DEAL BAKER

RAISED AND GLAZED COZY MYSTERIES, BOOK 22

EMMA AINSLEY

SUMMER PRESCOTT BOOKS PUBLISHING

Copyright 2022 Summer Prescott Books

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication nor any of the information herein may be quoted from, nor reproduced, in any form, including but not limited to: printing, scanning, photocopying, or any other printed, digital, or audio formats, without prior express written consent of the copyright holder.

**This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons, living or dead, places of business, or situations past or present, is completely unintentional.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Also by Emma Ainsley

Author’s Note

Contact Summer Prescott Books Publishing

CHAPTER ONE

Maggie Sharpe leaned back and gazed up at the setting sun. She rested after an impromptu picnic of leftover boxed lunches and cinnamon rolls from the donut shop for dessert. She could feel the warmth of the man she leaned against. Brett Mission sipped the last of his cold apple cider, also from Maggie’s donut shop.

The suggestion for a lakeside picnic came from the county sheriff himself. Brett had taken to suggesting plenty of last minute, unusual destinations for extra time together. Maggie was more than happy to go along and had even suggested a few herself. She was grateful for the nice, unrushed relationship that formed between them.

Her son Bradley and grandson Wyatt made an appearance in his plans from time to time, and Maggie was doubly grateful for his inclusion of her family. She tried to do the same whenever any of his three daughters came to town, although Layla was the only one they saw regularly.

Owning two donut shops in the Ozark Mountain region of far south central Missouri left her little time to deal with drama, and there was little drama with Brett.

She understood when work called him away, and he returned the favor on the rare times it happened to her. The thought passed through her head just as her phone rang. She picked it up and closed her eyes before she answered.

“I just jinxed myself,” she said as she answered it. “Hello?”

“Maggie, I am so sorry to bother you right now,” Naomi Gardner, one of her best employees, said over the phone. “But Myra is busy with Lexi, and I can’t reach Ruby.”

“It’s perfectly fine, Naomi,” Maggie said. “What’s the trouble?”

“Well, it’s this guy here delivering food for the donut shop. He says we ordered twenty-two cases of apple pie filling, but our copy of the invoice from the distributor shows thirty-eight,” Naomi explained. “Same thing with about five more items. We show a higher amount, and his invoice shows less, but they both show the same total.”

“What is he telling you?” Maggie asked. She sat up fully and listened.

“That’s the reason I am calling you,” Naomi said quietly. Maggie was sure she had huddled into the office to prevent the man from hearing her. “His invoice looks doctored up. It looks like someone is trying to get away with some monkey business right now. But he says it isn’t his problem and that he’s just here to deliver our order so he can move on to the next destination.”

“Did you ask him if you could look inside his truck to make sure?” Maggie asked.

“I tried,” Naomi said. “He was adamant that I do not take a single step toward that truck. I think he might have physically prevented it if I would have tried any harder.

“That doesn’t sound right,” Maggie said. She sighed and looked up at Brett. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“I’m sorry,” Naomi said again. “I know you two were having a romantic date out there by the lake.”

“We still had a romantic date by the lake,” Brett shouted into the phone.

“It’s okay,” Maggie said. “You did the right thing by calling. Give me a second to get back to my car and then I’ll be there.” She hung up her phone and turned to Brett. “I guess you heard that.”

He nodded. “Do you need me to come along?” he asked her.

Maggie shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s not really a police matter, but I’ll let you know if that changes, of course.”

“Then, you go,” Brett said. “I’ll clean up here and return the blanket to your house a little later.” Maggie had pulled the bedspread off the bed in her spare room to use but knew if they were going to keep up with the picnic dates, it would be wise to invest in something better. He leaned in and said goodbye in such a way that had her feeling warm all the way back into town and to the donut shop.

Maggie pulled around the side of the building and parked her car on the corner. The large box truck filled the other side of the alley almost entirely. She shoved her cell phone into her pocket and approached the back door. She caught Naomi’s eye and pressed her finger to her lips. She slipped inside the back of the donut shop and headed straight for her office where she printed off an inventory list straight from the distribution’s own website. With the order in her hands, she returned to the kitchen area and met the unfamiliar driver at the door.

“Where did you come from?” he demanded when she appeared.

“How about you tell me what’s going on with my order?” she asked, ignoring him.

“Your order?” The man sneered a little. He was just an inch or two taller than she was and easily a hundred pounds heavier. Maggie thought all he needed was the blunt end of a cigar in his mouth to fill every 1970s typecast of an angry truck driver. “Who are you, the baker? I’ll tell ya, you bakers really act like things belong to you.”

Maggie shook her head. “I hate to disappoint, but I’m not the baker.” She smiled. “Just the owner. And your invoice had better look just like mine because this one came from the company’s website ten seconds ago.”

“Where do you think this one came from, lady?” He waved the paper in front of her face. “This is the only invoice that matters.”

Maggie stepped closer and grabbed the invoice from his hand. “Not true,” she said. “Not true at all.” She turned her body away from him and straightened the paper out in her hand. “I wonder, why does your invoice look like someone marked through it with correction tape? Because my invoice and the inventory order both clearly say thirty-eight cases of apple pie filling, and yours somehow says only twenty-two.”

She held the invoice out and glared at the driver.

“Sounds like you better call my bosses, lady,” he said and snatched it back from her. “Keep it up and I’m leaving here with everything that’s still on the truck. Or, better yet, I wait here and let you two unload it all. I’d like to see that one!”

“You better knock it off,” Naomi said. She stuck her finger in the man’s face. “You want a visit from the county sheriff, buddy? Because she dates him, and he will be here in less than a minute.”

“There isn’t any need for threats,” the man said.

“What’s your name?” Maggie asked him.

“What’s it to you?” he scoffed.

“I want to know who you are so I can refer to you by name when I call your boss. You just said that I need to call your bosses to straighten all of this out, didn’t you?”

“Fine. It’s Clarkson,” he said.

“Help me,” a voice called from behind the truck. Maggie and the truck driver exchanged glances. “Help!” Naomi followed Maggie around the large truck to the other side of the alley. At first, she couldn’t see anyone. She looked around for the source of the cries for help.

“Where was that coming from?” Naomi asked her. She walked toward the road at the end of the alley and tried to find where the voice was coming from.

“I know I heard a man’s voice,” Maggie said. She followed Naomi to the end of the street.

“Hey, lady,” the driver shouted at her. “Are we going to get this show on the road or what?”

“Just a minute,” Maggie said. She walked back toward the middle of the alley.

“Help,” the voice called again, although considerably weaker.

This time, Maggie heard the voice coming from the back part of the alley lined with evergreens. She dropped down to her knees when she spotted a man lying between the trunks of two trees. His feet stuck out slightly but the rest of him was nearly concealed.

“Naomi!” she yelled. “Call 9-1-1!”

Maggie crouched down next to the tree just inches from the man. “Help is on the way,” she said. “What happened to you?”

The man groaned and closed his eyes. Maggie strained to see his face. The sun was almost completely gone, and the trees blocked out any light from overhead. In the dim light she could see a plaid button up shirt and a pair of dark colored pants. She placed her hand on his chest to see if he was breathing. Her hand rested in a warm, sticky liquid and she pulled it back quickly.

“Naomi,” Maggie said calmly.

“Yeah, what do you need?” Naomi asked.

“I need you to run to the kitchen and grab a handful of clean towels,” she said. “And a flashlight, if you can find one quickly.”

“What’s wrong?” Naomi asked.

“Just please hurry,” she said. “I think this man is bleeding to death.”

CHAPTER TWO

Naomi returned quickly with the towels. She also carried one of the wall-mounted battery powered lights from the utility closet in the donut shop. She tapped the top and knelt down on the other side of the man while Maggie pulled up his shirt.

“I brought this instead. I thought it would work better than one of us trying to hold our phone. And I called Brett,” Naomi added quietly as she positioned the light just inches over the man’s abdomen.

Maggie tried first to raise the shirt by the bottom but gave up and unbuttoned it from the top. She could see the dark red stain of the blood under the light. “Pass me one of those towels, please,” she whispered. Naomi handed a clean towel to her. And Maggie pressed it into the man’s chest.

The man groaned again and moved his head. His eyes fluttered open. “Help,” he whispered.

“It’s on the way,” Maggie said. She tried to smile. She raised her head slightly and listened for the sound of an approaching siren but heard nothing. “I’m so sorry if this hurts you.”

“Maggie,” Naomi said. She nodded down at the man’s chest and shone the light closer. Maggie looked a little closer to him and closed her eyes. “You better call Brooks, too.”

The man exhaled slowly. Maggie shook him by the shoulder, scared he had already passed away, but the man roused again and opened his eyes. “What happened to you?” Maggie asked. “Who did this?”

The man whispered something she could not hear at first. Maggie leaned in closer without taking her hand off of the cloth on his chest. “What did you say?”

“Preston Nance,” the man said. Maggie looked up suddenly at Naomi.

“Are you looking for Preston Nance?” she asked.

The man’s head shook slightly. “Stabbed,” he whispered.

“You were stabbed?”

The man’s head bobbed slightly. He exhaled deeply again, and his eyes closed. After what felt like forever, Maggie heard the wail of the sirens in the distance. She motioned for Naomi to take over holding the towel on the man’s chest and stood up to wave the ambulance over. She looked down the alley and noticed that the food delivery truck had left at some point. Brett’s car appeared on the other end of the alley, followed by a Dogwood Mountain Police Department squad car. Brooks Macklin, Chief of Police, stepped out of the car and followed Brett to the scene.

Two paramedics attended to the man between the trees, relieving Naomi and Maggie. The pair walked toward Brett and Brooks, Maggie straight to Brett’s arms.

“Where did the driver go?” Naomi asked her when they reached the back door of the donut shop.

Maggie shrugged. She released herself from Brett’s arms and sighed. “I looked up around the time we heard the sirens and noticed he had left.”

“Did he leave us anything?” Naomi asked.

Maggie peeked inside the kitchen and shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “That’s another phone call I’m going to have to make.” She turned back to Brett. “We were both here on the other side of the delivery truck when we heard someone calling for help.”

“We couldn’t see anyone at first,” Naomi said. “So, we went around the front of the truck and started checking out that end of the alley.”

“Is that when you found him?” Brooks asked, nodding toward the man on the ground.

“No,” Maggie said. “We looked all the way down the alley until we finally figured out where he was.”

“Did he say anything to you?” Brett asked. His eyes were fixed on the other end of the alley. Maggie turned in time to see the paramedics pulling the man onto a gurney. Slowly they pulled the blanket up over his abdomen and chest and began to wheel the cart toward the waiting ambulance.

Maggie turned back and covered her face with her hands. She didn’t cry but rubbed her face and shook her head. “Yeah, he said Preston Nance.”

“He also said the word ‘stabbed,’” Naomi added.

“He said Preston’s name?” Brooks asked. “Are you absolutely sure that’s what he said?”

Maggie nodded. “That’s what I heard him say,” she said. “Quite clearly.”

“I heard it, too,” Naomi agreed. “I heard it plainly.”

“Okay, I’ll call this one in,” Brooks said. He stepped away from the others and Brett followed closely.

Naomi stood close to Maggie and whispered. “Do you think Preston Nance did this? We both know he isn’t the most personable fellow.” Naomi had rented from the man for several months and had formed an opinion of him. He’d moved quietly to town, buying up property by the handful when he did. Like Naomi, Maggie was not a fan of the rude and belittling man. And now she wondered if the mysterious victim in the alley had just named him as his attacker.

They waited together while the ambulance completed the work of loading up the gurney and heading off to the hospital. She shuddered when they pulled out of the alley and the sirens wailed again. Brett and Brooks conversed together at the back door of the donut shop. A moment later, Brett approached the two of them.

“I know it’s getting late, but we need the two of you to head on over to the police department where you can give an official statement about what you saw and heard,” he said.

Naomi drove herself to the police station while Maggie rode along in Brett’s car. Her car remained parked in the alley where she had left it when she arrived. He said little to her while they drove the short distance, which she expected given the fact that she was supposed to give an official statement about the man in the alley when they arrived.

Maggie followed Brett and Brooks into the station and waited with Naomi while the officer readied a room for her to give her official statement. She included everything, especially the words the man spoke to her while she tried to stop the bleeding in his chest.

When she emerged from the small office a little while later, Brett was waiting for her by the door. “I’m going to take you back to your car and follow you home,” he announced. “Naomi left a few moments ago. She said she would see you in the morning at the donut shop.”

“Why are you following me home?” Maggie asked when she climbed into his car and buckled her seatbelt.

“I’ll explain it in a little while,” Brett said with a smile. “But first, I want you to tell me about those new donuts Ruby was talking about trying out in the donut shop this week. She mentioned them around the bonfire a couple of nights ago. Something Italian?”

Maggie thought the topic was an odd choice given what they had just done at the police department, but she played along. “Do you mean the lemon and ricotta donut holes she wants to make?”

Brett snapped his fingers. “That’s it,” he said with a wide grin. “Lemon ricotta donut holes.”

“I think she plans to introduce them on the menu tomorrow,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m putting a special request in with my girlfriend to see if she will set aside a dozen or two for me.”

“Of course, I will,” Maggie said. “You only want two dozen?”

“You know, come to think of it.” Brett tapped the steering wheel. “Why don’t you give me about twelve dozen? I’ll pick them up on my way back to the office for everyone to enjoy. I get all kinds of grief now that I’m dating the owner of two donut shops, so I might as well share the wealth.”

“Why do they give you a hard time?” Maggie asked curiously.

“Because they want donuts,” he said and smiled.

CHAPTER THREE

Brett’s reason for following her home was evident when he walked her inside, no longer joking about his hungry employees at the county sheriff’s department or asking her about the newest addition to the donut shop menu. He turned her around and placed his arms around her.

“I got a phone call while you were giving your statement,” he said. “The man in the alley died on the way to the hospital. When they arrived, the doctors were unable to revive or help him. He was just too far gone.”

“Oh, that’s just so sad,” she said and rested her forehead against Brett’s chest. “Did they figure out who the man is? Did he have any identification on him?”

Brett nodded. “They determined that his name is Adam King,” he said. “He was a driver for the same outfit that delivered your food today.”

“Do you think that’s why he chose the alley behind my business to seek help? Maybe he knew one of his coworkers was going to be here. This particular company always delivers later in the day.”

“Maybe. That’s one of the theories we’re working with, but there’s something else.”

“Okay.” Maggie looked up at him and waited for him to speak. Brett released her from his arms and took a seat at the kitchen table.

“When he was examined at the hospital, they found a note in his pocket.”

“A note?” Maggie repeated.

“Yeah, and it had the words ‘Dogwood Mountain Sheriff’ written on one side and ‘Preston Nance’ written on the other,” he said.

“I would venture to say that the next order of business is to pick Preston up and ask him some questions,” Maggie said.

“That and the driver who was there just before you found Adam,” Brett said.

They talked for a little while longer, Brett making sure Maggie was safe before he left. Seconds after, she got into the shower to help rid herself of the horrible experience, and then settled into bed, wishing for a good night’s sleep.

Maggie wandered around the kitchen the next morning feeling like she was missing half of her own head. Naomi appeared to be in a similar funk. She tried to show her enthusiasm when Ruby began to press the ricotta cheese between pieces of cheesecloth to remove excess water. When the heavenly scent of lemon zest filled the kitchen, she smiled and expressed her excitement, but her heart wasn’t really in it.

“You’re not here with us this morning,” Ruby said when Maggie helped her roll the lemon ricotta donut holes in powdered sugar. “I think Naomi is on the same journey with you.”

Maggie sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a wet blanket. It’s just this whole thing about the man who came into the alley last night. I can’t get over the fact that he was here seeking help and died anyway.”

“This isn’t a police station or a hospital,” Ruby said. “You couldn’t have provided any more help than you did.”

Maggie nodded and removed the dozen lemon ricotta donut holes from the baking sheet she used for her powdered sugar. “I know that, obviously,” she said. “It’s just that the poor man was here in his last moments, lying on the ground between two trees.”

“You know, under normal circumstances you would not have been here anyway, Maggie,” Ruby said.

“Have you thought about that? If it wasn’t for you and Naomi being here when you were, that poor man would have died all alone without anyone by his side.”

“It’s not like us being here made that much difference,” Naomi said.

“Are you sure about that?” Ruby asked her. “Are you sure that this poor man who was dying anyway wouldn’t have rather done so in the presence of two caring women who tried everything they could do to save him? I don’t know about you, but the thought of being injured and dying alone sounds a lot worse than being injured and dying with two caring people doing everything possible to help me.”

Maggie nodded and grabbed another batch of fresh donut holes to roll in the sugar.

“Your fella is here,” Orson Hawley announced from the swinging kitchen door. He rolled his eyes significantly and turned back to the front of the donut shop.

“That’s a first,” Myra Sawyer Macklin said from where she was stationed in front of the automatic donut machine. “At least he’s your fella this week and not just your man with the sheriff’s department.”

“I thought ‘your fella’ was a nice touch,” Ruby said.

“It’s a good thing we finished this batch of donut holes for him when we did,” Maggie said. She felt moderately comforted by Ruby’s words, and by the fact that Brett had just arrived. She boxed the donut holes up quickly and carried the first two boxes to the front where he was waiting for her by the counter.

“Good morning,” he said. She smiled and handed over the first set of boxes. “Can I come to the back with you to get the rest?”

“Since when do you ask me before you come to the back?”

“Since maybe I don’t want you to feel like I take you and your incredible skills for granted,” he said.

“I just rolled them in powdered sugar,” Maggie said. “It’s Ruby’s skills you would be taking for granted.”

“Either way, I sort of wanted to talk to you alone again,” he said.

Maggie picked up the boxes and set them on the shelf behind the counter just to make sure no one else took the boxes by accident. She followed Brett into the back.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” Naomi said.

“Morning,” Brett replied. “It’s a good thing you’re nearby, too. I have something I want to tell the two of you about last night.”

“Maggie told me about the poor man in the alley,” Naomi said. “Adam King. I know he passed away before he even got to the hospital.”

“Did she tell you about the note we found in his pocket and what was written on it?” he asked.

Naomi nodded. “He had a note with Preston Nance’s name written on one side.”

“You both should be aware that when we arrived at Nance’s residence to bring him in for questioning, he was nowhere to be seen,” Brett said. “In fact, his place looked like it had either been ransacked or that the owner had departed in a hasty fashion.”

“Do you think he took off?” Maggie asked. She was no fan of the man, but she hated the thought of him having been a victim of whoever killed Adam, unless he was Adam’s killer, of course.

“I hope that’s what happened,” Brett said. “Otherwise, we’re going to be looking for another victim.”

“Do you have any idea how Adam King and Preston Nance are connected? That’s what I’ve been wondering,” Maggie said.

“The truth is, I don’t know a whole lot about Preston, aside from the few interactions I’ve had with him,” Brett said. “I know he is some sort of a businessman and that he owns a lot of property around the county.”

“He has property around more than just this county,” Naomi said. “I think he has property in more than half of the state.”

“I have a question,” Myra said. She stepped out of the store room with a stack of clean bowls. “Is there still a bookstore in this town? I have been over there a few times and there are still books in the store, but it’s never open for people to come in and buy books.”

“He owns the building and the contents,” Maggie said. “But as far as I know, he only uses the bookstore as a place to run his other businesses.”

“I think we ought to be asking what other businesses he might be into,” Ruby said from the other side of the kitchen.

CHAPTER FOUR

After Brett left the donut shop with his boxes of lemon ricotta donut holes, Maggie decided to spend part of the morning on the sunnier side of the donut shop. She worked behind the counter with Orson for a couple of hours before it was time for her morning break.

Just before her break, she decided to clear the empty and half empty trays out of the donut case. She carried a stack of sticky trays to the back, where Naomi stood at the sink washing the dishes that would not fit in the large, industrial sized dishwasher. Slowly, she lowered the trays down into the hot, soapy water in the sink.

“You doing okay?” she asked Naomi quietly while they stood together at the sink.

Naomi nodded her head. “Ruby asks me that same question about every five minutes.”

“And what do you tell her?”

Naomi smiled. “I tell her to stop asking,” she said. “Because if I am not okay at some point, I promise to let someone know.”

“Fair enough,” Maggie said. She headed to her office for a portable battery charger for her cell phone, which had run out of battery recently. Forgetting to charge her phone was something she tried hard not to do. Naomi stood in the doorway to her office when she turned to leave.

“You know, you just asked how I’m doing, and Ruby keeps asking me the same question,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ve heard anybody ask you. Are you okay? How are you doing, Maggie?”

Maggie shrugged. “About the same as you are, I suppose,” she said with a meek smile. “It’s not an easy thing, watching a human being take some of their last breaths right in front of you.”

Naomi turned to walk back toward the sink. “You’re right about that,” she said. “That’s the main reason I decided not to pursue a career in nursing.”

“I never knew you had that as an interest,” Maggie said.

“Well, given my family history, it wasn’t a realistic choice anyway,” Naomi said. “But I’ve worked in a few long term care facilities in different capacities, and I can tell you, it takes a special person to deal with the end of another human being’s life.”

“It certainly isn’t something one hopes to be called to do out of the blue on a random Friday night,” Maggie said. She hugged Naomi slightly and headed back to the front of the donut shop for her break.

“I think we’re completely out of the lemon ricotta donut holes,” Orson said to a small horde of customers when she emerged from the back.

“Ruby is about to send another tray up here,” she announced as she passed. “But they are going fast.”

Orson winked at her as she passed by him. Maggie had not made any preparations for her own breakfast before her break. Her appetite was not what it normally was. She didn’t even prepare a cup of coffee for herself.

She settled into the booth and plugged her phone into the portable battery charger and set it on the table. She gazed over the heads of her patrons and stared out of the window at the bright, sunny morning. The daylight should have been a shot of serotonin to her soul, but she felt more like a drab, rainy day on the inside.

“You know you can’t just sit here in here in the middle of the donut shop without a plate of food and a cup of coffee,” Orson said, he approached her table with a tray filled with pastries of all shapes.

“Oh, Orson.” Maggie smiled while shaking her head. “I just wasn’t that hungry.”

“Nonsense,” he said and set a mug of coffee on the table in front of her. “I know how you take your coffee and I know when something is eating you up inside. You can pick from the arrangement I have here, or I can leave each one of these plates on the table in front of you. I was just about to take a few around to some of our customers in the dining room anyway, just to get the older products out of the case.”

“I don’t usually do it that way,” Maggie said.

“Yeah, well, this is my shift and I run it how I run it,” Orson grumbled. “Now, are you going to pick something out, or shall I pick for you?”

Maggie reached for a plate of lemon ricotta donut holes and a small vanilla bean scone. “You know, I don’t even speak to my grandson the way you do to me sometimes,” she said.

“Your grandson was with me three days ago and I said the same thing to him,” Orson said. “Only at his age, he’s faster than his Mimi to make a decision.”

Maggie sighed and placed her hand on top of the wrinkly hand holding the tray in front of her. “Thank you, Orson,” she said. “What would I ever do without you?”

“Be lonely,” Orson answered. “So lonely.” He turned on his heels and headed around the rest of the dining room. Maggie noted a slight grin on his face when he glanced back in her direction and caught her popping one of the donut holes in her mouth.

She sipped her coffee, grateful for the old man’s interference in her life, and tapped the screen on her phone. She opened up her texting app and typed a short message to Brett. “I hope you have a good day,” she said, and added a small heart.

The reply came instantly. “I think I just did,” he wrote back. His note ended with three hearts of various colors. Maggie wondered if there was some sort of hidden meaning to the colors, but she decided to leave that question for a younger generation. Instead, she decided the message was sweet and that the messenger was a good thing in her life. It wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed her mind. She had found herself thinking about their relationship quite often over the past few weeks and knew there was something he wanted to talk about, but he didn’t appear to be in a hurry to push her into anything more serious yet, and for that, she was beyond grateful.

A few of their friends would sometimes tease them about the next steps. Even Ruby had asked her about it one day recently.

“Does it bother you?” she had asked when they were picking up firewood for the bonfire on her large farm. “When everyone starts teasing you two about getting married, I mean.”

Maggie had shrugged her shoulders and hefted a large log off of the ground. “It doesn’t bother me,” she said. “The only thing I worry about is Brett feeling embarrassed or pressured to say something when neither of us need that.”

“So, you aren’t thinking about the future?” Ruby had asked. “About where your relationship might be headed?”

“I’ve done the whole marriage thing and you didn’t know me back then, but I wasn’t a happy person. Now, I have my own house and my own business, my friends, and my little family with Bradley and Wyatt. I’m not hankering for that to change. Not any time soon at least.”

And it was the truth about how she felt. She was content, even happy with the way her life was headed. Even if marriage had been on Brett’s mind, she wasn’t sure how she felt about it and until he brought it up, she wasn’t going to think about it too much.

Still, she loved the small expressions of endearment from him. If their relationship went on forever just as it was, she would be happy.

Maggie watched Orson move around and interact with the customers once Josie took over at the counter. He was another man in her life with whom she hoped nothing would ever change, but she knew that was too much to ask. Orson was getting older. While his health was good, he was at the donut shop less and less. He still moved around with more speed than most men his age, but it was also a relief that Myra and Brooks had made an apartment for him in their new home.

At the end of her break, Maggie smiled at herself. She had made it through her entire break without overthinking about Adam, the man who died in the alley. But as she returned to the kitchen, one glance at Naomi’s face made her think of it again.

CHAPTER FIVE

Maggie left the donut shop after lunch time and headed to Hunter Springs where she planned to help her son with inventory once again. For the most part, Bradley had the running of the donut shop in Hunter Springs down to an art, but inventory seemed to mystify him. Maggie agreed to take off work early Saturday and head over to help him.

“Good morning, Zeke,” she said to her son’s friend and right hand man when she entered through the back door.

“Morning,” Zeke said. “Are you here for the party?”

“The party?”

Zeke chuckled. “Bradley said that the two of you were doing inventory today,” he said. “That’s what I call a party.”

“Not me,” Bradley said when he came into the kitchen from the front. “I’m in no way looking forward to this.”

“Good thing we only have to do this every once in a while,” Maggie said. She headed straight for his large storage room and began counting. Zeke and Bradley followed her in.

“I hope you don’t mind if I tag along here and there,” Zeke said. “I thought if I could pick up a little about the way you all do inventory, I could help Bradley instead of you coming along every month.”

Maggie grinned. “That sounds like a fantastic idea to me,” she said. “Not that I don’t like coming out here to spend time with you, Son.”

“I would love nothing more than to turn over the entire inventory nightmare to someone else,” Bradley said. Zeke and Bradley were friends from their days in the Navy where Zeke ran the ship’s kitchen just about singlehandedly.

By the middle of the afternoon, Maggie herself was ready to hand the inventory tasks at the Dogwood Mountain location over to Zeke. She was seated on a stool in the back of the donut shop by the cooler, fanning herself with a sheet of paper. “I don’t think we have half this much stuff at my donut shop,” she said.

“So, Mom,” Bradley said while he stacked bags of cake flour on the stainless steel countertop. “Tell me a little bit about what happened yesterday. Did you really see a dead body in the alley behind the donut shop?”

Maggie sighed and narrowed her eyes at her son. “How in the world did you hear about that?” she asked.

“We heard it on the police scanner,” Bradley said with a shrug. “I’m sort of shocked that you didn’t call me to tell me about it yourself.”

“Since when do you have a police scanner?” Maggie asked.

“It was in my house when I moved in,” Bradley said. “We were in the basement looking around last weekend one night after Wyatt went to bed and decided to plug it in.”

“Listening to a police scanner? That sounds like something an old granny would do,” Maggie joked. She tried to deflect the conversation from the topic of the man practically dying right in front of her.

“Mom, what happened?” Bradley asked her. “I feel like you’re deliberately avoiding my question.”

“It used to work better when you were a kid.” She sighed. “Basically, I was with Brett at the lake when Naomi called to tell me that some delivery driver was giving her a hard time about our order. When I got there to handle it, we were talking with the jerk delivery driver when some man started yelling for help,”

“Where was he? The man, I mean,” Bradley asked.

“He was on the other end of the alley, away from the back door,” Maggie said. “We couldn’t see him at first because the truck blocked the view of that end of the alley. Anyway, Naomi and I went around the truck and looked for the source of the pleas for help. We searched everywhere until we spotted him on the ground lying between two trees right behind the alley.”

“Did he fall or something?” Bradley asked.

“I’m guessing not,” Maggie said. “He’d been stabbed and when we found him, he was in pretty bad shape. I had Naomi run after some clean towels from the kitchen to stop the bleeding in his chest, but I think he was already pretty far gone when we found him.”

“So, this man was bleeding pretty badly when you found him?” Zeke asked.

Maggie nodded her head. “His entire shirt was covered in blood,” she said. “I don’t know how many wounds I saw on him when we opened his shirt.”

“He had to have been close by to survive that long,” Zeke said.

“How close?” Maggie asked.

“Well, depending on where he was stabbed, he might have survived for a bit,” Zeke said. “If he had been hit in an artery, for example, he would have been dead in less than a minute.”

“What if an artery hadn’t been hit?” Bradley asked.

“Several minutes,” Zeke said. “It just depends on how many wounds he had, and how much force was behind the knife or whatever instrument was used to stab him.”

Bradley groaned. “The force behind the knife? Wouldn’t it be the same amount of force? If you’re going to kill a man, wouldn’t you just hit as hard as you can?”

“Not necessarily,” Zeke explained. “There is a difference between how hard a man and a woman push a knife, or an older versus a younger person. There are a lot of variables.”

Bradley narrowed his eyes at his friend. “How is it that you know so much about all of this?” he asked.

“I spent twenty years in the Navy, buddy,” he said. “Not all of the years were spent in front of a stove.”

“What happened next?” Bradley asked his mother.

“Well, we tried our best to help him while we waited for an ambulance, I forgot to mention that Naomi called 9-1-1,” she said. “He said the word ‘stabbed’ and mentioned the name of a businessman from Dogwood Mountain.”

Bradley’s eyes widened. “You mean he told you who killed him before he died?”

Maggie shook her head. “We’re not sure why he said the name he did,” she admitted. “Brett said there was a note found in the guy’s pocket with the name written on one side and ‘Dogwood Mountain Sheriff’ on the other.”

“That’s really strange,” Bradley said.

“It’s definitely weird,” Maggie agreed.

“Who was the victim?” Zeke asked. “Do you know the name yet?”

“I do. It was Adam King, and he was a delivery driver, too,” Maggie said. “There is a theory that he knew one of his work mates would be in the alley around that time, so he went there for help.”

“What did the other driver do?”

“The other driver? He took off at some point,” Maggie said.

“He took off! Why would he do that?” Bradley asked. “I mean, if your buddy is lying there on the ground bleeding to death, why wouldn’t you stick around to help?”

“I don’t think he knew who the guy was,” Maggie said. “We didn’t know until this morning.”

“Maybe not, but it is odd that he took off,” Zeke said. “He was a witness at any rate, and he should have stuck around for that reason alone.”

“I thought it was pretty strange that he left, too,” Maggie said. “Especially without even checking to see what happened.”

“What was the dispute with the delivery guy about, if you don’t mind me asking?” Zeke said.

“Oh, that’s a whole different story,” Maggie said. “Our invoice is saying that we ordered and paid for a specific amount, but his paperwork says something different.”

“Give me an example,” Zeke said.

“Well, we had ordered thirty-eight cases of apple pie filling and he delivered twenty-two,” Maggie said. “I have to call the company on Monday and straighten this out. Again.”

“So, this has happened before?”

“A few times,” Maggie said. “Spread over the past year.”

“I wonder if that’s been happening here?” Bradley said.

Maggie cocked her head sideways at her son. “What do you mean, you wonder if that has been happening here?” she asked. “Don’t you go over the invoice with him like I showed you?”

“I did at first,” Bradley said. “But when my driver shows up in the middle of a rush in the morning and I am short-staffed, I can’t always go over everything with him. Sometimes he just leaves it here and we have to wait and deal with it after lunch.”

“That might explain some of your issues with your inventory,” Zeke said. He patted Bradley on his back and headed back to the kitchen.

Maggie spent another two hours with her son at the Hunter Springs donut shop going over the inventory in the store room. When she finished, she made copies of his invoices to take along with her. When she asked her son for a copy of the order manifest from the driver, he admitted that he had not received one for the past several orders.

She called Ruby on her way back to Dogwood Mountain. “Do you have a little time this afternoon to help me sort something out?” she asked.

“Sure,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I think we have an issue with our food vendor,” Maggie said. “The distributor we use for dried goods.”

“Fairmont?” Ruby asked.

“That’s the one,” Maggie said. “I told you about the issues Naomi was having with the guy when I showed up last night.”

“Before the dead man wound up in the alley?”

“Yes,” Maggie said. “Before then. Anyway, it looks like Hunter Springs inventory has been messed up for a little while, too. And oddly enough, our deliveries from them come later at night when less staff is working, but the one there comes in the middle of the morning rush.”

“So basically, they come to us when a manager isn’t on duty, and they go there when things are too busy to stop and pay attention?” Ruby asked.

“Pretty much.”

“And the order form the driver leaves behind?”

“He hasn’t been leaving one,” Maggie said.

CHAPTER SIX

When she returned from Hunter Springs, Maggie stopped off at home just long enough to shower and change before she headed out to Ruby’s farm. She stopped by the donut shop and picked up her copies of the recent invoices and delivery manifests on her way out.

She could see the bonfire from the road before she pulled into the driveway. When she stepped out of her car, she could smell their dinner sizzling on the grill. Ruby waved from the bonfire circle and set a glass of wine down on the wide arm rest. “I thought you could use a little refreshment,” she said.

“In the form of wine and barbecue, you bet.” Maggie smiled. She tucked the invoices into her purse and headed across the front yard to her favorite Adirondack chair.

“I made shrimp kebabs and roasted Hasselback potatoes,” Ruby said.

“Works for me,” Maggie said. She set her purse down with the invoices next to her chair and immediately took a sip from her wine glass.

“What do you have with you?” Ruby asked when she took her own seat.

“I brought copies of our recent invoices and the last order manifest from our driver,” Maggie said. “I only found a few manifests from the past month.”

“Well, let’s have a quick look.” Ruby set her wine glass down and accepted a small stack of papers from Maggie. She began sorting through the papers, matching manifest with invoice while Maggie did the same.

After several minutes, Ruby set the papers down and shook her head. “These invoices are all over the place,” she said. “Thankfully we do our own inventory, so we know that this hasn’t been going on forever.”

“What did you find?” Maggie asked.

“It’s not consistent,” she said. “But every two or three weeks we are dealing with another shortage of one thing or another. That’s been going on for months and we haven’t caught on.”

“From what I can see, until recently, it has been one or two items at the most,” Maggie said. “But what I saw yesterday was several items.”

Ruby nodded her head. “And that has been a trend over the past several weeks,” Ruby said. “I don’t think this was accidental.”

“I don’t either,” Maggie said. “I wonder if that’s why the delivery driver took off so fast when the man in the alley was calling out for help. Maybe he knew the police would be showing up and he didn’t want to stick around and face any questions.”

“I think you might be onto something there,” Ruby said. “I’ve been doing a little rough estimating in my head, and I think we have overpaid Fairmont by at least three thousand dollars just in the past six months.”

“That’s a lot of money,” Maggie said. “But I don’t know. Something doesn’t quite add up for me.”

“Like what?” Ruby asked. She rose to remove their dinner from the outdoor grill.

“Well, like if it were me and I was going to defraud someone, three thousand dollars over three and a half months doesn’t seem like a lot,” Maggie said as she walked with Ruby. “In fact, it seems like a whole lot of trouble to go through for very little payoff.”

Ruby nodded. “It might be worth it if there was a little here and a little there,” she said. “But this sort of thing is more apt to happen in larger areas. Bigger cities with many more businesses and higher order totals. Fairmont is a small company.”

“I think it’s pretty clear that we have been had by this company,” Maggie said. “I can’t think of any other explanation for what we are seeing in these orders. But what I want to know is, does any of this have to do with Adam’s murder?”

“Right,” Ruby said as she handed Maggie a plate. “And how does Preston Nance fit into all of this?”

“Maybe one of his businesses was hit by the same guy and he was stirring up trouble about it,” Maggie said.

“But I thought he was into real estate.” Ruby led them back to the bonfire. “Real estate and nonfunctioning book stores.”

“I don’t think I was ever actually told what he’s into,” Maggie said. She set her plate on the chair next to her and picked up her wine glass. “I just thought about something else, too. I bet it isn’t the entire company cheating us. What if it’s just one driver and he was the guy who delivered to us yesterday?”

“Would that mean that the delivery guy and the murder of Adam are related?” Ruby asked as she popped a shrimp in her mouth. “Because the truth is, I can’t think of how they might be related. Do you recall the name of the delivery driver from yesterday?”

“Clarkson,” Maggie said. “That’s all he told me when I asked.” She brought her plate to her lap and eyed it gratefully.

Ruby looked through the invoices again, careful not to make a mess. “Honestly, I don’t see his name on any of these.”

“Are there any names on any of them?” Maggie asked as she began to pick through the invoices from Hunter Springs. “Wait a second. I see one name very clearly.”

“What is it?” Ruby asked.

“Adam King,” Maggie said. She put her plate aside again and handed the invoice over to Ruby.

“I see his name on another one for the Dogwood Mountain store,” Ruby said. “But none with ‘Clarkson’ in the name.”

“Here’s a second name,” Maggie said. “Andi Applebaum.”

“Sounds like we need to track down Mr. Applebaum and find out what he has to say,” Ruby suggested.

“What she has to say,” Maggie said. “I think in this case ‘Andi’ is for a girl. There is an ‘i’ at the end of Andi instead of a ‘y’.”

“So, we know the names of two drivers from Fairmont,” Ruby said. “Well, two and a half, I suppose.”

“Right. Maybe we can figure out who Clarkson is when we call,” Maggie said.

“There is another thing that bothers me in all of this,” Ruby said after a moment. “This guy wound up covered in blood in the alley. But where did he come from? His clothes were quite covered in blood, right?”

“His clothes were soaked in blood,” Maggie said, unfortunately remembering things all too well.

“Okay, but where was his car? Where had he been before he showed up in the alley and begged for help? The police should have found a vehicle or something that belonged to him,” Ruby said.

Maggie nodded slowly. “I hadn’t thought about that,” she admitted. “He would have been close by in order to still be conscious and talking.”

“But there wasn’t anything around that he appeared to have come from,” Ruby said. “That doesn’t seem right to me.”

Maggie leaned back in her chair and settled into a troubled silence. Her thoughts were all over the place, and she had more questions and fewer answers than she had arrived with. She finished her glass of wine and enjoyed her shrimp kebabs and potatoes before she left to head home. Brett called her as she pulled into the driveway.

“How was inventory?”

“Are you busy right now?” Maggie asked without answering.

“Headed home,” he said. “Do you want me to stop by?”

“If you can,” Maggie said. “I have some things to share with you that may or may not equal a part of this investigation.”

Brett agreed to stop by before returning home for the night. While she waited, Maggie thought back to her conversation with Ruby. Not about the delivery drivers and the mess surrounding their invoices, but about their mutual friends who liked to tease her about marriage and a future with Brett now that their relationship was more public.

Tonight was the perfect example of the reasons she loved things the way they were. She had no doubt that Brett’s day had been tough and hers had been no walk in the park either. He would stop by, and she would inform him of the discoveries they had made with the invoices. Then he would leave and head to his home, and she would relax alone in hers. There was no need to tiptoe around each other’s bad days.

Brett’s lights shone in her windows a few minutes later. She noticed the circles under his eyes and wondered just how bad his day had been. When he walked inside her house, he greeted her with a tired smile and a strong hug.

“Now, fill me in on what you have to share,” he said.

Maggie smiled and began arranging the invoices on her kitchen table. “When I went to check on Naomi before we found Adam in the alley, there was something very off about the delivery driver and the delivery itself,” she began. “I told you all about that, but what you don’t know is that it appears that we have had this issue for some time.”

“This delivery driver trying to charge for things he didn’t deliver?” Brett asked.

Maggie nodded. “Something like that,” she said. “But I think there might be a little more to this than just skimming money off of the top of their deliveries.”

“You think this is somehow tied to the murder of Adam King?”

“I don’t know how, but he was one of the drivers who delivered to us,” Maggie said. She handed him an invoice with the victim’s name listed as the driver. “He’s been to both stores, but this is the invoice from his last stop at Hunter Springs, I think.”

“Can I keep this?” Brett asked. “I don’t know if this is important to the investigation yet, but it might be.”

“I made copies of everything I took with me,” Maggie said. “You’re welcome to whatever you need. There is something else, though. When Ruby and I were adding this up together, we realized that the name of the driver from the other night, what we got from him anyway, doesn’t appear on any of these invoices or manifests. But there is another driver’s name on some of them. Andi Applebaum, spelled with an ‘i’ instead of a ‘y.’”

“How much are you thinking?” he asked. “I mean, how much money do you think you have been cheated out of and in what time frame?”

“Maybe three grand over a few months,” she said.

“That’s interesting,” he said.

“I just get the feeling that there is more to this than we’re realizing,” Maggie said.

“What part do you mean?” Brett asked her. “The delivery driver scandal or the murder?”

“Maybe both,” Maggie said. “Maybe they are one in the same.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Maggie decided to take off part of the following morning from the donut shop. She grabbed her work laptop, a stack of file folders, and stayed home trying to reconcile the orders with the invoices. She meant what she had said to Brett the night before; she had no inkling how far the scandal might go. Part of her hoped she discovered that it was just the driver she knew only as Clarkson who was involved and not anyone else.

But her gut feeling, for what it was worth, told her that there was a lot more to it. The problem was in the fact that there were so many seemingly unconnected pieces. It seemed too coincidental for the delivery truck problems not to be related to the murder of one of the drivers who just happened to show up in the alley behind her donut shop.

Once she was settled into her kitchen with her work laptop and a small lunch, Maggie spread the files out in front of her and began to organize them by date. Beginning a year before, she took note of the names of the drivers and stared at a stack of invoices per name.

Adam King’s name appeared as far back as any of the invoices went. She had no trouble finding the order manifests to go along with any of his orders. She noted a few other names that seemed to be mainly one-offs. Joe Davis. Harry Turner.

Maggie found Andi Applebaum’s name first appeared on an invoice about eight months back. She found a handful of them, and then searched for the matching manifests. She searched through several stacks but came up with nothing. She glanced at the time on the stove. Bradley should be able to step away from the kitchen for a quick phone call, especially with Zeke at the helm. She picked up her phone and dialed him at the Hunter Springs Donut Shop.

“Mom, you have got to thank Aunt Ruby for me,” Bradley said before she could get a word out.

“Whatever for?” Maggie asked.

“Lemon ricotta donut holes,” he gushed. “They are such a hit! And I have to say that I am shocked. The crowd here in Hunter Springs tends to be a bit less discriminating than your folks over in Dogwood Mountain so I wasn’t sure how a selection inspired from an Italian delicacy would go over, but I can’t keep enough in the donut case.”

“That’s great,” Maggie said. “Every time we debut a new flavor there is always a chance it will be rejected by the customers.”

“Has that ever happened?” Bradley asked her.

“Not yet, it hasn’t,” Maggie said. “Knock on wood.”

“Anyway, I suppose there was something you wanted to talk about.” Bradley laughed.

“There is, actually,” Maggie said. “I’ve been going over more of our invoices and order manifests here at home. I found Adam King’s name as far back as my invoices go, which is a year.”

“And Adam King is who, again?”

“He was the man who was murdered in the back alley,” she said.

“Okay, so he was a regular delivery driver?” Bradley asked.

“I found another name we had seen before,” Maggie said. “Andi Applebaum. But her name didn’t appear until about eight months ago and I can’t find any more paperwork to go with the orders she delivered. I wondered if I maybe left some invoices behind at your shop. If you get the chance, would you mind looking around to see if you have anything with her name on it? Or any paperwork with the name ‘Clarkson’ on it.”

“Clarkson?”

“Yeah,” Maggie said. “That was the name of the driver who delivered the other day when Adam showed up here.”

“Okay, I can look,” Bradley said. “Can I get back to you tonight? Maybe after your chatty grandson has gone to bed?”

“That sounds perfect,” Maggie said. She ended the phone call and went back to her invoices. She picked up and looked over each and every invoice. Not once did she find a single invoice with the name “Clarkson” on it.

Maggie stood up and rolled her neck around. Sore muscles were beginning to form in her neck and her upper back. She looked over the table and decided to take a break from her paperwork. She walked around in a circle and sighed. Her hand couldn’t quite reach the knot in the middle of her back. Her eyes drifted over one of the invoices. She spotted the logo for the delivery company, Fairmont Distribution, and picked her phone back up off of the table. She searched quickly for the address and studied the map.

Fairmont Distribution was only a twenty-minute drive from Dogwood Mountain. Maggie was surprised the warehouse was so far out with relatively nothing else surrounding it. It was just a short drive, and she might find something worth knowing. She had meant to call, so maybe an in-person visit would be in order, anyway. She gathered the invoices up and assembled them in chronological order and stuffed them back in one of the file folders. She headed for her car and drove in the direction of the distribution center.

Maggie pulled into the large gravel parking lot. She parked in front of the nondescript metal building with the words “Fairmont Distribution” painted on the side. She followed a series of arrow signs that declared that the office was “this way” and climbed up a small set of steps to another metal door.

Maggie opened the heavy door and walked inside. She waited in front of a white, plastic table with a desktop computer and an empty office chair. “Hello,” she called out. There was no answer. She wandered in a little bit further and peeked inside a second door to an equally sparse office. “Is there anyone here?”

She turned back to the front part of the office and spotted a bulletin board covered in snapshots. She spotted Adam King’s name right away. His face was broad and smiling. She thought he looked like he was a happy man in life. Her eyes moved over several other photos. She quickly scanned over the names searching for anything related to Clarkson.

She found neither a photo that resembled the driver or a name similar to the one he gave her. She scanned the photos a second time. Andrea Applebaum was on the second to the last row from the bottom. Maggie assumed that Andrea and Andi were one person in the same.

Maggie looked around again for signs of any soul in the office. She pulled out her phone and zoomed in on the picture. She snapped a picture of Andi Applebaum and pushed her phone back into her pocket.

“Can I help you?” Maggie turned around to face a middle-aged man holding a clipboard against his chest. “How did you get in here?”

Maggie pointed to the door. “That way,” she said.

“This isn’t open to the public,” he said and walked into the back office.

Maggie stopped herself from turning around and running back out the door with an apology to the man for daring to enter his office space. She gripped the file folder of invoices instead and took a step toward the office the man disappeared into.

“Hey,” Maggie said, a little louder than she intended to. “I think you need to get back out here and listen to what I have to say!” She was more than a little shocked at the volume of her own voice.

The man walked slowly back into the main part of the office. “What in Pete’s sake are you going on about?”

Maggie slammed the folder down on the table that doubled as a reception desk and pointed her finger at the man. “I would like to know why your drivers are delivering significantly less than my invoices show. I have been charged for far more than I have been receiving,” she said. “And I want some answers right now.”

At first, the man said nothing. He then shocked Maggie entirely by pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and lighting one up. He blew the smoke in her direction and extended his hand for the invoices.

Without saying a word, the man flipped through the files and puffed on his cigarette. When he reached the end of the file, he pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and pointed the folder back at her.

“I don’t know what you want from me, lady,” he said.

“I want to know why your driver delivered twenty-two cases of apple pie filling instead of the thirty-eight I paid for,” Maggie said. “And I want to know why that has been happening off and on over the past several months.”

“I think you’re a little nutty in the head, lady,” the man said. He released the folder in the air. The papers slowly cascaded to the floor all around her feet.

“That was uncalled for,” Maggie said. She kept her eyes level with the man. “I came here for answers. Your people are cheating me out of a great deal of money. I have two shops, and both have received less inventory that we have paid for. I want to make myself clear here. I’m giving you one chance to rectify this. Oh, and you should probably be aware of the fact that the Dogwood Mountain County Sheriff already has copies of these invoices, and he knows exactly what has been going on.”

He blew a breath of smoke on her face again. “Is that so?” he asked. “Then why isn’t he here?”

Maggie had to take a moment before she answered. “Because I am the business owner! And I am the one who is losing money here, not him,” she shouted. “Why are your drivers doing this to me? And why aren’t you taking this more seriously?”

“Maybe it’s because you came in here like a raving lunatic,” the man said. “Now you better get on out of here if you know what’s good for you. I’m not making threats. I’m telling you how it is.”

“I’m taking my business elsewhere,” she said.

“You better not do that. You better not,” he said. “I’m telling you how it is, straight out. Don’t you dare change a single thing or losing a few hundred dollars is going to be the least of your problems.”

“What are you saying?”

He walked over to the large window on the front of the office and looked down at the ground. “I think you better stop hanging around here and get down there and see to your car before you aren’t able drive out of here on your own.”

Maggie stared at the man for a moment. He raised his eyebrows at her, then slammed the open palm of his large hand down on the table next to him. The corded phone and laptop flew off of the table and onto the floor. Maggie ran out the door and down the steps. She was halfway down before she spotted her car, or what was left of it.

Something quite oddly shaped rested on her hood. She walked down the rest of the steps and stopped. She could smell the disgusting stench almost immediately. It looked like someone had dumped a ton of rotten food on the top of her hood.

But the heap of trash wasn’t where the damage ended. Two long, deep scratches had been cut into the body of her car, from the front fender all the way back to the rear quarter panel. She stepped around to the driver’s side and discovered the same thing had been done there.

Anger rose up in her middle. Maggie felt it surge to her head and threaten to boil over. Her car was ruined. She looked up, ready to march right back up the steps and give the man a piece of her mind. But the large man stood above her on the landing not far from an office door. He glared down at her with his arms folded.

She glanced down at the warehouse itself. Three groups of men stood in clusters in front of the warehouse. Maggie decided to get into her car and drive away as quickly as she could. She backed up quickly in the gravel and threw gravel behind her in her haste to leave. The trash heap on her car hood moved toward her windshield, but Maggie continued to drive even as it pressed against the glass.

She drove as fast as she safely could, until she reached a familiar road and pulled her car over. Almost as soon as she did, she spotted the white car of a Dogwood Mountain County sheriff’s deputy turn around in the and head in her direction.

The lights came on when the car pulled in behind her. She waited as the unfamiliar deputy got out of his car and headed toward her. His partner, a tall woman about Maggie’s age, stepped out of the passenger side and joined him.

“You have a lot of trash on your car,” the man said. Maggie read the name tag on his uniform shirt.

“Good morning, Deputy Barton,” she said. She glanced over at the woman. She had seen the woman before but could not recall her name.

“What are you doing?” Deputy Barton asked her.

Maggie sighed. She thought about calling Brett but decided to talk with his deputies first. “I just came from Fairmont Distribution, and someone did this to my car while I was inside talking to the manager about the fact that they have been overcharging me for deliveries,” she said.

“And where do you work?” Deputy Barton asked her.

“I own the donut shop in Dogwood Mountain and the one over in Hunter Springs,” she said.

“So, you went there and decided to handle it by yourself, without asking for assistance?”

“Dennis,” the female deputy said. “The sheriff probably already knows. This is Maggie Sharpe, his, you know.”

“Oh,” Deputy Barton said suddenly. “You’re that Maggie. Why don’t we just hire a tow truck, Simmons? I don’t think it is safe for her to drive.”

Maggie nodded her head. “Deputy Simmons,” she said. “I couldn’t recall your name.”

“Would you like for us to call a tow truck for you?” Deputy Simmons asked.

“I think that’s probably the best thing to do.” Maggie sighed. She shook her head and surveyed her car. She might be back to driving Ruby’s spare farm truck sooner than she’d ever wanted.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Maggie waited for thirty minutes for Ruby to show up in her good pickup truck and give her a ride back to Dogwood Mountain. Her car was loaded onto the back of a truck, tarped, and driven back to town.

Ruby dropped her off at home with the promise to return when she left the donut shop. Maggie let herself inside the house and dropped into the first chair she could find. For the first time since she left the headquarters of Fairmont Distribution, the weight of the situation washed over her.

The man, whose name she had failed to get, never once asked her for more proof or offered to speak to his employees to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. He didn’t even try to give her a show of sympathy or professionalism.

She felt as if she had just run into a mob thug instead of a plant manager. She shivered from head to toe. There was no fear at the mention of the local sheriff. Clearly the man in the upstairs office had been in communication with the guys below. She doubted that they would have taken to damaging her car without approval from the head bully.

Maggie rose from her chair to start a pot of coffee. She needed something to help clear her head, and it felt too early for anything strong enough to take the edges off of her nerves. Her phone rang as she poured the water into the pot. She switched the brewer on and answered.

“I had a feeling you would be calling me,” she said to Brett when she answered the phone.

“What were you thinking going down there alone?” he asked her straight off. “You could have been hurt.”

“I know what I could have been,” Maggie said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that there are some major problems with the overcharges on my invoices with these guys, and that isn’t something I need to call the sheriff about.”

“I think it’s a little more complicated than that, Maggie,” he said. “I’m not just the local sheriff to you. I am the, well, I am the man who is supposed to protect you.”

Maggie felt her heart melt a little. “You can’t be angry at me for handling my own business,” she said. “How would it look if I ran to you every time someone treated me unfairly? That would start to look like a whole lot of entitlement on my part and favoritism on your part.”

“Okay, that’s true,” Brett said. Maggie could sense the anger and frustration he was holding back. “But a man just stumbled into your alleyway and died. I think these are extraordinary circumstances we’re dealing with.”

“You sound upset,” Maggie said.

“I am upset,” Brett admitted. “I’m upset and I’m frustrated, and I’m scared. Because I know it is wrong of me to ask you to tell me where you are at all times and to check with me when you are heading into something that could wind up being dangerous.”

“I honestly didn’t expect that to go the way that it did,” Maggie said. “I wouldn’t have put myself in harm’s way if I had known.”

“Only you do,” he said. “More than once you’ve gotten to the bottom of some mystery or crime, but you’ve also been in danger before. I just wish you would leave the detective stuff up to me.”

“That isn’t fair, Brett,” Maggie said. “You’ve asked me to look into things on my own in the past, in the recent past. Just because you’re scared that I could have gotten hurt this time, doesn’t mean I’m not capable of handling things on my own.”

“I am asking you not to look into things this time,” Brett said. “Maggie, please? Just don’t push it. I have a feeling there could be something bigger going on here than either of us have seen before.”

“I can’t promise you that,” Maggie said. “I’m not trying to solve a murder here, but I am trying to figure out why both of my businesses have been cheated out of a lot of money.”

“Will you at least just hold off until we have this murder investigation solved? I don’t want to have to worry about you while I’m trying to do my job,” he said.

Maggie sat silent on the phone for a long time. She knew he had a lot to worry about and she understood and was even touched by how worried he got about her, but she also knew that she couldn’t just sit idly by and do nothing. “Just because we’re dating doesn’t mean I can snap my fingers and change the person I am,” she said. “And I don’t think that it’s fair for you to ask that of me.”

Brett released an exhausted sigh. “I don’t think it’s fair to say that we’re just dating, either, Maggie,” he said. “You may not be my wife, but you are the woman I love. Did you hear that? You are the woman I am in love with, and I need to know that you are safe. Does that make any sense to you?”

Maggie sighed in turn. “What if I promise not to put myself knowingly in any danger?”

“I suppose I’m going to have to be satisfied with that,” he said. “Is it too much to ask you not to go anywhere alone? Especially somewhere that isn’t in a public place.”

“I promise you I won’t seek out danger,” she said solemnly. “And I promise not to go down any dark, lonely roads in the middle of nowhere. Okay?”

“I guess that’s the most I can hope for,” Brett said.

Maggie hung up the phone feeling equally irritated at him and grateful for his concern. She felt a little extra warmth inside from how open he was with her. And the truth was, she had no intention of showing up anywhere alone again, at least not anywhere secluded, or private.

But running into someone in public sheerly by coincidence was another matter altogether. Maggie poured herself a cup of the coffee which had by now stopped brewing and walked down the hallway to her bedroom for her own laptop. She set the coffee and the laptop down in the living room and snuggled under a blanket. The blanket gave her a sense of security after the day’s events, and the laptop lent her a sense of purpose.

Maggie immediately opened every social media platform she could and searched for Andi Applebaum. She remembered the photo on her phone and threw the couch blanket back and padded into the kitchen to retrieve it.

She settled back under the blanket and opened up her phone to the picture she had taken of Andi Applebaum at Fairmont Distribution. After several searches, Maggie finally found her profile, listed under her given name, Andrea.

Maggie had lost any thoughts of violating the privacy of a perfect stranger by searching for her. And when she did open up the woman’s profile page, she was shocked to find the face of the man in the office she had seen that very day. Middle aged, angry, and balding, she had no doubt it was him.

In every picture of the two of them together, he had his large arm around Andi. Maggie followed the tag in the photos back to his profile and learned that his name was Phillip Chapman. He listed his occupation as “plant manager” but gave no more information. Maggie browsed through the photos on both of their accounts, She learned rather quickly that the pair was into craft beer and stock car races.

Both Chapman and Applebaum liked to travel and did it quite often. She noted a half-dozen excursions to exotic places over the past year alone. Maybe delivery drivers and plant managers made more money than she thought.

She also learned that the two of them attended events together. She returned to Andi’s profile for more information. She needed to find something that the woman did on her own time without her boyfriend or partner or whatever he was for her. She searched for a few more clues in the woman’s many photo albums on her main social media profile. She clicked through an album marked “family” and another marked “nice finds.” The finds she described as nice were mainly old furniture and antiques.

Maggie had a thought; she had discovered a large antiques flea market north of Hunter Springs just over the county line into Paradise County. She could drive up that way after work and look around herself. Maybe she would run into someone from Dogwood Mountain. Maybe she wouldn’t.

She considered the idea more and more as she flipped through a few dozen family photos. Toward the end of the album, Maggie stopped on a photo of Andi and another person. She stood with her arms wrapped around another man, who was definitely not Phillip Chapman, and stared. There was something familiar in the man’s face. She closed her eyes and tried her best to think. Where had she seen the man before?

Had she seen him before? Maybe he just reminded her of someone she had once known. But she had seen so many different faces at Fairmont Distribution that she couldn’t be sure.

CHAPTER NINE

After a quick wash, Maggie’s car was returned to her that evening. The damage that was done was almost entirely cosmetic. Her insurance would cover the repairs to the body, but there was nothing that could remove the smell of rotten food from her senses every time she stepped within ten feet of the car.

She held her breath early the following morning when she headed to work. Despite the very short distance to the donut shop, Maggie learned that the stench had infiltrated the car’s ventilation system. She pulled up to work with one hand over her mouth and her gag reflex in full force. She glanced over at the dumpsters in the alley close to the back door and wondered if the air might be fresher inside.

“I thought they cleaned your car,” Ruby said when she entered the kitchen a few minutes after Maggie arrived. She found Maggie seated on a stool in the store room with her face buried in a small dish of lemon zest, prepared the night before for a fresh batch of their latest offering. She had scooped some out to try to help her get over the horrible smell stuck in her nostrils.

“I thought so, too,” Maggie said into the dish. Ruby had done the prep work the night before to double the previous day’s batch of the lemon ricotta donut holes.

“Are you finding relief in my lemon zest?” Ruby asked.

Maggie nodded and pulled her head back from the dish. “I was a little desperate when I came in here,” she said. “Turns out the smell of rotten trash permeates the ductwork in a car after it is heaped on top.”

“Oh, that’s fun,” Ruby said. “Maybe this will cheer you up.” She set a large ceramic container in front of her and pulled off the lid.

“What’s this?” Maggie asked, curious. She inhaled the sweet smell of fruit but couldn’t identify the aroma.

“Last night, I got to thinking how I might make these lemon ricotta donut holes and how I could improve them,” Ruby said. “So, I concocted this raspberry dipping sauce to go with them.”

Maggie’s stomach rumbled. “Can you reproduce that here?” she asked. “I wonder if Bradley and Zeke might be able to make something like this at Hunter Springs?”

Ruby nodded her head and smiled. “Yes to both questions,” she said. “I already have the ingredients lined up in my head for making the sauce this very morning. Thankfully the lunch boxes are going to be simple for today. And Zeke and Bradley had what you might call a digital cooking lesson last night.”

“Digital cooking lesson?”

“Yeah, we had a video meeting and I showed them how to make it.” Ruby grinned. “We’ll see how things go in both locations, and then we can make this a permanent menu item. Which means ordering a few different ingredients from our vendors.”

“First we have to find a new delivery company,” Maggie reminded her.

“Already on it,” Ruby said. “I made a few phone calls to friends who are still in the restaurant business and came up with two good possibilities for companies that will deliver here.”

“That’s good news,” Maggie said. “Do you mind handling this? I would really like to take a step back from invoices and delivery orders for a little while.”

“I had a feeling you might say that,” Ruby said with a smile. “I have plans to train Zeke later this week.”

“Perfect,” Maggie said. She pushed the stool back into the store room and got to work at the baker’s table. She began with scones and added several batches of cinnamon rolls. When Naomi arrived an hour later, the automatic donut machines were heated up and ready to start.

Just before opening, Ruby prepared a small serving of the lemon ricotta donut holes with raspberry sauce for the entire staff to sample. Orson wandered into the kitchen about then and made a face.

“What have you done?” he asked Ruby.

“What do you mean, what have I done?” Ruby replied.

“To these things,” he said, a little flustered. “The lemon ricotta donut holes. Nobody said that they needed improvement. Why did you have to go and change things?”

“Orson,” Naomi said gently. “Shut up and try the dipping sauce.”

Orson grumbled for another second. When he picked up a donut hole and dunked it in the sauce, he merely grinned and walked away.

“I guess that means he approves,” Myra said from the other side of the kitchen.

Maggie announced her intention to leave shortly after lunch. She held her breath as she climbed back into her car and drove the short way home. She raced inside and pulled her bottle of lemon juice out of the fridge and inhaled deeply.

After a fast shower, Maggie sprayed a few extra spritzes of perfume on her shirt and headed back outside. She held her breath until she was safely inside her car. She shut off all of the vents inside her car. Her first stop was the gas station on the north side of town. She ran inside after she filled up her gas tank and returned with a half-dozen new air fresheners to hang from her car mirror.

She headed north and arrived at the antique mall with a slight headache and a buzz nearly an hour later.

At least she smelled more like a tropical rainforest than a garbage dump, she thought when she stepped out of her car. The antique mall was really an old grocery store turned into a consignment shop. She wandered around the first few booths and picked up an item or two here and there. She kept Andi Applebaum’s photo on the screen of her phone for fast reference.

Maggie walked through the first section of the mall, browsing aimlessly. She hung back in a corner booth and scanned the crowd. She spotted who she thought was Andi Applebaum on the far side of the store. She was flipping through a stack of quilt panels. She pulled out a few samples and studied them. Maggie headed in her direction.

When she was close enough, Maggie checked the photo on her phone again. Without a doubt, it was her. She exhaled, plastered on a smile, and walked toward the woman, determined to strike up a conversation with her. But a familiar face stepped out behind her.

“You,” the Fairmont plant manager almost shouted when he saw her. “What are you doing here?”

“Who is this?” his companion demanded. “Who are you?”

The man leaned over and whispered loudly, “This is the chick that came into the plant yesterday because her invoices didn’t add up.” He widened his eyes with the last part. The woman, whom Maggie presumed was Andi, reacted with a knowing nod.

Andi was a larger woman, tall and stocky with more muscle in her upper arms than Maggie had in her entire body. Before she could think twice, Andi Applebaum moved behind her and grabbed her around her shoulders. “Let’s go for a little walk,” she said.

Maggie struggled for a moment, but quickly began walking along with the woman. Andi gripped her right arm and forced her to move through the antique mall toward the back. “What do you want?” Maggie demanded.

“I want to know why you’re so stupid that you would show your face around me again?” the man boomed. “Didn’t you learn a thing yesterday?”

“Shut up, Phil,” Andi said severely. Phillip Chapman. Maggie recalled the name from Andi’s social media account.

“I’m not leaving here with you,” Maggie said.

“Be quiet and walk,” Andi demanded. She steered her toward the restrooms in the rear of the building and pushed her through a side door.

When they got outside, Andi pushed Maggie into the outside wall. Phillip stood on one side of her. “What are you doing here?” he asked her again.

“Shopping for antiques,” Maggie said.

Phillip stood closer to her and shoved his index finger in her face. “Not good enough,” he said. “You can’t tell me that seeing your face two days in a row is a coincidence.”

Maggie fought back tears. She was in trouble again. But her anger spurred her forward. “I told you yesterday that I’m sick and tired of being overcharged by your drivers.” She swallowed hard. “And you know what else I would like to know? What are you all hiding? I did a little adding of things with my business partner, and you know, it sure doesn’t seem like it is worth the trouble for just a few thousand dollars over a handful of months.”

“You really ought to learn to keep your mouth shut, lady,” Phillip said. “It’s bad enough that you sent the sheriff’s department out yesterday.”

“Is that why you aren’t at work today?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah, thanks to you, I don’t have a job anymore,” Phillip said. “And you have no idea how badly that screwed up my life. Which means, I am a little eager to screw up yours.”

“Maybe you can get more money from your drug dealers,” Maggie sneered at him. She was guessing wildly, but it was clear to her that their delivery shenanigans were useful only to cover up more sinister and suspicious activities.

But Andi’s face paled. “Is that what you think is going on? That we’re transporting drugs?”

“Who knows you’re here?” Phillip demanded.

Maggie smiled then. “My boyfriend,” she said.

“And who is that?”

“Head on over to the county sheriff’s department and ask for Brett.” Maggie smiled.

“Brett? Who is that?” Phillip said.

“Hold on, Phil,” Andi said quietly. She turned to Maggie. “Are you speaking of Brett Mission?”

“Who is that?” Phillip asked loudly.

“He’s the county sheriff,” Andi said flatly. “Is that your boyfriend?”

Maggie nodded slowly. “And to answer your next question, he knows exactly where I am, and he knows why.”

Andi suddenly released her. “Get back, Phil,” she said. “We need to just leave, right now.”

“Why? What is she going to do?” he asked.

“She might tell him what just happened, and he might start to think that we had something to do with Adam King’s death,” Andi said.

“Look, lady,” Phillip addressed her again. He dropped his finger from her face and frowned. “We aren’t drug runners and we sure as heck aren’t killers. You tell your boyfriend that, okay? We did not do anything to Adam. He worked for us, but we didn’t touch a hair on his head. You have to tell him that, okay?”

“Why are you holding me here, then?” Maggie asked.

Andi threw up her hands. “Nobody’s keeping you here,” she said. “You’re free to go. But Phil is right. Look, we aren’t perfect, but we do not kill people, okay?”

“Then why did you dump trash all over my car and key the sides?”

Phillip sighed. “I think you can guess that we do a little bit of side work, and I was just trying to scare you into not pursuing it,” he said. “But I never would have hurt you.”

“Just my car,” Maggie said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Look, we’ve got to go, but listen to me on this point. You need to back off. Someone did kill Adam, and I have a feeling that whoever that was wouldn’t think twice about snapping you in two.”

CHAPTER TEN

Maggie called Brett as soon as she made her way to her car. She filled him in on everything that had happened and listened as he vented a little at her for getting close to danger again.

“Okay, so I didn’t tell you about where I was going today or why I was going there, but now I’m telling you what happened. And I’m also telling you that I’m stepping back.

“You’re stepping back?” Brett said. “I hope you’re telling me the truth about your intentions.”

“I most certainly am telling you the truth about my intentions.”

Brett laughed. “I guess there isn’t anything more I can ask of you,” he said.

“I really need a different car,” Maggie said. “This one just plain stinks.”

“I’d like to help you get that taken care of as soon as I can,” Brett told her. “Right now, I’m focused on finding out who killed the man in the alley behind your donut shop.”

Maggie slowed her car then. She drove past a familiar-looking man walking down the side of the road. “Hey, Brett,” Maggie said. “Have you all found Preston Nance’s whereabouts just yet?”

“Not yet,” Brett said. “But we have some bad news. We found evidence of blood splatter when we were able to search his house and the place reeked of bleach.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Maggie said. “I think I just passed him walking down the road.”

“Where are you?” Brett asked.

“Just over the county line, north of Hunter Springs,” she said and gave him the name of the road.

“I’m less than five minutes away,” Brett said. “Give me a description and try to keep him in your sights until I get to you.”

Maggie sped up a little. She pulled into a narrow drive off of the road and turned her car around. “He’s wearing a baseball cap, faded and ripped jeans, and a Kansas City Chiefs t-shirt,” she said. She followed the man along slowly until she spotted a familiar police car coming toward her. She sped up and pulled her car over in front of the man. He walked up to the side of her car.

“Preston,” she said. “You need to talk to the sheriff. He’s right behind me and he’s worried about you.”

“Leave me alone,” Preston shouted. He took off running but was quickly cut off when Brett ran after him. Maggie got out of her car and followed him. She quickly caught up to them. Brett had his hands on Preston’s arms.

“You’re shaking,” Maggie said. “When is the last time you had something to eat?”

“You don’t understand,” Preston said. “They’re after me! I am not safe!”

“You’re safe now, buddy,” Brett said. He walked the man back to his car. “Let’s get you to the hospital and have you checked out.”

“Stop, please,” Preston begged. “They’ll find me! It’s too dangerous.”

“Who will find you?” Maggie asked. “And why is it dangerous?”

“Those people from the trucking company,” Preston said. He sat down in the back of Brett’s car, looking dejected and frail. “They already showed me what they will do to me if I talk.”

“What did they show you?” Brett asked. “Do you know why we have been looking for you?”

“No,” Preston said. “I assumed it was because they made good on their blackmail threats.”

“Blackmail threats? Preston, you have got to start talking to me,” Brett told him. “A man was killed this weekend. And he said your name before he passed away. In fact, your name was on the back of a piece of paper with Dogwood Mountain County Sheriff written on the other side.”

Preston dropped his hands in his lap. “Adam King,” he said slowly. “They got to him, didn’t they? Was that whose blood they threw on my front steps?”

“Um, well, we don’t think so,” Brett said. “We actually aren’t sure what happened. But we did find evidence of a whole lot of blood on your front porch, and a lot of bleach that was used to clean it up.”

“Bleach,” Preston said. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. I just left. As soon as I saw the blood on the concrete in front of my house, I took off.”

“Who are ‘they,’ Preston?” Maggie asked.

“I just told you,” he snapped. “Those people from the delivery company.”

“What do they have to do with you?” she asked.

Preston sighed. He cradled his head in his hands. “It was a mistake. I found them out on one of my properties one day dumping a bunch of stuff. They thought the place was abandoned and when I caught them, they threatened to report me for dumping some other stuff. But it was on my land, and I think they were dumping something dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

Preston nodded. “More dangerous than old furniture and cars,” he said. “Whatever it was it had one of those symbols like you see in hospitals.”

Maggie’s head spun. She walked over to the back of Brett’s car and leaned her back against the hood. Preston was scared to death of someone. Andi Applebaum and her loser boyfriend Phillip Chapman were frightened enough that he risked his job to dump trash on her car and scratch up the sides. And what did any of it have to do with a food distribution company? And apparently, biohazards?

If she had any idea how and why a man like Adam King had been killed for it, she might figure it all out.

How was any of this worth the few thousand dollars they might skim off of delivery invoices? Threats, blackmail, and even a man’s life seemed like a lot to pay for whatever scam they might be running.

Unless, Maggie thought, the deliveries were just a front for the other scams they were really into. What would be worth committing a murder over? Images flashed in her head, from Adam King’s blood-soaked shirt to the faces on Andi King’s social media account.

It hit her all at once. The face on her online photo albums, the one she couldn’t place but was sure she had seen before. Clarkson. The last name of the driver who had been there Friday evening when she had left Brett at the lake. Clarkson was the man in the photos, but he looked different enough that she hadn’t recognized him.

“You need to pick up Andi Applebaum and Phillip Chapman,” she blurted out. “When I saw them, Brett, they were scared of someone, too. And I think I know who it is. I think he is the man behind all of this. And I think he might be the one who killed Adam King.”

Brett secured Preston in the back of his car and sat in the driver’s seat on his radio. Maggie listened as he gave out a description of the pair with instructions to apprehend them immediately. He replaced the radio on the mount in his car and turned to her. “What do you think?” he asked. “What is going on here?”

“What I think,” she said slowly. She spoke as the ideas took form in her head. “Is that Applebaum, Chapman, and this other person, Clarkson, were all part of a scam to short businesses for a little cash. But I think there was more to it, and Adam King figured it out and it got him killed.”

“What about him?” he asked, pointing to the man in the back of his police car.

“I think he found out as well, only he doesn’t realize exactly what he figured out.”

“What, illegal dumping?”

Maggie nodded. “Think about it, Brett. Illegal dumping. Of what? Medical waste. And the trucks and shortened deliveries all play a part in it,” she said.

“Because they needed somewhere to hide the waste,” Brett said. He nodded and smiled at her. “And the person in the middle of all of this is the driver who took off the day Adam King stumbled into your alley. As a matter of fact, I bet this driver is the one who stabbed him and dumped him on the side of the road. It makes sense. We never did understand where King had come from or how he could have gone that far on his own power as badly as he was hurt.”

“I bet if you ran tests on the blood on his shirt, you’ll find that it wasn’t all his,” Maggie said. “And I would go further and say that I think the delivery truck Clarkson drove Friday probably smells a lot like bleach now.”

“I think you’re right.” Brett smiled. “And I think we might even find that the blood residue on Preston’s front porch wasn’t from just one source, either.”

Andi Applebaum and Phillip Chapman were not hard to find, Brett informed her later. Maggie was parked in front of her laptop searching for a new car when the text came. Not only were they easy to spot, but the truth had also come rolling out of both of them while they were still handcuffed in the back of the deputy’s car.

Barton and Simmons picked the pair up less than a mile from the antique store. Despite their concerns over what Maggie knew, they’d still shopped for another hour.

“Clarkson is Kevin Clarkson, Andrea Applebaum’s half-brother,” Brett said. “It turns out he was up to more than they knew at first.”

“What about Adam King?” Maggie asked. “What did he know?”

“All Chapman would say is that he was going around asking a lot of questions,” he said. “We’re sure that’s what got him killed.”

“But they were part of the invoice scandal,” Maggie said. “How were they part of one and not the other?”

“I think it comes down to greed,” Brett explained. “This Clarkson guy was able to talk them into using the trucks to skim money off of the top and they were fine with that. They just took the other goods and resold them to other vendors. Basically, they double dipped. But the lack of cargo left room on Clarkson’s truck to haul the real moneymaker, bio waste.”

“I wonder where he got the waste from?” Maggie said. “And who was helping him do it.”

“That is what we are working to find out now,” Brett said. “But you were right, Preston Nance identified Clarkson as the man who threatened him and dumped the blood in front of his doorstep. Of course, we confirmed his identity with his sister, too.”

“So, what happens now? Is Preston in trouble?” Maggie asked.

“He might have some questions to answer for the Department of Natural Resources, but as far as we’re concerned, he is a free man.”

“I wonder if he plans to stick around here?” Maggie mused.

“The last thing he said to me when I picked him up after he was checked out at the hospital was ‘no offense, Sheriff, but I am finished with this place.’ I think he plans to move to St. Louis and sell real estate there.”

“Sounds like a much better fit for him,” Maggie said. She hung up her phone and returned to her car shopping.

Ruby called her next. “Where have you been?”

“Solving a crime,” Maggie said. “Nearly getting myself hurt along the way.”

“I am completely lost, but I don’t like the sound of that,” Ruby said.

“Okay,” Maggie said. “I tracked down one of the drivers at an antique mall north of Hunter Springs. When I found her, the plant manager who trashed my car was with her. Phillip Chapman is his name and they’re a couple. Anyway, they strong-armed me outside of the antiques place and made some threats to me.”

“What happened?”

“I mentioned my relationship with Brett and some of the things I was figuring out,” Maggie said. “They got spooked and let me go after that, but not until after they made sure that I knew they were into some bad things, but not as bad as killing someone. Then when I left there, I ran into Preston Nance.”

“When did Preston appear in this mess?” Ruby interrupted.

“You’re not going to believe this, but I spotted him walking along the side of the road after I left the antiques mall.”

“That’s insane,” Ruby said.

“I think he was halfway there,” Maggie said. “He looked ragged and almost homeless.”

“I have such a hard time picturing that man looking like anything but the dapper villain in a kids movie,” Ruby said. “But these other people, they are all in custody?”

“Chapman and Applebaum are,” Maggie said. “Kevin Clarkson is still on the loose. But Brett has a lot of people looking for him, and thanks to his sister singing like a bird, they had plenty of photos to identify him.”

Ruby ended the phone call with her shortly after. Maggie decided to bother Brett one more time, with a request to take her car shopping with him the following day.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

They agreed to meet after Brett left work. He promised to stop by and pick her up and drive her to Joplin to pick out a new car. She settled into the seat of his old muscle car and ran her hand along the leather seat.

“Maybe I should opt for something more old school this time,” she said.

“Oh, yeah.” Brett smiled at her with a flirty wink. “Taking a page out of my book?”

“You know that is the only reason why we are still dating, right? Because you’re still driving the same car you had when we were in high school,” she teased.

“Well, if that’s the reason, what would it take for you to agree to marry me?” As soon as the words were spoken a hush fell over the car. Maggie stared out the window for several minutes. “I take it that marriage is a subject that is off limits for us.”

She turned back and shook her head slowly. “It’s not off limits, Brett,” she said. “It’s just something I have done before.”

“So have I,” Brett said.

“The last time I did it, it was wrong. In many ways my marriage to Bradley’s father took the soul right out of me,” she attempted to explain. “But I found life again when I came back home to Dogwood Mountain. And you were a huge part of that.”

“Just because marriage was rotten the first time around doesn’t mean that it has to be this time,” Brett said.

“Does marriage have to be the end goal for us?”

Brett smiled and covered her hand with his own. “You know what? It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “The most important thing is how we feel about each other. But I’d like you to not toss away the idea completely. Is that okay?”

Maggie looked at him. “I would never completely toss away any idea that has to do with you. I love you and you mean everything to me.”

He nodded and gave her a quick glance as he drove. “I love you too and I do hope that one day you change your mind. Until then, just keep in mind how I feel about everything.”

Maggie squeezed his hand and smiled to herself when she realized that the bit of space he’d allowed her might have been what she needed. She was absolutely going to consider his feelings and promised herself to do it seriously. Brett was right. Her first marriage hadn’t worked out, but she hadn’t been married to him.

They chatted easily the rest of the way to the car dealership. Brett walked around behind her while they browsed through the sedans and coupes. After an hour, he leaned in and asked her if she was serious about going old school.

“Yeah,” Maggie said enthusiastically. “I’m all for something old school.”

He took her by the hand and pulled her back to his car. They drove a short way to Webb City. Brett pulled into a small dealership with a few new selections out in the front lot and an even larger selection in the pre-owned section.

“Take a look for yourself,” he said and waited while Maggie walked around the first few rows of cars. She ran her hand along the sleek exterior of an older Ford Mustang. “This is nice,” she said.

“Are you thinking about a sports car?”

Maggie shrugged. “I don’t know what I really want,” she said. She walked out a little further and began looking amongst older trucks and sports utility vehicles. She opened the door to a red 1963 Chevrolet pickup truck and inhaled the leather interior.

“Do you want a truck? I’m surprised,” Brett said.

“Why? Just because I despise driving Ruby’s old heap of junk when I need a replacement for my own,” she laughed.

She closed the door to the truck and stood in the middle of the car lot. She turned around and surveyed her choices but stopped when something caught her eye. “This,” she said and pointed to a teal 1970 Jeep Wagoneer. “Right here. This is what I want.”

Brett laughed until tears streamed down his face. “This is what you want?” he asked between chuckles.

“Yes,” Maggie said defensively. “Is there something wrong with that?”

“Not a thing, honey,” he said. “It’s just the last thing I thought you would be interested in. Let’s go talk to the folks inside and see what they have to say.”

After stopping off for a bite to eat in Joplin, Brett drove them back to Dogwood Mountain. Maggie was excited about her unexpected choice in a replacement vehicle. Her vintage Wagoneer would be delivered by the coming weekend.

In the meantime, she planned to use her insurance to repair the damage to the body of her car and pay for the entire thing to be detailed. Then she would sell the car and forget about the day she decided to drive herself to the Fairmont Distribution plant.

“Do you mind stopping by the donut shop on the way home?” she asked Brett when they pulled off of the highway.

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “Did you forget something?”

Maggie nodded her head. “I don’t know why, but I just want to make sure the cameras are turned on tonight,” she said.

“Let’s stop by and check it out, then,” Brett said. He pulled into the alley behind the donut shop and waited while she ran inside. Maggie unlocked the back door and flipped on the interior lights. She headed straight for her office and checked to make sure that the cameras were on.

A warning light beeped on the computer, indicating that one of the exterior cameras had gone active. She pulled up the viewer and froze where she stood. Clear as day she could see Brett still seated behind the steering wheel. His window was down, and a large figure hulked over him.

The man leaned over the window. One hand was inside the car, very close to Brett’s head. While she couldn’t make it out completely, she was sure that Kevin Clarkson, the delivery driver suspected in the murder of Adam King, had returned to the scene of one of his many crimes. Or at least, close to it.

Maggie felt her legs weaken under her. She fought the urge to run. She pulled her phone out instead and dialed Brooks Macklin straight away.

“Maggie, is everything okay?” he asked.

“Brooks, I’m at the donut shop,” she whispered into the phone. “Brett is parked out back waiting for me, but the camera alerted me to something and when I looked, I saw someone out there with him. It looks like the same man who drove the delivery truck the other night. Kevin Clarkson, the one wanted for the murder of Adam King.”

“He’s out there with him right now?” Brooks asked.

“He is, and I think he might be holding a weapon on him, to his head to be precise,” Maggie said. “What should I do?”

“Hang on and I will be there in two minutes,” Brooks said. “Whatever you do, don’t go outside.”

“Okay,” Maggie said reluctantly. She leaned in closer to the computer monitor. The man appeared to be moving. Brett was talking, maybe arguing with him. She watched as Kevin Clarkson made his way around to the passenger door and forced his way inside. He pushed the object in his hand closer to Brett.

“Oh, no,” Maggie said. She grabbed her phone and headed out of the office without a second thought. She hesitated at the prep table on her way through the kitchen and grabbed a sharp knife, Ruby’s favorite cutting tool. Softly, she walked across the floor toward the back door, just in case the man could hear her footsteps in the quiet of the night.

When she made it to the backdoor, she stopped to listen. She closed her eyes and blocked out all noises from inside the kitchen and focused only on what she could hear from outside. She listened for the familiar roar of Brett’s car engine. Instead of a car motor, she could hear voices, deep and angry. With one hand she gripped the doorknob. She held the knife aloft in the other hand.

One deep breath in and Maggie threw the door open and jumped outside. She held the knife in front of her.

“Let him go!” she shouted.

“I’d really rather not,” Brett said when she spoke. “I already have him in custody.” He was standing outside the car with Kevin Clarkson bent over the hood. He leaned his body weight against him and waited while Brooks unfastened a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

“I told you not to, but I see you decided to come out and join the party,” Brooks teased her. “I don’t think the guest of honor is very happy to see you.”

Brooks handed over the cuffs and stood back while Brett fixed them to the man’s wrists. He jerked him back up off of the car hood and shoved him toward Brooks.

“We’ll make sure you are good and comfortable in your new accommodations,” Brooks told the man as he walked him toward his police cruiser. “Won’t we, Sheriff?”

“You bet! We have some real deluxe rooms for you down at the county jail,” he said with a wink. He turned to Maggie and slowly lowered the knife in her hand. “Is this the guy? The one who was in the alley the day Adam King appeared?”

“That’s the one,” Maggie said without a doubt. “I don’t know what he thinks he was going to do coming back here, but he’s about to get what he deserves.”

“Was it you?” Clarkson shouted just before Brooks pushed his head into the backseat of the car. “It couldn’t have been you. There is no way I was ratted out by a baker in a donut shop.”

“Hey,” Maggie shouted at him. “Like I told you before. I’m the owner of this place!”

“And don’t you forget it,” Brett said and slammed the door on him.

ALSO BY EMMA AINSLEY

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