Boston Scream Murder

Book 4: Deputy Donut Mystery

by Ginger Bolton

Genres: Mystery; Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries; Culinary Cozy Mysteries; Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

Halloween in the small town of Fallingbrook, Wisconsin, is the perfect season for Deputy Donut owner Emily Westhill to unmask a killer.
 
October 31 is just around the corner and Emily Westhill’s Boston cream donuts, carved with a scream, have made an indelible impression on local eccentric Rich Royalson. So much so that he’s ordered three dozen, with no screaming faces and twice the fudge frosting, for his seventieth birthday—a special event in more ways than one. It’s to be held on fog-shrouded Lake Fleekom where, twenty years ago, his wife mysteriously drowned.
 
But the next day, when Emily arrives with her Boston cream donuts, she stumbles upon Rich’s corpse. The poor guy wanted a unique birthday bash—just not one to the side of his skull. With a guest list of possible perpetrators left at the scene, Emily soon discovers that the Royalson closet is rattling with skeletons. As the fog thickens, motives mount, and the tricks outnumber the treats, Emily fears that Rich may not be the last one in Fallingbrook to go out screaming.
 
Praise for Jealousy Filled Donuts
 
“Charming . . . Yummy donut recipes round out a whodunit (or is it a whodonut?) sure to please cozy fans.”
—Publishers Weekly
 

Release date: August 25, 2020

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

Even from the kitchen in the back of Deputy Donut, the three of us could hear the man at a table near one of our café’s front windows. “Boston is the best city on earth!” he boomed. “You can get fresh seafood anytime, day or night. And I mean fresh. Not like here in Wisconsin.”

Boston. I had to smile. Tom Westhill, Nina Lapeer, and I were making Boston cream donuts, but Halloween was only five days away, so we were calling them Boston scream donuts. Spreading fudge frosting on one, I mentally defended our town. Fallingbrook wasn’t on an ocean, but the north woods near the Great Lakes had other advantages. I muttered to Nina, “That new customer should try fresh Lake Superior yellow perch. Or whitefish.”

Nina cast a sideways grin down at me. With the rounded tip of a wooden spoon’s handle, she made indentations resembling frightened eyes in the fudge frosting on a Boston scream donut. “Who is he, Emily?” The longest eyelashes I’d ever seen framed her brown eyes. Her spiky dark brown hair was mostly hidden underneath her Deputy Donut hat, a police hat with a fuzzy donut where the badge would be on a real police hat.

“From the sound of things, he’s the Boston Screamer.”

She burst out laughing. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t drinking coffee. I might have spewed it over an entire tray of donuts.”

I looked over the half wall separating the kitchen from the serving and eating counter and the rest of the dining area. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. What did he order?”

Pressing the end of the spoon handle down at an angle to make an oval in the fudge frosting, Nina gave the scared-looking donut a perfect screaming mouth. “Guess.”

“A Boston scream donut?”

Nina jabbed a skewer into the frosting twice, and the screaming face had nostrils. “You got it. Well, he said ‘cream,’ not ‘scream.’ But as you said, he’s screaming”—she made an air quote with her free hand—“about Boston.”

“About seafood in Boston. Does he want us to serve lobster and scrod donuts?”

Manning the deep fryers behind us, Tom chuckled.

Nina deftly used a knife to carve mitten-like hands cradling the sides of the donut’s screaming face. “When I took his order he was telling the other men at the table about duck boat and walking tours of Boston.”

Backlit by one of our two large front windows, the Boston Screamer was barely more than a silhouette. I asked Nina, “Do you think the retired men have recruited him to join them?” The retired men met at that table every weekday morning. They weren’t normally quiet. That morning, they were listening to the Boston Screamer instead of talking.

Nina gently placed the frosted top half of a Boston scream donut onto the filling-coated bottom half. “Do the retired men invite new members to their table?”

I spread filling almost to the edge of the bottom half of another donut. “I don’t know. They came here as a group when Tom and I opened Deputy Donut three years ago, and although other men have sat with them, none have become part of the group.” I raised my knife from the filling I was spreading. “I wonder if the Boston Screamer is Cheryl’s date.”

Nina opened her eyes wider than usual. “Cheryl has a date? I thought she was a confirmed bachelorette, or whatever you call a woman in her sixties who has never married.”

“Cautious. She’s trying one of those dating sites for over-fifties. She plans to meet the man here, where she’ll be surrounded by friends.”

“Isn’t she a little old for him?”

“She’s about sixty-five. How old would you guess he is? You talked to him.”

“Listened.”

“Listened. How old?”

“I can’t tell with old people.”

Behind us, Tom warned her, “Watch it.”

Nina turned toward him. “You’re not old. Policemen retire young, right? Even police chiefs?”

“Thank you.” Tom was sixty-two, but despite the salt-and-pepper hair hidden underneath his donut police hat, he looked younger, and I suspected that he was in much better physical shape than a lot of men thirty years his junior.

Nina pressed a screaming mouth into another fudge-frosted donut top. “You’re welcome. The Boston Screamer could be sixty-five or seventy, but don’t men who register on dating sites specify that they want to date women who are much younger than they are?”

I nudged a tray of filling-covered donut halves toward her. “I don’t know, especially about sites for over-fifties.”

“Have you ever tried a dating site? Like, for your age?”

“Certainly not!” Tom said. “I’m a happily married man.”

“I meant Emily,” Nina said.

“I haven’t.” I had married Tom’s son, Alec, when I was twenty-one. I’d been widowed six years ago when I was twenty-five, about the age Nina was now. I asked her, “How about you? Have you tried matchmaking sites?”

“Yeah, but everyone on them was probably as old as that guy yelling about Boston.” She looked toward the front door again. “Where are Cheryl and the other Knitpickers? It’s after nine.”

I glanced through our office windows toward the driveway leading to the parking lot behind Deputy Donut. My cat, Dep, who had given her full name to our coffee shop, stayed in our office. At the moment, instead of watching the kitchen and dining room through our interior windows, she was perched on the back of the couch and staring toward the parking lot behind the building. “They’re probably outside urging Cheryl to come in.”

While Nina and I had been talking, I’d heard the word “Boston” shouted at least five more times. I told Nina, “It must be time for me to go see if the retired men might need more coffee.”

With a teasing lilt, she accused, “You want to see if the Boston Screamer is good enough for Cheryl. You don’t want her to be hurt.” Although Nina looked all angles, elbows, and spiky hair, she was as softhearted as anyone could be.

I had to smile. “I don’t want any of our customers to be hurt, especially loyal regulars like the Knitpickers.”

Nina warned, “The Boston Screamer is going to call you ‘little lady’ in the first ten seconds of talking to you. He called me that, and no one has described me as little since about kindergarten. Plus, he was sitting down, and I was standing. Looming over him.”

I complained dramatically, “No one has ever called me tall, and no one is ever likely to.”

“Little and cute can’t be all bad.”

“Thanks.” Smiling, I carried a pot of coffee around the half wall, past the end of the eating and serving counter, and into the dining room.

We had made changes recently. We still had the wide-planked wooden floors and the white walls with their faint peach tint, we still displayed artwork from The Craft Croft on our walls, and we still had our chairs with their seats and backs upholstered in comfy coffee-brown leather, but we had replaced our sliced tree-trunk tables. Tom, his wife, Cindy, who was Alec’s mother, and I had painted the tops of plain round tables to look like donuts. No two tabletops were the same, and they were all cheerful. Glass protected our painted donuts and made cleanups easy. In corners around the room, friendly-looking ghosts and witches lounged on chubby pumpkins and twisty gourds.

The Boston Screamer was dressed as if for a date, in khakis and a white dress shirt. I decided that he must be about Cheryl’s age or older. He was shorter than the other men around the table, and muscular without carrying an extra ounce of fat. He held out his mug for a refill. He didn’t look like a dangerous desperado out to hurt his dates. His nose was well-defined, sharp without being pointy, and his chin was determined and square. His eyes were an extremely pale shade of blue as if they’d been bleached by the sun on boats off the shores of New England.

He asked loudly, “Are you the little lady responsible for this Boston cream donut?”

My smile widened. Nina had been right about the words he would use, but her time estimate had been about eight seconds too long. Refilling his mug, I answered, “Three of us—my partner, our assistant, and I—develop the recipes for our donuts, including the one you’re eating.”

“It’s pretty good,” he said. “Acceptable, actually.”

I managed not to laugh at the backhanded compliment. “Thank you.”

He pointed a finger at me. “If you double the chocolate frosting, your Boston cream donuts will be about perfect. And you need to be more careful. Mine looks like someone stuck their fingers into it.”

“We did that on purpose, with a spoon handle and a skewer, not our fingers. Before you bit into it, there was a face. It’s a Boston scream donut, because Halloween’s coming up.”

He looked down at his plate. “I get it. Very clever. Still, you could charge more for them with that one improvement, thicker frosting. I was a bank manager before I retired, and I know how small businesses can get themselves into trouble by skimping on quantity and substituting gimmicks for quality. There. That’s some free advice for you, little lady.”

I thanked him again.

“And I have to congratulate you and your colleagues on your outfits. The black slacks, white shirts, and white aprons with your logo on them are good branding. Do you know what branding is?”

“Yes.”

He glanced at my head. “The fur donuts on your hats are a little over-the-top.” I grinned, but he didn’t seem to notice that what he’d said could be funny. He went on, “I get it. Deputy Donut. A donut on a deputy’s hat. And even the cat in your logo is wearing one. The tilt to the cat’s hat is a nice touch.”

“Thank you. The donuts on our hats are not real fur.”

“I knew that from the first glance.” He leaned forward and spoke, for once, quietly. “I was told that the people working here would know who Cheryl is.”

The Boston Screamer glanced around our charming and friendly café. “I don’t see anyone resembling Cheryl’s picture.”

I reassured him. “She should be here any minute.”

“Okay, good. Get me another Boston cream donut on a fresh plate for her. Double the chocolate frosting on hers and don’t poke anything into it or make it look like a screaming face. I want to make a good impression.”

This guy was amusing me, but needing to be polite to customers, I managed not to laugh.

“And bring her some of your coffee. What did the young lady who took my order say today’s special was? I want the best premium coffee you can bring me.”

“It’s a blend from Guatemala, a dark roast. The flavor is mellow, but people tell me that the caffeine level is high.”

“Excellent. But don’t bring them until Cheryl gets here. I don’t want the donut to be stale or the coffee to be cold. It’s freshly brewed, right, and hasn’t been sitting around getting scorched and bitter?”

Now I really had to struggle not to laugh. “Right,” I said.

“And you’ll bring me the bill, for both of us.”

“Okay.” I was almost certain that he was too micromanaging for Cheryl.

He asked, “Have you ever been to Boston?”

“Once, when I was twelve, on a summer vacation.”

“Isn’t it a great city?”

“I liked it.”

“You probably don’t remember much about it. You should go back for a visit. You should consider moving there. I worked in Boston the summer I was twenty-three, in a restaurant. Best summer of my life. The seafood! I must have eaten a ton of seafood that summer alone.”

Still uncharacteristically quiet, the other men at his table were watching him as if he were a rare specimen in the New England Aquarium.

The Boston Screamer sipped at his coffee, put it down, and glanced around our dining room again. “This place looks good. Who was your decorator?”

I wasn’t sure that the Boston Screamer could see Tom from where he was sitting, but I pointed toward the kitchen. “The man in the kitchen in the donut hat and I did it ourselves. He’s my business partner.”

“Business partner, as in you and he own this place together?”

“Fifty-fifty. We opened it after Tom retired. He was Fallingbrook’s police chief.”

“Aha. Tom Westhill.” The Boston Screamer nodded, the complacent gesture of a man who knows or knows of everyone in town. “I’ve heard he’s a good man. So that’s why you named it Deputy Donut.”

“It was the cat’s name first.”

The Boston Screamer tightened his lips to a pinched frown. “Health regulations don’t allow cats in public dining areas.”

“She doesn’t go near the food. She stays in our office. Look through the window from the dining area into the office. We made it a kitty playground with ramps, catwalks, kitty staircases, tunnels, and carpeted columns.”

He rose to his feet and gazed toward the rear of the building. “Creative. I like all the windows and your use of foodie colors—coffee and chocolate browns, peaches, apricots, tangerines, butter, and whipped cream.”

This time my smile was genuine. “We did that on purpose, but you’re the first person to comment on it, complete with foodie words. The colors go with the cat, too.” Dep was a torbie, a very special tortoiseshell tabby with rings on her sides that resembled donuts. She was watching us from the back of the café-au-lait couch. She wasn’t puffed up, but she was alert, as if she hadn’t yet decided whether the latest Deputy Donut customer was a friend or a foe. She could be persnickety about which customers I should or should not serve.

The Boston Screamer gave me an approving nod. “And there’s an emergency exit from your office. Where does that go?”

Wondering if he had a particular reason for checking on the location of emergency exits, I answered, “To the parking lot. And there’s another back door, too, from our storeroom. You have to go through the kitchen.”

The Boston Screamer sat down again. “Good. I admire people who plan well. Did you and Chief Westhill design that office?”

“We designed the entire shop. Tom’s wife, who teaches art at Fallingbrook High, helped us paint the tabletops.”

“What about the kitchen? Commercial kitchens can be tricky. Didn’t you hire a professional designer?”

“We designed it ourselves.”

Smoothing the Deputy Donut logo on his paper napkin, he asked, not shouting but not whispering, either, “How would you like to earn extra money on the side?”

I didn’t know where this was heading, but I was glad that the retired men were witnessing the conversation and that I still wore my wedding ring. “We cater, too,” I said quickly. “Donuts and beverages, and we can stack donuts into shapes for cake-like desserts or provide a donut wall.”

“Hmm. I have a party coming up.”

Uh-oh. I was planning a party for friends on Saturday, which was Halloween, after the trick-or-treating. I hoped his party wasn’t that night. I attempted an encouraging smile.

The Boston Screamer didn’t need encouragement. “It’s tomorrow, my seventieth birthday. It’s being catered, but I’d like you to provide three dozen donuts and an urn of this superb coffee, by the time the party starts tomorrow at noon. The donuts shouldn’t be stacked into shapes or anything silly like that. I want double thickness on the chocolate frosting, and no holes in the frosting. Not Boston scream but Boston cream. When your birthday’s only four days before Halloween, you don’t want Halloween decorations upstaging you. But the important part is not my birthday. It’s Boston.”

“Then maybe you’d like tea.”

He pointed a finger at me. “You’re quick. I like that. Think you can be quick enough to make three dozen donuts and deliver them out at Lake Fleekom at eleven fifty-five tomorrow morning? Do you know where Lake Fleekom is?”

“Yes.”

He explained, anyway. “It’s only ten minutes away.”

I glanced toward the kitchen again. All three of us were scheduled to work the next day. “We can do that,” I said.

“Here’s what I also have in mind, in addition to my Boston tea party.” His lips twitched in a fleeting grin. “I have a cottage that I occasionally let renters use. The interior’s outdated, and last week’s tenants damaged it. I need to patch the walls and repaint, and I’d like to renovate the kitchen so that the ladies would love to cook in it. I’m not much for cooking. My late wife did all that, and here it is twenty years later, and I’m still not into cooking. Thank goodness for you folks and your restaurants and takeout.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’ll get contractors in to do the work, but I’d like you to give me some ideas about the latest trends in colors and kitchen design. I do have a few ideas, so you wouldn’t be starting from scratch. For renters to feel at home, I should remove the pictures of my late wife. Also, I’d like to give the whole place an updated New England vibe, make people feel like they’re at a seaside cottage. Meet me there this evening, if you can. Bring Chief Westhill along if it makes you feel safer.”

“This evening’s fine.” I did not want to go alone to a strange man’s cottage, but Tom worked long hours and enjoyed spending at least some time at home with Cindy. I asked, “How about if our assistant, Nina Lapeer, comes along instead of Tom? She’s an artist.”

“The young lady who served me when I first came in? Did she help you paint these donut tables? They’re very well executed.”

“Thank you. We did that before we met her.”

“That’s okay, anyway. Bring Nina along. An artist, you say?” He didn’t seem to require an answer. “I’ve heard from my banking clients how that goes. It doesn’t pay, and she has to do jobs like waitressing to buy supplies and make ends meet. But I can tell by the way she uses makeup to show off those cheekbones and the planes of her face that she has artistic talent. After all my years as an executive, I can spot the ones who might expend enough effort to succeed.”

I pointed to the largest painting in the room, a jumble of sailboats, rowboats, and canoes in an impressionistic style, seen from above, all in moody tones of indigo and blue. “She painted that one.”

Sipping coffee, he gazed at it. “Is she represented by a gallery?”

“The Craft Croft.”

“I know the place.” He pointed south. “It’s a few blocks that way, down Wisconsin Street. Tell Nina she needs to aim higher than artisans’ co-ops. She should try for galleries in larger cities.”

Pleased at his compliments for Nina, I ignored the slight to The Craft Croft and to Fallingbrook, which was big compared to nearby towns and villages. “I think that’s what she hopes to do. She’s good, isn’t she?”

“Very. And I know a little bit about art. She shouldn’t be wasting her time here.”

Fortunately, I didn’t need to find a diplomatic answer to that. The Knitpickers were outside the front door, surrounding a woman as if persuading her to come inside.

At first, I didn’t recognize Cheryl. Last I knew, her curls had been white. Now they were shades of sun-kissed sand. One of Cheryl’s friends opened the door. “Cheryl’s coming in,” I told the Boston Screamer. “I’ll introduce her to you.”

He stood up. “I’ll move to another table. Excuse me, gentlemen. I enjoyed our talk.”

That was no wonder.

Taking his mug and plate, he moved farther back to a table for two. I went to the front door and welcomed the Knitpickers.

Although never having had children, let alone grandchildren, Cheryl reminded me of a grandmother. She had a way of beaming when she smiled, even though her biggest smiles often caused her round, rosy cheeks to nearly hide her eyes. Today, not only had she dyed her curls light brown with blond highlights, she was wearing a new outfit—gray slacks, a floral blouse, and a purple cardigan that matched the flowers on the blouse and the frames of her glasses, which I’d also never seen before.

She seemed to be trying to appear brave. However, looking into her blue eyes, I was certain that she was nervous. The entire effect—hair color, new outfit, apprehensive expression—made her look younger than usual.

I extended a hand toward her. “Cheryl, come with me. There’s someone here who wants to meet you.”

Cheryl’s friends settled themselves at their usual table near the retired men. The Knitpickers weren’t paying a lot of attention to the retired men or to the knitting they were pulling out of bags and baskets. They were watching Cheryl.

I led her to the table where the Boston Screamer was standing behind the chair across from his. He pulled out the chair.

“This is Cheryl,” I told him. Not knowing his name, and not about to introduce him as the Boston Screamer, I let him introduce himself.

“I’m Richmond P. Royalson the Third,” he informed her. “Call me Rich.” Emphasizing the shortened form of his first name, he flashed an expensive-looking gold wristwatch. “Have a seat, Cheryl. I’ve ordered for you.”

I gave Cheryl a reassuring smile. “I’ll get your coffee and donut.”

In the kitchen, Tom and Nina were watching old-fashioned unraised donuts dancing among golden bubbles. Although Rich was conventionally handsome, I preferred Tom’s sturdy good looks. I said just loudly enough for him and Nina to hear, “The Boston Screamer’s name is Richmond P. Royalson the Third, call me Rich. Does that ring a bell?”

Nina shook her head.

Tom lifted the basket of donuts out of the oil and spoke quietly. “About twenty years ago, his wife drowned in Lake Fleekom.”

Nina and I moved closer to Tom.

He hung the basket on the side of the fryer to drain. “I was a patrol cop and not involved with the investigation, but I remember it.” He lowered another basket into the oil. “That fall was colder than this one, and the lake was slushy. She overturned her canoe. There were no witnesses. She was supposedly a good swimmer, but she was wearing heavy clothing and boots. Between hypothermia and waterlogged clothing, she didn’t make it to shore. The last I knew, Royalson was the manager of the Fallingbrook Mercantile Bank. I never met the man.”

Nina tilted her head. “I would have thought that bank managers and police chiefs would, I don’t know, hang out together or join the same men’s clubs.”

“Not this police chief,” Tom stated emphatically. “I prefer being home with my wife and my woodworking toys. I mean tools.”

Near the front of the dining area, Cheryl smiled stonily at the widower waving his arms and shouting words like “Boston,” “New England,” and “lobster.” I told Tom and Nina, “He wants a Boston cream donut for Cheryl, not a Boston scream do. . .