Beyond a Reasonable Donut Page 2

  When the oil reached the correct temperature, we dropped spoonfuls of fritter batter into it. They were corn fritters, but in honor of the day of luck, fun, pranks, and jokes, we were calling them corny fritters. We were making them small so they’d be easy to eat with fingers, and if people wanted a dozen, they were getting thirteen for the price of twelve. All of the food vendors at the carnival were doing the same thing.

  Our timing was good. At precisely ten, I removed the first basket of fritters from the hot oil. A family wanted a baker’s dozen. “The regular corny fritters are ready,” Nina told them. She looked over at me and the fryers. Fritters bobbed in all three of them. “And the peppercorny and turbo-charged spicy corny fritters will be ready soon. We can dip any of them in granulated or confectioners’ sugar.” She pointed at the display case. “And we have donuts, too.” The family opted for non-spicy, non-sugared corny fritters.

  Nina and I got into a rhythm. I made the fritters, put them into paper bags, and set the bags on the sales counter for customers. Nina took care of the money. If she needed to touch food, she pulled on a pair of food-handling gloves.

  A couple with their arms around each other wanted turbo-charged spicy corny fritters. “What’s with the police car out front?” the man asked us.

  Did he mean ours, which, unless Nina was playing pranks on me, wasn’t exactly out front but was up on the hill? I put their fritters into tiny paper bags. “The one with the donut on top?”

  Dimples bracketed the man’s grin. “Not that one. I recognize your Deputy Donut car. I mean a real one from the Fallingbrook Police Department. Two officers were talking to one of the people taking tickets.”

  The woman in line behind the couple explained, “The event manager was yelling at them to tow away a little pink car because it belonged to an exhibitor, not a paying guest. The officers explained that anyone can park outside the area that was rented for the carnival.” The woman flapped a hand toward tents and booths around us. “Apparently, the carnival doesn’t have jurisdiction outside the orange fence, except for the fairground’s main entry where we bought our tickets.”

  The woman beside her added, “I thought the carnival’s manager would blow a gasket, but the police officers were polite and talked her down.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Some of my best friends worked for the Fallingbrook Police. That department had a culture of friendly service dating back to before Tom was a detective and then chief.

  Nina made change for the couple at the front of the line. “Did the police have the little pink car towed?”

  The man pocketed the change. “No. They apologized and left.”

  The mime must have been lurking around the side of the tent. She appeared in front of me, pointed at her heart, pretended to lick the index finger of one of the white gloves with the red nails, and made a vertical stroke in the air. I translated the gesture as Chalk one up for me.

  The people in line laughed, and the mime went through her routine of being nearly inconsolable while she passed her beanie around.

  Nina whispered behind her hand to me, “She could be making more than we are.”

  Maybe she wasn’t. People loved our fritters. About mid-morning, a pair of cute teens in shorts and red Fallingbrook High T-shirts asked to have their turbo-charged spicy corny fritters dipped in confectioners’ sugar. We had brought a large covered plastic bucket of it.

  Nina and I searched the cabinets underneath the counters. We looked inside the fridge.

  The bucket of sugar wasn’t anywhere in our tent.

  Chapter 2

  We explained to the patiently waiting couple that we must have forgotten to bring confectioners’ sugar to the carnival.

  “That’s okay,” the girl told us. “Our fritters don’t need to be covered in it.”

  I could tell that the boy’s frown was a fake, even before he grinned and agreed.

  I offered, “Would you like us to roll them in granulated sugar instead?”

  The girl exclaimed, “Sure!” When she tasted hers, she fanned her face with her free hand. “Whoa, you weren’t kidding about spicy.” The boy smiled down at her. They headed into the crowd.

  Nina appeared as puzzled about the missing sugar as I was.

  What could have happened? We’d told the couple that we must have forgotten the confectioners’ sugar, but both of us knew we hadn’t. Earlier that morning when we’d been ready to leave Deputy Donut, we’d realized that we hadn’t packed any. We hadn’t wanted to make ourselves late by taking time to scoop some of it into a smaller container. Nina had dashed into our storeroom and grabbed a brand-new bucket. I’d helped her cram the bucket behind the donut car’s front passenger seat.

  The wrinkles between Nina’s eyebrows deepened. “I checked the label when I got it from the storeroom, but when we were unloading the car, I grabbed pails without reading labels.” All of the pails were nearly identical—large and made of white plastic.

  I hadn’t read labels when we were unpacking the car, either, but I had paid attention to them while I stored the ingredients in the tent. I had placed our small container of granulated sugar on the counter near the deep fryers where it would be handy for coating fritters while they were still warm. I suggested, “Maybe we brought it to the tent, and another vendor decided they needed it more than we did.” The only things lockable in the tent were the cash drawer and a cabinet big enough for Nina’s turquoise and purple handwoven tote bag and the cute red backpack I carried as a purse.

  Nina asked, “Did we lock the car every time we left it?”

  “Maybe not.” Locking and unlocking the doors and trunk of the old car was more of a procedure than pressing a button on a remote or carrying a key fob toward a car. “When we went back for that last load, we were distracted by Marsha Fitchelder and her argument with the mime. I think we emptied the trunk, but I’m not sure about the space behind the passenger seat, and my arms were full of donut boxes, so I’m not positive that I locked the trunk, let alone the doors.”

  “Maybe it was still behind the passenger seat when I moved the car. I should have checked.”

  “I should have, too.”

  She suggested, “We could cross CONFECTIONERS’ SUGAR off our signs.”

  We’d stockpiled enough fritters for me to take a break. I frowned. “I hate to eliminate one of the variations we’re offering here today, and besides, I can’t resist a mystery. I’ll go look in the car.”

  “It’s pretty far up the hill.”

  “I’ll find it.” Still wearing my Deputy Donut hat and apron, I strode to the carnival’s entryway.

  Marsha and two other ticket-takers stood underneath red umbrellas beside turnstiles. I pushed my way out through the exit closest to Marsha. She was glaring, maybe because the mime’s pink car was still in the area she’d earmarked for dignitaries. The morgue-like van was gone. Whoever the dignitaries were, they had not yet taken advantage of the spaces reserved for them. The little pink car was the only vehicle there.

  I started up the hill. Vehicles kept arriving. A windowless black van similar to the one that had been next to our car in the area reserved for dignitaries was among the parked cars and trucks glittering in the sunshine. The van I’d seen earlier had been plain black. This one had a website address, printed in red letters, near the bottom of the driver’s door.

  I didn’t take time to read it.

  Farther up the hill, a woman was standing next to our Deputy Donut car. Her right hand was on the driver’s door.

  Most of the people at the carnival on that nearly cloudless day were in shorts and T-shirts. This woman wore a roomy dark green twill shirt over a long, gauzy coral skirt. Instead of making her look bulky, the voluminous clothing accentuated how petite she was. Her wavy hair was tied back in a low ponytail that almost reached her waist. The hair on top of her head was pale, gradually shading darker to chestnut-brown at the tip of her ponytail. As I climbed closer, I realized that the pale hair was blond, not white, and she appeared
to be in her midtwenties.

  She shaded her eyes with her left hand, leaned down, and peered into the car. People often wanted a better look at our authentically restored sedan.

  I called out in a friendly way, “Hello! Would you like to see inside?”

  The woman jerked upright as if she’d heard me, but instead of turning my way, she hunched her shoulders and scuttled behind the donut car. Possibly heading toward a gray car, she disappeared beyond a white pickup truck.

  Had the woman done something inside our car? Had she been trying to open the driver’s door, or had she been closing it?

  The doors and trunk were locked. I unlocked them. The bucket of confectioners’ sugar was not in the car, and nothing seemed to have been disturbed.

  Starting down the hill, I took a better look at the black van. The website address on the door appeared to be for a health organization for veterans. The lettering was level with the sloping ground, but not level with the bottom of the van, as if the sign had been hastily slapped onto the door.

  It could have been the van we’d seen next to the donut car earlier.

  If so, our missing sugar might be inside it.

  As surreptitiously as possible considering that I was wearing a fake police cap embellished with a fuzzy donut, I pulled my phone out of my apron pocket and snapped photos of the website and the van’s license plate. I slid my phone into my pocket. Still trying to look casual, I eased into the crowd. People walking down the hill chattered about what they hoped to do and eat at the Faker’s Dozen Carnival.

  Behind me, a man said, “That’s quite a hat.” I turned around. The man was about my age. He smiled at the donut above the bill of my hat. “Nice.”

  Although he wasn’t hard to look at, I couldn’t help glancing beyond him to our donut car farther up the hill. The woman who’d been peering into the car was again beside it. She was looking down toward the carnival, though, and not into the car. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t touching the car. Knowing that it was locked and that if I approached her she might disappear again, I paid attention to the man complimenting my hat. “Thank you. I work for Deputy Donut.”

  I did not comment on his panama hat or his dressy black slacks and long-sleeved white shirt. They seemed formal for a carnival in the middle of August, especially for someone in his thirties. Maybe he’d worn a long-sleeved shirt for the same reason I did. I’d figured I might be in the sun more than usual that day, and applying sunscreen while preparing food would have been, at the very least, complicated. My shorts, red sneakers, apron, and funny hat kept my white dress shirt from looking as formal as the man’s freshly pressed one, however. Maybe he was a dignitary and didn’t know about the reserved spots. I could imagine Marsha waiting to see who arrived before deciding who deserved VIP treatment. By then the chosen VIPs would have parked farther away.

  I pointed down the hill. “We have donuts and we’re making corn fritters at our tent. It’s down there in the middle of the food and game booths, before you get to the rides.” Beyond colorful tent peaks and brightly lit signs, a Ferris wheel turned.

  The man asked, “Are corn fritters a Wisconsin thing?”

  “They’re one of our Deputy Donut things. Today, in honor of the carnival’s jokes and pranks theme, we’re calling them corny fritters.”

  His eyes lingered on my face, probably on the freckles. “Cute. I’ll have to stop by.”

  “Are you new in town?”

  “I’m on vacation.”

  Behind him, a thirtysomething blonde in hot pink shorts and top and a floppy hat asked him, “How long will you be in the area?”

  “For another week, but I’d like to stay longer.” Again, his eyes lingered on my face.

  The blonde began listing things he should see and do around Fallingbrook. They headed together toward Marsha and the other ticket-takers. Pleased by my accidental matchmaking, I detoured to the mime’s car, still alone in the row reserved for dignitaries. I tried not to be as obvious in my snooping as the woman in the gauzy coral skirt had been. The mime’s car had only two seats. The pail of sugar could have fit, just barely, behind them. If it was there, it was underneath a heap of clothing and blankets. I behaved myself and didn’t try the doors. Aware of the ever-vigilant Marsha nearby, I also didn’t take pictures.

  At the Deputy Donut tent, Nina was serving cream-filled donuts covered with strawberry frosting and shredded coconut to customers. I dropped more fritter batter into bubbling oil and called Tom. He said that with so many of our regular customers attending the carnival, Deputy Donut wasn’t busy. He’d send Jocelyn, our assistant who was back from college for the summer, to the carnival with more confectioners’ sugar.

  “Not on her bike, I hope,” I teased.

  “She can drive my car.”

  Jocelyn arrived fifteen minutes later. Wearing her Deputy Donut uniform and grinning, she plunked a container, not an entire bucket, of confectioners’ sugar on the table behind us. “Tom told me to stay here long enough for each of us to have a turn looking around the carnival.”

  I lifted a basket of golden fritters out of the oil. “Which one of you wants to go first?”

  “Jocelyn does,” Nina said.

  Jocelyn returned a half hour later, and Nina took off her hat and apron and went for her own tour. When Jocelyn and I weren’t serving customers, we made up lyrics to go with the calliope music coming from the amusement rides. Several tunes were playing at once, so nothing we sang made sense or had a recognizable melody, especially since neither of us was very good at carrying a tune, but we kept singing and making each other laugh.

  She looked past me. Her smile widened. “Hey! Welcome!”

  I looked up from rolling fritters in a bowl of confectioners’ sugar.

  Detective Brent Fyne was smiling at Jocelyn and me. Breezes teased his light brown hair, and his gray eyes were warm. He was dressed too casually for work, in jeans, a pale blue T-shirt, and a lightweight jacket. We usually went kayaking together whenever we both had a free afternoon, but I was taking Tuesday and Wednesday off for Samantha’s wedding and the fun leading up to it, and might not be able to go kayaking either of those days, so it didn’t matter that Brent had a day off when I didn’t. I was a little surprised, though, because he hadn’t mentioned it to me.

  Judging by his attentive expression, he wasn’t as relaxed as he was in my living room with my cat on his lap or when we were paddling in our kayaks on a calm lake or stream. I realized that, despite my first impression, he was probably on duty. It was a warm day for a jacket. Maybe he was wearing it to hide a shoulder holster.

  Nina bopped into the tent and handed him a sugar-coated turbo-charged spicy corny fritter. “Try this.” She gave me a mischievous smile. “It’s little and cute and sweet-looking like Emily, but watch out. It’s hot.”

  The tops of my ears flamed. “Heat hot and spicy hot,” I warned.

  Like all of the fritters we were making that day, it was small. Brent popped it into his mouth. “Wow. You weren’t kidding. It’s beyond a reasonable donut.”

  I laughed. “It’s a fritter.”

  Nina tied on an apron. “Emily, it’s your turn to wander around the carnival. It’s fun! You might as well go with Brent.”

  “Yes,” he said, “if you can, Em.”

  “She can,” Nina told him.

  Jocelyn added, “She’s supposed to. Tom said.”

  The tops of my ears burned more. Jocelyn and Nina were certain that Brent and I should be more than friends, but I wasn’t ready to date even now, almost seven years after my late husband, Alec, who had been Brent’s best friend and also his partner on the police force, had been shot and killed. Brent understood, and although we were close, I suspected he would have felt uncomfortable in a romantic relationship with his best friend’s widow.

  I took off my hat and apron, picked up a bag of peppercorny fritters to share, and joined Brent in the walkway between food and game booths.

  He asked, “What’s Dep doi
ng today?”

  Tom and I had named our donut and coffee shop after my cat. Due to the donut-like circles on her sides, Alec had christened her Deputy Donut when she was a tiny kitten. “I took her to work this morning. Tom will drop her off in my house after he closes the shop.” With food, water, toys, and litter boxes both at home and in the office that Tom and I had designed especially for her at work, Dep would be fine until I returned.

  A pair of eleven-year-old twins who occasionally came to Deputy Donut with their mother skipped past us. Behind them, their mother hollered for them to wait. They did.

  Brent asked them, “What’s the best thing to do in the carnival?”

  The boy didn’t hesitate. “The rides!”

  The girl pointed to the right. “The Friday the Thirteenth tent. You can break mirrors and walk under ladders.”

  Brent turned to me. “Who can resist that?”

  I smiled back at him. “Let’s go tempt fate!”

  The mother corralled the twins toward the rides.

  Brent and I meandered along, savoring the tasty fritters and trying not to bump into each other or anyone else. We finished the fritters and tossed the empty bag into a trash container. Brent asked, “Mind doing a little pretending, playing a role?”

  I looked up at him. “What?”

  He stared straight ahead. “This.” His hand clasped mine.

  Suddenly my throat felt funny, like I couldn’t breathe. “No,” I managed. “I don’t mind.” Brent was my kayaking partner, my dinner buddy, and one of my cat’s favorite people. His watchful detective look had hinted that he was at the carnival because of something connected to work, so maybe that was the reason for his request. I returned the pressure of his hand.

  He murmured, “If I tell you to take cover, don’t ask, okay? Just do it?”

  “Okay.” I knew the drill from my few short years with Alec. Police officers did not plan to mix work with social life, but duty sometimes intruded. “Is there anything or anyone I should be looking for?”

  “No. Just enjoy the carnival.”