Survival of the Fritters Read online

  She took us back to the center of town and dropped me off at Deputy Donut. She and the other five Knitpickers waved good-bye, but their spirits appeared as wilted as the mums in Georgia’s dining room. Feeling the same way, I went into the office, picked Dep up, and rested my cheek on her head. Then I fastened her halter around her and clipped on her leash. Together, we walked down Wisconsin Street and turned the corner into Fallingbrook’s historic neighborhood of Victorian homes.

  Breezes teased at red-tinged maple leaves. My eyes stung. Georgia would never see another late August, another Christmas, never awaken to another Wisconsin springtime morning brilliant with sunshine, flowers, and promise.

  Dep pounced on fallen leaves and vanquished them. The last six blocks to our sweet Victorian cottage took a while.

  Like Georgia’s, my front door opened directly into the living room, but my two bedrooms were on the second floor underneath the eaves. Alec and I had painted most of the cottage’s interior white, and we’d stripped the woodwork and floors to reveal the antique pine.

  Dep didn’t wait to be unleashed. She pranced, with me keeping pace behind her, through the dining room and kitchen and into the sunroom where windows on three sides let her observe our secluded walled garden. She hopped up onto a radiator cover that doubled as a windowsill and let me remove her halter and leash. She smoothed the fur around her shoulders with quick flicks of her tongue, and then stretched and hunkered down where she could watch for birds, squirrels, and chipmunks. Her tail twitched. Deputy Donut had gone into jungle kitty mode.

  In the kitchen, pine cabinets honored the age of the cottage, but everything else was sleek—a six-burner stainless-steel range with two ovens, a large stainless-steel fridge-freezer, and granite countertops. Alec and I had shared a lot of joy, including the love of cooking.

  I sliced Gruyère onto thick homemade bread, broiled the sandwich until the Gruyère melted, and took it to the living room.

  No matter what, that room always gave me a feeling of solace. Alec and I had furnished it in colors coordinating with the jewel-toned stained-glass windows above the door and the front window. The rug was mostly red with a royal blue, navy, and cream pattern that the Victorians would have loved. I’d inherited a couch from my great-grandmother and had reupholstered it in deep red velvet that complemented its carved mahogany trim. An overstuffed armchair matched the couch.

  The sun was setting, but a few hours earlier it would have gleamed through the stained-glass windows and transformed my collection of glass vases to a sparkling rainbow of gems. I hadn’t been able to resist red velvet drapes similar to those that might have graced the room when the cottage was built.

  I ate in the deep blue wing chair where Dep and I liked to cuddle. Dep padded in circles on my lap. Why did I suspect that this particular burst of affection was actually aimed at the gooey and delicious Gruyère?

  My phone played its strange aliens-from-outer-space tune. I answered.

  Misty said, “I’m finally off duty. Can I come over?”

  There was nothing quite like good friends. Misty did not need to be told that, especially this evening, I would not want to be alone with my memories. “Great,” I said.

  I was licking the last vestiges of cheese off my fingers when the front door opened and Misty came in. “Emily, when are you going to learn to keep your doors locked?” Her hair was down, hanging below her shoulders, and damp. She’d changed into jeans, sandals, and a girly blouse, ruffled and printed with pink and purple flowers.

  “I was expecting you. Why would I lock you out?”

  “I’d have knocked.”

  “Ha,” I teased. “You didn’t.”

  “I was just checking.” Dep twined around her legs. Misty scooped her up and cooed, “You’ll fend off intruders and keep Emily safe, won’t you, Dep?” She glared at me over Dep’s head, but the pointed black and ginger ear sticking up between Misty’s blue eyes negated most of the threat in Misty’s expression.

  I smiled and took my empty plate to the kitchen. “Would you like a sandwich?”

  Carrying the purring cat, Misty was right behind me. “I already ate.”

  I washed my hands. “How about a beer? The sun’s just set, but at the moment, the evening’s warm enough for us to sit outside.”

  “Sounds perfect, if I can stay awake. I just worked sixteen hours.”

  “Did you drive over?”

  “Since when did I start driving from my place to yours? It’s less than a mile.”

  I removed two bottles of beer from the fridge. “Since you look like you can barely stand up.”

  “That’d be a good time to get behind a wheel.”

  Letting the beer froth just enough, I poured it into glass mugs. “Considering that your fellow officers were probably working overtime and are as zonked as you, who’s to know?”

  “Someone’s always out there looking for bad drivers.” She gave Dep a kiss and set her on the terra-cotta tile floor.

  “That’s a relief.” The joking did not quite distract me from dwelling on Georgia. I opened a bag of pretzels and dumped them into a wooden bowl handcrafted by one of the artisans at The Craft Croft.

  Dep came outside with us. The brick wall surrounding my yard was smooth and tall, and there was no way that a cat could climb it. As a kitten, Dep had discovered that the branches of shrubs wouldn’t hold her and that she did not care for backing down tree trunks. She was perfectly safe outside, and so was the wildlife. I’d never known her to catch anything other than leaves, acorns, and bugs.

  I put the bowl on a table between two cushioned chaises, and Misty and I stretched out. We preferred to sit outdoors evenings without a light. As night fell, our eyes would adjust. Dep jumped onto my lap.

  Misty picked up a handful of pretzels. “I’m sorry about Georgia. She was your friend, also, wasn’t she, not only a customer?”

  “Yep.”

  “Look, I understand why you tampered with the evidence. Trying to put things right in situations like that is a common reaction. But I wish you hadn’t.”

  “Me, too. And I’m sorry. I also picked up two stale donuts that were lying on the floor, and then when I saw that doll, I just let them go. I don’t know where they ended up.”

  Birdcalls became sporadic, as if the birds were telling one another good night and falling asleep.

  Misty asked quietly, “Are you okay?”

  “I guess.” Each salt crystal on the half pretzel in my hand was a tiny cube with sharp corners and edges, like miniature knives stabbing at my fingers. “Georgia was in her seventies. When she didn’t show up at Deputy Donut as usual this morning, I began to prepare myself that she could have been sick, or . . .” My vision blurred. “I guess I should be glad that Lois came to fetch me, or those seniors would have discovered Georgia by themselves.” I brushed at my eyes. “How about you? Are you okay? Seeing Georgia like that can’t have been easy for you, either.” I popped the pretzel into my mouth. Instead of cutting at my fingers, the salt bit at my tongue.

  “We do what we have to. Most of the time, the job is rewarding. Serious crime is rare in Fallingbrook.”

  The tree above us rustled, the sound of oak leaves turning leathery. I shivered, but not because summer was ending. “Matthias Treetor went missing five years ago,” I reminded Misty. “Almost to the day.” Georgia’s call had been my first real emergency as a 911 operator. I could still remember the panic in her voice when she told me that her son, a popular Fallingbrook grocer, had been missing for several hours and that she’d found his car, empty and locked, parked almost out of sight on a farm lane. She’d also found an empty gas can with TREETOR scrawled in black marker on it beside the road near the end of the lane. If he was going for gas, Georgia had grated out over the phone that evening, he wouldn’t have left his gas can behind. “Her son was murdered,” I said. “And now she’s been murdered, also.”

  “Thanks to your interference, we can’t be sure of it, but Brent suspects foul play. More c
rime scene investigators should be at her house now, and there’ll be a postmortem.” She sipped her beer. “Do you have any idea what happened to Matthias’s father? Could he still be around?”

  “No. Georgia told me he left her right after she had Matthias, about the second time he heard the baby cry. That would have been about fifty years ago. A few days later, police in Illinois contacted Georgia. Matthias’s father had died in a collision with a train.”

  “Did Georgia tell you if Matthias’s father had family, like children by anyone else before he met her?”

  “I don’t think she knew.”

  “Was Matthias’s father’s name Treetor, also?”

  “I don’t know.” There was too much that I didn’t know, and now would probably never find out, about my friend.

  Misty twirled a pretzel on the tip of her index finger. “Did you notice a change in Brent?”

  “He was unusually businesslike, which wasn’t surprising, since he was on duty.”

  “He worries me. He always seems to have a new, leggy, and beautiful girl on his arm, but he doesn’t seem happy.”

  I leaned my head back on the soft headrest and gazed up at the sky, that dusky blue preceding twilight. “I’m sure he misses Alec and wonders what he could have done differently that night.” Just like I wondered what I could have done differently. . . Brent and Alec had been best friends as well as partners, first as patrolmen, and then as detectives.

  “Have you talked to him recently?”

  “Maybe I said ‘hi’ to him this evening.” Actually, I couldn’t remember saying anything. I’d stared back at him, and that was all.

  “If you gave him any encouragement, he’d come running.”

  I recrossed my ankles. Dep jumped off my lap. I immediately missed her warmth. “I admire him, but we’re just former friends who’ve drifted apart, and that’s fine with me. He’s too much like Alec, too likely to be hit by a bullet some dark and horrible night. If I ever fall for anyone again”—highly unlikely, considering the way I felt about Alec—“it will be a man with a nice, safe career, like a librarian.”

  “Ever hear of protesting too much?”

  “I’m just saying what I think.” I patted my lap. “Dep, come here. I’m getting cold.” Dep turned her back, sat in the grass, and stared toward my rosebushes.

  “Brent’s the lead investigator in Georgia’s case. He’ll need to talk to you.”

  “No problem. No matter how much I sound like one, I’m not a weak-kneed blob of jelly.”

  “I wouldn’t know what one of those sounds like.”

  “Police officers are supposed to know things like that.” My teasing broke the tension. So, what did I do? I went right back to being serious. “Do you think Georgia’s death is connected to her son’s murder?”

  “We don’t know. Maybe we never will.”

  “Why would anyone harm either of them? She was a sweet and considerate lady who owned a doll hospital. She was grateful to me for, she said, caring. All I did was my job—answer a 911 call. And then after Alec’s death, talking to her helped me cope, helped us both cope with our losses. How could anyone hate her? And Matthias was a nice man, as far as I could tell from shopping in his store. Besides, he coached kids’ sports, baseball in the summer and hockey in the winter.”

  “Crime has a way of not making sense.”

  We sipped beer, nibbled pretzels, and mellowed. Dep returned to my lap and settled down to a rhythmic and vibrating purr. Misty and I laughed about the comparatively innocent days when she, Samantha, and I had first known one another, about our high school crushes, and about our long-ago plans. Misty had always known she would become a police officer. Samantha had planned to do something in the medical field. I’d changed my career goals about once a week, twice if there was a full moon.

  Misty’s comments dwindled to “mm-hmms” and then to gentle snores.

  The quarter moon sank behind my cottage’s chimney. Despite the purring cat on my lap, I was getting cold. I set Dep on the ground, went inside, put on a fleece jacket, fetched a quilt, and spread it over Misty. She didn’t stir.

  Nicely snug in the thick fleece, I sat down again and picked up a pretzel. Dep leaped onto my lap and pawed at my hand. Since when did my finicky cat beg for pretzels?

  I offered it to her.

  She turned up her cute little nose, jumped down, and crept into the shrubs at the rear of the yard.

  Seconds later, she was back. She again ignored the pretzel. Tail straight up except for a question mark at the tip, she turned around and strutted into her jungle. She even let out a roar of sorts, although to me it sounded exactly like a meow.

  She trotted to my chaise, reached up, and batted my shin, and then headed back toward the shrubbery. Turning to face me, she let out a plaintive mew. She barged underneath a fern. Her meows became demanding.

  Misty mumbled something and then went back to snoring.

  I tiptoed to the fern and called softly, “Dep?” I raised my voice and commanded, “Deputy!”

  She meowed again, but her voice sounded strangely distant.

  “Come here, Deputy!” She never came when called. Why would I expect her to change?

  I trotted past my sleeping friend, retrieved a flashlight from a drawer in the kitchen, and ran back to the rear of the yard. “Dep?”

  She meowed.

  I got down on my hands and knees and peered under a prickly hawthorn. “Nice new game, Dep,” I muttered.

  The answering meow was insistent. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the wall, but that was impossible. I stood up and shined my light at the top of the wall. No cat.

  I crawled into a brushy cave underneath a sprawling forsythia and aimed my light at the base of the wall.

  What was this? An extra row of bricks, jutting out into my yard?

  “Meow.”

  The bottom of the wall was definitely thicker in that spot, about two bricks thicker, but the extra course of bricks was only about three bricks high and four bricks long. I felt one end of it. A hole?

  Kitty claws latched into my hand. “Ouch!” I yanked my hand away, which was not the right thing to do, but I managed to detach myself from those sharp claws and shine my light where the paw had been.

  I saw no sign of my imperious cat, but there was a square opening behind the outer layer of brick.

  “Dep?” I whispered.

  Her stripy face with that adorable ginger spot in the center of her forehead appeared in the opening, and then she wiggled backward out of sight and meowed again.

  Now I was sure of it. Dep was on the other side of the wall.

  A square tunnel just big enough for cats had been incorporated in the base of the wall, probably when it was built. And during the almost six years that I’d lived here, the forsythia had hidden the tunnel.

  “Meow!”

  And then I heard something else, something that made all the hairs on my body stand straight on end like Dep’s when she puffed herself up.

  “Help!” The voice was tiny, as if my almost-magical walled garden harbored elves.

  Chapter 5

  Still on my hands and knees, I backed away from the wall. Twigs snared my curls, but I kept crawling, at the expense of both my hair and the shrubs. Someone—most likely not an elf—was calling for help, and I didn’t dare waste time. I jumped to my feet.

  It seemed like a perfect occasion to ask Misty to come with me, but she was still asleep. I breezed past her.

  When some long-ago homeowners had walled in the garden, they’d left no way out except through the house. Although it could be inconvenient, I liked the lack of gates and my garden’s perfect seclusion. Alec had approved—unwanted visitors were unlikely, and our new kitten could safely explore. My donut-loving policeman husband was the one who had laughingly christened the frisky little ball of fur Deputy Donut.

  Hanging on to my flashlight, I dashed through the kitchen, dining room, and living room. I took a moment to adjust the doork
nob to lock the front door behind me, and then I raced down the block, around the corner, and up the next block. The streets were lined with Victorian homes and tall trees. I recognized the cottage behind mine by the gigantic oak looming against the sky.

  And then I ran into a brick wall, literally, on one side of the small house. I ran around to the other side. Same thing. Like my backyard, this one was surrounded by a high wall with no gates, which wasn’t terribly surprising. The exterior of this cottage was almost the twin of mine.

  I had locked my front door, but this one was standing open. A warm yellow glow lit the living room. I loped to the front porch and knocked on the doorjamb. “Hello! Anybody home?” My voice echoed too loudly in the otherwise silent cottage.

  No one answered.

  Someone in the backyard had called for help. This was not the time to wait politely for an invitation. I charged into the living room.

  The décor reminded me of my house when Alec and I first purchased it. The living room was carpeted and wallpapered. It was perfectly neat except for the off-kilter shade on the lamp shining down on about a dozen large linen-covered books on the floor beside a bookcase that was full except for one mostly empty shelf near eye level.

  The floor plan was identical to the one in my cottage, and I had no trouble finding the back door. Like the front door, it was open. Beyond the porch, the yard was unlit. Leaves pattered against one another. Tall ornamental grasses whispered.

  I was getting a serious case of the creeps.

  I reminded myself that Misty was on the other side of the brick wall. If I needed her, I could shout, and if that didn’t rouse her, I could phone her. With her longer legs, she would run here faster than I had, but I hoped I wouldn’t have to disturb her.

  I shined my flashlight’s beam over lawn furniture, flowerpots, and grass.

  Bright kitty eyes flashed back at me. Dep pawed at a heap of fabric on the ground beside her. “Meow!” She was particularly adamant.

  And no wonder.

  It wasn’t a heap of fabric. It was white pants and a flowing purplish top, with a woman inside them.