingly against her heart, plunked a fist on a hip, and then thrust her hands into her pockets, turned them inside out, and looked desolated.

  The audience clapped. The mime pulled her beanie off and waded into the crowd. Her posture dejected, she held the beanie upside down and pointed into it. Her pockets were still inside-out. People good-naturedly put coins and bills into the hat.

  Stea
ming about as much as the hot dog stand beyond the fence, Marsha stomped back toward the carnival’s entryway, probably to ward off more vehicles.

  I turned away from the crowd surrounding the mime, opened the donut car’s trunk, and asked Nina, “Can we take the rest in one load?”

  “Sure. It will save us time.” Our arms ended up full, but I managed to slam the trunk, and we carried boxes of donuts we’d made and decorated early that morning to our tent and set the boxes on one of the stainless-steel counters.

  I offered Nina the car keys. “Want to drive the car up that hill and park it while I organize here?”

  Nina loved driving that car. We all did. “Sure! It can handle that hill just fine.” As coltish and bony as a teenager, a very tall one, she bounded away. We were dressed alike in knee-length black shorts, long-sleeved white shirts, and our donut-festooned police caps. We never bothered to coordinate our shoe colors. She was wearing turquoise sneakers. Mine were red.

  In order to make change, we’d brought coins from our shop and brand-new bills from the bank. I sorted it all into the lockable cash drawer’s compartments, and then I put on a Deputy Donut apron, white with our logo embroidered on the bib. I filled the deep fryers with oil, started them heating, stowed away ingredients we wouldn’t need at first, and arranged decorated donuts in a glass-sided display case.

  Nina returned. I thanked her for parking the car and asked, “Were Marsha and the mime still putting on a show?”

  “No. Turnstiles are blocking the entryway. Marsha and a couple of other people wearing black vests are checking tickets that people bought at the fairground gate where we first drove in, where we showed our vendor’s pass. I didn’t see the mime, but her car was still beside ours.”