Doughnuts & Deadly Schemes - Culinary Competition Mystery #3

Chapter 17

(Amy)

Amy tossed her cell phone on the passenger seat. According to the text message, Sophie was going to be at least twenty minutes late. And Amy was already parked behind Riverbend, staring at the kitchen door that could possibly have an uninvited visitor on the other side. The pastry chef who used to wake up at 4:00 a.m. without the aid of an alarm clock was always punctual, at least until somebody decided to use terror as a way to earn money. Or maybe her new living arrangement with a sexy, celebrity look-alike boyfriend had something to do with the delay. Amy sighed as she looked around. Why did shadows always have to look like creatures that had stepped out of her worst nightmares? How did fire hydrants turn into ogres and lampposts into spindly aliens?

She started the Mini's engine again and backed out of the parking spot. Was Sophie's attacker roaming around, preparing to ambush another early arriving business owner? There was enough time to take a spin around the neighborhood and see.

At the end of the block, Amy turned toward Main Street but continued across the main road after stopping for the red blinking stoplight. The property adjacent to the CooleyRiver had once been a narrow park, so there wasn't space to make square blocks like the rest of the district. If the downtown was a wine glass, the section where Riverbend and Finley & Crowe were located formed the stem, with buildings only constructed along Main Street. The alley bisecting the larger blocks turned into a service road edged with a wide median of grass. The seldom-used road stopped at the river then made a 90-degree turn into the residential neighborhood behind the businesses.

Amy turned left so she could pass behind the beleaguered menswear shop. It didn't seem likely that the extortionist would break into the menswear shop after committing a murder there, but irrational people did stupid things. She was relieved to find the employee parking areas tucked behind the buildings empty of both cars and people. When the road turned, she followed it into the residential neighborhood. Most of the houses were dark. A few had lights on. She caught a glimpse of a white-haired woman standing at her kitchen counter, pouring water from a kettle into a mug. The nearby murder surely had rattled many of the residents in the neighborhood, but at the moment it looked peaceful.

She stopped at a crossroad and decided it was time to turn back toward Riverbend. The sky was beginning to lighten from black to a dark navy blue from the impending sunrise. Massive, old trees lined the sidewalk. An occasional lit porch light cast dense shadows that mimicked the gnarly trunks. Amy squawked, a sound that seemed more appropriate coming from a chicken who had just produced an egg. One of the shadows was moving, and she was certain it wasn't her overactive imagination conjuring the effect. She stomped on the brake pedal. In fact, it wasn't a shadow at all. A person in black pants with a black sweatshirt, hood pulled up, was hurrying down the sidewalk toward downtown. Was this the murderer heading out to make more trouble? When she set out on her little impromptu jaunt, she hadn't figured out what to do if she actually found a suspicious person.

During the entire tour around the area, Amy hadn't seen another car moving on the streets. She couldn't follow the shadow person in her Mini, even though the vehicle sometimes seemed to be invisible to semi-trucks and hulking SUVs on the highway. She slowed and came to a stop at the corner. The brake lights cast a bloody glow on the person as she spotted him in her side mirror. Or at least it looked like a him. A very large him who had the same solid girth as the ancient trees he was marching past. Amy made a split-second decision and turned left. In her rearview mirror, she saw the man treading on the sidewalk next to the grass median behind Finley & Crowe's block.

Amy stepped on the gas pedal. She rolled through the stop sign at the next corner as she turned right. All of the curbside parking spaces were empty along the edge of the block. If the guy hadn't picked up his pace, she might be able to cut through the alley and see where he was going. She scrambled out of Mimi. She had parked at the edge of the opening to the alley. A few steps brought her inside the dark, narrow corridor dotted with dumpsters and dormant delivery vehicles. The claustrophobic passage was dark and stinky from a nearby restaurant dumpster. The buildings on both sides were two stories tall. It felt as if she were padding along the pathway to Hell.