The Peppermint Mocha Murder by Colette London

Author:Colette London
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

Once I’d gotten close enough to Donna Brown to see her face clearly, I thought I realized what was going on. A few minutes’ conversation with her inside the Sproutes theater confirmed it.

“I’m just so overwhelmed!” the playhouse director told me inside the ornate lobby. “I swear, I never meant for any of this to happen! I came down here today to try to calm everyone down.”

“Well, no worries, then!” I said cheeringly. I nodded to the small crowd, still milling around beyond the theater’s decorated-for-the-season windows. “Everyone seems peaceful.”

In fact, they seemed positively upbeat, for a protest.

“Do you really think so?” Donna’s gaze looked apprehensive.

I nodded. I felt for her; I truly did. She reminded me of a few of my clients—particularly the ones who were small-business entrepreneurs. They were perpetually overextended, juggling too many responsibilities and feeling they were doing nothing well.

As the playhouse director and a teacher, Donna Brown could easily feel the same way. Compared with the photos I’d seen of her, she appeared much older than I would have expected. She was probably only sixty, but her face seemed drawn and creased with worry. Her movements were jittery; her hands restless.

I guessed months of online bullying could be tough on a person—especially one who, like Donna, seemed so delicate. Behind her eyeglasses, her blue eyes were teary and hesitant.

Beneath her knee-length puffer coat, I glimpsed her sequined holiday sweater, dressy trousers, and snow boots. She wore gloves, so I didn’t spy a wedding ring, but I knew from my research that she was unmarried. Her dog had shed on her coat; an unraveled thread on its hem told me she’d been wearing that garment a long time. Maybe she couldn’t afford to replace it?

“What I don’t understand is how things got to this point.” I gave her a steady encouraging look. “You have a real fan club out there! But I thought you agreed to cancel The Nutcracker?”

“I did.” Donna shuffled her booted feet, then glanced at the nearby security guard. He had recognized me and let us in.

The crowd, believing that I represented someone who wanted to negotiate the closure of Christmas in Crazytown, had cheered.

“But something has changed since then?” I pressed. This was none of my business, really. But I was afraid Roger Balthasar would show up at any moment and terrorize Donna. He had to have caught wind of the protest and come here to deal with it.

I doubted he would handle the matter with any compassion.

“Honestly, I was happy to shelve this year’s production,” Donna admitted. Her gaze sought mine. I nodded in affirmation. “I’m positively overloaded with work and projects right now. I would have canceled it for nothing! It was a relief not to have to coordinate one more thing.” She studied the snow melting from her boots onto the theater lobby’s marble floor. “It’s been a difficult year,” Donna added with enviable understatement.

I understood. “That’s too bad. Work pressure?”

Her face took on a venomous cast. “Not exactly.”

Yikes. Apparently, Donna Brown had a dark side, too.

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