Raising Hell - Shannon West Page 0,2

that had seemed to work. My friends looked at me like I was crazy when I told them that, but I didn’t question it too much. It worked was all I knew. Like magic.

I set out, then, to shamelessly get as close to duplicating the Krispy Kreme recipe as I could. Not because I had any insight into their ingredients, because I obviously didn’t. It was done more or less by trial and error. And I went back to running a mile every day, because I kept sampling the product.

After dozens of failed attempts, because I really had no idea what I was doing, and after a couple of kitchen fires that did no real, or at least, no lasting damage, I finally perfected my version of a doughnut recipe, not to mention the use of the deep fat fryer. And I mean perfected—if I did say so myself, the doughnuts tasted amazing. They were really sweet, light and literally-melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and even better than the original. It was like magic.

I really wasn’t sure how I’d done it, but I managed to duplicate that recipe again and again. I started opening for breakfast, offering the doughnuts, glazed, jelly-filled and chocolate covered, and my customer base grew accordingly. I even put up a “Hot and Fresh” sign in the front window, just like Krispy Kreme did. And the doughnuts flew out the door. My shop was packed every morning and usually customers took a box home with them. Along with serving some nice, flaky croissants that I purchased in bulk at Sam’s Club over in Birmingham, real butter and a nice selection of jams and jellies, my shop soon almost cornered the market on breakfast in town. It was all a little mystifying, but I was enjoying it while it lasted.

As Indian Springs was the county seat, my best customers included most of the members of the county sheriff's department, including Sheriff Nick Moody. It wasn’t ideal that I had to see him almost every day, but I managed to cope, and since he largely ignored me, I tried to ignore him right back.

I was busy enough that I was able to hire a couple of helpers and an assistant manager, Tina, so I no longer had to get out of bed at the crack of dawn every morning to make the doughnuts.

After six months in business, doughnuts were still my specialty, because we were The Donutery, after all, but I’d begun to branch out into light lunches too. Business was amazing and life was good in general, even if my social life had almost completely dried up when I moved to Indian Springs.

There weren’t a lot of gay men—or at least not openly gay men—in town, so any action I got was limited to a few forays to the bars in nearby Huntsville, and the occasional hook-up on Grindr, neither of which were great options.

The sheriff’s department came into view with all the lights blazing inside the building, bringing me back to my current situation, which wasn’t anything I was looking forward to dealing with. I hurried inside, hoping that I could calm the situation down and get my grandmother and my aunt out of there before anybody else, especially someone from the funeral home, showed up. As the funeral home was located right across the road from the sheriff’s office, I didn’t hold out much hope of that.

There was no one in the front lobby in the middle of the night, but in one of the rooms leading off it, the door was wide open, and I could hear my grandmother’s voice ringing out.

“I know my constitutional rights!”

Another voice I didn’t recognize piped up. “That’s right. You tell him, Pearl!”

I stepped up to the door of the room and saw my grandmother, all five feet nothing of her, rheumy blue eyes blazing as she stared up belligerently at a large sheriff’s deputy. On one side of her stood her younger sister, Rose, wringing her hands, and on the other side a woman I recognized only by sight, but not by name. I only knew she was in my gran’s book club, which met every Saturday morning in our basement. She had silver gray hair and was dressed all in dark clothing. In fact all of them looked like geriatric ninjas, dressed in various shades of black, dark brown and navy blue.

“I know my constitutional rights!” Pearl shouted again, banging her fist on the table to punctuate her point.

The deputy