My best friends ever since junior high are Misty Ossler and Emily Westhill.

I’m an Emergency Medical Technician.

Misty is tall, confident, and thoughtful. She is one of the kindest police officers in our town of Fallingbrook, Wisconsin.

Emily is an idealistic and earnest sweetheart. She became a 911 dispatcher. Devastated when she couldn’t save everyone, including her young detective husband after he was shot, she quit that job. She and her late husband’s father opened a donut and coffee shop, Deputy Donut.

It’s not surprising that, as first responders, Misty and I often end up at the same emergencies.

We don’t expect to run into Emily during crises.

Unfortunately, we sometimes do.

Shortly before Halloween, I was on the day shift. I woke up early, jogged, and then returned home for the rest of my workout. I showered, had breakfast, packed my lunch, and drove to work at our Emergency Medical Services station. It’s a glorified garage that houses two ambulances, an office, and a great room with a kitchenette, comfy seating, and a table where we could eat if unfinished jigsaw puzzles weren’t in the way.

I put my lunch in the fridge and made coffee. We buy our coffee beans from Deputy Donut. Following Emily’s excellent advice, we grind the beans right before we brew our coffee. We’ve learned to pour our coffee into travel mugs in case we have to hop into an ambulance and rush off somewhere.

Relishing those first sips of the rich and almost chocolatey coffee, I hovered over the table and searched for a puzzle piece showing part of a jack-o’-lantern’s snaggle-toothed grin.

A call came in.

My partner and I took our coffee with us and transported a man to the hospital. He had tumbled off his bike and broken an arm. His helmet had prevented worse injuries.

Back at the station, we cleaned the ambulance inside and out. We were about to eat our lunches when we were dispatched to a home next to one of the area’s small, pretty lakes.

It was a Tuesday. I would have expected Emily to be safely at work at Deputy Donut.

However, Emily had promised to help cater a man’s seventieth birthday party. She had taken Boston cream donuts and coffee to the events tent on his lawn and had found him with no apparent vital signs.

Misty and her patrol partner, my boyfriend Hooligan Houlihan, were already at the scene when we rolled, strobes flashing and siren blaring, into the man’s driveway. We hadn’t needed the speed, the lights, or the siren. The poor man was beyond help. After trading sympathetic glances with Misty, Hooligan, Emily, and another of our friends, Detective Brent Fyne, who arrived shortly after we did, we wheeled our stretcher up the hill to the ambulance and returned to our station.

We did manage to eat our lunches and enjoy more coffee before our next call. A woman had fallen off a ladder while attempting to hang a square of gossamer white cloth in a maple tree. A ghost, she said. From the looks of it, the ghost needed more help than the woman did. She decided she was fine, only winded.

We checked and confirmed that she was right, but we didn’t leave right away. We hung the so-called ghost on a branch that was lower than the woman had originally intended. Luckily, the woman and her gauzy ghost provided a distraction from thinking about the body that Emily had discovered.

After work, I called Emily to see if she was all right, but the call went directly to message. Hooligan came over for dinner and to help get ready for the pre-Halloween party I was having Thursday night. Misty is invited, along with her boyfriend, our fire chief. And of course, Emily is also invited. She will tell you that she is definitely not dating Brent, who was her late husband’s partner on the Fallingbrook Police Force, but he’s part of our circle of close friends, and we always include him. Maybe, someday, Emily and Brent will realize that despite the shared grief that has kept them apart, they belong together.

My boyfriend Hooligan is a darling, with boyish auburn hair, freckles, and greenish eyes. Like Misty, he is a well-trained and compassionate police officer. His smile is the warmest in the world, and although Emily thinks she’s a matchmaker, Hooligan and I fell for each other about five seconds after we met. That was at least a minute before Emily saw us together and decided that Hooligan and I were meant for each other.

I won’t tell you everything that Hooligan and I discussed that night. But I will tell you that we can hardly wait to see our friends at Thursday night’s party. We also hope that this new murder investigation won’t prevent Brent from attending it.

Boston Scream Murder is the fourth book in the “Deputy Donut” mystery series, coming August 25, 2020.

Halloween in the small town of Fallingbrook, Wisconsin, is the perfect season for Deputy Donut owner Emily Westhill to unmask a killer.

October 31 is just around the corner and Emily Westhill’s Boston cream donuts, carved with a scream, have made an indelible impression on local eccentric Rich Royalson. So much so that he’s ordered three dozen, with no screaming faces and twice the fudge frosting, for his seventieth birthday—a special event in more ways than one. It’s to be held on fog-shrouded Lake Fleekom where, twenty years ago, his wife mysteriously drowned.

But the next day, when Emily arrives with her Boston cream donuts, she stumbles upon Rich’s corpse. The poor guy wanted a unique birthday bash—just not one to the side of his skull. With a guest list of possible perpetrators left at the scene, Emily soon discovers that the Royalson closet is rattling with skeletons. As the fog thickens, motives mount, and the tricks outnumber the treats, Emily fears that Rich may not be the last one in Fallingbrook to go out screaming.

Purchase Link
# # # # # # # # # # #

About the author
Ginger Bolton writes the Deputy Donut mystery series—coffee, donuts, cops, danger, and one curious cat . . . The third Deputy Donut Mystery, Jealousy Filled Donuts, came out in August 2019 and was chosen as the Woman’s World Best New Cozy Mystery of the week. It was also named as one of Dollycas’s Best Reads of 2019. Boston Scream Murder comes out August 25. More Deputy Donut Mysteries are in the works. When Ginger isn’t writing or reading, she’s crocheting, knitting, sewing, or generally causing trouble. She’s also fond of donuts and coffee. As Janet Bolin, Ginger wrote the Threadville Mysteries—murder and mayhem in a village of crafty shops. Visit her website at gingerbolton.com.

All comments are welcomed.