Jealousy Filled Donuts Read online

  We moved our vehicles forward again. The parade continued north for a few blocks. At the designated end of the parade route, I turned back toward Deputy Donut. Avoiding the parade still moving up Wisconsin Street was easy. I drove south through parking lots behind stores, parked the donut car near our loading dock, and went inside through the office.

  Purring, Dep rubbed against my ankles. I told her, “You’re the one who deserves a tiara.”

  She briskly licked one shoulder as if to show that, unlike Duchess Gabrielle, Dep was wearing real fur.

  Jocelyn bounced inside from the front patios and poked her head into the office. “Emily! Come see what we made.” She led me into the kitchen, to a stack of large, flat boxes, white with our logo printed on them in black. With a gleeful smile, she opened the top box. All of the donuts in it were frosted with white icing. Jocelyn had piped narrow red stripes on the raspberry jelly–filled donuts and had sprinkled dark blue sugar stars on the blueberry jelly–filled ones. She and Tom had arranged the donuts in a checkerboard pattern.

  I smiled at Jocelyn. “They’re perfect. You’re really good at decorating them.”

  Her dark eyes gleamed. “I like doing it.”

  “As much as gymnastics?”

  Dimples showed beside her delightfully mischievous grin. “Almost!”

  I said, “You didn’t tell me that one of your former coworkers was elected queen of today’s festivities.”

  She stared at me for a second as if puzzled. “I thought everyone knew.”

  Screeching at full volume, the bagpipe band crept past on its float.

  Jocelyn and I carefully loaded the boxes of donuts, assorted sizes of Deputy Donut paper bags, a red and white plaid tablecloth, and white platters with red stripes around their rims into the rear seat of the 1950 Ford. Tom would stay in the shop to make more donuts and wait on anyone who didn’t attend the picnic.

  I asked Jocelyn, “Would you like to drive?”

  “I’d love to!”

  She neatly piloted the car the quickest way around the parade to the far side of the square and then parked near the table assigned to us. The tail end of the parade was passing the reviewing stand.

  The Fallingbrook Fabulous Fourth Committee had provided pretty blue-flowered vases containing vivid red geraniums and a small flag for every table on the square. We moved our centerpiece temporarily and spread our red and white plaid tablecloth over the table. Leaving most of the donuts in their boxes in the car so they’d stay fresh, we arranged a selection of donuts on the platters, and then we put the cheery geraniums back on the table along with the platters of donuts, a selection of paper bags, and our Deputy Donut napkins, fanned out to display the logos printed on them.

  Other goodies, including hot dogs and potato chips, were being given away during this annual community picnic, but folks immediately crowded around our table. I let Jocelyn chat with everyone and give them donuts while I dove into the car for more.

  The royal court made a walking tour of the square. Duchess Gabrielle asked for a donut decorated with star sprinkles. “Because I’m a star,” she explained.

  Queen Taylor gave her a look that could have turned those sugar stars into cinders. She pointed at the donut with the most stars on it and asked for that one. King Ian and Duke Nicholas, who had removed his black woolly jacket, ate their red-striped donuts right there, but Queen Taylor and Duchess Gabrielle said they wanted to enjoy theirs after they changed out of their white gowns. We’d run out of the smallest Deputy Donut paper bags and had to pack the women’s star-studded donuts in bags big enough to hold about eight donuts, and then the court moved off to visit other subjects. Nicholas and Ian strolled. Taylor and Gabrielle minced, obviously having difficulty keeping their heels from sinking into the soft turf. Gabrielle reached for Nicholas’s arm. He sidestepped away. Ian held his arms stiffly at his sides. I felt sorry for all of them. Finding a way through the maze of romance could be tough for twentysomethings.

  A mom, a dad, and their four kids came to the table. The smallest boy, whose blond hair stuck out in adorable tufts, announced, “Today’s my birthday!”

  Jocelyn smiled down at him. “How old are you?”

  He held one hand up, fingers and thumb spread out. “Five.”

  I asked him, “Want us to stack the donuts for you and your brother and sisters and mom and dad into a sort of birthday cake?”

  “Yes!”

  “Please,” his mother said.

  “Please,” he echoed.

  Jocelyn suggested, “We could make a skyrocket, since your birthday is the Fourth of July.”

  He beamed. “Okay!” He glanced at his mother. “Please.”

  Three members of the family wanted red-striped donuts and the other three wanted donuts decorated with blue sugar stars. Jocelyn asked the birthday boy which kind of donut should be on top.

  He didn’t hesitate. “Stars!”

  Jocelyn put a red-striped donut on a doily on the table and stacked the others on it, alternating blue stars with red stripes. Ordinarily, we would hold the donuts together with toothpicks or use frosting as a sort of paste, but we didn’t have any toothpicks and the frosting on the donuts had dried too much to be sticky.

  When we finished, the slightly unwieldy skyrocket needed one more thing. “Just a second,” I said. Recently, I’d left a spare dark blue birthday candle in the donut car’s glove compartment. I dug it out. The candle was only slightly curved after a few days in the occasionally hot car. I returned to the table and poked the candle into the top blueberry jelly–filled donut. It would serve both as a birthday candle and as a fake fuse for the fake skyrocket.

  Carefully, I held the stack of six donuts while Jocelyn opened a Deputy Donut paper bag that was the same size as the ones we’d given Taylor and Gabrielle.

  This time, I recognized the whirrs and clicks.

  The photographer who’d been in Deputy Donut and at the marshaling grounds was now aiming his camera at Jocelyn, me, and the family with the four kids.

  Jocelyn dropped the bag onto the table, turned her back on the photographer, and disappeared on the far side of the donut car.

  Chapter 4

  In Jocelyn’s absence, the kids’ dad helped me slip the skyrocket cake made of donuts into the bag. Crowing about having the best birthday cake ever, the birthday boy held his dad’s hand and grasped the top of the bag in the other fist. The family wandered out onto the lawn. The kids pulled in different directions. The mother said something about hair.

  The oldest boy asked, “Do we have to?”

  The father boomed in a jolly voice, “After we’re done here. Next stop, bouncy castles!” They headed toward a cluster of balloon-like structures at the north end of the square.

  Jocelyn returned to my side. “I brought a bigger bag.” It was huge.

  I thanked her. “We managed.” I eyed Jocelyn’s too-pink face, but she turned away. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that she had again made herself scarce at the exact moment that the photographer and his camera showed up or that she had again stayed away until after he left. More excited people arrived at our table, though, and I didn’t ask.

  I decided to keep a protective eye on her.

  The picnic wound down around one, just as we gave away the last of our donuts. For the rest of the afternoon, games, skits, mini-concerts, and other fun activities would entertain kids and adults. We relinquished our table to a troupe of face-painting clowns. Jocelyn drove us back to Deputy Donut and backed the car perfectly into its garage.

  Cheerful and appreciative customers kept us busy until we closed as usual at four thirty. After we finished tidying, I shooed Tom and Jocelyn out. “I’m going to stay and make another batch of Fourth of July donuts to share with friends at the fireworks.”

  Jocelyn offered, “Want me to help?”

  “No, thanks. I’m doing this for myself, not for promotion. And you meet with your gymnastics coach every evening, don’t you?”

  “No
t tonight. It’s a holiday. I’m going to the fireworks.” She looked about to execute a cartwheel right there in the Deputy Donut kitchen. Instead, she pirouetted. Although she now concentrated on gymnastics, she’d been taking both gymnastics and ballet since she was a toddler. I wasn’t sure when she slept.

  Tom told her, “We sometimes take leftovers home. Usually, we leave them for the Jolly Cops Cleaning Crew to deliver to the food bank. Emily always pays for the donuts she makes here for herself.”

  “He only lets me pay half the retail price,” I complained teasingly.

  He countered, “You’re doing the work.”

  I said, “I’m too cheap to pay either of you to help, and I’m also too lazy to make them at home. Everything’s all set up here.”

  “Not quite,” Jocelyn confessed. “I used all of the blue sugar stars for the donuts we took to the picnic. I didn’t let Tom have any of them for the customers here, not even before the picnic.”

  Tom joked, “We hired a tyrant.”

  “You obviously needed one,” Jocelyn retorted.

  I pointed toward our storeroom. “I’ll find something else fun for decorations.”

  Tom left in his SUV. Jocelyn hopped onto her blue one-speed coaster-brake bike and pedaled away.

  Peering through the window between the kitchen and the office, I explained to Dep that the two of us would stay a while longer. She opened one eye and closed it.

  I mixed a small batch of yeast dough. While it rose, I rejoined Dep in the office and started catching up on paperwork.

  Dep yawned, stretched, and then dashed to her catwalk. She tore around up there doing her own chores, which seemed to consist of flinging toys down at me and the computer. Jocelyn wasn’t the only tyrant at Deputy Donut.

  I put Dep’s toys away in her basket.

  Back in the kitchen, I rolled out the dough, being careful not to smash it completely. With a plain circle cookie cutter, I cut out twelve circles. I let the donuts rise until they doubled in size and then lowered them into the hot oil. When their undersides were golden, I gently turned them over and cooked them until they were golden on the other side, too, and then I slid them onto racks to cool while I sorted through our supply of sprinkles for something I could use in place of the blue stars. I found some tiny light blue spheres.

  I jabbed a skewer into the sides of the cooled donuts and worked it around to form cavities in the donuts’ centers. With a pastry syringe, I injected blueberry jelly into six of the donuts and raspberry jelly into the other six. I frosted all of the donuts with vanilla frosting and put the minuscule blue balls on the blueberry jelly–filled donuts. I piped red stripes on the raspberry jelly–filled donuts. The frosting could harden while I took Dep home for dinner.

  In the office, my persistent and hardworking cat had not quite removed all of the toys from her basket. She stood almost still while I fastened her halter around her and snapped on the leash. Although it was after seven, the sun was high and the evening was pleasantly warm, making the six-block walk to our neighborhood of Victorian homes even more enjoyable than ever.

  I knew I was biased, but I thought that my yellow brick cottage was just about the cutest house around. A wooden porch trimmed in white gingerbread spanned the front, and there were stained-glass panels above the door and the living room window. The Stars and Stripes fluttered from a pole jutting from the porch roof. The front porch was like an invitation to sit with friends or a book. I had put red, white, and blue cushions on the white wicker armchairs, and a ruby glass vase of red, white, and blue flowers on the table between the chairs.

  The front door opened directly into the living room. I released Dep. When my late husband and I had bought the house, we’d stripped the wide pine-plank floors to reveal their golden luster. Alec and I had painted most of the interior walls white. The sofa, armchair, and wing chair in the living room were upholstered in dark red and deep blue to go with the stained-glass windows. The Oriental-style rug was red, cobalt, navy, and ivory.

  Dep scampered up the stairs. I followed. In my Wedgwood blue and white bedroom, I changed out of my Deputy Donut uniform and into blue pants, a red and white striped blouse, and red sneakers. I put on the backpack that contained my phone, wallet, and keys, picked up a red cardigan in case it would be chilly later, and headed down the stairs. Dep reached the bottom before I did.

  I went through the living room and dining room to the kitchen. Although Alec and I had tried to preserve most of the home’s Victorian details, we had created an efficient and beautiful kitchen where we could indulge our foodie hobbies. We’d installed pine cabinets that went with the house’s woodwork, but we’d added granite countertops, a terra-cotta tile floor, and stainless-steel appliances.

  I fed Dep and gave her fresh water. Expecting to snack at the fireworks with my friends, I slathered Icelandic-style yogurt on celery sticks for a satisfying mini-supper.

  By eight thirty, the sun was low. I left Dep at home, walked back to Deputy Donut, and packed the donuts I’d made after work into an oversized paper bag. I carefully set the bag, complete with its cute cat-in-a-fake-police-hat logo, on the bench front seat of our pretend squad car. For fun, I turned on the donut’s sprinkle lights and let them dance all the way to the fairgrounds.

  The parking lot at the top of the hill was nearly full. I found a space near the back. Wearing my backpack and carrying the bag of donuts, I wended my way toward the big red fire truck on the other side of the lot. As I approached, I could see the tops of an ambulance and then a police cruiser on either side of the fire truck. My first-responder friends had arrived early and parked in the spaces reserved for them.

  The four friends were sitting together on a brown and green plaid blanket in front of their vehicles. Samantha Andersen was on the left end of the row. She was small considering the work that EMTs did, but she was capable. She and I always claimed, especially to our tall friend Misty, that we were small but mighty. Samantha was in her EMT uniform. In honor of the holiday, she had streaked her short dark brown curls in red, white, and blue. She turned around, grinned at me, and called, “Emily!”

  Beside her, Misty’s patrol partner, Hooligan Houlihan, leaped to his feet. “Hey, Emily.” The freckle-faced, auburn-haired policeman shook my hand.

  I gave him the bag of donuts.

  He made a show of unrolling the top of the bag and inhaling deeply. “Mmmm. All for me?”

  I laughed. “You might share.”

  Samantha reached playfully for the bag. “He will!”

  Hooligan grinned down at her. I thought he blushed, but maybe the rosy post-sunset glow was tinting his face. Also wearing her police uniform, Misty gave me a hug, and so did the man who had been sitting beside her, our fire chief. Tall and blond, Scott Ritsorf looked handsomer than ever in his dress uniform, shiny brass buttons and all. The four of them made room for me beside Scott.

  Samantha, Misty, and I had been best friends since junior high. We’d known who Scott was back in high school, but at the time we hadn’t paid much attention to the lanky, studious teen. I’d met Alec, a police officer in Fallingbrook, when I was a 911 dispatcher. Naturally, Alec had known the fire chief, and I had become friends with Scott, also. Misty really liked Scott, but Scott always gave everyone around him equal attention.

  And he did it again, making certain that I was included in the teasing and bantering as we passed donuts, peanuts, chips, popcorn, and soft drinks to each other. The slope below us filled with other people sitting on blankets.

  Dusk gave way to darkness, and the first rockets soared into the sky. Saplings and bushes dotted the hill, but they weren’t tall enough to obstruct our view. I leaned back, watched, and enjoyed simply being near my friends.

  I’d been matchmaking when I’d suggested, several weeks before, that we should sit together at the fireworks. It would have been nice if the others weren’t on duty, but all four of them were in their uniforms and prepared for crowd control, illnesses, and accidents. I knew they co
uld be called away at any minute, leaving me alone on someone’s plaid blanket.

  Before Hooligan joined the Fallingbrook Police Department the previous October, I’d earmarked Brent Fyne, Alec’s former partner on the police force, for Samantha. She’d never seemed particularly interested in Brent, though, especially after she met Hooligan. Both Samantha and Misty liked to tease me that Brent was right for me.

  They were wrong.

  Brent had been Alec’s best friend. Brent was a good detective and a good man. I liked him, but I had no desire to risk the friendship that he and I had rebuilt after my grief-filled three years of avoiding him because I hadn’t wanted to think about the night that Alec was killed.

  That night, I had switched shifts with a new 911 dispatcher so I could spend the evening with friends who were visiting from out of town.

  Brent and Alec had been shot.

  Brent had been merely grazed, but Alec’s injuries had been critical.

  I would always wonder if, with my experience, I could have acted faster than the new dispatcher and could have arranged help for Alec in time to save his life. Brent claimed that I couldn’t have. He had radioed for help immediately, and his call had mobilized an ambulance even while a distraught onlooker was stammering through her emergency call to my untried colleague.

  Brent’s assurances had assuaged my guilt a little, but I didn’t think I would ever completely get over it. I knew I would never recover from the grief of losing Alec.

  I had another reason for not being interested in Brent except as a good and supportive friend—even if I wanted to date again after five years of widowhood, I would not choose a man doing the job that had led to Alec’s death.

  Alec’s life had been like these fireworks, brilliant, awe-inspiring, and over much too soon.

  My hand tightened on the emptied donut bag. Sparkling patterns burst above us, the crowd oohed, and pungent smoke drifted. Maybe I thought the same thing every year, but this seemed to be Fallingbrook’s most extravagant fireworks display ever.