Goodbye Cruller World Read online

  Tom squinted at them for a few seconds as if memorizing their appearance in case he had to describe them to his former colleagues in the police department. “Take a good look at the two bridesmaids,” he said. “Not the tall one, who seems to be the maid of honor.”

  “Probably. She’s the bride’s half-sister.”

  The shorter female attendants resembled grown women except for the way they giggled at the boys. My eyes opened wider. “The bridesmaids are teens, too!”

  “Yep.” Tom picked up his drill and box of screws. “Let’s go make donuts.”

  Chapter 3

  Back at Deputy Donut, Tom mixed so-called unraised batter, the kind that relied on baking soda instead of yeast to rise, and I rolled and cut the yeast dough that had risen while we were out at Little Lake Lodge. Then Tom fried the yeast donuts and I made cruller pastry and piped bumpy circles of it onto parchment paper. Tom fried the crullers, I rolled and cut the unraised batter, and then he fried those donuts, too.

  As the donuts cooled, I decorated some with confectioners’ sugar and others with white or periwinkle frosting. I placed white sugar “pearls” on some of the periwinkle donuts, periwinkle sugar hearts on some of the white donuts, and dusted edible gold confetti on other donuts. I dipped the crullers in a simple honey glaze. The hills and valleys in their surfaces glistened. It all smelled delicious.

  Tom grinned at my rapidly filling trays. “They’re looking good.”

  We carefully arranged our finished donuts in bakery boxes, white with our Deputy Donut logo printed on them in black.

  Shortly before nine, we stacked the filled bakery boxes into the trunk of our “police” car, and then we slid a stainless-steel cart, wheels up and swiveling lazily, into the back seat. I added a clean Deputy Donut apron, one of my Deputy Donut hats, and a box of food handlers’ disposable plastic gloves.

  Tom shut the car’s back door. “Would you like me to go instead, and cope with that wedding party, especially Roger-the-Rager and those kids they must have picked up from some stray prom?”

  I laughed. “You just want to drive this car. But the gloves I packed are too small for you, and besides . . .” I dangled the car keys out of his reach. “I have the keys. I’ll go party, and leave you to clean up.” Tom deserved to spend what was left of the evening with Cindy.

  He knew I was only pretending to be fierce. His slightly crooked smile reminded me of Alec’s. “Call if you need me.”

  I agreed and drove home. With Dep batting at my hands and feet, I changed into the new black jeans and white shirt I’d picked up from Jenn. In honor of the formal occasion, I put on a pair of black suede flats with sprays of rhinestones across the toes.

  I threw on a red down-filled jacket and picked up the periwinkle step-on wastebasket that I’d trimmed with white lace and gold ribbon. “Goodbye, Dep,” I said. “I’ll be back really late. Don’t wait up for me.” She rubbed a paw over her head, flattening an ear. “Pretend you can’t hear me, Dep,” I teased. “I know you can.” She flattened her other ear.

  Driving that vintage car up and down the hilly, curvy road to Little Lake Lodge was even more fun than driving it in town. I turned on the “sprinkles” in the rooftop donut. Multicolored streaks darted across trees crowding the road. As I often did in the 1950 Ford, I played a soundtrack from 1950, but I didn’t broadcast it from the loudspeaker on the car’s roof. “The Cry of the Wild Goose” came on, and I burst out laughing at the coincidence—I was heading back to the Wild Goose Banquet Hall.

  Millions of stars pierced the black sky. The way the rooftop “sprinkles” kept time to the music was whimsical, but the dancing lights seemed to disturb the peaceful drama of the otherwise dark forest. I turned off the lights but left the music on.

  I sang along with “Harbor Lights” and “The Tennessee Waltz.” Apparently, love and loss were popular themes in 1950.

  I allowed myself to miss Alec intensely, but the songs from 1950 seemed to imply that there would be happy endings out there somewhere. The harbor lights would bring the lover sailing back, and the sweetheart would come to her senses and return from the “friend” who had stolen her away. The songs seemed more peculiar than sad.

  Maybe it had something to do with the way I was singing them.

  I drove down the slope to Little Lake Lodge. Ahead, those millions of stars twinkled, both in the sky and on Little Lake’s calm surface.

  I backed up to the delivery entrance, took the cart out, and loaded boxes of donuts onto it.

  Behind me, someone slipped on a gravel driveway leading down the hill from the lot that Jenn had said was the staff parking lot. A woman asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” another woman answered.

  I opened the lodge’s delivery door.

  One of the women on the driveway above me shouted, “Hold the door!”

  Despite their high-heeled sandals, which weren’t nearly as high as Suzanne’s, the two women caught up quickly. They were wearing nice pants and frilly tops, but judging by the huge totes they were carrying, they weren’t wedding guests. I couldn’t place the perfume wafting from at least one of them, but I suddenly remembered being inside a store in Colonial Williamsburg when I was about eight years old and my parents had taken me on a road trip to Virginia. I glanced at the women’s totes. They advertised The Happy Hopers Conference—Goal Achievement Through Shopping!

  The slightly shorter woman, a sharp-featured one with close-cropped dark hair that feathered around her ears, held the door open for me. I wheeled my cart into the service corridor and had to veer left to avoid crashing into a security guard who, along with the chair he was on, had appeared since Tom and I left the lodge around six thirty. The security guard was sitting with his back to the door, obviously positioned to see down the length of the corridor and watch the doors leading to the backs of the meeting rooms. He wore a black uniform, complete with typical law-enforcement shoes and a red and yellow badge on the sleeve of his jacket, but no hat covering his gray hair. Leaning away from me, he pulled a newspaper out of a briefcase. The lace of his left shoe must have broken. It had been retied near the middle, leaving only enough string at the top for a meager knot that showed up against his white sock.

  “I’m with Deputy Donut,” I told him. “I’m bringing donuts to the wedding reception in the Wild Goose Banquet Hall.”

  He nodded.

  The taller of the two women, the one with a serene face framed by wavy shoulder-length blond hair, asked him how to get to the Happy Hopers Conference.

  “Go around to the front and in through the lobby entrance.” His voice reminded me of toast being scraped with a dull knife.

  The two women backed out. The door closed behind them.

  Band music in the banquet hall put an end to my brain’s constant looping of “The Tennessee Waltz.” I left the cart in the gloomy narrow space between the log walls and the draperies, out of sight of the people talking and laughing beyond the white curtains, and then went back out to the service corridor. Jenn had said that after I unloaded I could park in the staff parking lot. She’d expected the front lot to be filled with vehicles belonging to hotel and wedding guests.

  The security guard was reading his newspaper. “I’m just going to park my car,” I told him.

  He grunted.

  “Will this door still be unlocked when I get back?”

  “Far’s I know.”

  The Happy Hopers were standing outside the delivery entrance. They stopped chatting, and the brunette pointed at the old Ford. “Nice car!”

  I pointed at my head. “It goes with the hat.”

  She smiled. Her friend continued looking serious, as if she couldn’t quite approve of decorating cars and hats with fake donuts.

  I drove the Fordor up the gravel driveway and parked in a lot hedged in by slightly scraggly pines. Shivering, glad I was wearing a warm jacket and my Deputy Donut hat, I carried my decorated wastebasket, apron, and box of disposable gloves down the driveway.
I understood why one of the Happy Hopers had slid on it a few minutes before. The “gravel” was actually rounded stones that rolled underfoot.

  Both women were still downhill from me, near the delivery entrance. The brunette looked up, pointed at me, and said something to the blonde. Their heels clip-clopping on the concrete pathway, they hurried away, toward the lodge’s front door.

  Some of their fragrance had lingered. As I recalled, it had a name I’d found funny when I was eight. This heady fragrance smelled like roses, lavender, and citrus, with overlays of exotic spices.

  As the security guard had sort of promised, the delivery door was unlocked. He was snoozing over his newspaper. I set my cute flats down quietly, but if he was sleeping through the band music, my footsteps and the slight rattling of the lace-embellished wastebasket weren’t likely to awaken him.

  Inside the banquet hall, I set the wastebasket behind the curtains and put my apron and the box of gloves on our table. I stuffed my jacket underneath, where it would be hidden from reception guests by the tablecloth and draperies. Deputy Donut aprons were too long for me. I looped the strap over my head, made a tuck at the waist, crossed the strings in back, tied them in front with a bow, and folded the tuck over the bow. I slid my phone into one of the apron’s large front pockets.

  Straightening my hat, I peeked between the curtains to the slightly brighter reception. The meal had been cleared away, many of the tables had been removed, and chairs had been pushed back. The parquet dance floor was larger than it had first appeared. Dancers were smiling, including Jenn, dancing with Roger. He wasn’t smiling. I wondered if he ever did.

  I wheeled the cart in front of the curtains and parked it next to the donut wall. After I pulled on a pair of plastic gloves, I could finally do what I’d been anticipating ever since Jenn had first asked for a donut wall. I decorated it with donuts.

  Jenn’s favorite honey-glazed crullers went on the dowels underneath her name, and Roger’s favorites, raised donuts coated in confectioners’ sugar, went on the dowels underneath his.

  After I hung those, I did the most fun part. Varying frosting colors and designs, I stocked the middle dowels. I also arranged donuts on the tiered cake stands. Stepping on the wastebasket’s foot pedal, I threw out the first of what would probably be many pairs of gloves that night. I tweaked the positions of the vases of flowers and then I tried not to be too obvious as I used my phone to photograph the enticing donut wall and the tulle-festooned white curtains on both sides of it.

  I was wheeling the cart, with newly flattened bakery boxes stacked on its lower shelf, behind the curtains when the music stopped.

  Roger announced, “The donuts are here, folks. Finally.”

  It was exactly ten.

  I parked the cart underneath the table. Smiling, I returned to the front of the donut wall. Roger said into the microphone, “Go help yourselves.” The band began playing again. Roger stalked toward the head table. Jenn and her periwinkle-gowned attendants were near the table, but where were the boys in gray tuxes?

  At the end of the banquet hall opposite the head table, the white curtains bulged and rippled. Either the room was suffering another bout of gown with the wind or the boys were racing around the room behind the curtains.

  Guests mobbed the donut wall, taking selfies with it and raving about it and the donuts.

  I didn’t know that Fallingbrook’s fire chief, Scott Ritsorf, was at the reception until he gave me that adorable grin and a quick hug. His hard chest almost knocked my cap off. Although whipcord thin, he was the super-fit kind of person you’d want rescuing you from a fire, except I didn’t like the idea of his endangering himself by entering a burning building any more than I liked the idea of being trapped inside one. In a dark blue suit, white shirt, and fire-engine red tie, he was every bit as handsome as he was when he showed up in Deputy Donut wearing his fire department navy blue pants and shirt.

  Was he at the reception with a date, and if so, who was she?

  I had designs on Scott.

  Not for myself. I liked him a lot, but I wasn’t interested in dating and didn’t know if I ever would be. Scott was perfect for one of my best friends, Misty, an officer with the Fallingbrook Police Department, and not only because they were both tall and blond like their Scandinavian ancestors. They were also smart, funny, and kind. As far as I was concerned, they belonged together. I was almost certain that Misty was on duty that night, though. Who was Scott’s date?

  Questioning him about it might give him the impression that I was interested in him for myself. Instead, I asked, rather inanely, “How do you like the way the exit signs are hidden?”

  “I don’t.”

  “I bet you already picked up that mic and made certain that everyone at the reception knows where the exits are.”

  “I did. Before dinner was served. How did you know?”

  I laughed up at him. “I guessed.”

  “Can you dance, or do you have to work?”

  “Jenn said I should join the party beginning at midnight. Sort of like Cinderella, only backward, and no fairy godmother brought me a ball gown.”

  “How about a coach?”

  “It’s black and white with a donut on top, and its horses won’t turn into mice.”

  “That is one great coach.” And he had one great smile. He asked, “Save me a dance at midnight?”

  Behind the donut wall, feet scuffled and someone stage-whispered, “Sh!”

  I ducked between the curtains. The three boys in tuxes were slinking away with a bakery box. I’d brought donuts to the reception to be eaten. No one needed to be sneaky about taking some.

  Scott had followed me. He loped after the boys. They slowed behind the bar, near the cartons of wine and beer. The boy carrying the donuts turned around, saw Scott behind him, and heaved the box toward him.

  As if in slow motion, the box went up in an arc, and the lid started opening, revealing rows of Roger’s favorite donuts. I imagined a dozen powdered-sugar-coated donuts flying out and rolling around leaving trails of sugar on the gaudy carpet.

  Scott caught the bakery box with both hands, neatly clamping the box closed and saving the donuts.

  That must have impressed the boys. They let him walk right up to them. He opened the box. They each took a donut. He watched them until they passed the bar, and then he came back and set the box and the nine donuts left in it on the periwinkle table. “Did you bring a purse tonight?” he asked.

  “Only a thinned-out wallet, with my driver’s license, credit card, and a couple of small bills.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In my jacket, under the table.”

  “Is it still there?”

  A sleeping security guard out in the hallway was not particularly reassuring. “I . . . hope so.”

  “Want me to get your jacket for you? Or are food handlers encouraged to crawl around on floors in the middle of their food handling?”

  I had to laugh. “We weren’t, last I knew.” I grabbed the cart’s handle. “Here, I’ll move this out of the way.” I pulled it out into the space between the table and the room’s back wall.

  He folded that lanky body underneath the table and handed me the jacket.

  My wallet was safe. Thanking him, I slipped it into my apron pocket with my phone. “I should have thought of that myself.”

  He put the jacket where he’d found it, stood, and brushed the knees of his pants. “No problem.”

  “And thank you for rescuing those donuts from certain death. I owe you a dozen, any kind.” Despite being one of our best customers, Scott never seemed to gain an ounce.

  He shot me that grin again. “I’ll take it in dances after midnight, Cinderella.” Giving me a thumbs-up, he went out between the curtains.

  Chapter 4

  Scott went to the opposite side of the room and sat down. Even standing on tiptoe, I couldn’t tell which of the women at his table might be his date.

  I parked the cart underneath the
table again and then spent the next hour and a half chatting with reception guests and restocking the donut wall. Several guests asked if we could provide donut walls for their events. “We’d love to,” I said.

  Scott danced with Jenn at least twice. I’d known who Scott was in high school, and Alec had liked and admired him. Scott and I had become friends a little over a year ago, after police officers and firefighters had begun flocking into Deputy Donut for their breaks. So far, my attempts to throw Scott and Misty together had fizzled.

  Could Scott be the ex-boyfriend Jenn said she’d invited to the wedding and reception?

  At nearly midnight, I was hanging more donuts on the wall. I didn’t know that a man had come up behind me until he asked, “What do you recommend?” His deep voice carried without apparent effort.

  I turned around.

  He was almost as tall as Scott, but not as wiry, and his gray suit looked brand-new and perfectly tailored. As if he’d run out of time to have a haircut before the wedding, his thatch of brown hair drooped over one eye. He brushed it aside. His eyebrows slanted downward toward the outer corners of his eyes, giving him a look of amusement.

  Maybe he had a good reason to be amused. I might have been the first person in history to wear a fuzzy donut glued to the front of a police hat at a wedding reception.

  “What do you like?” I was becoming hoarse from talking over the band. “Light, eggy crullers or donuts? Raised or unraised? Frosting or confectioners’ sugar?” I didn’t ask him about sugar pearls versus periwinkle hearts or gold confetti.

  His grin broadened, and his warm dark eyes seemed to take in my entire face. “I like it all.”

  Oh. A flirt.

  He held out a hand. “I’m Chad,” he said.

  I stripped off my plastic gloves and shook his hand. His grip was firm and warm. “I’m Emily.” I ducked behind the curtain, added the gloves to the growing collection in the wastebasket, and returned to the front of the table.

  Chad was still there. He hadn’t taken a donut.