Deadly Donuts by Jessica Beck Read Free Book Online Page B

asked, suddenly resenting the man that I had adored growing up.
    “Listen to me, young lady!” my mother snapped at me.   “I will not allow you to judge your father for what he may have done in his weakest moment.   His integrity was never in doubt.   Besides, you don’t know the whole story about our split, and if I have anything to say about it, you never will.   Do we understand each other?”
    “Loud and clear,” I said.   It was odd, but I’d always thought of my parents as just that, two people who had raised me together, and mostly that was the end of it.   The idea that they’d had lives before I was born just never entered my stream of consciousness.   Boy, was I going to have to adjust my thinking as far as that was concerned.   “I’m curious, Momma.   What evidence did Mr. Briar offer you to back up his assertion of Daddy’s culpability in his brother’s death?”
    “All he had with him were a faded police report, an old letter, and a newspaper account of the tragedy.   As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t proof of anything.”
    “Did he honestly expect you to pay him to keep that quiet?”
    Momma frowned, and then she explained, “Actually, the letter was the linchpin to his blackmail scheme.  
    It was from your father to Blake Briar, and in it, he threatened to kill the man.”

 

 
    Chapter 4

 
 
    “He did what ?” I asked.
    “The letter explained that they had started a new business together, and Blake cleaned out their joint account without warning your father what he was doing.   Thomas threatened legal action, and if that didn’t work, your father said that the retribution would be worse than Blake could imagine.   There was definitely more than a hint of a threat in the tone of that letter.   Thomas said at one point that he’d wring Blake’s neck if he didn’t get his money back.”
    “Surely Morgan showed the police that letter,” I said.
    “He said that he did, but he claimed that the chief was one of your father’s cronies, so the police refused to take it seriously.   I told him that the entire premise was preposterous, but Morgan claimed to have an ace in the hole that he wasn’t going to tell anyone about, real proof about your father’s culpability.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I slapped his face,” Momma said, “but I never killed the man.”   She looked at me oddly, and then she asked me, “Suzanne, why are you smiling?”
    “Truth be told, he was probably getting tired of being slapped by the time you hit him.   I took a swing at him myself earlier in the day, and I made pretty good contact.”
    “Like mother, like daughter, I suppose,” she said with a subtle smile.
    “And I’m more proud of it than I could ever say,” I answered.   “What happened after that?”
    “I stormed off as he yelled threats in my direction that I’d be sorry, but I didn’t even hesitate to go.   The man evidently seriously misjudged the women he was trying to blackmail.   I have to wonder if we were his only victims, though.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “He wasn’t nervous at all when he asked me for one hundred thousand dollars,” my mother said.   “It was as though he’d practiced the request a dozen times before he made it of me, and I have to wonder if the man made it a habit of extorting money from other people.   Perhaps one of his other victims caught up with him, and we had the misfortune to have it happen in April Springs while he was pursuing us.”
    “One way or the other, I need to dig into this,” I said as I finished my coffee.   “We can’t just leave it up to the police.”
    “I agree.   Suzanne, I believe an investigation is in order outside of official channels this time,” she said.   My mother hadn’t been all that thrilled with my past snooping, but this was a matter of not just family honor, but our freedom and reputations as well.   “Though I admit that I would feel better if Jake were involved