Read Online Mint Chip Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 6 by Susan Gillard - Free Book Online Page A

Year’s.”
     
    “That’s only two and a half months
away,” Amy said, fixing her with a stern glance.  “You do realize that, right?”
     
    “Why wait?” Heather protested.  “It’s
not like this is a first wedding for either of us.  It won’t be as big and
fancy as the first time around.  Simple, yet elegant.  That’s what I’m going
for.”
     
    “What about Ryan?  What does he want?”
     
    “Ryan just wants to get married,” she
said.  “He’d just run down to the Justice of the Peace if I would go for that.”
     
    “But you won’t,” Amy said firmly. 
“That’s totally not romantic.  And second wedding or not, you want a wedding to
remember.”
     
    “I’d remember the Justice of the
Peace,” Heather teased.
     
    “Yeah, but not in a good way.”
     
    “True.”
     
    “So if this really is the dress,
you’ve gotten the second most important part out of the way,” Amy said.
     
    “The first most important part being
finding a groom?” Heather asked.
     
    “You got it,” Amy said.
     
    ***
     
    Long after Amy had left, leaving the
stack of bridal magazines piled on Heather’s coffee table, Heather sat on the
couch flipping through their glossy pages.  Every now and then, she folded down
a page corner to mark a dress she wanted to come back to and look at a second
time. 
     
    But her thoughts weren’t entirely on
what she was seeing.  Finally, she gave up, laid the open magazine down on the
coffee table, and turned her attention to trying to figure out what was
bothering her.
     
    Something kept stirring at the back of
her mind, some thought or idea that wouldn’t quite come into focus.  What was
it?
     
    Starting with getting up that morning,
Heather mentally reviewed the events of her day.  As she worked forward toward
arriving at Donut Delights, the nagging feeling got stronger.  When she got to
her encounter with Lana Sturmer, alarm bells began going off.  Why?
     
    Lana had looked pretty tired that
morning.  Her unpleasant attitude might have had no more significance than
that.  But wait…
     
    Heather sat up straight as the idea
began to come into focus.  Lana had said she was tired because the pageant
circuit was exhausting.  But hadn’t the Miss Harper County pageant been over
for several days?  Shouldn’t she have had time to relax by now?
     
    On the other hand, maybe Emily was
preparing for an upcoming pageant.  Maybe that’s what Lana had meant.
     
    But that possibility didn’t feel
right.  Heather thought about googling pageants in the area but realized that
would probably come too close to Ryan’s definition of getting involved in the
investigation.  Instead, she texted him, “Hi, handsome.  Please call me when
you get a chance.  I have an idea you might want to check out if you haven’t
already.”
     
    But even though she waited several
minutes, no ping announced a response from Ryan. 
     
    She’d been sitting long enough, first
looking at magazines with Amy, then continuing to peruse them on her own.  She
didn’t feel like sitting around waiting for Ryan to call.  He’d call as soon as
he could.  She might as well find something to do in the meantime.
     
    “Hey, Dave,” she called to her dog,
who was sleeping on his doggie bed in the corner.  Dave lifted his head and
blinked at her.  “You want to go for a walk?”
     
    At the word ‘walk,’ Dave lumbered to
his feet, shook himself all over, and trotted eagerly to the back door.  “Sure,
you know what that means,” Heather said, lifting his leash off the hook by the
door and clipping it to his collar.  She stuck her cell phone in her pocket and
grabbed her keys from her purse on the counter.  “Okay, let’s go.”
     
    As Dave led her enthusiastically down
the steps, she felt a twinge of guilt for not taking him on walks more often.  It
was just so much easier to let him out in the back yard to do his business.  It
was a big yard, and if he wanted to run