Troubled Treats Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the line of danger and not have it impact your life?”
    “Apparently more times than I’ve experienced yet,” I said.
    “So, you are investigating,” Gabby said triumphantly, as though she’d won a point in a debate, which was really all that every conversation with her ever was.
    It was time to give her a little nudge.  “I don’t know.  The truth is that I wouldn’t know where to start.  Sully was such a private person.”
    “To some folks,” Gabby said almost wistfully.  I glanced over at her and saw that she was frowning slightly.  Apparently my instincts to come there first had been dead on the money.
    “Are you implying that you knew him better than I did?” I asked her.
    “I know lots of folks in April Springs,” she said, suddenly deflecting my attention.
    I wasn’t going to let her, though.  “I get it, Gabby, you’re in the loop.  Don’t forget, I know a lot of folks around town, too.”  Waving my hand in the air dismissively, I said, “Thanks for your time.  I’ll try again in a few weeks.  Maybe you’ll get something in that works for me by then.”
    I was two steps away from the door and beginning to regret my bluff of leaving when Gabby said, “Things are kind of slow at the moment.  Would you care for a cup of tea?”
    “Why not?” I asked, doing my best not to reveal how eager I was to get her opinion about who might have wanted to murder Sully Jackson.
    Gabby surprised me by walking toward the front door and flipping her sign to show that she was closed.
    “I don’t want you to lose any business on my account,” I said.
    “Nonsense.  Turning them away every now and then just makes them want what I have more.  You could take a lesson there yourself.  Now that you’re married, how long are you going to continue to keep your shop open seven days a week?”
    “It’s taxing at times, but what day should I close?  It can’t be on the weekend; I have too many standing orders then.  What day of the workweek could I shut the shop down?  Each day brings its own unique set of customers.”
    “So, let them change their routines.  I have an idea.  Why don’t you close on Wednesdays?  Remember the old days when everything closed on Wednesday afternoon around here?  You could take the entire day off and spend it with your new husband.”
    “I’ll think about it,” I said.  “But I’ve already shaved a few hours off each workday, and you wouldn’t believe how some folks are still howling about that.”
    “Let them complain,” she said with a shrug.  “It’s good for them.  Now, let’s see about that tea.”
    We walked to the back of the store together and into Gabby’s office.  The space was quite a bit nicer than the former cubbyhole of a closet I’d converted into my office at the donut shop, but then again, Gabby had a great deal more square footage than I had to work with.  After all, I was reminded daily that Donut Hearts had been converted from a tiny old train depot, and it didn’t leave me a great deal of space to work with.
    As the teapot started to whistle, Gabby said, “I’m really going to miss Sully.”
    The tenderness of her admission surprised me.  “Were you two really that close?” I asked her.
    “As a matter of fact, I was quite fond of him,” she said, avoiding giving me a direct answer.  “Though I might have been in the minority of the people around him.”
    That news was interesting.  “I’ve heard so many people describe Sully as the last genuinely honest man left on the planet that it’s hard for me to imagine anyone wishing him harm.”
    “Don’t you see that’s what threw some folks off?” Gabby asked as she prepared the tea.  “In fact, I’m willing to bet that’s why he was murdered.  Sully took his integrity to the limits, and some folks considered it a handicap more than a virtue.”
    “Who thought that?” I asked her.
    “Well, right off the bat, I can think of a few folks.  His two employees