Every morning, the aromas in the Deputy Donut kitchen were enticing, and the morning of July Fourth was no different. I smelled coffee, yeast dough, cinnamon, nutmeg, and the two types of jelly we’d just opened—raspberry and blueberry.
I was in the midst of an argument.
Well, sort of. Making a very stern face, I settled my Deputy Donut hat firmly on my rowdy curls. “It’s perfectly fair, Tom,” I informed my father-in-law. “I won the coin toss, and I’m driving our donut car in the parade this morning.” Unfortunately, the hat did not quite give me the authority of a real police hat, maybe because of the fuzzy white donut glued in front where the badge should be.
Tom was also trying to look serious, a difficult task considering that his dark brown eyes were twinkling and his Deputy Donut hat was jammed crookedly on his salt-and-pepper hair. “Emily,” he warned, “I’m the police chief.”
“Retired,” I reminded him. “And our donut car police cruiser is from 1950, way before you were a rookie cop.”
“All the more reason for me to drive it. You’re barely over thirty.”
“And a half. When you were my age, you drove real police cars with real sirens and real flashing lights. It’s only fair for me to drive our pretend cruiser this morning while you and Jocelyn keep making Fourth of July donuts.”
Tom grinned at our new assistant. “Never expect to win an argument with Emily.”
Jocelyn’s dazzling smile included both of us. “With either of you.”
The athletic nineteen-year-old was dressed like Tom and I were, in knee-length black shorts, white polo shirt, Deputy Donut apron, and donut-trimmed “police” hat. Like me, she had dark hair, but she pinned hers, which was long and straight, into a bun she wore low to accommodate the cap. Her eyes were almost black, not blue like mine.
Pasting on a fake glower, Tom shook his index finger at me. “Someday, I’m going to drive that car.”
I frowned and wagged my finger right back at him. “How about next Fourth of July?”
Off to my side, something whirred and clicked.
Jocelyn glanced past me. Her smile disappeared, leaving her face blank and unreadable. She twirled on one toe and glided out of the kitchen and into our storeroom, out of sight of Tom and of me. And also out of sight of everyone in our dining room.
I turned toward the sounds I’d heard.
A man on the other side of our serving counter lowered a camera from his face. Like nearly everyone else besides Jocelyn, he was taller than I was, maybe about five ten, but his slight stoop made him appear shorter. He seemed too thin for his faded jeans, khaki photographer’s vest, and formerly white T-shirt that must have been washed with the dark clothes. Everything about his face seemed droopy—skin, eyes, mouth. Wrinkles bracketed his mouth. He looked about forty but could have been thirty.
I asked him, “What would you like? In honor of the Fourth of July, our special coffee today is one of the few coffees grown in the U.S., Ka’u from Hawaii. Like all Hawaiian coffees, it’s mellow and flavorful.”
Still holding his camera near one shoulder, the man gave me a long, silent, and disapproving look. Without a word, he turned around and walked quickly but quietly out of the café.
That was odd.
Jocelyn’s abrupt departure a few moments before was even odder. I traded concerned glances with Tom and then looked for her in the storeroom.
I found her poking at slotted spoons hanging from hooks. “Do you know that man?” I asked.
She didn’t turn to face me. “No.”
“He left.”
“I was just checking on things.” Her voice was small, like she didn’t believe her own words.
“Is anything wrong?”
“No.” Then, more forcefully, “No.” Without turning those dark eyes toward me, she retreated toward the bins of flour. “We have plenty of flour.” She sounded more like her cheerful self, but she didn’t fool me. Something about the man with the camera had alarmed her. Jocelyn was a world-class gymnast. She should have been used to photographers. Maybe she was, and maybe she was also sick of them. A semblance of her smile returned. “It’s nearly nine. If you don’t get out there, Tom might take the car and drive it in the parade.” She skipped back into the kitchen.
Obviously, she didn’t want me pestering her with questions. Pondering what had just happened or not happened, I chose a clean apron from the shelf and tied it on. Our logo, the black silhouette of a cat wearing a rakishly tilted Deputy Donut hat, was on the bib.
In the kitchen, Tom was frying donuts, and Jocelyn was mixing frosting. “See you later!” I called.
Greeting customers, I walked through the rear section of our dining area. Bright morning sunlight poured in through the front windows and gleamed on the red, white, and blue bunting that we’d draped around our pale peach walls. We’d also put red, white, and blue napkins on our glossy sliced tree trunk tabletops. The entire shop felt festive.
I closed myself into our office. My cat, who had been named Deputy Donut before we’d borrowed the name for our donut shop, was curled on the couch with her tail covering her nose. She stood up and stretched, showing off her ginger, cream, and black tabby stripes and the donut-like circles on her sides. She came to work with me every day, but health regulations didn’t allow her in the kitchen or dining area, so she stayed in our office.
Tom and I had designed that room to be much more than an office.
Dep could scramble up carpeted pillars, ramps, and kitty-width staircases to get to and from tunnels and catwalks that Tom and I had built near the ceiling. All four sides of the office had large windows. When Dep wasn’t dozing or cavorting around in her indoor gym, she could sit on wide windowsills and peer into the kitchen, the dining area, the parking lot behind our building, or the driveway leading to the parking lot.
Having thoroughly stretched, she leaped to the back of the couch and stared up into my eyes. “Meow!”
I kissed the orange-striped patch on her forehead. “I’m going out without you, but Tom and Jocelyn will cater to your every need. Meow at the window into the kitchen if you want attention.” She didn’t need the advice. I added, “I’ll be back after the parade.”
She jumped down, turned away from me, and settled into the couch’s comfy cushions. I seemed to be garnering a lot of disapproval, first from that photographer and now from my cat, not that she ever approved of my going anywhere without her.
After making certain that the office door was locked from the outside, I went to the rear of the parking lot and backed our donut car out of the garage. The car was a meticulously restored four-door Ford. The name of the model was actually Fordor, and there’d been a two-door version which the Ford Motor Company had cutely named the Tudor. Our Fordor was painted like a police car, black with white doors and roof. We had stencilled the Deputy Donut logo on the front doors.
I loved the Ford’s authentic details, like the large-circumference steering wheel with the gearshift on the steering column, the windows that had to be cranked open and closed, and the two-piece windshield, divided down the middle by a chrome strip. I was particularly fond of a feature that was definitely not vintage. We’d added a giant plastic donut, which lay flat on the car’s roof. White plastic frosting with multicolored sprinkles imbedded in it dripped down the sides of the donut. The sprinkles were lights that could be programmed to dance, either to the music we broadcast through the megaphone-shaped speaker in front of the donut or to preset patterns. None of the lighting displays resembled the strobe lights on actual police cruisers, but they made people smile.
Following over a hundred years of Fallingbrook tradition, Fourth of July parade participants were supposed to assemble far from downtown, at Fallingbrook Falls. I didn’t have time to drive out to County Road G and take the scenic route. I drove quickly south on Wisconsin Street and then turned onto a tree-lined country road.
I kept worrying about that photographer in Deputy Donut. Did he frighten Jocelyn or merely surprise and annoy her? I couldn’t believe she was shy about having her picture taken. She was often featured in local papers.
Feeling responsible for the girl’s safety and comfort when she was working at Deputy Donut, and wondering if Tom and I could gain her trust enough for her to tell us if she was upset, I pulled into the parking lot near the base of Fallingbrook Falls.
I couldn’t actually see the falls, but I could hear them. I had climbed all of the trails around the falls many times, and I knew how beautiful the roaring sheet of water, the rocky cliffs, and the trees dewy with spray were.
Carrying clipboards and wearing fluorescent green safety vests crisscrossed by orange and silver Xs, teens directed me to position my car out on the road facing town. My friend Misty Ossler was behind the wheel of a real police cruiser at the beginning of the lineup. A big red fire truck was second. I parked behind the fire truck, rolled my driver’s window all the way down, and got out.
Breezes teased leaves in the trees shading the road. I leaned against the donut car’s broad front fender and listened to the distant rush of water. Farther down the line of vehicles, people wearing kilts were trying out bagpipes.
No one had actually marched the entire route from Fallingbrook Falls to downtown Fallingbrook since about the time our donut car was made. These days, parade participants got in line at the falls, drove quickly to downtown Fallingbrook’s outskirts, and then slowed to a normal parade speed. When I was a kid, some of the groups clambered out of their vehicles at that point and marched the rest of the way, but for the past ten or so years, the parade participants simply stayed in their vehicles or on their floats.
It was nearly time to start. Members of the bagpipe band and the Fallingbrook High Marching Band climbed aboard their floats. The high school kids had labeled theirs FALLINGBROOK HIGH FLOATING BAND.
I straightened my donut hat and smoothed my apron. Where were my passengers? They had to be among the people milling around on the road.
Fallingbrook always elected a court to reign over the Fallingbrook Fabulous Fourth Festivities—a queen, a king, a duchess, and a duke. We knew that celebrating Independence Day with a mini-monarchy was a little strange, but we always pointed out that our monarchy was democratically elected and reigned for only a year. The members of our local royalty were always just barely out of their teens. None of it made having a royal court less odd, but we proudly celebrated the holiday the way Fallingbrook always had, except for marching long distances on hot and sunny days.
This year’s king and queen were supposed to ride in the rear seat of the Deputy Donut car.
A girl with a clipboard and a megaphone herded two men and a woman toward me, and I figured out which man must be this year’s king. He was one of those tall, chisel-featured, dark-haired, dark-eyed men who, with those bagpipes squalling nearby, would not have looked out of place in a kilt and no shirt. Instead, he wore an open-necked white dress shirt tucked into tight jeans. He had loafers on his feet, and no socks. He looked a little sheepish about the jewel-encrusted gold crown that he could not quite hide behind one muscular thigh.
Beside him, a similarly young woman in a slinky white gown and a red, white, and blue striped faux-fur cape was hectoring him to put on the crown. She was probably about as short as I was, but her heels made her almost three inches taller. Most of her gleaming brown hair was pinned behind a sparkly red, white, and blue tiara. Tendrils of hair curled artfully around her ears and neck. Her nose and chin were both narrow considering the roundness of her face and her doe-like brown eyes. “I’ll crown you!” she told the king in a playfully threatening tone. The heels were bright red. The cape was short, barely bigger than a collar, but even in the shade, it looked like overkill on the rapidly warming day.
I opened the door behind the driver’s seat, swept a curtsy, grabbed my hat before it could land on the pavement, and announced, “Your Majesties, your coach is ready.”
The king shook his handsome head without disturbing one hair on it. “The queen’s not here.”
The woman in the red, white, and blue faux-fur capelet gave him a coy smile. “I’ll be queen and ride in her place.”
The second man, another handsome and very young twentysomething, glared at her. “No, you won’t.” He had to be this year’s duke. The crown on his head was only silver.
The woman in the tiara dimpled up at him. “Chill. I was only teasing.”
“And you’re only the duchess.” How had he been elected duke? Usually, personality helped win votes in the Fallingbrook Fabulous Fourth Festivities elections. To be fair, though, this man’s looks went a long way toward making up for his lack of congeniality. He was not quite as tall as the king, but he was every bit as noticeable with his white-blond hair and amazing tan. His woolly black suit probably wasn’t helping his mood.
“So?” the duchess demanded. “You’re only the duke.” Wearing faux fur around her neck probably wasn’t helping her mood, either.
The king tapped that bejeweled gold crown against his leg, shifted from foot to foot as if fuzzy caterpillars were checking out his bare ankles, and kept glancing toward town.
We were supposed to pull out at nine thirty. Nine thirty came and went. Nine thirty-five. Beyond the parking lot, the falls continued their subdued roaring.
Closer, bagpipes, trumpets, and tubas continued their unsubdued warm-ups.
Nine forty. The queen did not arrive.
The duchess inched a phone out of her evening bag. “I’ll call her. She’s my best friend.”
The duke rolled his eyes and tapped the screen of his phone.
The king glared at the duke.
Neither the duchess nor the duke got an answer.
Tucking her phone away, the duchess turned to me. “You should go find her and bring her back. She works at Freeze.”
Freeze was my favorite ice cream shop. It was a little surprising that no one there had told me that a fellow employee had been elected this year’s queen. Even stranger, Jocelyn had worked at Freeze until we hired her only a week before the Fourth, and even though Jocelyn must have heard me mention that the king and queen were riding in my car, she hadn’t said that the queen was one of her ex-coworkers.
The duke scowled at the duchess. “She’s only fifteen minutes late.”
The duchess squinched her mouth to about the size of a raisin. “Just trying to be helpful. And it’s more like twenty minutes.”
The girl with the megaphone turned a pair of puppy-like and hopeful liquid brown eyes on me. “Would you, please? I . . . don’t have my license yet.” She blushed. She couldn’t have been much over sixteen, if that.
“Sure.” I gave her my phone number. “Call if she shows up?”
I pulled out of line. Waving, I zoomed past the fire truck and the police cruiser. I drove as quickly as was safe all the way to downtown Fallingbrook and I parked beside Freeze. Inside, the shop smelled like especially good chocolate and vanilla.
Kelsey, a clerk I recognized from my frequent visits, was behind the counter. She was younger than I was, and quite pretty with her hazel eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks. A strand of auburn hair escaped from underneath her frilled pink paper cap. She was barely taller than I was. With a welcoming smile, she asked what I’d like to buy.
“Everything, but I can’t right now. I’m looking for . . . you, maybe? Are you today’s queen of the Fabulous Fourth Festivities?”
“That’s Taylor Wishbard, but she won’t be in today. She has the day off. She’s going to be in the parade this morning. Maybe you can catch her when the parade arrives at the village square. She gets to sit in the reviewing stand.”
“She was supposed to be at the parade-marshaling grounds at nine thirty and ride in my car, but she wasn’t there.”
Kelsey glanced toward the closed kitchen door, and then looked back at me. “I thought that if she would ever be on time for anything, it would be this Fourth of July stuff. It’s a big deal.”
The middle-aged woman who owned Freeze and told everyone to call her Mama Freeze backed into the swinging door from the kitchen. She turned to face us. Like Kelsey, she wore a cute apron, pink and white striped with ruffles around the edges. She was carrying a cardboard barrel of ice cream. “What’s a big deal?”
Kelsey gave her a bright smile. “Taylor being queen today.”
Mama Freeze set the cardboard barrel on the counter. “Brrr! Yes, Taylor deserves this honor. She’s gorgeous, for one thing, and she works so hard here. We’re very proud of her, aren’t we, Kelsey?”
“We sure are!”
My phone rang. “The queen’s here,” a girl said over the phone. “Can you come right back?”
I promised to be there as soon as I could, told Kelsey and Mama Freeze that Taylor had been located, and tore out of Freeze.
Concerned about further delaying the parade’s start, I exceeded a few speed limits on my way back to the falls. I parked in the spot I’d left, behind the fire truck and in front of a long, low maroon and silver 1970s sedan. I got out of my car.
The girl with the clipboard and megaphone escorted a tall young woman in a curve-hugging white gown toward me. Queen Taylor could barely wobble in her very high white satin heels. Waves of blond hair cascaded over her bare shoulders. Dramatically, she placed a bling-studded gold crown on her head. Her crown, along with the shoes, made her almost as tall as the king. With a coy smile, she placed a hand lightly on his arm.
His handsome face remained impassive, and he didn’t turn his head toward her. He still wasn’t wearing his crown.
I again opened the door to the seat behind mine. I rolled down the window in that door and pushed the cute little side vent window open.
Looking panicked, the girl escorting Taylor lifted her megaphone to her lips. “Everyone, get into place!”
Taylor let go of the king, grabbed the girl’s megaphone, and shouted into it, “Sorry I’m late, everyone! The hairdresser that my bestie, the duchess, recommended was an absolute disaster!” She separated the word into three separate syllables with pauses between them. “I had to go to a different salon!” One arm outstretched, she waved toward the crowd, the road, the woods across the road, and the waiting vehicles and floats. “Don’t ever get your hair done at Felicia’s,” she blasted at full volume. “She was so jealous of my hair that she tried to make it as ugly as hers.”
Felicia? When my parents were in the area, staying in the campground beyond the trees across the road from where I’d parked my car, Felicia was my mother’s hairdresser.
Taylor shoved the megaphone toward the girl, who nearly dropped it.
Other teens with clipboards shooed the duke and duchess toward the 1970s sedan.
The girl with the megaphone pointed Taylor and her king toward my car.
Taylor balked. “I’m not riding in that thing.”
That thing? Our beautiful 1950 Ford? I felt my eyes open wide.
Blushing, the teenager with the megaphone whispered, “It’s all planned.” The poor girl probably wasn’t used to standing up to a queen.
Taylor grabbed the megaphone again and announced, “I’m not riding in a clown car with a ridiculous donut on top.”
I felt my eyes open even wider, but I didn’t mind taking some of the pressure off the flustered teen. I smiled and said quietly, “It’s a police car.”
Taylor spoke into the megaphone again. “This lady says it’s a police car. I’m not riding in any police car. People will think I’ve been arrested.”
The girl whose megaphone had again been co-opted didn’t look any happier. My smile became a little strange, going from grin to grimace to grumpy.
And that was just marvelous—the photographer who had been in Deputy Donut earlier that morning had wedged himself between a couple of the teens in safety vests, and he was aiming his camera in my direction. His long lens was the kind that could pick out every single wrinkle deepening between my eyebrows.
My slighted donut car was about seventy years beyond being capable of serving as a police car, and I had it on good authority that it had never been one. I opened my mouth. And closed it.
“Besides,” Taylor shouted into the megaphone, “I’d get sick in the back of an old car like that!”
I tried another smile, undoubtedly not a very believable one. “Would you like to ride in front with me?” The king could squeeze between us on the wide front seat.
Taylor stomped one of her white satin heels. “No, I would not.”
The duke stepped forward. “Would you like to ride in the vintage car we were assigned?”
Taylor cast a disdainful look at the maroon and silver 1970s sedan. “Old cars stink. Just looking at it makes me queasy. Besides, it’s not a convertible.” She pointed toward the parking lot. “I was forced to leave my convertible way over there. Why don’t you drive my convertible, Nicholas?” She simpered up at the duke and then tilted the side of her head toward the king. “And he and I will ride in it?” She flapped a hand toward her bestie, the duchess. “She can ride in the clown police car.”
Queen Taylor was so over-the-top that I almost laughed. What are friends for?
Luckily, some of us did have kind and helpful friends. Misty had been quietly watching the drama. She went to the girl who was attempting to retrieve her megaphone from Taylor and asked, “How about if I drive this lady’s convertible, and she and the king can ride in it?” She waved a hand toward the front of the line. “My partner will drive our cruiser.” Misty was as tall as Taylor but, with her genuine smile, much more beautiful, even th. . .
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