Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2) (30 page)

Instead, I kept driving into the inner city streets of Hobart. New Year’s Day was maybe the one time of year I could get a parking spot right outside Stewart’s flat.

My New Year’s Resolution? Stop bribing parking inspectors with delicious baked goods. Mostly.

I ran up the stairs and knocked on his door. ‘Have you finished your word count for the day yet?’ I yelled through it.

‘No, go away!’ he yelled back.

‘I can be inspiring!’

He opened the door, looking skeptically at me, though he couldn’t stop that grin that tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘How inspiring are we talking here, Tabitha? A bit o’ plot advice, or full on Muse duties?’

‘I have a café to open tomorrow. I could be doing prep work. I could be baking or chopping or boiling, or…’

‘Or grabbing random passersby tae demand they tell ye their favourite flavour of ice cream?’

‘Everyone should have a hobby. You never said what you thought about my Philadelphia vanilla sundaes?’

Stewart’s mouth twitched again. ‘Serving them up was fun. The eating… meh.’

‘Meh?’ Flirting forgotten, I glared at him. ‘That was my masterpiece!’

‘Couldae done wi’ chocolate. Or … I dunno. Some flavour other than vanilla.’

‘There were strawberries on the side,’ I pouted.

‘You dinnae do vanilla very well, Tabitha. Tha’s okay. No one’s perfect.’

I narrowed my eyes at him, but let it drop. Right now, I needed not to think, and talking nonsense with him was the fastest way to get there. ‘So what are you working on?’

‘Love scene,’ Stewart said, his eyes on mine. ‘Big finale.’

‘How’s it going for you?’

‘It’s lacking something.’ He motioned me in, and I took a step or two. Stewart closed the door behind me. ‘I have my hero and heroine in a room together. All the misunderstandings are resolved, the plot strands are tied up, and if they fall intae each other’s arms I can wrap this baby up before dinner. No’ that I need dinner after eating my own weight in bacon, mushrooms, pancakes, and the most boring ice cream sundaes ever devised.’

If I hit him, he might stop talking. Right now I really wanted to hear him talk. ‘So what’s the problem?’

Stewart shook his head slowly, his gaze still steady. ‘Nae idea. For some reason they keep talking. Neither of them makes the first move.’

‘I think — ’ I said hesitantly, and then stopped. ‘You’re screwing with me, are you?’

‘Oh aye. Finished my chapters half an hour ago. I was on the phone tae my agent, actually.’ He gave me an odd look. ‘She wants me tae come out.’

There were two ways I could take that, but I decided to go for the more obvious one. ‘As a male romantic novelist? Is that even allowed?’

‘Aye. She seems tae think now would be the perfect time. Something about a snog going viral on YouTube. Up to 10,000 hits and rising. If we link it to my books — could be a publicity winner.’

‘Show me,’ I said in a deadly voice.

Stewart snapped open his laptop, called up the YouTube page, and we watched in silence on the couch as a re-edited, shorter version of Darrow’s
Flynn By Night
film played with an indie rock soundtrack running in the background.

The vid of just our kiss had built more slowly, but this one had skyrocketed since Darrow had posted it in the early hours. 13,588 views and counting. Bloody hell. The comments were full of speculation and discussion about the people involved in the film, including me. Me and Stewart and Darrow and everyone. But mostly That Kiss.

Ninety seconds into the vid, the guy’s hat fell off as he kissed the dame against a wall. The best kiss of my life, on YouTube for the world to see.

‘Tabitha,’ Stewart said quietly. ‘It doesnae have tae mean anything.’

‘The kiss, or the film?’ I felt a long way away from myself. But I was finding my way back.

‘Either. Ye dinnae have tae make some grand, life-altering decision about us, no’ right this second.’ There was a silence after that, though, and I knew it had a question in it.

‘I know,’ I said finally, leaning comfortably against Stewart on the couch as the vid came to an end. ‘Shut up. Play it again.’

THE END

(almost)

JASE AND SHAY'S BEER SORBET*

(TRULY AS BAD AS IT SOUNDS**

375 ml beer of choice, chilled

625 ml ice water (or if you have machinery capable of blending ice cubes into tiny tiny ice shards, then 500g of ice cubes and 125 ml water)

300 ml icing sugar

Combine ingredients. Turn into granita by preferred method — freeze stir freeze or trusty ice cream maker.

Drink.

Apparently it seemed like a good idea at the time. The boys were insanely pleased with themselves and claimed it was the best thing ever. Then they went to throw up in the garden.***

*Recipe not endorsed by Tabitha, whose ice cream maker was boarded by PIRATES. Sneaky, sneaky pirates.

**Xanthippe claimed it wasn’t too bad, but I suspect she was lying for the sake of the children.

***Ceege has vowed to introduce the world to the perfect Guinness icypole. The world may never recover.****

****Stewart is sticking to his coffee, thank you very much.

[Really the end]

The Blackmail Blend by Livia Day

Six romance writers.

Five secrets.

Four poison pen letters.

Three stolen manuscripts.

Two undercover journalists.

One over-complicated love life.

Way too many teacups and tiny sandwiches.

This shouldn’t be a recipe for mayhem and murder, but Tabitha Darling has been burned once before and she knows the signs that she’s about to fall into another crime scene.

At least she doesn’t have to worry about love triangles any more. Right? RIGHT?

Enjoy this excerpt of The Blackmail Blend

Stewart looked as if he was going to say something else, but at that moment, Xanthippe emerged from the kitchen. ‘Tish,’ she said to me, and rolled her eyes at Stewart as he gave her Regency Rake costume an ironic wolf whistle. ‘Oh very twenty-first century male, that is, I swoon in your general direction. Tish, there’s a problem with Queen Beatie.’

I hurried over to her. ‘Is she offended by something else? Did she find out about the Duchess of Bedford? Is the tea too cold? Too hot? Are the sandwiches the wrong shape? Did she make more people cry?’ Stewart and I exchanged a brief glance, and the question ‘Did she find out there’s a conspiracy to blackmail her over tea and cakes’ rose to my tongue, but did not emerge.

‘No, none of those things,’ Xanthippe said impatiently.

I eyed her suspiciously. ‘Then what’s she in a strop about?’

A light went off in Xanthippe’s eyes as if she had spotted the perfect way to present me with bad news as if it was good news. ‘Oh, she’s definitely not in a strop. This is a strop-free situation.’

‘Brilliant!’

‘And the ambulance will be here any minute.’

The courtyard swam around me, and then snapped into focus. ‘Ambulance, like … actually what?’

‘It’s all going to be fine,’ said Xanthippe. ‘Though when I say fine, she is in fact not very fine at the moment. Still breathing, though, so there’s that.’

I opened and shut my mouth and nothing came out. ‘Did someone stab her with a cake fork? I hid the cake forks to avoid that very specific situation!’

‘No, I reckon she was poisoned.’

Stewart was standing right behind me, and I felt him take my hand.

‘What kind of poison?’ I said in a small voice. ‘Not—allergies? She’s allergic to a lot of things. There was a list.’ Had I missed something? Was this my fault? ‘Is she going to be okay?’

I could hear them now, the ambulance sirens, getting closer.

Stewart guided me into the kitchen, where I could sit down. Poison. Thoughts of my café’s reputation flooded through my brain. Poison was bad. Hard to come back from poison. ‘You don’t mean food poisoning?’ I said in an even smaller voice. Salmonella in the quiches. Egg white in the chocolate mousse. This could be the end of Café La Femme.

‘To be honest,’ said Xanthippe. ‘I’m pretty sure it was attempted murder.’

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ I said, and then realised a beat later that it was the wrong thing to say.

A Cafe La Femme mini-mystery set between
A Trifle Dead
and
Drowned Vanilla
.

Available at
www.twelfthplanetpress.com
and all good ebookstores.

About The Author

Livia Day is a stylish, murder-obsessed fashionista who lives inside the head of someone else entirely. Tansy Rayner Roberts is a mother, a blogger, a podcaster, and a Hugo-award winning critic. Together they WRITE CRIME. And sometimes they invent ice cream recipes. Livia is the author of the Café La Femme series of cozy mystery novels, including A Trifle Dead and new release Drowned Vanilla. Warning: reading these books will make you crave dessert.

A Trifle Dead

Find out where the story began with
A Trifle Dead
, Book 1 in the Café La Femme series.

Tabitha Darling has always had a dab hand for pastry and a knack for getting into trouble. Which was fine when she was a tearaway teen, but not so useful now she’s trying to run a hipster urban cafe, invent the perfect trendy dessert, and stop feeding the many (oh so unfashionable) policemen in her life.

When a dead muso is found in the flat upstairs, Tabitha does her best (honestly) not to interfere with the investigation, despite the cute Scottish blogger who keeps angling for her help. Her superpower is gossip, not solving murder mysteries, and those are totally not the same thing, right?

But as that strange death turns into a string of random crimes across the city of Hobart, Tabitha can’t shake the unsettling feeling that maybe, for once, it really is ALL ABOUT HER.

And maybe she’s figured out the deadly truth a trifle late…

Shortlisted for Best Debut Book, Davitt Awards for Australian Women's Crime Writing

Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Finalist

Enjoy this excerpt from A TRIFLE DEAD

Chapter 1

You can tell a lot about a person from their coffee order. I play a game with the girls who work in my café—guess the order before the customer opens their mouth. It’s fun because half the time you’re spot on—the bloke who would rather die than add anything to his long black, the girl who doesn’t want to admit how weak she likes her latté, the woman who’ll deliberate for twenty minutes as to whether or not she wants a piece of cake (she does), the mocha freak, the decaf junkie.

The rest of the time, you’re completely wrong. An old age pensioner requests a soy macchiato, a gang of pink-haired school girls want serious espresso shots, a lawyer in a designer suit stops to chat for half an hour about free trade…The best thing about people is how often they surprise you.

Ever wondered what kind of coffee a murderer drinks? Yeah, me neither.

I tumbled into the kitchen of Café La Femme, arms full of bakery boxes, a vintage mint-green sundress swirling around my knees. Late as usual, but at least I was wearing my favourite sandals.

A gal can cope with anything when her shoes match her bra.

Nin paused in the middle of kneading focaccia dough to stare at me from under her expressive eyebrows. I love her eyebrows. They make Frida Kahlo’s look meek. ‘They’re here again,’ she said, and went back to kneading.

My assistant cook doesn’t use paragraphs when a sentence will do, so I had to read between the lines. ‘They’ almost certainly referred to several respected members of the Hobart police force, most of them in uniform, some of them armed. ‘Here’ meant all the comfortable chairs in the main room of the café, and probably leaning on the counter as well. ‘Again’ meant that Nin was sick to death of them all asking her where I was, and how I was doing, and I probably owed her a raise.

I couldn’t afford to give her a raise, so I piled my boxes of bread rolls, bagels and croissants on the bench and tied on my
Barbarella
apron instead. ‘Can I help you with that dough?’

Nin’s eyebrows judged me. Hard.

‘Okay, okay. I just have to bring in the eggs, and then I’ll go front of house. Five minutes.’

I ducked outside and took several breaths of salty spring air before she could object. Five minutes, and I could just about deal with a café full of guns and bicycle clips. Couldn’t I? The café courtyard is a gravel square, walled in by sandstone blocks that were once shaped by convict hands. I keep saying I’ll clean it up and put tables out here, but the truth is I don’t want to lose my little sanctuary of calm.

Our local egg supplier had left a basket by the back step. I’d asked her more than once to take them straight into the kitchen so no one will trip over them, but she claims to be afraid of Nin’s eyebrows. Who can blame her?

As I leaned down to pick up the basket, I caught a whiff of strawberry perfume, and then someone came up behind me and yanked my braid. I reacted with a lifetime of skipped self-defence classes by screaming like a girl, and slamming the basket of eggs behind me and into the face of my assailant.

‘What the—!’ she exclaimed in disgust, and let go of my hair.

Oops. I turned around to see a tall, glamorous woman in black. Not black like a Goth, but black like Emma Peel in
The Avengers
, circa 1966. ‘Is that actually a catsuit?’ I asked, impressed. Even if I had a stomach as flat as hers, I doubt I’d have the nerve to wear something like that, and I have (almost) no shame when it comes to fashion.