Death by Scones

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What critics are saying about

Jennifer Fischetto's books:

"It grabbed me by the hand and pulled me in, not letting go until the very last page. Highly recommended."

—
Melody's Bookshelf
, on "Unbreakable Bond"
 
"Weaves mystery with laughs (and a few tears). This delightful tale is a definite read! I would read it again as well as the rest of the series."
—
Should You Read This Book?
Review Blog, on "Secret Bond"
 
"The characters are always so well written. They feel like they could pop off the page. I can’t wait for the next book in the series!"
—
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, on "Secret Bond"
 
"I approached this book with the idea that it would be the light reading many of us look forward to enjoying in the summer. It turned out to be more than that and I couldn't put it down."
—
The Birch Bark
, on "Secret Bond"

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DEATH BY SCONES

A DANGER COVE

BAKERY MYSTERY

by

JENNIFER FISCHETTO

&

ELIZABETH ASHBY

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Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Fischetto

Cover design by Janet Holmes

Gemma Halliday Publishing

http://www.gemmahallidaypublishing.com

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

To Nana and Nani and all those memories at your kitchen table with my Easy-Bake Oven.

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One, two, three dashes of pure lemon extract. I rarely measured when I baked anymore. I'd done it all my life and could eyeball a teaspoon or tablespoon perfectly. I breathed in a deep lungful and smiled. Raw dough smelled of hope and possibilities. The tanginess of the lemon trifecta—extract, juice, and zest—mixed with the olive oil, sugar, and eggs was heaven. Grams swore up and down that it was impossible to smell sugar and that it was the memory of the way it tasted that I thought I smelled, but hogwash. I had the nose of a bloodhound, and I knew the sweet raw scent of the tiniest grain.

I thrust my hips to the right and then the left. The skirt of my black-and-white, polka-dot halter swing dress made a whooshing sound. A glance to the other side of the bakery's kitchen showed me that our full-time baker, Joe, wasn't watching. Good. Food needed to be celebrated, but it didn't mean I wanted an audience. I'd prefer if Joe didn't see me getting jiggy with it this early in the morning.

I turned off the Hobart stand mixer and admired the yellow flecks in the gorgeous, pale batter. This was a new recipe. One that had come to me last night as I crawled into bed.

One of Grams' many friends had a farm in Southern Cali. The family had sent her a crate full of baby spinach last week. It was as if they'd forgotten only the two of us lived in the small, white-shingled house by the beach. We'd been eating spinach for days, and while I loved the tender green leaves, it would go bad before we finished it all. So last night I made a spinach, mushroom, and fontina frittata and a bucket of pesto. We still had enough for lasagna and several vibrant smoothies.

I reached for the container of nut-free pesto, dropped a couple of large dollops into the batter, and mixed just until incorporated.

After filling two jumbo muffin tins, I popped them into the oven, tucked an escaping strand of my long dark hair back into my hair net, and started cleanup. A quick glance at the clock told me I still had an hour before I needed to open the family bakery.
My
bakery!

I thought of the box of party decorations I'd left here yesterday, just waiting to be hung, and I giggled. I had purchased balloons, streamers, and a huge banner that read:
Re-Grand Opening!
Maybe it was cheesy, but it made me smile.

Grams, a.k.a. Cinnamon Templeton, had opened Cinnamon Sugar Bakery twenty years ago. I was ten. She'd built the shop with sweat, tears, and hard work. Not that I'd ever seen Grams cry. Except at Mom's funeral.

Today was the first day of her retirement. She had groomed me all my life and had handed over the keys yesterday afternoon. Today was my first official day as owner.

For my fifth birthday, Santa had gotten me an Easy-Bake Oven. That's when I'd known I'd bake forever. Once I'd run out of packaged mixes, Grams had helped me concoct my own creations. Pretty soon, the tiny pink oven had begun to collect dust in the corner of her kitchen while she and I used her real oven to make bigger, more lavish cakes, cupcakes, and cookies.

She always said, "Riley, dear, you are Cinnamon Sugar's inspiration. If it wasn't for your tiny pink oven, I wouldn't have remembered how much I loved baking with my mother as a child." I was just happy to work in the kitchen and create the delicious treats. I'd never thought about Grams retiring. She was too young for that. But during the last five years, she'd started talking about cruises and trips to Italy and France after she hung up her apron strings, and I started envisioning wearing those strings. Well, the apron too.

The bakery's back doorknob jiggled, and I flinched. Other than Grams or Joe, no one would be here this early or use the delivery entrance. And Grams wasn't in town. She'd left to visit friends last night. Her first official retirement vacation.

"Did you forget to lock it again?" Joe asked and picked up one of our French rolling pins.

He was a big guy. Six feet of bulk and heft and with a jagged scar that ran from the corner of his right brow down to the tip of his nose. He'd been in a knife fight as a teen and said cooking had helped him turn his life around. I loved him. Even when I'd been a kid and he'd first started working here, I'd never once feared him. The rolling pin looked like a toy in his beefy hands, and I had little doubt he'd know how to use it, even though he was up there in age—somewhere between Grams' sixty-nine and my thirty.

I opened my mouth to say I couldn't remember if I'd locked the door but just ended up acting like a fish gulping for air. There was nothing I could say to defend myself. I, Riley Spencer, was absent minded. I was known for forgetting where I placed my phone or keys and not locking up behind me properly. It wasn't an everyday occurrence but usually happened when I was also baking. What could I say? Tossing ingredients into a bowl and whipping up something decadent was foremost on my mind. Luckily, I was also known for my Death by Mocha Brownies.

The door pushed open, and standing on the other side was my best friend since third grade, Tara Fielding. Her straight black hair hung loose. She wore her usual garb of black leggings, black sneakers, and a yellow hoodie. She looked like a bumblebee.

I giggled in my relief that she wasn't an ax-wielding serial killer. Not that there were any serial killers in Danger Cove, Washington, ax-wielding or not.

Joe groaned, but I saw the relief on his face. He went back to rolling out the dough for cinnamon buns.

"Did I miss something?" Tara asked after stepping inside and shutting and locking the door behind her.

I shook my head. No sense in reminding her of my flaws. "What are you doing here so early?"

Tara ran the only dance school in town. She taught some afternoon classes, but most were held in the evening and night. She was not a morning person.

"I wanted to wish you good luck on your first day as boss lady," she said with a tight smile. As much as I believed her words, she was biting the inside of her cheek. This was only half the reason she was here.

I closed the distance between us, in case she didn't want Joe to overhear. "And?"

She glanced away. Something was definitely going on. Tara never shied away from anything. She was my brave rock. The one who held my hand during so many insecure moments. And there had been plenty. What if this was something serious? Oh my gosh, was she sick? She looked healthy. She got plenty of exercise and mostly ate right. Her skin was her normal tanned color, no jaundice or peculiar looking moles, from what I could tell.

The buzzer went off, jerking me out of my train of panic. Joe opened the oven with the oatmeal cookie bars, and I kept my attention on my best friend.

Somehow, in these few short seconds, I'd taken Tara's hesitation and turned it into a ginormous, life-altering problem that would require radiation, chemotherapy, countless cherry-chocolate cupcakes, romantic comedies, and an endless supply of tissues.

I swallowed hard and squeezed her shoulder. "Hey, whatever it is, we can get through it."

She stared me straight in the eye and whispered, "Duncan has a ring."

I blinked repeatedly, allowing my brain time to process her words. Unless he had a fatal case of ringworm, I realized my flair of drama had reared its ugly head. I was so glad I hadn't uttered any of my crazy thoughts.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"I spent the night at Duncan's. When he got up to shower this morning, I was rummaging through his dresser…" She pointed a finger in my face. "No judgments."

I smirked and shook my head.

"And I found a small, red velvet box. The kind that house engagement rings."

My heart began to swell but in the opposite way from before. "Well, how many carats? Is it round, square, or ooh, oval?"

She took a step back and scoffed. "How the hell should I know? I didn't open it. I saw the box, slammed the drawer shut, and then hightailed it out of there."

Of course she did. Tara didn't do serious. She preferred her relationships light and fluffy, like meringue. She and Grams were the same in the romance department. I, however, wanted the fantasy. The white picket fence, the dog, and the two-point-five children. Well, actually three, 'cause half a child would be gross.

Duncan Pickles was a journalist for the
Cove Chronicles
, and in stereotypical reporter form, he was one of the more unscrupulous ones. He had a killer nose for news and didn't care how he gathered his information. But he was six feet of blond, blue-eyed, bulging, bronzed perfection, so Tara overlooked his lack of humanity. But they'd only been seeing one another for a month. As far as I knew, it wasn't serious enough for a ring, and Duncan hadn't seemed like a picket fence guy either.

"How would you feel if Will got down on bended knee this afternoon?" she asked.

Will Hendrickson and I had only been on four dates, so I immediately got her point.

I pulled her farther into the room and pulled out a stool at one of the steel counters. Then I went to the coffeemaker and poured her a cup. Joe glanced at me from the corner of his eye. He was too much of a gentleman to act like he'd heard our conversation, but I believed otherwise. I was certain he'd collected and stored bits of gossip over the years. All the times Tara and I cheered or cried over boys, college, and just life. But not once had he ever mentioned any of it to Grams.

Joe had been with Cinnamon Sugar Bakery since the first day, and despite never sharing holidays together, Grams and I considered him family.

I set the mug and a pint of half-and-half in front of Tara. She drank the stuff without sugar. I wasn't sure how. It was too bitter that way for me. I sat beside her. "So now what are you going to do?"

"Not see him anymore, of course."

Duncan was slimy, and Tara deserved better, commitment or no commitment, but I wondered if she was reacting too harshly. Plus, a tiny part of me felt sad for Duncan. Slimy or not, getting dumped sucked.

"Maybe it's an empty box," I said and waited for her to scoff.

She didn't though. She just stared into her cup. "We haven't been together long enough for him to propose."

There was my level-headed friend.

"Exactly. It was probably a misunderstanding. I mean, it's not like he got down on one knee."

She lifted the right side of her top lip. "What if he has someone on the side, and it's for her?"

Oh gosh, that wasn't any better. And technically, if this other supposed woman was the one he planned to marry, then wouldn't that have made Tara "the one on the side"? But I had no plans to voice that.

"I wouldn't worry about that," I said.

She stared at the wall across the room and had a faraway look in her eye. "Yeah, you're right. I won't."

I considered leaning forward to check her forehead for a fever. Tara never let go of a situation that quickly. Being a Virgo, she tended to become obsessive about some things. It usually started out from concern or analyzing something, and before you knew it, she couldn't let it go.

She sipped her coffee and changed the subject. "So what new concoction have you created?" She knew me well too. "Don't try to deny it. You wouldn't be here so early if your brain wasn't buzzing with a new recipe."

I chuckled and glanced at the timer. Eight minutes to go. "Lemon pesto muffins."

She grimaced. "Why on earth?"