The Bite-Sized Bakery Cozy Mysteries Box Set Page 2

  I’d been so convinced, I’d considered retracting the ad and asking for my money back. After footing the bill for the food truck, ingredients, and the accessories needed for a successful business on the road, I’d been strapped for cash.

  But then Bee had come knocking and everything had changed.

  I was eternally grateful to her for being willing to work with me, particularly since she was a fantastic baker.

  I flashed an appreciative smile at her now.

  “I take it you’re smiling for a reason,” Bee said, as she wiped off the counters in our truck with a rag. “Why don’t you tell me more about this date you’ve got tonight?”

  My stomach did a little flip. I’d forgotten about Owen, the handsome and surprising lobsterman, who’d asked me out. I checked my filigree watch, its pearlescent face flashing the time.

  It was already 7:30 pm. I had to be at the Lobster Shack in a half an hour. “Oh my heavens, I’m going to be late.”

  “Late? Late for a very important date?” Bee grinned at me.

  I flapped my hands at her. “I wouldn’t say it’s important. I have no idea why I even agreed to go on a date with him. It was all so strange.” I broke down what had happened this morning for her—Bee had rolled out of bed an hour after the incident and had been too grumpy to ask too many questions at the time.

  “He scared you?” Bee asked. “That’s an interesting way to ask someone out on a date.”

  “I shouldn’t even be going. Not after…”

  Bee blinked at me. I hadn’t yet told her my full story, and she never pressured me into it. I liked that about her. She respected my privacy, and I did the same for her, though I was curious about her history. She had let on even less than I had.

  Not that it mattered—we shared a love for baking and were both loyal and trustworthy. Bee had a fantastic sense of humor too, which always helped during the long hours on the truck.

  I cleared my throat. “Look, I’ll tell you later, but now, I’ve got to go get changed and get to this Lobster Shack place.”

  “Knock on my door when you’re back at the guesthouse, all right? Just so I know you haven’t gotten lost between here and the pier.”

  “And because you’d like to know what happened?”

  “That too.”

  I paused, looking around the truck. Not everything was neatly polished and packed away for tomorrow. “The truck…”

  “I’ll handle this.” Bee flicked my arm with her rag. “Go on. You go have some fun.”

  I hastily untied my apron, left it on one of the hooks next to the specials board, and hurried out into the night. A quick trip to the guesthouse for a freshening-up later, and I was on my way to the pier—I’d looked up the address of the Lobster Shack earlier—my heart hammering in my chest.

  My palms had grown sweaty.

  This so wasn’t like me. Maybe it was good I got out of my comfort zone and forgot about Daniel. After all, it had been two years. Two whole years of my colleagues giving me the side-eye and muttering things behind my back and … I’d probably imagined most of it, but I certainly hadn’t imagined the pain of losing him.

  Now really isn’t the time to be thinking about that.

  I found the pier still bustling with activity, folks meandering along its wooden walkway and stopping to play games at stalls or to shop for touristy items to take home from their trip to the seaside town.

  The Lobster Shack was supposed to be right at the end of the pier. The closer I got to the restaurant, the quieter the pier grew. Odd. The other portions of the pier had been so busy and full of life—surely, a popular seafood restaurant would draw in a lot of tourists and locals?

  I arrived at the restaurant and found it in darkness. The front doors were glass and huge, looking out on the ocean, along with several floor-to-ceiling windows. I spied a bar further back, but no activity whatsoever.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I reached into my purse for my mace. I took a step toward the restaurant, craning my neck, but stopped in my tracks. The front door was ajar.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Is anyone in there? Owen?”

  I wasn’t about to waltz into a restaurant so clearly devoid of life. But my curiosity was piqued for the second time today. Why would the lobsterman have invited me to a closed restaurant?

  I positioned myself in front of the door and opened it, slowly. The light from the lampposts on the pier splashed across the wooden boards.

  I didn’t have to take a step inside to make out the shape on the floor.

  A man, lying supine, a smear of something dark across his cheek. A lobster mallet lay a few feet from him, its end coated in something red. Something I was sure was blood.

  It was my date, Owen.

  And he was dead.

  3

  “And you just happened to be here to find the body?” The detective, a squat little man who wore a scowl that transformed him into a caricature of villain, sat with his notepad and pen on his lap and glared at me.

  “I didn’t just happen to be here,” I said, shifting on the bench at the end of the pier. “I was here for a date.”

  “With the deceased.”

  “Yes.” I’d already told him this about five times, but Detective Jones, the incarnation of every small-town mean police officer cliché, hadn’t taken any of it in. That or he just wanted to question me until we were both blue in the face.

  And given that it was fall, and the chill wind off the ocean had dropped another few degrees in the past half an hour, it was likely we’d both change color or freeze at this rate.

  I shifted on the bench, my gaze darting toward the restaurant and away again. Each time I looked over at it—now with its crime scene tape out front and police officers moving around the entrance, talking softly—my stomach did a turn, flip and a plunge.

  Owen was dead.

  I had never seen a dead body before. No, that wasn’t right. I’d never seen a murdered body. The only time I’d experienced anything similar had been at my Great Aunt Tiana’s funeral where there’d been an open casket. I’d been fifteen years old at the time, and I’d passed out right in front of the coffin. Twenty years had passed, but I wasn’t any less squeamish.

  It was much easier to write articles about war or famine or death than it was to confront it face-to-face.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and caught my breath.

  “Tell me what you saw again,” Detective Jones said, in that commanding tone.

  I faced him. “I didn’t see anything except … except poor Owen on the floor. He had a smudge of something on his cheek, and there was a lobster mallet next to him. I—I didn’t see anything else. Or anyone else.”

  “A lobster mallet,” Jones said. “Interesting that you remember that detail.”

  “It was fairly obvious, given that it was covered in blood.” I shuddered. “Look, what’s your point?”

  Detective Jones took his time writing something down on his notepad then underlining it three times, viciously.

  “Detective, may I go? I’ve given you my statement and answered all your questions. I don’t see how—”

  “You know when we last had a murder in Carmel Springs?” he asked.

  “No. I’m new to town.”

  “That’s what I thought.” He snapped his notepad closed. “The last time we had a murder was last fall. During tourist season. All these leaf peepers come down here, thinking they belong. They bring trouble with them. The guy whodunit the last time? He was a tourist too.”

  “Too?” I stiffened. “What on earth are you suggesting?”

  “That you don’t leave town,” he replied. “Not until this investigation is over.”

  I hadn’t planned on leaving for another few weeks, but the fact that I couldn’t now sat in the back of my mind. What if the customers here didn’t buy? What if we needed to move on? Just how long did a murder investigation usually take to—?

  “Ruby!” A shout traveled along the pie
r.

  Both the crotchety detective and I looked up.

  Bee came scuttling toward me, still wearing her Bite-sized Bakery apron from the truck. “I heard the sirens,” she said. “And then some old guy came by and told me that there’d been a murder at the restaurant.”

  “Which old guy?” Detective Jones and I asked, in unison. We exchanged a glance, one that was fraught with dislike and tension.

  “You let me handle the questions, young lady,” he said.

  He was probably five years older than me and a few inches shorter. Not that there was anything wrong with short, but still … “young lady?”

  “Who are you?” Bee asked, eying the detective. “A rent-a-cop?”

  “No, Bee, he’s a real detective. Investigating the case.”

  Jones had drawn himself up straight at the phrase “rent-a-cop.”

  “Who died?” Bee asked, looking back over her shoulder at the restaurant.

  “I’ll fill you in later,” I said. “Detective, are we done here? Am I allowed to leave?”

  “No,” Jones said, his beady brown eyes narrowing. “I still have a few questions about your involvement.”

  “What involvement?” Bee asked.

  “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to back up. This is an ongoing police investigation, and I need to question Miss Holmes as a person of interest in the case.”

  Bee pursed her lips at the detective but retreated after a few moments, hanging back near the railing at the touristy stall nearest to the restaurant. She peered out over the ocean but cast surreptitious looks our way, as if checking whether I needed her help.

  I took a deep breath and focused. “Wait, I’m a person of interest?” This can’t be happening.

  He couldn’t seriously think I had anything to do with this. But then, his whole leaf-peeper speech had pretty much insinuated that. “Look,” I said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. Owen asked me out on a date this morning. All I did was turn up here at the right time and—”

  “You expect me to believe that he invited you to have dinner at a restaurant that’s always closed on a Monday?”

  “I didn’t know that. I was asked out on a date. I spent all day working. I didn’t even have time to—”

  “Why would he ask you to this place if it was closed?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I wasn’t the one doing the asking.” Prickles danced over my skin—this always happened when I got frustrated. First came the prickles, and then I’d get hot, and then I’d say something I’d regret. “This is ridiculous. I’ve cooperated with you fully, and I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong except get the shock of my life.” I swallowed, trying to calm myself down. “Look, I’m staying at the Oceanside Guesthouse. If you need to talk to me again, I’ll be there. And I park my food truck down at the beach every day too.”

  Detective Jones tapped his pen on his pad one last time. “Fine,” he said, at last. “You can go. But I’ll be in touch, Miss Holmes. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.” I rose from the bench.

  I wobbled slightly and steadied myself on the wrought-iron arm. It was the murder. It had me woozy. That or the detective’s line of questioning had sent me into a dizzy state. Either way, I had to get off this pier.

  I met Bee in front of the stall, and she looped an arm around my shoulders. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen, well, exactly what you just saw.”

  “A corpse,” I said.

  “Now, there’s something that will keep you up all night.”

  “I hope not. We’re supposed to open the truck early tomorrow.” But Bee was right. If I closed my eyes now, I’d wind up running the whole event through my head again.

  “Come on,” my friend said. “Let’s get you back to the guesthouse. We can have some hot cocoa before bed and talk about what happened.”

  “Do you really think talking will help?”

  “It’s better than lying awake, staring at the ceiling.” Bee patted me on the back.

  I cast a last glance at the Lobster Shack. Detective Jones was out front, and he stared at me as we walked away, his mouth set in a thin line.

  4

  The guestrooms we’d hired out in the Oceanside Guesthouse were small but quaint and linked through a shared bathroom. We’d opted to leave the doors open for now, which I greatly preferred since I was spooked out after the whole “dead body in the restaurant” incident.

  I sat on the armchair at the end of Bee’s bed in her suite and curled my legs underneath myself. The guesthouse was mostly self-service, with set meals for dinner, breakfast, and lunch if one booked to eat.

  Unfortunately, it was way too late for us to attend the dinner, and the guesthouse didn’t have room service. However, there was a station for coffee, hot cocoa, and tea in the corner of every room, and it was there Bee stood now, humming under her breath as she fixed us two mugs of hot cocoa and plopped mini-marshmallows into the frothy chocolatey liquid.

  She brought the mugs over to the tiny seating area and handed one to me before settling into her armchair and propping her feet up on the coffee table. “I’ve got an ache in my toes,” she said. “And in my neck. And one in my brain from all the customers this morning.”

  Bee was friendly to me, but she was definitely a behind-the-scenes type of person. She preferred baking to talking to folks, whereas I enjoyed discovering the strange personalities in this small town.

  “The toes and the neck might need a soak in the tub,” I said. “I’m afraid I don’t know what to do about the brain pain.”

  “I’m thinking a good set of earplugs might do the trick,” she replied, smiling. But her mirth faded. “How are you? You were so pale when I arrived on the pier, you looked like a ghost.”

  “I know I need a tan,” I said, tugging my warm fluffy robe toward my body, “but that’s a bit harsh.”

  Bee chuckled.

  I took a sip of my hot cocoa to bolster myself and nearly burned my top lip on a marshmallow. I scooped it out with a greedy finger and deposited it into my mouth, relishing the sweetness as it spread over my tongue and warmed me.

  The sugar helped, that was for sure. I no longer felt as if I was about to keel over or faint or worse.

  “All right, so what do you think happened?” Bee set her mug down on her lap, grasping it between her palms.

  “I know what happened,” I said. “Someone murdered Owen with a lobster mallet.”

  Bee, who had lifted her mug to take another sip of cocoa, snorted and nearly did a spit take. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “A lobster mallet.”

  “As in the tool? The tool used to crack open the lobster shell and get to the succulent meat inside?”

  “I wasn’t aware there was another kind of lobster mallet,” I replied.

  “No, no, there isn’t. I think. I just wanted to be sure we’re on the same page,” she replied. “A lobster mallet. Now, that is unique. What kind of murderer walks around with a lobster mallet?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, and I didn’t shudder this time. It was much easier to discuss this when I wasn’t in the shadow of a murder scene.

  “Perhaps a roving diner, angry about the fact that they hadn’t yet sated their hunger?”

  “Bee…”

  “I know, I know, not an appropriate joke, but still. It’s a strange weapon choice,” she said. “As murder weapons go, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a lobster mallet killing.”

  “Haven’t spent much time in Florida?”

  “I thought that was the chainsaw massacre state? Or was it shotguns? Shovels?”

  “Are you trying to make me dizzy?” I asked. “You know how I am with blood. And I just saw a whole mallet coated in the stuff.”

  “Yuck. Sorry. And I’m sorry about your date too. This Owen guy sounded nice. Albeit strange.”

  I took another sip of cocoa. “I wonder who did it.”

  Bee met my gaze and held it for a moment. “Me too.”
>
  I didn’t know what Bee had done in her past. Her resume had been sparse, apart from a yearlong stint at a patisserie in SoHo and a certificate proving that she’d taken a two-year baking course. Before that, there was nothing. I hadn’t asked, even though I’d been sufficiently curious to do a quick online search that hadn’t turned up much.

  But I trusted her implicitly. Bee was one of those people who had an open smile and said exactly what they meant. I liked that, particularly since I’d spent so much time interviewing people for articles on topics they didn’t want to talk about.

  “You know,” Bee said, scooping one of her marshmallows out of her cocoa and slurping it down, “motive is important. And the question is valid. Who would be walking around with a lobster mallet? Was running into Owen accidental or intentional? And how on earth did they know he would be in that restaurant?”

  “Well, the place was called the Lobster Shack. Maybe the killer grabbed the mallet from the kitchen or the bar or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “An even better question would be why on earth Owen asked me to go out to eat at a restaurant that was known for being closed on a Monday evening. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Hmm. That is strange.” Bee sank into a quiet.

  It was broken by the gentle creak of the bathroom door.

  Bee and I tensed, immediately. I set my cocoa down, trembling, and peered at the darkened crack between the edge of the bathroom door and the jamb.

  “Who’s there?” I called out.

  Bee rose from her chair. “Come out, right now,” she said. “We know you’re in there.”

  The door creaked again, and my heart pitter-pattered like crazy.

  A calico cat paw reached around the bottom of the door and hooked claws into the wood. Another creak, and a kitty cat leaped into view with a meow and a purr.

  Bee burst out laughing. “It’s a cat. Of course, it’s a cat.”

  For a moment, I’d thought a lobster-mallet-wielding psychopath had been hiding in the bathroom. I giggled, and the kitty cat meowed and darted over to me. It rubbed its cute face against my legs, purring loudly.