Goodbye Cruller World Read online

  “Emily, get away from that powder.”

  “I covered it with my hat again. Carefully, so that none of it blew around. And it could actually be sugar, and Roger could have passed out from drinking too much. He was pretty sloshed at midnight.”

  “I . . . listen, Em, get everyone out of that room. Scott can quickly authorize evacuating the entire lodge, hotel rooms and all, and turning off the ventilation system, so tell him to do that. If you can corral the wedding guests in one spot outside, please do, but the important thing is to make certain that everyone, including you and Scott, goes outside. Have you told anyone besides me about that white powder?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Tell Scott, but no one else. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t take chances.”

  I repeated, “It could actually be sugar.”

  “Assume it’s not, and stay away from it. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He disconnected.

  People around Scott were still chattering, and Scott was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher. Not knowing if Scott had heard anything from my end of the conversation with Brent, I bent over and whispered into his free ear. I told him what I’d found and gave him Brent’s instructions. I added, “And no one should leave this room by the back door. It’s too close to the white powder.”

  With quick grace, Scott stood up. I held out my hand for his phone. He relinquished it and strode across the room to where the band was playing.

  Brent had told me to leave, but with 911 on the phone, I needed to stay near Roger. I also had to keep an eye on my hat and the saucer of white powder underneath it, and on the front of the donut wall to prevent people from helping themselves to possibly contaminated donuts and crullers. The only place where I could monitor all three areas was the gap between the white drapes next to the donut wall, so I stayed where I was, trying not to shiver in the draft eddying in from the service corridor. The sides of the drapes tapped at my sleeves.

  Except for random twitches, Roger wasn’t moving.

  Scott talked to the bandleader for a few seconds. The leader brought “The Way You Look Tonight” to an early close, and Scott took over the microphone. “We’ve been asked to evacuate the hotel. There’s no need to panic. Please leave by the front doors, and stay together in the south end of the front parking lot. That will be to your right as you exit the lodge’s main doors.” He pointed toward me. “Emily and I will join you there.”

  I waved my free hand high in the air, but I wasn’t certain that anyone was watching me. People were gathering belongings or looking at Scott, and some were already leaving. No one came toward me or the room’s back door.

  Scott added, “If anyone feels ill, please tell Emily or me, or call 911, or go straight to Emergency.” That speech came close to negating his earlier instructions about not panicking, but, with a few exceptions, everyone was filing out in a semi-orderly way. Scott handed the mic to the bandleader and then strode toward the lobby.

  The bandleader returned the microphone to its stand. Cradling instruments in their arms, band members followed wedding guests into the hallway.

  The fans in the ceiling juddered to a halt, the drapes stopped their constant tip-tapping at me, and the hotel’s PA system blatted out a series of squawks loud enough to awaken the lodge’s heaviest sleepers. A woman’s voice announced that everyone should leave the building and assemble in the front parking lot to await instructions.

  The 911 dispatcher must have overheard some of the racket. She asked how the patient was.

  “Unchanged.” And he doesn’t seem aware of the clamor surrounding him. . . .

  Scott returned to the nearly empty banquet hall and removed his phone from my stiff fingers. “You’re supposed to leave, Emily.”

  “You are, too.” Ordinarily, both of us would stay with a stricken person, but rules and common sense dictated that we leave a situation where our own health and lives could be in danger.

  “The ambulance is almost here. I’ll stay with him. You go outside and try to keep wedding guests together.”

  “I . . . you . . .” I folded my arms. “If it’s not too dangerous for you to stay, I’ll stay, too.”

  “I’m fire chief and I’m ordering you to leave.” There wasn’t even a hint of a smile on his face.

  I frowned back at him. “I’ll get revenge someday, Scott.”

  In the distance, sirens wailed.

  “Go,” Scott insisted. “Until I join you outside, it will be up to you to keep an eye on everyone out there and call Emergency if anyone else seems ill. Do you have a phone?”

  I nodded, but my frown turned into a glower. Scott knew exactly how to make me leave him alone with a sick patient and a saucer full of potential danger. “Don’t take chances,” I told Scott.

  “I’m not.” Now that the ventilation system had been turned off and everyone else had left the room, Scott was able to speak softly.

  My jacket was underneath the table, but if that white powder was dangerous, my jacket could have been contaminated. I left it behind, crossed the room, and went out between the wide-open double doors. In the brightly lit lobby, the red, purple, and beige swirls in the carpet seemed to leap up and smack me in the eyes.

  Not surprisingly, the temperature outside was still barely above freezing. At the nearest edge of the parking lot, hotel guests were standing around in nighties and pj’s covered in bathrobes, coats, and blankets. Some were barefoot. I was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, an apron, and shoes, and I was shivering.

  Corralling wedding guests or even keeping an eye on them was going to be impossible. Most of them had gotten into cars and were driving away, a steady stream of vehicles inching up the hill toward the road. I stayed near the main doors so I could direct the Emergency Medical Technicians to the banquet hall where Scott waited with Roger.

  Fortunately, the lodge’s driveway was wide enough for the ambulance to speed in past departing cars. Lights flashing and siren howling, the ambulance stopped in front of the lodge’s main entrance. The lights continued strobing and the engine continued running, but the sudden silence of the siren pulsed against my ears.

  Wearing a reflective parka and a black EMT stocking cap that covered most of her pink-streaked dark brown curls, my friend Samantha climbed down from the driver’s seat. I ran to her. She was taller than I was, mostly because of her thick-soled boots. “You’ll need hazmat gear,” I told her.

  “Brent radioed us about a mysterious white powder that might be poison.” She quickly assessed my face in the on-again-off-again lighting. “And he said to take you to the hospital if you showed any signs of illness.”

  “I’m fine. But Scott stayed in there with the patient.”

  She looked worried. “He’s not supposed to.”

  “I know. He wouldn’t listen. He seemed okay a few minutes ago.”

  “We’ll look after him. When you get home, change your clothes and take a shower, just in case. Where’s the patient?”

  I pointed. “In the Wild Goose Banquet Hall. Go in through these doors, turn left, then take the first right.”

  Samantha and her partner, a strong-looking guy possibly ten years younger than Samantha and I were, quickly covered their black uniforms with hazmat suits and removed a wheeled stretcher covered with cases of lifesaving equipment from the ambulance. Running, Samantha and her partner wheeled the stretcher into the lodge.

  Only seconds later, Scott joined me. He wasn’t wearing a coat over his tailored blue suit. “How are you?” he asked.

  “Physically fine, but stressed. You?”

  “I’m not sick or anything.” He paused, then added, “I’m used to this kind of thing.”

  A woman’s voice behind us quavered, “What’s going on? Is someone hurt?”

  I turned around. A ghostly cloud of white cloth floated toward us. Jenn. She must have come from the south end of the building, where the delivery entrance was, and although my shivering was becoming more violen
t, she didn’t look cold in her strapless wedding gown, maybe because of the yards of fabric in the skirt. Although she wasn’t carrying her bouquet, the smell of roses surrounded her.

  I put a hand on her surprisingly warm arm and said, as gently as I could, “Roger fainted.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Inside. They’ll look after him and bring him out.”

  “Is he okay?” Her voice was shrill and her face looked pinched.

  Scott and I took too long to answer, which she probably interpreted correctly. He doesn’t look good.

  Her eyes rolled back in her head and her neck listed to one side. Like a marionette whose handler had dropped the strings, she sagged toward the ground.

  Chapter 7

  Grasping Jenn’s arms, Scott and I eased her and her trailing veil and froth of fabric onto the pavement.

  Scott felt Jenn’s wrist. “Her pulse is strong.” Strobing lights from the ambulance colored and recolored the planes of his face.

  The ambulance’s engine rumbled. Exhaust curled from the tailpipe. Scott had to be making more sense of the garbled strings of words blatting from the radio than I was.

  Colder and colder, I could no longer control my shivering.

  Scott gave me an assessing look and then jumped to his feet. “Stay with her.” He ran to the back of the ambulance, returned with three folded white blankets, and handed me one. “Wrap it around yourself.”

  I did, and it helped, although cold air crept in between the blanket’s loosely woven fibers.

  Scott slid one blanket, still folded, underneath Jenn’s head and spread the other over her. With one hand, I held the edges of my blanket together at my throat. With the other, I helped Scott tuck Jenn’s blanket around her shoulders.

  “What about you?” I asked him.

  “I’m dressed warmly enough.”

  Right, in a suit with no coat over it. Men.

  High heels hammered across the pavement from the direction of the lodge’s main entrance, and then Suzanne towered over us. The ambulance lights turned her slinky periwinkle gown first dull gray and then blinding white. Her cheek and collarbones cast purplish shadows on her skin. She demanded, “What did you two do to my sister? I was in the ladies’ room and couldn’t come out when they told us to, and now look what’s happened!”

  “She’s okay.” Scott was apparently accustomed to speaking in reassuring tones. “I think she only fainted. She’s coming around.”

  “Then why is an ambulance here?” Suzanne’s voice was about an octave higher than it had been the few times I’d heard her speak, and her eyes were showing a lot of white, but she didn’t seem about to topple over.

  Remembering my 911 training, I tried to sound as reassuring as Scott had. “It’s for Roger. He collapsed.”

  “I told Jenn he was getting drunk and she should make him stop.” Suzanne did not sound any fonder of her new brother-in-law than she had before he became her brother-in-law.

  I asked, “Are you okay, Suzanne?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  I pointed out, “You must have spent a long time in the ladies’—”

  Jenn struggled to sit up. “Whuh?”

  Suzanne bent over her. “You’re okay, Jennifer. You just fainted. I told you that bodice was too tight.” She brushed Jenn’s veil and hair back and helped her sit. I was ready to prop Jenn’s shoulders, and I could see Scott trying to figure out where he dared place his hands on a woman displaying so much flesh, but Jenn seemed to be holding herself up and didn’t need Scott’s and my assistance.

  Samantha and her partner, still in their white hazmat suits, wheeled the stretcher outside with Roger strapped to it, white blanket and all. Roger’s face looked almost as gray as Suzanne’s dress appeared.

  Jenn shouted, “Roger!”

  No one answered.

  Samantha and her partner loaded the stretcher into the ambulance and then stripped off their hazmat suits and stuffed them into plastic bags. Samantha’s partner clambered into the back of the ambulance. Samantha ran to us.

  I told her, “This is the bride.”

  Samantha turned those dark, often humor-filled eyes on me. “I figured.” Having known each other since junior high, Samantha and I were used to each other’s sarcasm.

  “I mean, she’s married to the man you just put into the ambulance. He’s the groom.”

  “I get that, too. Are you sure you’re okay, Emily?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Scott looked skeptical.

  “I am,” I told him, jutting my chin out and looking up into his face.

  Samantha turned to Jenn. “Do you feel strong enough to stand if we help you?”

  Jenn nodded.

  Samantha touched Jenn’s wrist. “You can ride in back with your husband. My partner will keep track of both of you.” I wasn’t familiar with the voice Samantha used while working. She truly was as kind as she sounded, but the laughter that usually spilled through her sentences was absent.

  “I’m her sister,” Suzanne stated. “I’m coming, too.”

  Samantha’s attention snapped to her. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course. I didn’t drink anything besides sips of champagne for the toasts, hours ago, and my clothes are not too tight.”

  Under Samantha’s direction, Scott, Suzanne, and I helped Jenn to her feet and into the back of the ambulance. Samantha’s partner was hanging an IV bag on a hook above Roger. Samantha pushed at the yards of ruffles in Jenn’s skirt and closed the back door of the ambulance.

  She handed Suzanne the folded blanket that Scott had placed under Jenn’s head. “Wrap yourself in that and ride in front with me.” A furrow between her eyebrows, Samantha told Scott and me, “You two, look after each other, and call if you need us again.”

  In seconds, Samantha and her entourage were gone. The ambulance had been at Little Lake Lodge for about five minutes.

  Its siren masked the siren of an arriving police car until the police car was near us. Instead of the unmarked car he usually drove, Brent had commandeered a cruiser. He must have driven it at speeds rivaling Tom’s.

  Brent shut off the siren and strobes and leaped out of the driver’s seat. He was a big man, about six feet tall and muscular. He didn’t shut the cruiser door, and he wasn’t wearing a coat over his charcoal gray suit. His unbuttoned jacket and dark striped tie flapping, he sprinted to Scott and me. “Are you two okay?”

  We both nodded, but another approaching siren prevented our replies from being audible.

  Misty was at the wheel of the cruiser. A patrolman I’d never seen before rode shotgun.

  As Brent had, Misty and her partner jumped out without closing their doors. The two patrol cops were dressed for the weather, with Fallingbrook Police Department parkas over their uniforms. Unlike Samantha, they wore billed caps similar to the Deputy Donut cap I’d left on the table behind the donut wall, but their hats sported proper badges instead of fuzzy donuts. Misty’s blond hair was tied back in a low ponytail. She and her partner clomped to us in their substantial police-issue boots.

  Misty asked Scott and me if we were okay, and we again said we were. Brent told Misty to talk to the wedding guests who had not yet driven away and then to get Scott’s statement.

  I controlled a smug grin. For once, I didn’t have to be the one to throw Misty and Scott together.

  Brent said he’d take my statement.

  Turning away from Brent, Misty aimed an almost-smug grin at me.

  Ha, I thought. Misty could do all the matchmaking she wanted, but it wasn’t going to work. She knew perfectly well that I was not interested in dating and might never be. She told Scott to stay with her and point out reception guests.

  Misty was almost as tall as Brent, and Scott was even taller. Lips twitching as if he was trying not to smile, Scott gazed down at Misty’s upturned face. “I’m fine, you know.”

  “Stay that way,” she answered, all business. “Let’s go.” They strode off together
toward a cluster of formally dressed and anxious-faced people.

  Brent told Misty’s partner to tape off the lodge’s entrances and then write down the license numbers of the cars in the parking lot. Misty’s partner nodded and opened the trunk of his and Misty’s cruiser.

  Brent turned to me. “I don’t see your donut car, Em. How did you get here?”

  I pointed. “I parked my cruiser in the staff parking lot.”

  He stared toward the tree-rimmed rise. “Another parking lot? You can show it to me after I get your statement.”

  “Do you want to see where Roger was? And my hat?”

  “Hazmat investigators in protective gear will do that. They’ll photograph that saucer from all angles under different lights, so we’ll probably get a good impression, no pun intended, of what you saw. Meanwhile, the EMTs should have taken a sample of the powder with them. It’ll be analyzed in the lab at the hospital.” He took out his notebook and pen. “Did you notice anyone near your donut wall around the time that the saucer appeared underneath your hat?”

  Absentmindedly, I watched Misty’s partner string tape around the peeled tree trunks holding up the roof over the lodge’s main entryway. “Roger’s the only one I specifically noticed, twenty minutes or so before he fell.”

  “Eating anything?”

  “I saw him take a cruller, but I don’t know if he ate it. He’d been drinking. He was belligerent right before midnight while I was talking to Jenn’s—that’s the bride—while I was talking to her ex-boyfriend, Chad. Roger told Chad to leave. Chad didn’t, not right away. I danced with Chad a couple of times, and then Scott cut in, and Chad left the banquet hall. I never saw Chad come back, and he wasn’t among the guests milling around the parking lot after the hotel was evacuated. He seemed nice, but . . .”

  “Did you get Chad’s last name?”

  “No, sorry. Jenn and her half-sister, Suzanne, left the reception about the time Chad did. Unlike Chad, those two did come back, but by the time Jenn returned, it must have been about twenty-five minutes after Roger fell, and several minutes after everyone in the lodge was told to go outside. The ambulance was already here. Suzanne showed up shortly after Jenn did. They both came from, I think, inside.” Pointing at Misty’s partner, the roll of tape over one arm, heading toward the south end of the building, I added, “Jenn came from that direction, and although her gown was strapless, her skin was warm when I touched her arm, so I think she’d been inside only moments before. She could have come from the delivery entrance. Suzanne showed up a couple of minutes after Jenn did, shortly before you arrived.” I pointed at the lodge’s front doors. “Suzanne came from those doors. They lead to the lobby. She said she would have come outside sooner, except she was in the ladies’ room.”