Ice Cream, You Scream

A Cookie’s Creamery Mystery

by

Kathleen Suzette

Copyright © 2022 by Kathleen Suzette. All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Sneak Peek

Chapter One

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DO YOU EVER WONDER what you’re doing with your life? Like, when a little kid dumps his jumbo monster extravaganza on your new Nikes that you just happen to still be wearing? Take it from me, it makes you question your life choices. And right then, I was questioning why I had returned to my hometown of Lilac Bay on the central California coast. Was it just to have some kid dump their gigantic ice cream cone on my new shoes and scream in my ear?

“Here you go.” My BFF from high school, Chloe, handed me a wet washcloth and a bucket as she passed me. I didn’t miss the grin on her face.

I eyed the kid. He was around six and far too old to be throwing a fit like this. And I could feel chocolate sauce seeping into my socks. I forced myself to smile. “I’m going to clean this up now.”

“You didn’t make it right! The strawberry goes on the bottom, not the top!” He rubbed his eyes with his chubby fists, but I’m pretty sure he was faking the outrage because there wasn’t a tear in sight.

His mother sighed. “Corey, would it kill you to eat the strawberry first for once?”

“Mom,” he whined. “You know I can’t. Strawberry goes last.”

She looked at me helplessly. “He needs the strawberry on the bottom. He’s a child genius, and if things aren’t exactly right, he falls apart. I’m sorry.”

I was bent over, scraping ice cream from my shoes. I was pretty sure the only thing this kid was a genius at was manipulating his mother. I smiled up at her. “I’ll make him a new cone.”

When I’d gotten as much ice cream off my shoes as I could manage, I went back behind the counter, my shoes squishing the entire way. How does that much chocolate sauce squeeze into shoes that quickly?

After washing my hands, I made the kid his jumbo monster cone again, this time with the strawberry at the bottom, and handed it to him, then stepped back. My first mistake had been coming around to the front of the counter where the kid could get at me, and I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. “Here you are, sweetie.”

His mother smiled. “Thank you so much.” She dug in her purse for money to pay for the second ice cream.

“That’s all right. It’s on the house. You two go and enjoy the beach.”

His mother lit up like a Christmas tree. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” When they had walked out the door, I turned to Chloe. “Please tell me the entire summer won’t be this way.”

She laughed. “I wish I could promise you that, but I really can’t. You handled it marvelously, though. Really, it’s like you were made for customer service.”

I rolled my eyes at her. I had moved away from Lilac Bay when I went to college, vowing never to return. But, here I was. It was only temporary though. I had just hit a small stumble in life when I lost my job at an advertising agency in Los Angeles. I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t my fault. The business had shut down. And now here I was working at Cookie’s Creamery for the summer. Just long enough to figure out what my next move would be. After my experience at the advertising agency, I knew advertising wasn’t for me, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself.

“Hey Maddie, if you get enough ice cream on your shoes, it will solidify and make them look like clown shoes.”

I smiled, looking over at Jeffrey Pease. He was sitting on the back counter—something we’d been told not to do because it wasn’t exactly hygienic, and it was completely unprofessional. “I’m sure that’s true.” There was something about Jeffrey that I didn’t like, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. He was a couple of years older than me and had this dark vibe about him. But I wasn’t here to complain about my coworkers. I was here to earn a little money and work on my tan on my day off.

“I’d like a chocolate bombshell, please,” the little elderly lady at the counter said. She peered into the cookie display case. “And a chocolate-dipped chocolate chip cookie, please.”

I smiled. “One chocolate bombshell and a chocolate-dipped chocolate chip cookie coming right up. I hope you can handle all the chocolaty goodness in this creation.” I grabbed a waffle bowl and scooped triple dark chocolate ice cream into it. At Cookie’s Creamery, all the ice cream was made here on the premises, and Chloe’s mother delighted in making all sorts of unusual combinations. Each ice cream order came with the customer’s choice of one cookie, because, who didn’t like ice cream and cookies?

She nodded. Her white hair had been braided like a schoolgirl’s, and it looked just right on her. “I love chocolate more than life itself. I once had a doctor tell me that I needed to give up chocolate. I told him he was off his rocker, and then I went home and ate two Hershey bars.” She laughed.

I laughed along with her. “That will teach him.” I poured fudge sauce over the top of the ice cream, then added some whipped cream and a cherry. “I think I’m going to have to try one of these, it looks delicious.”

“Oh, you haven’t lived until you’ve had a chocolate bombshell. The name’s Estelle Smith. You’re new here, but you’ll be seeing lots of me.”

I grinned. After the morning I had had, Estelle was a day brightener. “I’m Maddie Bradford, and I hope to see lots of you around here.”

Estelle paid for her ice cream and left. I turned to Chloe. “She was nice.”

“Estelle knows everyone and everything in this town. She used to be the county librarian when we were in like second grade. Don’t you remember?”

I gasped. “That’s right. She used to give us Hershey’s kisses when we brought our library books back on time. How could I forget that?”

“Well, it was a few years ago. Let’s take a break. Jeffrey, can you take over?”

“Yeah,” he grumbled.

I wiped my hands on a wet cloth, and we walked out into the sunshine. At twenty-five, I was a little disappointed to be back in my hometown, living in my parent’s house, and without a clue as to what I wanted to do with myself, but I was going to make the best of it. And eat a lot of ice cream.

“That Jeffrey isn’t the most fun to work with,” I whispered.

She nodded. “My mom and his mom are friends, and he hasn’t been able to keep a job long, so his mom asked my mom if she could give him one.” Her eyebrows rose in a ‘what are you gonna do?’ sort of way.

There was a bench in front of the ice cream shop, and we sat down. “Why can’t he keep a job?”

She leaned over toward me. “He’s creepy!” she laughed.

I shook my head, smiling. Chloe was the one thing that I truly missed about Lilac Bay. She was the best friend I had ever had, and she loved to laugh. “I missed you.”

I’d only been back in town a week and a half, and on the job for a week. Things would work out, I told myself. Over and over.

She turned to me. “Aw, I missed you too. I told you not to move away. It’s no fun around here without you.” She put an arm around my shoulders and hugged me, and for a moment, I felt a contentment I hadn’t felt since I had left. It was the scream that split the air that broke that moment and made us jump to our feet.

Chapter Two

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PEOPLE WERE RUNNING toward the concrete alcove that held large square metal dumpsters that the businesses used. Chloe and I looked at each other, and we ran in that direction. It was only ten o’clock in the morning, and a small crowd of people who had heard the scream was gathered around when we got there. The girl from the smoothie shop was standing there crying, one hand over her mouth.

“What happened?” I asked.

She looked at me and pointed behind the dumpster. Chloe and I sidled over to get a look at what she was pointing at, and then we saw it. A young man was lying on his back, his eyes staring straight up at the sky. There was something in his mouth, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I shook my head, and we backed up, looking away.

“I’ve called the police,” an older man in the small crowd said. “Everyone needs to get back. The police won’t like it if we’ve trampled all the evidence.”

“What evidence?” an elderly man asked. His bathing suit was hiked up so high the waistband was nearly beneath his armpits.

“Evidence of a murder,” the first man said as if the questioner was an idiot.

There was a gasp from the crowd, and people took a step or two backward, but no one was leaving the area.

“Are you sure he’s dead?” a woman in a pink bathing suit asked. “How do you know it’s a murder?”

“He looks dead to me,” a teenage boy with bad acne answered.

“But what if he’s not?” bathing suit lady asked. “He could need medical attention.”

The girl from the smoothie shop shook her head. “He’s dead. There are—there are flies.”

I winced and looked at Chloe. “What was that in his mouth?” I whispered.

She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

We stepped back some more, and I glanced at the ice cream shop. Jeffery had stepped outside to see what the commotion was about. I looked away. I didn’t want him to think I wanted to communicate anything to him.

The police got there surprisingly fast. Two were on bicycles that usually cruised the beach, and two were in squad cars. They took a look at the guy, and one of them called it in.

“Should we go back to the ice cream shop?” I asked Chloe.

She shook her head. “No, let Jeffrey handle things for a while.”

Chloe’s mother, Cookie, had been to the shop early, made the day’s ice cream and cookies, and had already gone home. Two other employees would be in later in the afternoon, and we would make more ice cream and cookies as needed, but Chloe was right. Jeffrey could handle things for a few minutes.

I looked up and saw Estelle standing at the edge of the group. She grinned at me when I caught her eye and held up her chocolate bombshell that she was still eating.

I smiled back. Then a plain black car pulled up and parked behind the police cruisers, and a tall, dark-haired man got out. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him. He went to the body and consulted with the officers.

“Did anyone see anything?” an officer asked the crowd.

“I was taking out the garbage,” the smoothie shop girl said. “I found him.”

“We’ll need a statement from you. Anyone else?” No one stepped forward. “Then you can all leave.”

But no one did. I glanced at Chloe, and she shrugged. Then suddenly the man who had stepped out of the unmarked car was walking in our direction. “Did the two of you see anything?”

We shook our heads. “No, we just heard the girl scream,” I said. “And we hurried over to see if she needed assistance. We wanted to help out if we could. Because that’s what we do.” I suddenly couldn’t stop talking. Whoever this man was, he was handsome, and something about him made me nervous. Maybe it was just the fact that he was a police officer.

“Then I need you both to leave. Now.” He turned to the people standing next to us.

I was taken aback by his rudeness, but I suppose he was only doing his job. Chloe made a face, and we walked back toward the ice cream shop, glancing over our shoulders every few seconds. It was the end of May, and things were picking up on the boardwalk. The crowd near the dumpster was getting bigger, but they had enough sense to hang back as the officers made people leave.

Inside the ice cream shop, it was cool, and all the customers had left, probably to go stand and watch the excitement near the dumpster. Jeffrey was now seated on the front counter. I was beginning to see why he couldn’t keep a job. Cookie would have a fit if she saw that.

“Hey Jeffrey, get off the counter,” Chloe said.

He smirked. “What’s going on out there?”

“Someone found a dead body,” she said as he slipped down off the counter. “Might be a murder.”

“Oh yeah? Who?”

She hesitated. “It was that guy that comes in and buys a plain vanilla ice cream on a regular plain cone.”

I looked at her. She hadn’t said that she recognized him, but now that she said it, I realized she was right. He had white hair but was probably only thirty or so.

Jeffrey laughed. “Serves him right.”

I looked at him. “What do you mean, serves him right?”

“Cause he always complained about how much ice cream I put on the cone. Said it was too much. I guess he was too delicate to eat an entire scoop of ice cream. He probably complained about the wrong person and ended up dead.” He laughed again.

I glanced at Chloe, and she was looking at me.

“I’m going to check and see how much ice cream we’ve got in the freezer in the back,” she said.

“I’ll help.” I followed her to the backroom, and when the door closed behind us, I said, “I can’t believe he’s laughing about someone dying.”

She snorted. “That’s Jeffrey for you. He argued with that man a couple of times. I don’t know why he couldn’t just give him what he wanted.”

“Why does your mom let him stay?” I couldn’t imagine he was helping the business any. There was another ice cream shop at the end of the boardwalk where people could get their ice cream if they had to argue with Jeffrey here at this shop.

She shook her head. “She doesn’t want to upset her friend.”

I sighed as we took a look at the walk-in freezer. Wrapping my arms around myself, I shivered. “I think your mom is too nice. She hired me, after all.” I grinned.

She lightly punched me in the arm. “Hiring you is the best thing she’s done in a while. I’m so glad you’re back.”

“Me too.”

I didn’t know what had happened to the guy behind the dumpster, but it wasn’t exactly the most natural place to lie down and die. Someone put him there. I felt sorry for him.

Chapter Three

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“IT WAS SO SURREAL,” Chloe told her mother the following morning as we prepared the batches of ice cream for the day.

“It sounds like it,” Cookie said as she scooped oatmeal raisin cookie dough onto a baking sheet. “I’m kind of sorry I missed it.” She chuckled. “We never have much excitement around here. Not that I would want anyone to die, of course.”

Cookie made the best cookies in town and had earned the nickname years ago when she first opened her ice cream shop and decided to offer cookies as well. Her husband had been the first to call her the name, and it stuck.

I measured cream into one of the ice cream machines. “It’s just so weird to see a dead body like that.” I had never seen anyone dead. Not even at a funeral—the ones I had attended all had closed caskets.

“I bet it was,” Cookie said. “I hope he was just drunk and maybe hit his head or something. I’d hate to think that someone did something awful to that man.”

I nodded. “Let’s hope so.”

We made six flavors of ice cream and nine types of cookies before the shop opened. Cookie’s always carried chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream, but the other flavors were up to whatever she felt like making. We carried fifteen flavors of ice cream in total, and the variety of cookies also depended on what she felt like making in the morning. Today we had peaches and cream ice cream that I was dying to try on my break.

There was a knock on the front door, and I untied my apron, tossing it on the counter. “I’ll get it.” I glanced at the clock. Jeffrey was late again. He was supposed to be here an hour before opening to help with the baking, but he liked to do as he pleased. When I got out front and saw the tall stranger peering through the glass door, I stopped in my tracks. Then I remembered him from the day before. He was the police officer that had been rude to us. I pasted the smile on my face and went to the door.

“We don’t open for twenty more minutes,” I said loudly through the door. To that, he whipped out his police badge and showed it to me.

“Can you open the door, please?”

My heart started a staccato beat in my chest. Police always did that to me, even though I had never broken a law in my entire life. At least, I don’t think that I had. I stood there frozen, not sure what to do. Cookie had said to never allow the customers into the shop until everything was ready and it was time.

His eyes pinned me with their gaze as I tried to get my brain functioning again. “Uh. Can you hold on for a minute?” I turned and almost ran into the backroom without waiting for him to answer me.

“It’s the cops! It’s the cops!” I nearly shouted. I looked from Chloe to Cookie and back. For some odd reason, they seemed perplexed by what I had just said.

“Ok,” Chloe said. “And? Did they want an ice cream? We aren’t open yet.”

I shook my head. “He showed me his badge, and he wants in,” I hissed.

Cookie smiled. “I’ll take care of it.”

I was probably over-reacting, and somewhere in the back of my half-frozen mind, I knew that, but I couldn’t seem to get myself to calm down. What was a cop doing knocking on our door this early in the morning?

“What did he say?” Chloe asked as her mother went out front.

“Can you open the door?”

Chloe narrowed her eyes at me. “Seriously? That’s it? Let’s go see what’s going on.”

I really didn’t want to do that, but I didn’t want to be left behind either, so I followed her out front. The officer’s eyes went to me, but he continued speaking to Cookie.

“I’m Detective Noah Grayson, of the Lilac Bay Police department, and I’d like a word with you, please.” He was standing in the open doorway; Cookie hadn’t invited him in yet.

Detective?

That word freaked me out more than police officer did.

“Yes, of course,” Cookie said. “Come in. I’m going to lock the door behind you so customers don’t come in early.”

Cookie introduced herself and then Chloe and me while she locked the door.

He nodded at us and turned back to Cookie. “Do you recognize this man?” He held up a picture, and Cookie gasped and stepped back, looking away.

She nodded. “Yes, he comes in a couple of times a week and buys ice cream.”

“I’m sorry for the picture, but it’s the only one we’ve got,” the detective said. “When was the last time he was in?”

“Oh, I think it was three or four days ago.”

He whipped out a small notebook and a pen. “Three or four days ago? Not the day before yesterday?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see him, but I usually leave mid-morning.” She looked at us. “Did you girls see the tall, white-haired young man that comes in a couple of times a week?”

We shook our heads. “I think Cookie is right. It was three or four days ago,” I said, grimacing. I didn’t want to engage him in conversation.

He looked up from his notebook. “What time were you two here at work on Tuesday?”

“We both worked from Six in the morning until two o’clock in the afternoon,” Chloe said. “We would have seen him if he had been in here during that time.”

“What’s this about, Detective?” Cookie asked.

“He was found dead near the dumpster yesterday morning around ten o’clock. Do you know his name or his address?”

“The girls told me he was found dead, but I don’t recall him ever saying his name. He wasn’t very talkative. He just wanted his ice cream, and he would leave. He didn’t even want the free cookie that goes along with the ice cream. I tried making him a plain sugar cookie and a white chocolate-covered sugar cookie, but he didn’t want them,” Cookie said.

He frowned, looking confused. “Okay,” he said hesitantly.

Cookie smiled. “He was very particular about his ice cream. He only wanted vanilla, so I thought if I made him a plain cookie, he might like it.” She shrugged. “He didn’t.”

“How did he die?” Chloe asked.

He turned to look at her. “Someone shoved a very large ice cream cone down his throat, and he choked to death. Judging by the bruises on his arms, they held him down.”

I gasped. “How horrible.” And then I realized that he was questioning us for a reason, and he wasn’t just asking around about the dead guy. He thought it was our ice cream cone.

“Well, there’s another ice cream shop at the end of the boardwalk,” Chloe said, having guessed the same thing I did.

“Yes, but this cone was one of those colossal waffle cones, and it had a paper band around it that said Cookie’s Creamery.”

“Oh, dear,” Cookie said.

Chapter Four

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WHEN DETECTIVE GRAYSON left, the three of us stood there and stared at one another. How on earth could a Cookie’s Creamery waffle cone get shoved down the dead man’s throat? It took Jeffrey knocking three times to get us to open the door for him.

“Man, it’s like I gotta beg to be allowed to come to work.” He shook his head and went behind the front counter. Chloe motioned to the back room, and we all headed back without saying anything to Jeffrey. The door closed behind us, and then I thought of something.

“Jeffrey and the dead guy argued,” I hissed, waving the other two in closer. “Chloe, you said they argued every time he came in to buy ice cream.”

“That’s right,” Chloe said. “All the poor guy wanted was a single scoop of vanilla ice cream on a plain cone, but Jeffrey had to make it difficult by over-scooping it and trying to get him to buy something else.”

Cookie glanced toward the closed door. “I don’t think we should jump to conclusions, girls. We don’t know anything about the dead man. Not even his name.”

She was right, of course, but if the killer worked here, then it had to be Jeffrey. And then I felt a little queasy. Were we working with a killer? And might he kill someone else who didn’t like the way he did something? I glanced at the other two, and I swear, I could read their minds. They were thinking the same thing.

“Mom, you have to fire him. I don’t want to work with a killer,” Chloe hissed.

“No, firing him might get us all killed,” I said. “We have to think of something else.” But what? I shook my head. I had no idea.

The back door swung open, and we all squealed. Jeffrey’s brow furrowed. “Was there a meeting that I missed? What are you all congregating back here for? It’s time to open the shop, and I ain’t gonna do all the work by myself.”

“We’ll be right out,” Cookie said, smiling pleasantly.

He snorted and went back out front.

“Really, Cookie, you shouldn’t let him talk to you that way,” I told her. “His mother knows he’s difficult to work with, and she isn’t going to blame you if you have to let him go.” I was changing my mind about firing him. He was a jerk, and no one liked working with him.

Cookie sighed. “I know, I know. But it would be easier if he were arrested for murder. Then I don’t have to deal with it.”

I nodded. “You’re right. If he committed the crime, then the police should have to deal with him.” But would the police figure it out? That was the question. And suddenly I realized that they might need some help figuring out who killed the dead guy, and if it was Jeffrey, then I was going to be the one to help them figure it out. I didn’t want to work with him anymore, and seeing him go to jail wouldn’t break my heart.

We headed to the front of the shop, and I waited on the mom with two little girls that were at the counter, while Jeffrey pretended not to see them. It didn’t matter that it was only nine o’clock in the morning, people wanted ice cream and cookies. Many of them were on vacation, after all, and who doesn’t splurge while on vacation?

When they left, the bell over the door jingled, and Estelle walked in. Her white hair was braided again, and she was smiling. “Well, top o’ the morning to you, sweetheart. Imagine us running into each other here again.”

I grinned. “It’s like it was fate or something.”

She laughed. “Wasn’t that something with that poor fella that died out there? And to die near a trash bin?” She shook her head and made a tsk-tsk sound. “Doesn’t seem right.”

I glanced back at Jeffrey, who was washing his hands at the sink and looking over his shoulder at us. He suddenly seemed interested in our conversation.

“I know, it’s sad. No one deserves to die like that. Do you know who he was?” Chloe said Estelle knew everything, so she had to know his identity, didn’t she? I glanced back at Jeffrey again, and he was headed to the backroom.

She nodded. “Sure I do. I was the head librarian at the county library for almost fifty years. I never forget a face, not even when it’s grown up. I almost forgot yours, but when we were standing out there looking at that poor man, I remembered you. Maddie Bradford. My, how you loved Hershey’s kisses. You never brought a book back late.”

I felt my cheeks go pink as I grinned for all I was worth. “I almost forgot you too, but Chloe reminded me, and I did love those kisses. Still do.” I didn’t want to ask what the man’s name was again, so I hoped she would remember I had asked. If I looked too interested, it might make her curious, and I had to keep our secret as long as I could.

She glanced around the empty shop and stepped closer. “George Janson. That’s who he is. He was always late with his library books because he doesn’t like chocolate. Can you imagine? What child doesn’t like chocolate?”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t seem right, does it?” It also explained why he only wanted a vanilla ice cream cone.

She chuckled and looked at the tubs of ice cream in the freezer. “I think I’d like a scoop of rockier road ice cream with a dollop of marshmallow cream on top. Oh, and a cherry chocolate chunk cookie, please.”

I nodded. “That sounds like a winning combination. Waffle bowl?”

She shook her head. “Not today, dear. How about a paper cup? You know, that George was always an odd boy. He liked to check out books on bugs and dissection.”

I glanced at her as I scooped some rockier road ice cream into the cup. The rockier was the addition of chocolate chunks. “Don’t most boys like to look at insects at some point?”

She nodded. “I suppose so. It was the dissection books that bothered me. They went into great detail, and he was truly obsessed with bugs. He would sometimes sit out on the front lawn of the library waiting for his mother to pick him up and catch bugs.”

I poured a dollop of marshmallow cream on her ice cream. “Maybe he wanted to become a botanist when he grew up?”

She shrugged. “Maybe so. But when he brought in a dead rat he had dissected, he crossed a line.”

“Ew. Okay, I see your point. I mean, maybe he wanted to be a scientist or something, but there was no reason to bring a dissected rat into the library.”

She nodded. “He didn’t have many friends, either. Or at least, not that I saw. Occasionally he came in with the Franklin boy though.”

“Franklin boy? Do you happen to remember his first name?”

“Of course. Roy Franklin. He works at the lumber yard these days if I’m not mistaken. And I’m not.” She winked. “Well, I had better get going. I’ve got errands to run.”

I rang up her ice cream and tucked the cookie into the cup alongside her ice cream. “Nice talking to you, Estelle.”

She nodded. “Nice talking to you, too, Maddie.”

I watched as she left, wondering if Roy Franklin remembered his old friend George from school. And was he as odd as Estelle made him out to be? If so, did it figure in to how he had ended up dead?

The lumber yard was on my way home from work, so I decided to stop by and have a talk with Roy.

Chapter Five

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THE LUMBER YARD WAS a large home improvement store with a lumber yard surrounded by a chain-link fence in the back. When I was a kid, it only had an assortment of nuts, bolts, tools, and lumber, but they had enlarged the building, and now they had everything from home lighting, to carpet, to gardening supplies. It was a nice addition to the town.

Now I had to figure out who Roy Franklin was. I should have asked Estelle for a description. Chloe and Cookie said they didn’t know him and they had things to do after work, so I was on my own with this. I didn’t even know what I was going to ask him if I did run into him.

I wandered down the gardening aisle and wondered if I could plant a garden. It might have been a little late to get one started, but the weather was almost always nice here, so I might be able to get something to grow. I lived in my parents’ house where I had grown up with my sister, and it had a large backyard. My family had all moved to Arizona to take care of both of my grandmothers. The dry air was better for their arthritis, and they were at an age where they needed just a bit of help. I didn’t like to sweat, so my first choice when I knew I was going to move was here to the seaside.

“Hey, you look familiar.”

I turned when I heard a familiar voice. It was Todd James, my high school boyfriend. I smiled. “Hey, Todd, how are you?” We hugged each other and when he released me, I realized he was wearing a name tag. He worked here.

“I’m doing great. What brings you back to Lilac Bay?”

Seeing Todd made me happy. We had done nearly everything together when we were dating back in high school, and I had nothing but fond memories of him.

I sighed. “The company I worked for went under, and I decided to come back for a while to figure out what I want to do with myself. Oh, but it wasn’t my fault the company went under. I swear. I had nothing to do with it.”

He grinned. “You goofball. It never crossed my mind that it was your fault. I’m going to be a dad.”

The way he blurted it out stunned me, as I tried to come up with something to say. Did he say a dad? When I finally found my voice, I said, “Really? A dad? Congratulations!” I hoped my voice didn’t sound weak on that congratulations.

He grinned. “It’s a boy. I can hardly believe it.”

I couldn’t believe it either. “Well, who’s the lucky mama?”

He beamed. “My wife, Crystal. You remember Crystal Davis, don’t you?”

Wife?

This was another one of those moments when I really needed to reassess my choices. I had left Todd James behind so I could go to college and make something of myself. Todd James, one of the cutest and sweetest boys in high school. Todd James, the boy I had dated for nearly three years and who would have done anything for me. Anything. Seriously. I thought I was going to make something of myself, but I was an ice cream scooper.

“Of course I remember Crystal. You tell her I said hello, and congratulations.”

“You bet I will. She’ll be so thrilled to hear you’re back in town. So what have you been up to?”

I swallowed. “Well, I’m working at Cookie’s Creamery for the summer. It’s temporary, of course. Just until I figure out what I’m going to do with myself.”

“Aw, I love Cookie and I love everything in her shop. She’s the best.”

I smiled. Cookie really is the best. “She sure is. Say, Todd, is there someone by the name of Roy Franklin that works here?”

He nodded. “Sure, he’s out in the lumber yard. Why?”

I knew he was going to ask that. I tucked a lock of my black hair behind my ear. “Well, my dad said to look him up and get his opinion on what kind of wood to use to repair a small hole in our fence. Some dog must have dug through it or something.” Lies. My dad didn’t even know Roy Franklin existed, but there was a hole in the fence.

“Oh, sure. He’s the guy with the green hair out in the yard. You can’t miss him.”

“Green hair?”

He laughed, and I suddenly realized how much I missed that laugh. Too bad I let him go. “Yeah, Roy is a wild one on his days off. Plays in a band. But he’s an okay guy. Want me to walk you out there?”

“No, that’s okay. I’m sure with green hair, I’ll find him. It sure has been good to see you, Todd.”

“Okay, well, don’t be a stranger. We should get together sometime.”

I nodded. “That would be super. You know where to find me.”

“All right then, see you.”

“See you.”

I hurried away toward the entrance to the lumber yard. My old boyfriend was having a baby with my old friend? Okay, she wasn’t a close friend, and to be honest, I never liked her that much, but if I didn’t have someone to hang with during PE class, she was usually available. I walked down the aisle, shaking my head. A baby.

When I stepped outside, Roy was easy to spot. He was unloading lumber from a huge wagon and placing it carefully into a pile. I hurried over.

“Um, excuse me,” I said. “You don’t happen to know what I could use to repair a small hole in a wooden fence, do you?”

He looked up at me. “What kind of wood?”

“Um, I’m not sure. But it’s tall. Like six feet tall.”

He smiled. “Let’s go take a look.” He led me to a stack of wood that looked similar to the wood fence in our backyard. Not that I could tell if it was exact, of course.

“I think that’s it.” I pointed at the closest pile.

“How big is the hole?”

I held my hands about a foot apart. “About like this.” It was actually closer to three or four inches.

“Well, there’s really no way to patch this stuff and make it look good. I recommend you just replace the entire board. That will be the easiest thing to do.”

I glanced at the piece of lumber. Six feet of wood was not going to fit in my car. “I think I’m going to have to get someone to bring a truck so I can haul it home.”

He nodded. “Well, we’ve got plenty of it here. It would cost forty dollars to deliver it, so if you have access to a pick up, I would go that route.”

I nodded. “I think that’s probably best.” Roy Franklin had dyed what looked to be blond hair green, and he had a lot of freckles. He had to be at least five years older than I was. Green hair on a thirty-year-old guy didn’t look exactly right, band or no band. Not that I cared. “You know, you look familiar.” I leaned in and pretended to read his name badge. “Roy. I’ve been away from Lilac Bay for several years, and I just moved back.” The first part was a lie, but I needed to make conversation here. He didn’t look familiar at all.

“You know, now that I think of it, you look familiar, too. Did we ever date?” He grinned at me, and it looked like more of a leer.

Uh oh. That wasn’t the kind of conversation I meant. “I don’t think so. Oh, did you hear about that awful murder yesterday?”

He sobered. “Yeah, that was weird. I heard the guy was stabbed.”

Stabbed? Ugh. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Really? I didn't hear that. Did you know him? I’m not sure if I did or not. His name was George Janson.”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “No, I never heard of him.”

“Oh.” This took me by surprise. I expected the conversation to continue with what he knew about the victim. “Well, it sure is a shame that someone killed him. I don’t know what has happened to this little town.”

He nodded and glanced away. “Well, if you get someone to loan you a truck, you come on back and pick up that piece of lumber. I’ll be glad to help you.” Then he just walked away. He didn’t even look back.

I sighed. Roy Franklin was acting mighty suspicious if you asked me.

Chapter Six

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“I JUST DON’T KNOW HOW George Janson ended up with one of my waffle cones stuck down his throat,” Cookie said as she poured sugar into the machine that was going to produce banana ice cream, hold the walnuts. “He only bought the regular plain cones, not the waffle cones.”

Chloe looked up from where she was chopping pecans to add to a batch of nut thins wafer cookies. “I think it’s some kind of sick joke. Maybe someone from the other ice cream shop killed him and thought it would be funny to use one of our waffle cones to kill someone they hated.”

It wasn’t a bad idea, but I felt like that wasn’t it. Besides, did we go to the other ice cream shop and ask if one of them did it?

Cookie shook her head. “I think I know Gloria Wright well enough to know she would never do that. She doesn’t have many employees that aren’t family, and they’re a good family.”

“I know,” Chloe said. There was just a touch of a whine in her voice.

I was chopping maraschino cherries to go into the all the cherries ice cream. I decided to tell them what I knew. “Estelle Smith said that someone named Roy Franklin was friends with this George guy when they were kids, but when I asked him if he knew him, he denied even knowing who he was.” I picked up the tub of glace cherries and took a handful of them out to chop. I looked up. Both Cookie and Chloe were staring at me. “What?”

“You went and asked some guy that you don’t know if he knew the murder victim?” Chloe asked. “Alone?”

I looked from her to Cookie and back. The looks on their faces said they thought I was nuts. I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, it’s not like I went and interrogated him or anything. I just asked if he heard about the murder, and when he said yes, I asked if he knew him. That was when he lied. And I think if you need to lie about something, it’s because you need to cover something up.”

They still stared. I got to work chopping the candied cherries.

“That was brilliant,” Cookie finally said. “Dangerous. But brilliant.”

I looked up at her. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. Why would he lie?”

“Mom, that’s beside the point. She shouldn’t get involved in this sort of thing. You never know who a killer might kill next. If they find out someone is asking around about the murder, they might kill the person doing the asking.” She looked at me pointedly. And Okay, she had a good point. But the guy lied.

I opened my mouth to defend myself when there was a knock on the glass door out front. “I’ll get it.”

I went to the front of the shop, and I let out an involuntary sigh when I saw it was the detective. Why was he back? I pasted a smile on my face and unlocked the door. “Good morning, Detective.” My heart was pounding in my chest, and I silently told it to knock it off. There was no reason to get worried just because a detective had shown up at my place of employment. A detective who was looking to pin a murder on someone.

He nodded. “Good morning. May I come in?”

Since he was being polite, I decided I may as well let him in. Not that I wouldn’t have let him in if he hadn’t been polite, mind you. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“I’d like to speak to Cookie.”

I nodded. “Let me get her.”

I intended for him to wait in the front of the shop, but he followed me back to the kitchen.

“Well, I don’t know what that detective thinks. That we killed him?” Cookie was saying to Chloe right at the moment the detective and I entered the kitchen. I was about one hundred percent sure that he had heard her.

When Chloe and Cookie saw him, they went silent, their eyes growing to twice their size.

“Good morning,” the detective said with a nod. “Cookie, is there someplace I can speak to you in private?”

Cookie had mashed bananas on her gloved hands and looked like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. After what seemed like forever, she nodded, dropped the rest of the banana into the machine, and removed her gloves. “Chloe, can you finish this?”

Chloe hurried over to the machine. “Sure.”

“I have a small office back here,” Cookie said to the detective, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, and then led the way. When the door had shut, Chloe looked at me wide-eyed.

“What do you suppose that’s about?”

“The murder?” It was a rhetorical question, of course, but I had to answer it. “I wonder why he wants to speak to her in private?”

She rushed to my side. “I don’t want my mom going to jail. You know she didn’t do anything. She’s not a killer.”

“Relax, Chloe, she’s not going to jail.” I didn’t feel as confident as I sounded, but only because I had seen enough news programs where innocent people spent forty years of their lives behind bars for a crime they didn’t commit. But Cookie wasn’t a killer, and the detective had to see that, didn’t he?

“What are we going to do?”

“Figure out who killed George what’s his name.”

Her eyes got big again. “Do you think we can do that?”

“Why not? It’s a small town, and someone has to know something. Killers always leave clues, or they talk too much. We just need to find someone who knows the truth and get them to talk.”

She nodded. “I am not letting my mother go to jail.” She teared up now, and I gave her a quick hug.

“Your mom is a second mother to me. I’m not letting her go to jail, either. We’ll figure this out.”

We went back to work making ice cream and cookies while each of us kept one eye on the clock. Even if that detective was back there grilling Cookie, we still had ice cream and cookies to make.

It was more than half an hour later when the two came out of the small office. The detective almost had a smile on his face, and Cookie seemed tired.

“Thank you for your time,” he said, glancing at Chloe and me. “I’ll have to stop in later for some ice cream.”

Was he teasing? Why would we want him here?

“Yes, you need to do that,” Cookie agreed. “We make the best ice cream and cookies in the state.” She escorted him to the door and let him out. When she returned to the kitchen, Chloe and I started talking at the same time.

“What happened?”

“What did he want?”

“Why was he here?”

“Why is coming back?”

She shook her head and went to the sink, and washed her hands. When she had finished drying them, she turned to us. “He was asking questions about the victim. How often he came in and what he ordered, and if he had issues with anyone here. Also, what everyone’s scheduled was.”

“I hope you told him that he had issues with Jeffrey,” Chloe said.

She nodded. “I told him the truth about everything.” Then tears sprang to her eyes. “I’m afraid that he suspects me.”

“Oh no,” I said. Chloe and I both hugged her. It couldn’t be true, could it? If that detective had any sense, he would not suspect Cookie. She was too kind. Too sweet. She would never harm anyone.

“Why do you think that?” Chloe asked as we released her.

“It was the way he asked the questions. He wanted to know exactly where I was during the time of the murder and wanted to know if I had an alibi. But of course, I was home alone. I have no alibi.” She started crying, and it broke my heart.

I patted her arm. “Cookie, no one in their right mind would think that you could have had anything to do with the murder. We’re going to figure out who killed that George guy and set the record straight.”

“We’re not letting them send you to jail, Mom,” Chloe said tearfully. “We won’t let them.”

I really had no idea how we would do something like that, but I was determined to do it anyway.

Chapter Seven

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IT WAS NEARLY ELEVEN o’clock in the morning when a tall, thin woman with blond hair walked through the door. She looked to be in her early sixties, and her face was red. The ice cream shop was doing a swift business with several families with little kids waiting in line and clamoring for ice cream and cookies.

Chloe and I were scooping as fast as we could to try to satisfy all of our customers, small and big alike. Jeffrey had skipped out on work with some flimsy excuse about a dentist appointment. Of course, if he really had a dentist appointment, he would have told Cookie in advance. Cookie had stayed later than usual and was making more ice cream in the back. and our relief employees had been called in a little earlier to help out. They just hadn’t arrived yet. So things were hopping at the ice cream shop when the woman walked through the door and waited not so patiently at the end of the line.

As we waited on customers and the woman got closer to the front counter, I kept glancing at her. She had clearly spent far too much time out in the sun. She kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other and looking past the people in line in front of her. Maybe she needed the ice cream to cool off.

When she got to the front of the line, I smiled big. “Good morning. It’s a beautiful day, and it looks like you’ve already gotten a lot of sun today. What can I help you with?”

She pressed her lips together and glared at me. “What are you talking about? What sun?”

Uh oh. “Ah, I just meant it’s getting warm out there. What can I get you?”

She placed both hands on the glass counter and leaned toward me, getting uncomfortably close. “I want to know which one of you killed my son.” That was when I realized that her red face was the result of her anger and not being out in the sun too long.

My stomach dropped to my knees. The customers who had been in line in front of her were still in the shop, either sitting at a table or getting napkins for the kids, and they all turned to stare.

“I’m sorry, what?” I shouldn’t have asked it, but I was so stunned by what she had said that I didn’t know what else to say.

“Did you kill my son?” She looked over at Chloe, who had just scooped out a large scoop of bubblegum flavored ice cream from the container and was frozen in place. “Did you kill my son?” The woman’s voice was loud and seemed to echo off the walls of the ice cream shop.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, for your loss,” I said quickly. “But no one here killed your son. We would never do something like that.”

Chloe placed the scoop of ice cream onto a sugar cone and handed it to the woman standing next to the angry woman at the front counter, then turned to the angry woman. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I didn’t get your name.”

The woman’s head whipped around to look at her. “That’s because I didn’t give it. I know that someone who works here at this ice cream shop killed my son, and I want to know who it is.”

“No, ma’am,” I said as gently as I could. My voice was shaking, but I tried to make it come out smooth. “No one here killed your son. We would never do something like that. We are so very sorry that he died, though. He liked to come in and get vanilla ice cream. He loved our vanilla ice cream, and we always tried to give him extra because he was so polite.” The truth was Jeffrey tried to force a large scoop on him, and he hated it, but why split hairs?

She gritted her teeth for a moment. “I know what the detective told me. He said it was your fault. I will pay you back for what you did. No one here is getting away with murder.”

My eyes went to the man standing five feet behind her. He had obviously forgotten something, and for a moment I thought he might speak up, but instead, he picked up his little boy and almost ran from the shop. That was when I wondered if he had seen something. Did she have a gun or some other weapon? I could only see her from her mid-section up. No, I was jumping to conclusions. I forced myself to smile. I was sorry that she had lost her son, but we didn’t have anything to do with it.

“Please, Ma’am, you have to understand that we had nothing to do with your son’s death. We feel terrible about it.”

“Oh, you feel terrible about it? Is that why you’re smiling? Is it funny to you? Do you think the death of an innocent man is funny?”

She nearly shouted this, and I stopped smiling, having forgotten I was doing it, and I shook my head. “No. I’m so sorry. I don’t think it’s the least bit funny.” Customers began slipping out the door while others hung around to watch and see what happened next.

Cookie suddenly appeared from the backroom. “Is everything okay out here?”

The woman focused her laser beam eyes on Cookie. “No, it is not okay. You killed my boy.”

Cookie’s eyes got big, and she came to the front counter. “I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am for your loss. I feel terrible that someone was so horrible that they used one of our treats to kill him. It was cruel in the most awful way. I wish there was something I could do to help ease your pain, but I know there is nothing that will do that.”

And suddenly, the woman’s anger broke. It was as if there was a collective sigh that went through the room, and the woman started sobbing. “He was my only child, and now he’s gone. He was a good boy. He always thought about me and was such a help. And now he’s gone.”

Cookie put a hand on one of hers and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry. I’m sure he was the best son a mother could have, and I’m sorry he’s gone.”

The woman nodded, and I handed her a handful of napkins to wipe her eyes. She nodded. “Thank you. I’m sorry I came in here and yelled at you all. I just don’t know what to do with myself now that my only reason for living is gone.”

“It’s understandable,” I said. “We all feel awful about it. Tell us more about your son.”

She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “He was smart and shy. He loved animals, and he liked to draw. He was always there when I needed him. I never had to ask him twice to do something for me. He was always just there.”

“He sounds like a wonderful son,” Cookie said.

She nodded. “He was.”

“Do you have any idea who might have had something against him?” I asked. It was a dangerous question, but I had to know. She wasn’t the only one who thought we might have had something to do with her son’s death, and we needed to get to the bottom of it.

She sniffed. “His girlfriend. She’s an awful human being. Oh, why did I jump to conclusions and come in here and accuse you nice people?” She shook her head. “It had to be that woman.”

“Oh? What’s her name?” Chloe asked.

“Bridget Grinds. I’m going to have a talk with her. She’s the most likely person to have killed him. She’s selfish and hateful and was always bossing him around. When she didn’t get her way, she would threaten to break up with him. Thank you for your time and your kind words.” With that, she was gone, and the few customers that were left in the shop went back to eating their ice cream.

“Bridget Grinds works at the hair salon,” Chloe whispered. “Hairs the Place.”

I nodded. We needed to talk to her. But first, we’d let Mrs. Janson have a shot at her.

Chapter Eight

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CHLOE SAID BRIDGET Grinds, George’s girlfriend, worked at Hairs the Place—a local hair salon, so after work, we headed over there. They took walk-in appointments, and I needed a trim anyway, so it worked out perfectly.

I didn’t know what Bridget looked like, but Chloe nudged me and nodded in the direction of a woman with shoulder-length brown hair who was just finishing up with a client. I nodded back, keeping my eye on her. Bridget was about five and a half feet tall and was rather plain-looking. But she smiled a lot as she spoke to her client and that always made a person prettier. When she finished with her client, she looked up at us expectantly.

“Good afternoon, ladies. What can I help you with?”

We stepped forward. “I just need a trim, if you have time.”

“Me, too,” Chloe said.

“Of course we have time. I’ll take you right now, and Connie is just about to finish up with her client, and she’ll take you.” She nodded at Chloe, and I went with Bridget.

Two things surprised me about Bridget right off. One was that she was here at work when her boyfriend had just been murdered. Two was that she seemed happy. Maybe it was all an act, and maybe going to work instead of staying home and crying helped her get through her grief. Or she had killed him, and she didn’t care. Either way, I was going to try to figure out what was going on with her and her late boyfriend.

I sat down in the chair, and she put the nylon drape over me and snapped it at the back of my neck. “Now then, are you sure all you’d like is a trim? You have gorgeous hair.”

I nodded as she pulled my hair loose from the collar of the drape. “Thank you. Yes, just a trim. It’s been a while, and I just want my hair to look healthy again.”

She smiled. “Your hair is beautiful and shiny. I admire a woman with black hair.”

I smiled at her in the mirror. “Thank you. I get it from my maternal grandmother. She’s Italian, and she has always had the prettiest hair. It’s gone gray now, but it’s still pretty.” My skin was creamy white, presumably from my father’s side of the family and his English heritage. I played Snow White at Disneyland during the summer between high school and college. That was an experience. Tons of rules and screaming kids, let me tell you.

“Well, let’s get to trimming then.” She picked up a pair of scissors and got to work on my hair. I liked a wet trim better than a dry trim, but this was fine.

I watched her in the mirror as she worked. She hummed and smiled. Weird. “Isn’t the weather nice?”

She nodded. “Beautiful beach weather.”

“I just moved back to Lilac Bay a few weeks ago. I sure did miss it. There’s nothing like a small town and the beach.”

She glanced at me in the mirror, smiling. “It really is a nice town.”

Didn’t she have anything else to say? I cleared my throat. “I was so shocked to hear about the murder the other day.” Clearly, I had to be the one to bring it up, or it was not coming up.

She looked at me in the mirror again, her eyes widening, then she nodded. “It was awful. I can’t imagine what goes through someone’s mind when they commit murder.”

Darn it. I wanted more from her. Like a confession that he had been her boyfriend, and they’d argued and she shoved an ice cream cone down his throat. Or something like that. “I lived in Los Angeles for a few years, and you heard about murders there all the time, but not here in Lilac Bay. It’s always been peaceful.”

Her mouth made a slight downturn. “No, you don’t hear about them here every day, that’s for sure.”

She worked in silence, trimming the ends of my hair, matching them up to make them straight. I glanced at Chloe as she sat in the chair next to me. Her hairdresser was a chatty Cathy as she went on and on about the weather and the upcoming summer tourist season.

“Did you hear about the murder?” Chloe asked her when she could get a word in.

That shut her up as she glanced at Bridget. After a few moments, she nodded. “Yes, it’s a real shame when you aren’t even safe in your own hometown.”

“I didn’t know him,” Chloe said. “So he was a local? That’s awful.”

She nodded. “Yes, George was born and raised here.” She glanced at Bridget again, but Bridget just kept working on my hair.

“I wonder if the police have any idea what might have happened to him?” Chloe asked. I relaxed in my chair. Chloe was going to take on the role of the questioner.

“I have no idea.”

“Whoever it was should pay for it. And I don’t mean life in prison either,” Bridget finally spoke up.

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said, making eye contact with her in the mirror. “Did you know him?”

She blinked, and for a moment, her face crumpled in grief, but she recovered quickly. “He was my boyfriend.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said. “For your loss, I mean.” And I did feel sorry. When I decided to find George’s killer, I hadn’t thought about having to talk to people that loved him and who were in pain from losing him. But I should have after speaking to his mother earlier in the morning.

She nodded. “Thank you. I think it was someone that he worked with. I know that sounds crazy, but I do.”

“Who? And why?” I asked.

She was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know who. But he hated his job. He worked at the aquarium leading tours. He loved the sea animals, and he enjoyed talking about them to the tourists, but he hated his boss and his coworkers.” She spoke quietly, and now I could tell how much she was hurting over losing her boyfriend.

“That has to make for a miserable day, then,” Chloe said. “Did he ever say if there was one person in particular who he didn’t like? Or someone that harassed him?”

“His boss. He liked to nitpick every little thing he did. He hated going to work there, but he showed up on time and did his job to the best of his ability every day.” She sniffed and snipped at the ends of my hair.

“Have you talked to the police about it?” I asked.

She nodded. “They know. I don’t know if they’re doing anything about it though. You know how the police can be. They get an idea in their heads, and they don’t want to change it for anything. Now then, you’re all done.” She quickly unsnapped the drape and pulled it off me, shaking my loose hair to the floor. “I’ll ring you up.”

I followed her to the front counter and paid for my trim. “I really am sorry for your loss. And I hope the police catch the killer soon.”

She looked at me steadily. “I doubt it. They think I did it.”

I felt my eyes widen. “Why?” It was out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

“Because his mother is a nut job, and she told them that I did it.”

I shook my head slowly. “Why would they believe her?”

She sighed as another customer came through the door. “Because she said we fought all the time. And then there’s his evil stepmother who can’t stand me, either. Between the two of them, they have that detective convinced I did it. But I didn’t. If you ask me who did it, I’d say it was an old friend of his from school. If you’ll excuse me, I have a customer.”

Roy Franklin?

“Okay, thanks for the trim. And I’m sorry.”

I stepped back and waited for Chloe to finish with her trim. If the police did think that Bridget had done it, why had the detective come into the ice cream shop and make Cookie feel like he suspected her? I could see where Bridget thought George’s mother was a nut job. The way she had come into the shop accusing us was irrational. Well, irrational for anyone not grieving a murdered child. I sighed. We still had a lot of work to do.

Chapter Nine

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“YOUR HAIR LOOKS NICE,” I said to Chloe. She was a blond bombshell, and I had always envied her hair just a little. She had the hairdresser cut off a little more of her hair than I had.

“Thank you,” she chuckled. “Yours looks nice, too. Now, where are we off to?”

We had the rest of the afternoon and the next day off from work, and we wanted to enjoy ourselves, as well as find George Janson’s killer. It was sunny and warm and what I really wanted to do was go lay out on the beach and see if I could get some of this pasty white skin to tan up at least a little, but we had work to do. We had a killer to find.

“How about we head to the aquarium and see what we can see? I haven’t been there in years, and it used to be my favorite place to go when I was a kid.”

She nodded. “You bet. I loved that place too. Remember when your mom used to take us there the first Saturday after school let out for summer every year?”

“Oh, how could I forget? It was the best. Then we stopped by your mom’s shop and got an ice cream cone. Sometimes I’d like to go back and relive parts of my childhood.”

She nodded as we got into her car, a 1988 Dodge hatchback that barely ran. It didn’t matter though; we could walk just about anywhere in Lilac Bay if it broke down.

“Childhood was all too short. And now we have bills and rent. Blech.”

I chuckled. “I have bills, but no rent. The advantage of living in my parents’ house while they’re gone.”

“Lucky you. Do you think they’ll ever move back to Lilac Bay?”

“I don’t know. It would be nice if they did.” I wasn’t holding my breath. As long as my grandmothers had arthritis and other health issues, they needed a warm environment to keep them as pain-free as possible. But I missed having my family here.

We pulled up to the aquarium and parked. As soon as I got out of the car, I could hear the sea lions barking. The aquarium specialized in rehabilitating sea animals that couldn’t survive in the wild. The sea lions had been kept illegally as pets or had been in aquatic shows where they were sometimes not treated very well. There were also large aquariums with an assortment of deep-sea life that were fun to look at. The guides gave a brief tour that lasted about twenty minutes and gave a memorized speech. We usually skipped the tour and wandered the aquarium oohing and aahing over each creature.

We paid the entrance fee and bought chopped-up fish to feed the sea lions, and went inside. The sea lions were in large tanks with cement islands that they could get on to get out of the water. The ones who had been trained would clap their fins and stand up, begging for pieces of fish. We obliged by tossing them what we had bought, then went to wash our hands in an outdoor fountain. Next, we went inside to look around.

“Not much has changed, has it?” I peered into a tank that had small sharks in it.

“No, they haven’t changed much. I kind of like that.”

I looked at her, smiling. “Me too.”

We wandered around a while, and then we ran into Gail Swenson, a girl we went to school with. She was wearing a name tag, and when she saw us, she stopped. “Maddie? Chloe?”

“Gail!” We hugged each other and laughed. We would sometimes all hang out when we were in middle school, and I hadn’t seen her in years.

“Do you work here now?” Chloe asked.

She nodded. “Yeah, for a year now. It smells a little like dead fish, but it’s a fun place to work.” She laughed.

I stepped in closer. “We heard one of your coworkers was murdered.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, George. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sorry he was murdered, but he was a pain to work with. No one ever lived up to his expectations of how we should perform our jobs, so he wasn’t exactly popular around here.”

“Was he a supervisor?” Chloe asked.

She chuckled. “No, he was just a tour guide. Nothing special. But he was stuck up, rude, and didn’t like anyone. I guess that’s unkind of me to say since he was murdered.” She shrugged. “I do hope they find his killer. The last thing we need in this town is a killer on the loose.”

Chloe nodded. “You can say that again.”

“So no one liked him? Did they dislike him enough to kill him?” I asked, glancing around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear.

She hesitated. “It’s true that no one like him, but you know how it is. There’s always that one person that seems to get on everyone’s nerves, no matter where you work.”

I immediately thought of Jeffrey. “That’s the truth.”

She nodded. “But you know, if I had to take a guess, and I have been silently guessing since it happened, there was this guy that used to work here that really, really could not get along with George. The owner finally had to fire him because the two almost got into a fistfight, and he was more obnoxious than George was. His name was Jeffrey Pease.”

At the sound of Jeffrey’s name, both Chloe and I gasped in unison.

Gail smiled, looking confused. “What?”

“He works at my mom’s ice cream shop, and he is obnoxious,” Chloe said.

I nodded. “Really obnoxious. I can hardly stand to work with him.”

She nodded knowingly. “That would be him. Honestly, George was a pain to work with, but he was nowhere near as bad as Jeffrey, and when the two got together, things got crazy. Jeffrey was always threatening to beat George up.”

I nodded. “I wonder if he finally made good on his threat and went further than that and killed him.”

Chloe looked at me. “And why did Jeffrey never say that he knew him other than when he came in to buy ice cream? He acted like he was any other difficult customer that we get.”

I nodded. “Exactly.” Jeffrey was looking more and more guilty by the day.

“Didn’t he put this place down as somewhere he had worked when he applied for the job?” Gail asked.

Chloe shook her head. “No. I looked at the application. The last place he worked was the grocery store.”

“That’s weird,” Gail said.

Chloe turned to me. “It’s weird all right. I wonder why he would feel the need to leave it off his application? It’s not like he had a good work history anyway. Even his mother said he was always having trouble with jobs.”

I agreed. It was weird. And deceptive. And I thought we probably had our killer.

Chapter Ten

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I LAID IN BED AS LATE as I could the next morning, only to awaken to an orange-striped cat lying across my stomach. I don’t have a cat.

I opened one eye. “Hey. What are you doing here?”

The cat opened one of its eyes and looked at me, then closed it and went on with its slumber. I had seen it hanging around the house for a couple of weeks, and I assumed it belonged to a neighbor since it didn’t look skinny. My parents had a little dog, and my dad had made it a doggie door, so I was sure that was how he had gotten in.

I ran a hand across the cat’s back, and it purred. “You need to go home.” No response, so I delicately moved him to the bed and got up.

It was almost ten o’clock. Chloe and I planned on a trip to the beach and then lunch, and then we’d figure out what we were going to do with the rest of the day. Even though we worked together, we still wanted a day where we could just hang out and do what we wanted.

I quickly took a shower and put my bathing suit on. I let the cat sleep, figuring it would find its way out of the house the same way it found its way in and texted Chloe with plans to pick her up and drive through someplace to get coffee.

***

MY EYES POPPED OPEN when a frisbee whooshed past my head as I lay on my beach towel. The beach was more crowded than I had expected and I was beginning to think this may not have been the best day to lay out.

I turned my head to look at Chloe. “I did not like that.”

She cracked a smile and turned her head toward me. “I’m not exactly thrilled with it, either.”

“Maybe it’s time to get up and take a walk down the boardwalk?”

She nodded. “Sounds good.”

We got to our feet, and pulled the umbrella from the sand, gathered our things, and walked back to the municipal parking lot. Lilac Bay wasn’t as busy as some of the Southern California beaches, but there were still days that it was better to stay home, and apparently, today was one of them. There were three school buses in the parking lot. Senior class trip, I supposed.

After we’d stowed our gear in the car, we headed to the boardwalk. There were shops and a few small restaurants there, including the best place to get clam chowder on the central coast. I wasn’t quite hungry yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

“Oh, look,” Chloe said, looking into the window of a beachwear shop. “I like that hoodie.”

“It’s cute.” It was pink with a large blue wave on the front. Chloe loved her hoodies.

She elbowed me as we continued. “Look.”

I looked at the people coming toward us. “What?”

“Look,” she leaned over and whispered.

I shook my head. “At what?”

“That’s the detective.”

I looked at a tall man wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans walking toward us. He was wearing sunglasses and walking with a tall blond woman. I shook my head. “No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

I squinted. Maybe. The detective had been wearing a casual suit the times we had seen him, and I didn’t recognize him in a t-shirt and jeans. I looked away, pretending to be interested in the shops.

“What are you looking at?” Chloe asked when I stopped in front of a seashell shop.

“Seashells interest me.”

She snorted. “You’re nuts,” she whispered.

It was no use, though. The detective spotted us and stopped right in front of us. “Maddie. Chloe.”

I turned and acted surprised to see him. “Detective?”

“Nice day for a stroll,” Chloe said, looking at the blond woman. She smiled.

“It is.”

I eyed the detective. Since he wasn’t shy about stopping us, there was no reason for me to be shy. “How is the case going? Have you caught George Janson’s killer yet?” I felt emboldened just asking the question. There was no reason to let him freak me out.

I was pretty sure he narrowed his eyes at me behind those sunglasses, but they were too dark to tell. “Not yet, but I’m sure it will be soon.”

“I certainly hope so. And you might want to have another talk with Jeffrey Pease. Did you know that he used to work with the victim, and yet he failed to mention that?” I wasn’t fooling around here. He needed to get back on the case.

The detective looked surprised to hear this. “No, I didn’t know that. How do you know about it?”

“The aquarium. He worked there with George but he didn’t put it on his job application for the ice cream shop.” It was as if once I got started talking, I couldn’t stop. I could feel Chloe looking at me, but I didn’t care. Cookie was not going down for a crime she did not commit. Chloe would thank me for this someday.

He hesitated. “I see. It is odd that he wouldn’t mention something like that.”

The woman next to him glanced at him but didn’t say anything. She was drop-dead gorgeous, and I idly wondered if she was his wife. A quick check of their hands showed no rings, so not his wife. Fiancée? No, there would still be a ring. Girlfriend. And then I felt myself blush as I realized where this line of thought was headed.

“I think it’s more than odd. I think he killed him.” There. I had said it out loud.

It may have felt like a huge thing to say out loud, but the detective only smirked. “You do, do you?”

I narrowed my eyes at him, forgetting I was also wearing sunglasses and that he couldn’t see them. “Yes, I do. You don’t leave out things like that unless you want to hide something. Don’t you think he’s trying to hide something?”

He nodded. “I guess that’s a possibility. I’ll have another talk with him. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got a reservation for lunch at The Clamshell.” And just like that, they walked between Chloe and me and were gone.

“Can you believe that?” I exclaimed when they were out of earshot.

“No, I can’t. Why did you tell him about Jeffrey?”

That shut my mouth. For a few seconds anyway. “What? Because it’s true. Why wouldn’t I tell him that?”

She shrugged. “Maybe we should have kept it to ourselves for a little while longer? Until we could look into it further?”

I was surprised she was saying this. It wasn’t like I had intended to tell him, it just sort of fell out of my mouth. “Okay, yes, maybe we should have. I wasn’t thinking. But he didn’t take it seriously, anyway.”

“He said he would look into it.”

I sighed. “That’s like saying I’ve got better things to do with my time than listen to you. And he had reservations at The Clamshell? Like, is he rich or something? Shouldn’t he be working on the case instead of going out to fancy lunches? And he was so rude! He didn’t even introduce us to his girlfriend.”

“It’s not like we’re anyone important to him.” She shrugged. “All I know is that I wish he would find the killer so my mother doesn’t have to worry.”

And that burst my bubble. “Me too.” Making sure that Cookie wasn’t put into jail was the important thing, and I was getting excited because I didn’t think he had paid close enough attention to what I had told him. Sometimes I didn’t think.

Chapter Eleven

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THE FOLLOWING DAY, I worked the opening shift instead of the early shift. My co-worker, Jennifer Levin, had an appointment, and she was going to work the early shift. That was fine. Sleeping in a little later suited me.

I unlocked the shop door and let myself in just as the detective was coming out of the kitchen area. I stopped in my tracks.

“Good morning,” he said and nodded, but he kept heading toward the front door. I hadn’t had a chance to lock it again, so he pushed it open and was gone. I watched him go. Why was that detective always so rude? He could have allowed me to open it. He didn’t know it wasn’t locked. I stuck the key into the lock and turned it. When I turned around, Cookie and Chloe were standing in the kitchen doorway. Cookie was pale and had dark circles beneath her eyes.

“What? What’s going on?” I asked.

“That detective,” Chloe said with a huff. “He’s such a jerk. He wants my mom to provide fingerprints.”

I shook my head. I could hear Jennifer in the kitchen making ice cream, and I lowered my voice. “Why? Does he think there are fingerprints on that ice cream cone that killed George Janson?”

Cookie shrugged. “They lifted some prints from George’s glasses, and he wants to see if they’re mine.”

“He said that?” I asked and crossed the room. “He said he wanted to see if they were yours?” This was getting ridiculous. As soon as you met Cookie, you knew she was the sweetest person you were ever going to meet. That detective had no sense.

She shook her head, looking flustered. “He didn’t exactly say it like that, but you know that’s what he meant. I just don’t know what to do. I can’t imagine killing someone, let alone actually doing it. I just wish he would find the real killer so we can put this behind us.”

“He’s never going to do that as long as he has his eye on the wrong person,” I said with a sigh.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Cookie said, looking forlorn. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, but our sales have dropped. It’s the beginning of summer, and I depend on summer sales to help get us through the rest of the year.”

I had noticed that there didn’t seem to be as many customers in the shop, but I didn’t want to bring it up. Cookie had enough problems.

“Good morning, Maddie,” Jennifer said, carrying a tray of cookies to the display case.

I smiled. “Good morning, Jennifer.” We waited for Jennifer to replace the empty tray with the full one and return to the kitchen before continuing.

“This will pass,” I said. “New tourists will arrive in the coming weeks and months, and they won’t even know there was a murder.”

Chloe nodded. “That’s true. There’s always something new happening to replace the old news. It will be fine.”

I knew it would be fine eventually. But there was one thing I was wondering about. “I wonder why he has his eye on you? Just because it was one of our cones that was used to kill George doesn’t mean a thing. And even if he did suspect it was someone who worked here, why you and not someone else?” I was thinking of Jeffrey, but I didn’t want to say it out loud.

Cookie sat down on one of the stools at the front counter and sighed heavily. “There’s something I never told you girls.”

“That sounds ominous,” Chloe said, pulling up a chair from a table to sit in front of her mother. I did the same.

She looked from Chloe to me. “A few years ago, when you girls were still in high school, we hit a rough patch. It was right after that new ice cream shop opened up on the other end of the boardwalk. You know how people are. They always want to try something new, and it was hurting our business.”

I nodded. “I guess that’s to be expected.”

“It is. At the time, George was working for me.”

Both Chloe’s and my mouth dropped open. “Seriously?” Chloe asked.

She nodded. “Seriously. He was a reasonably good employee, but he was strange. He didn’t talk much, and the customers didn’t really like him. One day I had a large family come in, and they spent a lot of money. Over seventy dollars. It felt good to have a sale that large. They paid for it with a hundred-dollar bill, and George rang them up. But when we closed that evening, the hundred-dollar bill was missing.”

“Uh oh.” I didn’t like where this was going.

She nodded. “Uh oh is right. We counted the cash drawer over and over, but we couldn’t find it. George didn’t even seem disturbed by it. But I was. I had so much pressure on me. I was afraid we would never recover financially if things didn’t turn around. So I let George go. The customers didn’t like him anyway, and I couldn’t afford to lose money if he was stealing.”

I bit my lower lip. “So he stole from you? You did the right thing by letting him go.”

“That’s what I thought. But a few days later, I found that hundred-dollar bill. It had slipped between some paperwork that I used to keep at the back of the cash drawer. I don’t know why we didn’t find it when we looked for it the first time. George even looked, and he couldn’t find it.”

Chloe sighed. “What did you do?”

“I went to him, and I apologized. I told him if he wanted his job back, he could have it, but he was understandably angry. He refused.”

“So what does that have to do with the case?” I asked. “You realized your mistake, and you tried to make it good. Why would you want to kill him?”

“He and his stepmother never forgave me. His mother was the woman who came in the other day, but he was raised by his father and stepmother, Gloria Nusbaum. And you know I have always had trouble with her.”

Gloria Nusbaum was a woman that everyone had trouble with. She stuck her nose into everyone’s business, and she was always at the center of every organized event in town.

“And?” I asked.

“And George used to come in here for those vanilla ice cream cones. I couldn’t understand it at first. There was another ice cream shop he could have gone to, after all. But then when he was so precise in how he wanted that cone, I realized he was doing it to punish me. You may not have noticed it, but I tried to make myself scarce when he would come in.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said.

Chloe shook her head. “Me either.”

She nodded. “Well, Gloria told the detective I still had something against her stepson. That I still thought of him as a thief, and I wanted to get back at him.”

“And you explained everything to the detective?” I asked.

She nodded. “Several times. But I don’t think he has another suspect, and that’s why he’s looking at me so closely. That and he was killed by one of our ice cream cones.”

She looked sad, and it made me angry. That detective was a jerk, and he had no right to harass someone as sweet as Cookie was. Anyone with a pair of eyes could see she wasn’t the sort of person that could commit murder.

“I still feel so terrible about blaming him for the missing money.”

“Because he wanted you to feel terrible about it. Coming in here and asking for that vanilla ice cream cone was his way of getting back at you,” I said. “That detective needs someone else to investigate.”

Jeffrey had only been working at the shop for a few months, so it must have been a bonus for George to be able to bug both him and Cookie with his ice cream order. We had to find a way to figure out who killed him, so Cookie didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

Chapter Twelve

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COOKIE WAS RIGHT ABOUT business slowing down. She sent Jennifer home early, and I was running the front counter while Chloe made another batch of chocolate chip cookies that probably weren’t going to get eaten. Well, I suppose we could eat them if it came down to it.

I watched all day as people walked past the shop. Some peered in the window as if we were a spectacle of some sort, with only a small handful of them stopping in now and then throughout the day to buy ice cream. Or ask for directions. It frustrated me. We were better than the other ice cream shop. Our creations were more creative, and we always gave a free cookie with each ice cream. So someone had been murdered with one of our cones? It’s not like we were going to murder everyone that bought one from us.

I was leaning against the front counter when Roy Franklin walked through the door. The green hair was hard to miss.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” I said, straightening up. “What can I help you with?”

He looked up at the menu board. “I’m not sure yet. I just got off work, and I was in the mood for some ice cream.” He grinned at me.

“Well, you came to the right place, then.” I was trying to sound chipper after feeling down all day, and I wasn’t sure I was succeeding.

“Hey, didn’t you come into the home improvement center the other day? You had a hole in your backyard fence. Right?”

I nodded, surprised that he remembered me. “Yeah, I did.”

“Did you ever come back and pick up that piece of lumber to fix your fence?”

I shook my head. “No, not yet. I’ve got to find a pickup truck to bring it home in.” Plus, the hole had been in the fence for something like six years. It’s not like there was any hurry. It was too small for my parent’s little dog to get through, so when they came home to visit, there was no worry there.

He nodded. “Yeah, well, as soon as you can find one, you be sure and come get that piece of lumber. The longer you wait to fix something like that, the worse it’s going to get. Like I said, we could deliver it, but it would cost forty dollars, and it probably isn’t worth it to you.”

I smiled. That hole was not getting worse. “I’ll keep that in mind. I’ve just been working so much that I haven’t had time to ask around.”

He nodded, his eyes going to the menu board again. “I think I’d like a triple scoop black cherry in a waffle cone with a drizzle of chocolate sauce.”

“That is a wise choice. You can’t beat cherries and chocolate.” I got to work scooping his cone and keeping an eye on him. I so wanted to ask him why he had lied about not knowing George Janson when Estelle said he knew him.

“Any news about that guy that got murdered?”

I glanced at him and shook my head. “Nothing new. How about you? There has to be something going around town about it.” I hadn’t forgotten that Bridget had implied that a friend from school had killed George, and I wondered if it was Roy she was talking about.

He shrugged, his green hair falling into his eyes. He pushed it back. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think his girlfriend did it.”

“Why do you think that?” I scooped some more dark cherry ice cream into the cone.

“Because I heard they fought a lot, and he was controlling. I also hear his girlfriend didn’t like to be controlled. Then, a customer came into the lumber yard and said they knew both of them really well and said his girlfriend was acting suspiciously. Like she was really happy now that her boyfriend is dead, and they thought she already had another boyfriend on the side.”

I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth. It’s true that I was surprised by the fact that Bridget had been at work and that she had been smiling when I got my hair trimmed the other day, but when the murder was brought up, she seemed sad he was dead.

“Really?” I said, hoping he would continue.

He nodded. “Yeah. It was a friend of his girlfriend. Deb Salyers. Do you know her?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been away from Lilac Bay for a few years, and George Janson was at least five years older than me, so I didn’t know him when I used to live here.”

He nodded. “Well, I can tell you that a lot of people are talking. And they’re saying that she did it. She has quite a temper. I went to school with her, and she and her boyfriend got into an argument one day. She was screaming at him and punched him in the arm, making his books fly out of his hands, and then she stomped off.”

“Really? I bet that detective would like to know about that.” If we could get his attention off of Cookie, then she could relax about it and people would come back to the shop. Not to mention the killer would also get caught.

The bell over the door rang, and Estelle entered the shop. I smiled at her. At least she hadn’t deserted us.

“Hello, Maddie,” she said as she got in line behind Roy and squinted up at him. “My, your hair is really green. Too much chlorine?”

He smiled, turning toward her. “Naw, I did this on purpose.”

Estelle chuckled. “Well, it sure is a pretty shade of green.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll be right with you, Estelle,” I said as I drizzled chocolate sauce on Roy’s ice cream cone. “Cookie?”

He leaned over to look into the display case. “How about that dark chocolate one?”

“You got it.”

“That looks delicious,” Estelle said, eyeing the ice cream I was making. Then she turned her attention back to Roy. “Say, don’t I know you?”

Roy turned to her again and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Sure, I do. You’re Roy Franklin. I was the librarian at the county library, and you used to bring your books in late. No Hershey’s kisses for you.” She laughed.

Roy lit up. “Oh, wow, I forgot all about that. I swear, I tried to get those books back on time.”

She shook her head. “You only managed it once or twice a year, though.”

“You have some memory.” He took his wallet out of his back pocket and paid for the ice cream.

“I certainly do. I’m so sorry about your friend, George. It’s a shame he was murdered.”

His face went pale. “Who?”

“George. George Janson. You two were friends in the third and fourth grade.”

He glanced at me, then shook his head. “No, sorry. I think you have me confused with someone else. Maybe it’s the green hair.” He turned to me and took his cone. “Thanks a lot. This looks great.”

“You’re welcome.”

He looked at Estelle. “Nice seeing you again, Mrs. Smith.” And then he was out the door.

Estelle turned to me, frowning. “I rarely make a mistake about things like that.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to this. I was pretty sure she was right, but that meant he was lying. And why would he do that?

I shrugged. “I guess it happens.”

She thought about it, then looked up at the menu board. “I’d like a chocoloco, please. And one of those dark chocolate cookies, too.”

“One chocoloco coming right up.”

If Roy was lying, I wanted to know why.

Chapter Thirteen

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THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE quiet, which wasn’t a good thing, business-wise. But it did give us some time to do a deep clean, and we had the shop and the kitchen sparkling. When the customers realized how silly they were being about this situation, they would be completely impressed with how the place looked. Not that it wasn’t clean before, of course, but now it was clean enough to eat off the floor, as the saying goes.

The other positive about the situation was that Jeffrey had asked for three days off, and we didn’t have to deal with him. If he was going to show up for work, I wanted to stay busy so there would be no time to talk to him, and that wouldn’t have been possible with how slow things had gotten. But Jeffrey was due to be back today, and I was making a list in my head of things I could do to stay busy and away from him.

The front door opened, and Jeffrey swaggered in. Why couldn’t he just walk like a normal person?

“Hey, I’m back!” he announced.

I was wiping up around the sauces and add-ons we kept for the sundaes and other goodies we made, not that it was necessary. We hadn’t made a sundae since last Sunday.

“Hey.”

He looked around the empty shop. “So, what’s up with this place? Why’s it so quiet?”

I shrugged. “It happens.”

Chloe came in from the kitchen, and when she saw Jeffrey, she frowned.

“I’m back,” he told her.

“So I see.” She had a tray of cookies that she took to the display case and began placing them inside.

“Wow, that’s not much of a welcome. You two should be thrilled that I’m back since you always leave all the work to me.”

Chloe and I looked at each other. If he thought he was doing most of the work around here, he was out of his mind.

“No, we don’t. It’s a chore to get you to do anything around here,” Chloe said without looking at him.

He snorted and grabbed an apron from behind the counter and tied it on. “If it weren’t for me, this place would be dead in the water. I mean, look at it now. No customers. And why is that? Because I’ve been gone. I bet you haven’t had any customers since I took off.”

Chloe spun around to face him. “Are you out of your mind? You really believe that?”

“Well, yeah, why wouldn’t I? I’ve seen the receipts on the days I work and the days I’m off. We make more money on the days I’m here.”

Uh oh. Now he had done it. I could tell by the twitch in Chloe’s jaw that she did not like what he had just said.

“What are you doing looking at the receipts? It’s none of your business how much money we make. Ever.”

He laughed. “It’s not like things are locked up around here. You people are terrible at business. In fact, I don’t know how you stay in business. It’s a good thing I came along when I did.”

“Jeffrey, you are out of your mind,” I said, taking up for Chloe. I couldn’t let her defend the shop on her own. “You’re terrible with the customers. You only do as much work as you absolutely have to, and I seriously doubt you could add two and two together without a calculator.”

Chloe snickered and shut the display case door. “I can’t argue with that.”

He glared at me. “My friends have been coming in here and spending their money on your ice cream, and that has been a big help to this place. Everyone knows Lilac Bay Ice Cream has better ice cream, and that’s why people would rather go there.”

“That’s a lie,” I said between gritted teeth. “They’re going there because you’re obnoxious. Take, for instance, the way you were so difficult when you waited on George Janson when all he wanted was a vanilla ice cream cone. And speaking of George, how come you never told anyone that you worked with him at the aquarium?”

“How come you were so mean to him?” Chloe asked. “Why did you feel the need to hide the fact that you worked with him?”

“Is that true?” Cookie asked. We all turned to look at her. We hadn’t heard her come in from the kitchen. “Jeffrey, did you work with him at the aquarium?”

Jeffrey hesitated. He knew he’d been caught in a lie. “What difference does it make? It’s not like I was going to be feeding sea lions here. I put down the fast-food experience I had on my application because that applied to this kind of work.”

“That wasn’t what the application asked for. It asked about your last job. Was the aquarium your last job?” Cookie asked.

He shrugged. “Who cares? And who cares about that idiot George Janson? He got what he deserved. Good riddance.”

Cookie’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe anyone would talk that way about someone who was murdered. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

He shook his head. “You know what? I don’t have to put up with this. I got better things to do with my life.” He took the apron off and threw it on the counter. “I’m going to take another three days off until you people can get your attitudes right.” He strode across the room, shoving open the glass door and left, the little bell ringing as he went.

I looked at Chloe and Cookie. “He’s the killer. There’s no other reason he would lie and pretend that he didn’t know George when he came in here.”

“Did he lie about that specifically, though?” Cookie asked, her eyes still on the door.

“Yes,” Chloe said. “I asked him once why he was so mean to George. What did he have against him? He just laughed and said he didn’t have anything against him, and he didn’t even know him.”

“I asked him too,” I said. “I asked him if he knew who the guy was, but he denied it. Gail Swenson from the aquarium said the two fought all the time. He got fired from there. That’s why he didn’t put it on the application. He didn’t want you to do a reference check.”

She looked at me. “I guess I can see why he wouldn’t want to put it on his application then.”

“We need to call the detective,” I said. “He needs to know about all of this.”

“I agree,” Chloe said. “This is all very suspicious. If he had nothing to hide, he wouldn’t have lied about it.”

Cookie was quiet for a bit. “I don’t know. Let me think about it for a while.”

I was surprised she said that and couldn’t understand it. If it were me that the detective had his eye on, I would call him immediately the moment I got even the slightest hint that it was someone else that did it. “Why?”

She looked at both of us. “If he did kill George, we just made him very angry. He may kill again. And if we send the detective his way, he will know who it was that talked to him.”

“But we have to let the detective know,” Chloe said. “He has to question him more thoroughly.”

“And what if he does question him more thoroughly, and he doesn’t think he did it? Jeffrey will come back for us.” Cookie looked from Chloe to me and back. I understood her fear, but we couldn’t let him get away with murder.

“We can’t just sit here and say nothing. You might end up going to jail,” I pointed out.

“Let’s just think about it.”

I sighed. I didn’t think I could make that promise, but I wasn’t going to say that to her.

Chapter Fourteen

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COOKIE WAS AFRAID OF Jeffrey. I knew that. But Chloe and I were afraid that Cookie might go to jail for a crime she didn’t commit. That was something I couldn’t sit by and watch without doing something. So against Cookie’s wishes, the following day I went in search of Detective Grayson. I didn’t care much for the detective, but I had to put my feelings aside. No way was I going to sit around while Jeffrey, the person I thought was most likely to be the killer, went free.

I was hoping to speak to the detective on common ground, so I drove by the grocery stores, the shopping outlets, and every other place I could think of while I was on my lunch break looking for that black SUV. Nothing. There was only one thing left to do. And that was go to the police station. The thought made me weak in the knees. There was something about cops that made me anxious, but I had to ignore it.

I walked up to the front desk at the police station. A woman who looked to be in her mid-forties sat at the desk and ignored me.

“Um, excuse me.”

She continued typing on her computer. I was getting ready to say something again when she finally looked up at me. She wore half-rim glasses that sat on the end of her nose. I smiled.

“Yes?”

“Good afternoon. May I please speak to Detective Grayson?”

She gazed at me as if I hadn’t spoken. Then, “Why?”

I wasn’t prepared for that. Did this woman screen all of his visitors? Maybe he was busy and had asked her to do that. But I didn’t want to discuss my business with her.

“It’s about one of his cases. Could you please tell him that Maddie Bradford is here to see him?”

She rolled her eyes and picked up the phone on her desk. Pressing a button, she said, “Maddie Bradford is here to see you.” There was a pause. “I don’t know. She says it’s about one of your cases.” Another pause, and she hung up. Looking at me over her glasses again, she said, “he isn’t familiar with the name.”

I sighed. “He’ll be familiar with the face. Trust me. It’s important.”

She looked me up and down and then nodded. “His office is down the hall.” She pointed to a closed door without looking at it.

“Thank you.” I hurried toward the door before she changed her mind. I had the feeling that she might be in charge of who got past the closed door or not, regardless of whether she called anyone for permission.

Past the closed door was a hallway full of more closed doors. Thankfully, there were brass nameplates on each one and I kept going until I got to the one that said, Detective Noah Grayson. My hand was shaking when I knocked.

“Come in,” a voice from the other side called.

I fumbled with the doorknob, twisting it one way, then the next, but it wouldn’t open. In a panic, I turned it faster, back and forth, but still nothing. Finally, I gave up. “It won’t open.”

There was an audible sigh from the other side of the door, and I heard heavy footsteps, then the door opened easy as you please. I smiled at the unsmiling detective. He looked surprised to see me.

“Oh. It’s you.” He turned and went back to his desk and sat down.

I followed him without being asked, hesitating in front of his desk. Then I decided to sit without asking for permission. The guy was a jerk, and what was he going to say if he didn’t want me to sit?

“Hi, how are you?” I suddenly felt emboldened. “I’m so glad that you remembered who I am.”

He smirked. “Of course I remember who you are. It was the name that was forgettable.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I have something to tell you about the case. Cookie didn’t kill George Janson. She’s not that kind of person and if you have your eye on her, you’re a sorry excuse for a detective because anyone with any sense would know better.” I was shocked by what I had just said, but I wasn’t taking it back. As for the detective, he looked slightly amused by the time I had finished my defense of Cookie.

“So if Cookie didn’t do it, who did?”

I sat back in my chair. “Jeffrey Pease. My coworker.”

“Why? What’s your reasoning?”

I sighed. “He lied about working with the victim. And the reason he lied about it was that he and the victim hated each other.” I might have been going overboard by saying they hated each other because I really didn’t know that. “They fought while working at the aquarium, and Jeffrey was fired for it. Plus, he’s been a pain since coming to work at the ice cream shop. He’s rude to customers, but he was especially rude to George. All he wanted when he came in was a vanilla ice cream cone with a not too large scoop of vanilla ice cream, but Jeffrey argued with him about it every time.”

“Arguing over ice cream isn’t reason enough to commit murder. And you’ve told me all of this already.” He sat back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.

I sighed again. This might not have been new information, but he obviously hadn’t talked to Jeffrey about it, and I needed him to. “Look. Jeffrey wanted to keep it a secret that he worked with George at the aquarium and the only reason for that was because they fought so much that he got fired over it. George did not get fired over it, so you know it was Jeffrey’s fault. When we confronted him about it, he stormed out of the store and said he was taking three days off.”

Now the detective looked mildly interested. “Why three days off?”

I shrugged. “He had just taken three days off and had just come back to work. When we confronted him over this information, he got angry and said he was taking another three days off and stormed out of the shop. And cookie is very worried that Jeffrey might retaliate against us for confronting him.”

“Confronting him might not have been the best idea if he did kill George Janson,” he pointed out.

I nodded. “I know. But it wasn’t like we planned on confronting him. It just sort of happened because Jeffrey is so full of himself. One thing led to another, and we did it.”

“Who is we?” He leaned forward and started jotting things down in his notebook. That made me relax a little. If he felt this was important enough to write in his notebook, then he might feel it was important enough to look into.

“Me and Chloe.”

He looked up at me. “But not Cookie?”

I shook my head. “Well, sort of, but not exactly.”

He gave me a look that said I was trying his patience. “What does that mean?”

“Cookie was in the kitchen, and by the time she came out front, we had already confronted him. She was surprised he had lied on his job application, so she did ask him about that, but Cookie is worried about what he might do if he is the killer, so she wasn’t exactly confronting him.”

He sighed. “Let me look into this. In the meantime, if he does come back to work, do you think you and Chloe could not bring this up with him?”

I nodded. “Our lips are sealed.”

“I bet they are.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “What do you know about Bridget Grinds?”

I shook my head. “Virtually nothing. Why?” Did he suspect Bridget of the murder? It occurred to me to pass on what I’d heard about her, but it was all hearsay, wasn’t it? It wasn’t anything I knew for a fact.

“Nothing.”

The detective had no use for small talk and asked me to leave after I had told him all of this. That was fine. I didn’t want to make small talk with him. I just wanted Jeffrey Pease arrested for the murder.

Chapter Fifteen

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I HEADED BACK TO THE ice cream shop without having eaten lunch. That’s what happens when you’re crime-solving. And that’s what I was doing, right? I would do anything to keep Cookie out of jail. She was my best friend’s mother, my employer, and a second mother to me. Chloe and I had met when we were toddlers, and our mothers had taken us to the park. We both loved the swings, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. Even when I had moved away, we talked to each other at least once a week.

The shop was empty when I got back, so I scooped myself some ice cream to get me through until dinnertime. Chloe and I cleaned the already clean shop and then hung out, watching the traffic pass by.

In the afternoon, Roy Franklin stopped in. His green hair was fading, and he was wearing his vest and name tag from the home improvement store.

“Hey, ladies,” he said as he came up to the counter. “How’s it going?”

“Great,” Chloe said. “What can we help you with?”

He glanced up at the menu board, then around at the empty shop. “Sure is quiet in here. This place is usually hopping.”

Chloe nodded. “We have our days. It’s so nice out, I’m sure everyone is at the beach right now.”

I stepped up. “How is business at the home improvement store?”

He grinned. “It’s always busy there. It’s nice when you’re the only store in town where you can pick up lumber and bolts and screws. People gotta stop in there or drive a while to get what they need.”

“Or order online,” Chloe pointed out.

He nodded. “Yeah, I guess there’s that. But most people around here shop local.” He looked up at the menu board again. “How about a butterscotch crème and a sugar cookie?”

“You got it,” I said. “Waffle cup?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

I got to work dipping vanilla ice cream into the cup. Next, I poured butterscotch over it and then added butterscotch chips and whipped cream to it while they talked about the weather. The sugar cookie went on the side.

“Here you go,” I said, placing a napkin beneath the waffle cup.

“Looks great. You know, it was weird that that old lady thought I knew George when I was in here the other day. I kind of remember him from school, but we were never friends. As I recall, George didn’t have many friends. At least, none that I can remember.”

“That’s sad,” Chloe said. “But Estelle has a memory that is as excellent as they come. I’m surprised she would get it wrong.”

I glanced at Roy as he dug in his pocket for money for his ice cream. He frowned. “Yeah, well, when you deal with as many kids as she must have, being the county librarian and all, she’s bound to make a mistake. I do feel bad that someone killed George, though. He was such a loner as a kid. I always felt sorry for him. And now he ends up dead? Life isn’t fair sometimes.”

I nodded. “It sure isn’t. Hopefully the police will figure out who his killer is soon, and he will get the justice he deserves.”

He nodded. “Yeah, hopefully they get it figured out. I’d hate for the murder to go unsolved. Have you heard anything about how the case is coming along?” He looked up at me now.

I shrugged. “All I know is the police are working on it.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it takes some time for them to solve something like this,” Chloe said.

He nodded. “I saw something interesting yesterday. Not that I want to gossip or anything. But George’s girlfriend, Bridget, was with a guy in our parking lot. They were standing by her car, and she kissed him. It surprised me.”

I glanced at Chloe. “Kissed him how? On the cheek, like he was a friend she hadn’t seen in a while?”

He grinned and shook his head. “No. It was on the lips. And it was very friendly, if you know what I mean.”

“Some people greet each other that way, and it doesn’t mean anything,” Chloe said.

He laughed. “Well, I guess there’s that. But it looked a little friendlier than just kissing a friend. But maybe I’m reading more into it than there is, especially since it surprised me at the time. Maybe it was just a friends kind of thing.”

“Did you know who the guy was?” I asked. Maybe the detective had good reason to ask about her.

He shook his head. “I didn’t recognize him. They must have already been in the store, and I missed seeing them because they got in her car and left after that.”

“That is odd,” I agreed.

He shrugged. “It’s probably nothing. Like I said, I don’t want to be spreading gossip around. The poor girl’s boyfriend was just brutally murdered, after all.”

“Yeah, you never know. It could have been an old college friend,” Chloe said. But she didn’t sound convinced. I was pretty sure she was thinking the same thing that I was. What was a dead guy’s girlfriend doing kissing some other guy not two weeks after he was brutally murdered?

He nodded as he laid out the money for the ice cream. “There you go. I think this about does it. And maybe you’re right. Maybe it was a college friend or something.”

I nodded and scooped up the money, including the change. “Thanks. And enjoy your ice cream.”

“I sure will. I’m off work for the day, and I’m going to go home and just chill. The ice cream is going to help with that.”

We watched as he left the shop. I turned to Chloe. “How good is Estelle’s memory? He’s right that she had a lot of kids to deal with over the years as the county librarian.”

She nodded. “Yeah, that’s true. But I still think Estell’s memory is pretty good. In fact, I’d say it was excellent. Maybe his green hair threw her off, and she doesn’t remember him as well as she thinks she does.”

I nodded. “She didn’t recognize me at first, either. But then she realized who I was and what she remembered about me was right.”

I still had some more digging to do if I was going to get Cookie’s name cleared. And I was going to talk to Bridget again. That kiss didn’t sound innocent, and I couldn’t imagine her just having met someone. He had to have been around for some time, and I wondered if they killed George so they could be together.

Chapter Sixteen

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NOT HAVING CUSTOMERS to wait on put a damper on things at work. Cookie was cutting employees’ hours and there were rumors that Jennifer and Sarah were looking for other places to work. It’s not like you could blame them. Everyone has bills, and they have to eat. Without sufficient employment, that isn’t going to happen.

The evening after I spoke to the detective, I was sitting at one of the tables in the ice cream shop with Chloe and Cookie. They were working longer hours to fill in for the hours cut from the other employees, and I was working closing shifts. Jeffrey had given us another three-day break from him and that at least made me happy.

“So, you aren’t going to let Jeffrey come back to work, are you?” I asked Cookie.

“Yeah, Mom, this is the perfect opportunity to get rid of him. It’s nothing personal. We simply don’t have enough work for him right now. Or ever.” Chloe gave her mother a big, cheesy grin.

Cookie broke into a smile. It was nice to see. Lately, she had become somber, what with the worries about having a crime she didn’t commit pinned on her, and the lack of customers. There wasn’t much to smile about. “I was thinking the same thing. It’s a great excuse to let him go. I’m going to call his mother tomorrow morning.”

“His mother?” I looked at Cookie questioningly.

She nodded. “If he can use his mother to get him this job, I can use her to fire him.” She laughed heartily, and Chloe and I joined in.

“I see no issue with you doing that,” Chloe said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

I nodded. “Let her handle his tantrum when he finds out he’s been let go.” I took a bite of the vanilla ice cream I had scooped into a paper cup. Vanilla wasn’t just the victim’s favorite, I was a fan of it, too. I looked at the two of them. “I’ve been thinking. Chloe and I worked late the night that George was killed because Jennifer called in sick and Jeffrey had the evening off. So one of us waited on the killer.”

Chloe nodded. “That’s been on my mind since we found out that he had been killed with one of our ice cream cones.”

“I’ve been trying to think if there was anyone suspicious that came in that night. Can you remember?”

“There was that mom with six kids. They all bought screaming mimis. I know because I made them all.”

I nodded. Chloe hated making screaming mimis because it involved lots of various syrups and a cone that couldn’t quite contain it all. It was a guaranteed mess for the maker and the eater. “Nothing unusual about them except that she was giving them all that sugar right before bedtime.”

“Some people don’t think,” Cookie said. “I wish we could figure out who killed him.”

“Me too. It was a slow night, which was unusual for a Saturday.” I took another bite of my ice cream.

“The fireworks show was going on that night. The first one of the season and everyone wanted to be there,” Chloe pointed out.

I looked up at her. “That’s right. I forgot about that. And if George screamed, or he fought with the killer, no one would have heard them because of the fireworks.” From the end of May until the Labor Day weekend, the town put on a fireworks display every Saturday night. It was a way to draw tourists in and brought people out onto the beach at night.

Chloe looked at me. “Even Estelle came in earlier in the evening because she wanted to be home before the crowds came out to watch the fireworks.”

“Okay, so there weren’t many customers that came in. But no one stands out in my mind as far as who may have been the killer.” I swirled my melting ice cream around my cup with my spoon as I tried to remember. “Oh. There was that guy that kind of hung out for a while. He said he was waiting for someone, and he kept looking out the window.”

Chloe’s brow furrowed in thought. “Yeah, I kind of remember someone, but he was here when I was waiting on the woman with all the kids. I was distracted by them. Do you remember what he looked like?”

Sadly, I didn’t. I shook my head. “Not really. Brown hair. Tall. Kind of young? Honestly, I had another customer I was helping. The guy that wanted a scoop of every flavor we had. Remember?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Too bad we don’t have cameras in here. We should get some, Mom.”

She nodded. “As soon as the customers come back, I’ll look into it.”

I felt badly for Cookie. She was stressed about this whole thing. Not that I blamed her. Who wouldn’t be?

We all jumped when there was an explosion nearby. The fireworks had begun. We looked at each other wide-eyed, and we laughed.

“I guess we may as well lock up. No one is coming in here tonight,” Cookie said, getting to her feet.

I sighed as we stood up. “That detective is going to find the killer, Cookie. I’m sure of it.” I hadn’t told either of them that I had gone to talk to the detective. I was going to keep that to myself for now. As long as he was looking at Jeffrey and not Cookie, I was happy.

Cookie turned to me. “You sure sound confident.”

I shrugged. “I’m trying to think positively. Thinking negatively just makes me depressed.”

She nodded. “You’re right. I need to think more positively.”

I went to the front door and pulled the key from my pocket. For a moment, I saw something move near the back of a car parked out front. Pushing the door open, the cool sea breeze hit me as I looked around. Had I seen someone duck down behind that car? I glanced over my shoulder as Cookie and Chloe cleaned up around the shop.

Stepping out onto the sidewalk, another firework exploded in the sky, providing momentary lighting. I glanced in the area where I thought I saw someone, but all was still. I stepped out into the street and walked toward the back of the car. There was a scampering sound, and I stopped. We sometimes had wildlife hanging around the outside garbage cans, looking for a bite to eat. When I didn’t hear anything else, I walked a little further out, and another firework exploded. This time, I was sure I saw someone across the street. They ducked between two shops where there was a tiny area between the outer walls, not wide enough to walk comfortably through, but wide enough to squeeze through if you wanted to. Or had to. I shook my head. I was being paranoid. Nearly everyone in town was on the beach watching fireworks.

I turned and headed back to the shop.

“The fireworks are beautiful, aren’t they?” Cookie asked as I locked the door behind me.

I nodded. “They sure are. But they’re loud too, and that has bothered me since I was a kid.”

Cookie chuckled. “I remember that. Bob and I took you and Chloe to the beach when you girls were five, and the first firework sent you scampering for cover beneath the blanket I had brought for us to sit on.”

I grinned. I could just barely remember that night. I sighed. Cookie’s husband Bob had passed away about a year later, leaving Cookie and Chloe on their own. Sometimes life just wasn’t fair.

Chapter Seventeen

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THE FOLLOWING MORNING I was sweeping the shop, just killing time, when I noticed someone familiar sitting on the bench outside. It was Bridget, George’s girlfriend. I glanced at Chloe, who was looking at her phone. Leaning the broom against the wall, I went outside. I had intended to talk to her again and now was my chance.

“It’s kind of a gloomy day.”

She looked up at me, then glanced at the overcast sky. She nodded. “It was a little foggy at my house this morning.”

“Do you mind?” I asked before sitting next to her.

“No, it’s fine.”

“How are you doing, Bridget?”

She straightened up without looking at me. “I don’t even know. I’m still having a hard time getting it through my thick skull that George is gone.”

“I guess death is like that. You just keep expecting to see the person you’ve lost somewhere familiar.”

She nodded, biting her bottom lip for a moment. “That detective came by the shop yesterday. Asking the same questions he had already asked me. Why do cops do that? Do they think you’ll forget what you told them the last time? Does that make them think you’re guilty?”

I thought that was a real possibility, but Bridget was upset, and I didn’t want to add to that. I didn’t know if she had murdered her boyfriend or not, but I felt like she hadn’t, in spite of the things I had heard. I just hoped I wasn’t making a mistake.

“Maybe he’s just hoping you’ll think of something you forgot to tell him.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. But after what George’s evil stepmother told him, I’m pretty sure he thinks I killed him. Which is ridiculous. I couldn’t hurt a fly.”

But was she really kissing someone in the parking lot of the home improvement store? I wanted to ask, but I didn't know how to do it without making her angry.

“Did you ask the detective if he had made any progress on the case?” I was as anxious as anyone for him to arrest the killer. Then Cookie could relax again.

She shook her head. “No, I figured that he thinks it’s me.”

“But what motive would you have?” I asked. It might have been a little naïve. This was a murder suspect if she was to be believed, after all.

She chuckled bitterly. “Just because George and I would have the occasional argument, his stepmother thinks I might have killed him. Couples argue. There’s nothing unusual about that. Why can’t she understand that?”

“George’s mother told the detective that you argued?”

“Of course she did. She’s looking for anything to pin the murder on me. And his real mother is crazy. She also talked to the detective. Just because the police were called out to my apartment a couple of times, that detective acts like it’s a big deal.” She shook her head. “He has some nerve.”

“Oh.” I suddenly felt like I wanted to slide down to the other end of the bench, as far as I could get. When the cops are called on you and your boyfriend, you have passed the point of an argument and entered into domestic dispute territory. And that territory could go anywhere.

“I know, right? It’s so stupid. Like, where did they find this detective? Walmart?”

I pressed my lips together. Where they found that the detective wasn’t important. What was important was whether she had something to do with her boyfriend’s murder. Having someone call the police on you when you argued made me think she could definitely have had something to do with George’s murder.

“I’m sorry you’re going through all of this.” I decided that trying the sympathetic route would get me the most information. “If I were in your shoes, I would feel so lost. I do know one thing, though. I would cherish the last time I had seen him.”

She softened, nodding. “Believe me, I do. We were supposed to go watch the fireworks, but I had come down with food poisoning or something, so I stayed home. I told him not to come by, but he did. Later, he called me and said he was going to stop and get some ice cream and then head out to the beach.” Her voice began to crack as she spoke. It was heartbreaking, except for the part where she may have had something to do with his death. “And then he said he loved me, and he hung up.”

“That’s so sweet.” But he never stopped by our shop for ice cream.

She nodded and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her top. “He was the best boyfriend I’ve ever had.”

“He sounded like a good guy.” He was also difficult to deal with, as evidenced by the precise amount of vanilla ice cream he wanted on his cone. Jeffrey may have tormented him about it, but he had been that way with whoever waited on him. And if it was true that he was only coming into the shop to torment Cookie, then I lied. He wasn’t a good guy.

“Did he stop in that night? To buy ice cream?”

“No. I don’t remember seeing him.”

She turned to look at me, smiling sadly. “He used to pick fresh flowers and bring them to me. I’ve never dated anyone who did that.”

I smiled back. “That really is sweet.”

She nodded. “He said it didn’t matter whose yard he had to take them from, he was going to bring me fresh flowers.”

Okay, my mouth dropped open on that one. Was this girl really that hard up for a decent boyfriend? I forced my open mouth into another smile. “Wow. That’s dedication for you.”

She nodded. “I told him to stop. That he would get into trouble for it, but he didn’t care. He said I deserved those flowers, and I was going to get them.”

So did he think she didn’t deserve to have flowers that were bought and paid for? With the money that he had worked for? I blinked. The more I heard about this guy, the more I realized there might be more than one person who wanted him dead.

“Well, I’m sorry for your loss. I know this is so hard for you.”

She nodded, looking away. “Do you think someone from your ice cream shop killed him?”

I was surprised by the change in conversation. She turned to look at me, and I shook my head. “No. I can’t imagine that anyone who works there would do something like that.” I wasn’t even going to throw Jeffrey under the bus. I suddenly realized how weird this girl was, and I didn’t want her hanging around the shop and asking who killed her boyfriend.

She nodded. “I guess it was just a coincidence.”

“I’m sure it was. Who do you think killed him?”

She gazed off into space before answering. “Sometimes people you thought were your friends, aren’t.”

I opened my mouth to ask her what she meant when she got up and walked away without saying anything else to me. She had just moved up on my list of possible killers.

Chapter Eighteen

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“TWO STRAWBERRY DELIGHTS coming up,” I said as I grabbed a waffle cone bowl. I scooped strawberry ice cream into one of the bowls.

“I love strawberry ice cream,” the little girl at the counter said. She was standing on her tiptoes, watching me work.

I smiled at her. “I love it too. In fact, I love all ice cream. It’s my favorite food ever.”

She giggled. “It’s my mom’s, too.” She turned to look at her mother, who looked to be about eight months pregnant.

She nodded. “Especially these days. I’m afraid I’m going to give this baby the sweetest tooth ever.”

I chuckled. “If it were me, I would use pregnancy as an excuse to eat all the ice cream I could.”

“Oh, believe me, I am.”

Estelle walked through the door, grinning. “Hello, everyone. It’s a beautiful day.”

“It sure is.” The door opened again, and Roy walked through it. We hadn’t seen three customers in a row in forever and I smiled at him. Four if you counted the little girl. “Hi, Roy.”

“Hey, Maddie.”

I poured strawberry syrup over the strawberry ice cream I had scooped into the waffle bowls and then topped them with whipped cream. Next to each scoop of ice cream, I placed a sugar cookie. “How does that look?”

The little girl started bouncing on her toes. “Yummy!”

“It does look yummy,” her mother said as she paid for their ice cream.

“Have a good evening.” I turned to Estelle. “What can I get for you?”

“How about a chocolate confusion? Oh, and a dark chocolate cookie.”

I laughed. “You really do love chocolate, don’t you?”

She nodded. “You know I do. But at least the chocolate confusion has some white chocolate in it. It’s like a whole new flavor sensation for my palate.”

I chuckled and got to work on her ice cream. “One chocolate confusion coming right up.” Chloe was in the backroom cleaning up so we wouldn’t have much to do after we closed. I could have called her up front to help, but it felt good to have a line of customers, even if it was small. It didn’t take me long to make their ice cream anyway.

Estelle leaned on the counter as I worked. “Did they ever find out who killed that poor man? I sure hated to see what happened to him.”

I shook my head. “Not yet, but I’m sure the police will have someone arrested soon. It’s a small town, and the killer can’t hide forever.”

She nodded. “You’ve got a point.”

Roy stepped up to the counter next to Estelle. “I don’t know about that. You know how small-town police are. They aren’t that good at fighting big crimes.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t sell our police department short,” Estelle admonished. “They work hard to keep us safe.”

Roy grinned. “Well, they didn’t keep that dead guy very safe.”

He had a point, but it wasn’t like Lilac Bay had ever had a huge problem with crime. And when we did have issues with it, it was usually tourists that had caused the trouble.

“My money is on the police,” I said as I poured melted white chocolate onto Estelle’s ice cream.

He chuckled. “You might lose some money then.”

I shook my head. Roy’s green hair was pale green now, and a few more washings would leave his hair its original color, which looked to be blond. “That killer can’t hide forever. The police will catch him.”

“I second that,” Estelle said. “The police will catch him.”

I finished up with Estelle’s ice cream, and she paid for it and left.

“Now then, what can I get you, Roy?”

He looked up at the menu board for a few moments, then looked at me. “What makes you so confident that the police are going to find the killer?”

I shrugged. “It’s their job. They’ve been trained for this sort of thing. Besides, I like to see the good guys win.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. But lots of people get away with crimes they’ve committed. You sound very confident. I’d like two scoops of chocolate chip on a waffle cone. And a peanut butter cookie.”

I shrugged as I got the cone. “I don’t know. I just think they will find them.”

He leaned on the counter as I worked. “I heard Cookie was a suspect.”

I glanced at him. We knew people had stopped coming in because the victim was killed with one of our cones, but did they really think that Cookie had done something so awful? I had assumed that they must think someone did it, but not necessarily Cookie herself.

“I’ve known Cookie all my life. There’s no way she killed anyone. She doesn’t have it in her to do something like that.” I opened up the glass door on the freezer where the tub of chocolate chip ice cream was.

He nodded. “I couldn’t agree more. Cookie is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. She isn’t a killer.”

It made me feel good to hear him say it. I didn’t want anyone thinking she might have done it. “The police will find the killer. And if they don’t, then I will.”

His eyes widened slightly. “What do you mean? Have you gone and joined the police department?”

I laughed as I scooped the ice cream. “Of course not. I have no desire to be shot at. But I figured if someone can point a finger at someone that means so much to me, then I can hunt around town and try to find the killer.”

He nodded. “Can’t say as I blame you. Got any ideas on who did it yet?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. But give me a little time. I’ll find them.” I wasn’t going to give out the information I had picked up about the people I was suspicious of, including him. Who lies and says they didn’t know someone who was their best friend in grammar school?

“You know what?”

“What?” I handed him his ice cream cone.

“I believe you will find the killer. You’ll put that detective to shame, and they’ll give you an award of some kind.” He grinned at me.

I rolled my eyes as I rang him up. “Now you’re being silly. I’m sure the police are perfectly capable of finding the killer.” He was making fun of me, but I didn’t care.

He paid for his ice cream. “Thanks. And don’t forget to get that piece of lumber to fix your fence with. I’m telling you, it will rot and make a bigger, more expensive mess.”

“I know, I know. I’ll have to get serious about finding a way to bring it to my house.”

He smiled. “See you around.”

“See you.”

The door closed behind him, and Chloe came from the kitchen. “I’ve got everything cleaned up back there. There’s not much left to do.”

I sighed. “Good. That means we can just hang out until the next customer comes in. Oh, you missed the evening rush. I had four customers in here at once.”

Her mouth dropped open in mock surprise. “Are you serious? Four customers?”

I nodded. “Well, one was the eight-year-old daughter of one of the customers, but still. There were four people in here, and they all bought ice cream.”

She sighed. “I hope it’s the start of something good. Maybe people are ready to ignore that someone was murdered with one of our ice cream cones.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

Chapter Nineteen

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THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I slept in until ten o’clock. The orange striped cat was once again sleeping on my belly when I awoke and I was a little worried that I did in fact own a cat. But if I did, I wasn’t sure where he was getting his food. Besides the table scraps I had been tossing him. I mean, it wasn’t like I could just eat in front of him.

I ruffled the fur at the back of his neck, and he lifted his head to look at me sleepily. “Meow?”

“Meow to you, too. What’s your name?”

He yawned and stretched and laid his head back on my stomach. Apparently, ten o’clock was too early for him to get up. But I needed to do some laundry and get something to eat, so I moved him to the bed and got up. Besides laundry, I had nothing to do on my day off. Chloe had to work, and I didn’t feel like going to the beach alone.

In the kitchen, I started the coffee and put two slices of bread in the toaster. The backyard needed to be mowed, but I had never been much on yard work. Maybe I could find someone to hire to take care of it.

I went to the French doors and looked out. The Jacaranda tree was in full bloom with its purple flowers brightening the yard and swaying in the light breeze. It looked so peaceful. Maybe I would lay in the hammock and get some reading done. It felt like it had been forever since I had done some serious reading. The cat came into the kitchen and rubbed up against my legs.

“What am I going to do with you?” I knelt and rubbed his shoulders, and he blissed out, closing his eyes. “I bet there’s some tuna in the cupboard. If you’re going to be hanging around here, I should probably get you some proper cat food. But the question remains. Do you belong to someone?” He purred loudly, ignoring my question.

When the toast was done, the coffee was brewed, and my house guest was fed, I sat down to eat and look through my phone. Social media didn’t hold a lot of interest for me, but it did help me to catch up with relatives and friends that lived far away. After looking at everything I needed to look at, I stretched and got to my feet. That book wasn’t going to read itself.

***

I WAS DEEP INTO A STORY about a female detective who was hunting a serial killer and imagined myself as the said detective. She was smart, she was tough, and she was beautiful. As I read, I wondered what it would take to become a detective. I was in the market for a new career, after all, and I thought I was doing a reasonably good job of sorting out who might be George Janson’s killer. Okay, I had yet to face anyone who really authentically seemed like they could kill someone in cold blood, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be a good detective. I had one small problem, though. I was afraid of guns. Yeah. They make loud noises, and I don’t like loud noises.

Anyway, I was really getting into my novel when, in my peripheral hearing, the sound of a truck came to me. I didn’t pay much attention since I was in my backyard, enjoying the cool, late spring breeze, and cars and trucks were driving up and down the street, and sometimes down the alley behind the house. But when I heard the door open and slam, it made me stop and listen. Was it the neighbors? No, they worked all day. A delivery driver? Maybe. But then I heard someone knocking on a door, and while I couldn’t swear to it, I thought it might be my door. I dogeared the paperback and got out of the hammock. I know, I know. Dogearing a book is sacrilege, but I didn’t have anything to slip between the pages.

I trotted inside to see what was going on, and there was another knock on the door. Peering through the peephole, I saw that it was Roy. By now, his hair was almost back to normal, and it took me a few seconds to recognize him.

I opened the door before I had the thought: how did he know where I lived?

“Roy?”

He grinned. “Hey, Maddie. How are you doing?”

I was confused. That’s how I was doing. Why was he here on my front step, and how had he found my front step? I smiled. “Good. I’m doing good. How about you?”

He nodded. “I’m doing great. I got the day off, and I thought, you know, Maddie is never going to remember to ask someone to borrow their pickup truck and get that piece of lumber for her backyard fence. And that hole is going to get worse over time, especially with the damp weather we have around here, so why don’t I bring her that piece of lumber?”

“Oh. No, I couldn’t have you do that.” Why on earth was he so concerned about that hole in the fence?

“Don’t tell me what I don’t need to do because I already did.” He put his hand out toward his truck like he was Vanna White on the Wheel of Fortune. The end of a piece of lumber stuck over the tailgate and had a red bandana tied to it so other vehicles could spot it in traffic.

“Oh.” I looked at him. “Oh. I don’t know what to say. But you really shouldn’t have. There was no need to do that.”

He chuckled. “I know, I know. People are always telling me that I’m too much. Guilty as charged. But I brought my tools, and it won’t take but ten minutes to remove the old piece and put the new one up.”

I shook my head. “I can’t let you do that.”

He looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it isn’t right. I was going to hire someone to come and do that for me, and I couldn’t allow you to do that. Especially since it’s your day off.”

He chuckled. “Now, Maddie, I just told you I was too much, and I intend to stay that way. I swear it will only take me ten minutes.”

I was stuck. There was something inside of me telling me to refuse, but I wasn’t getting far with that. “The thing is, I have an appointment, and I was just getting ready to leave. Could you come back later?”

He considered this, then shook his head. “No, I’ve got my own appointment. A doctor’s appointment. Why don’t you just show me to the backyard, and I’ll fix the board while you go on to your appointment? It will just take a second for you to let me back there.”

I relaxed a little at this. I could get in my car and leave, and there wouldn’t be an issue. “Okay. Let’s go through the side gate over here.” I didn’t feel comfortable letting him into the house, and I wasn’t sure why.

“Let me just grab that piece of lumber.” He hurried to his truck and picked up the piece of wood. When I had seen him at the lumber yard, and he asked me what kind of wood it was, I just pointed at the nearest one. I had no idea if this would match or not. “Here we are.”

I smiled. “This is too kind of you.” And annoying.

“I try my best.”

I led him to the side gate and reached over it to unlatch it, and he followed me inside the yard.

“Well, look at you. A hammock? Aren’t you fancy?”

I glanced at him. “I try.”

He laughed, and before I knew it, that piece of lumber was swinging toward my head. Something inside me made me duck, and it whizzed past, the breeze blowing my hair. I got to my feet and ran for all I was worth for the French doors since he was blocking the side gate from where he had been standing, but I could hear him on my tail. I ran through the doors and slammed them, but I was too late. He caught them, keeping them from closing, and came after me.

I screamed, my heart pounding in my chest, and the orange tabby came out of nowhere, hair standing on end. Apparently, Roy didn’t see him until the last second, and he tried to pull up, but he lost his footing and hit the kitchen floor while the cat ran through to the dining room. That gave me just enough time to grab my keys hanging near the front door and get outside, screaming for all I was worth.

Chapter Twenty

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THE NEIGHBORS ON EITHER side of me may have been at work, but Mr. Farmer from across the street was retired and when he heard me screaming, he went inside and got his hunting rifle. He had seen Roy pull up while he was watering his roses and he knew the scream wasn’t good news. Mr. Farmer held Roy at gunpoint until the police could arrive. Thank goodness for good neighbors.

It was the following morning when Detective Grayson stopped by the house to have me sign some paperwork. I had been up all night and Chloe had come to stay with me, along with Oliver. Who is Oliver you ask? He’s that orange tabby that bought me some time the day before, allowing me to escape from a killer. Yeah, he was mine now.

“Is he going to just get out and come after me again?” I asked the detective while we sat at my dining room table.

He shook his head. “Not for a while.”

“How long is a while?” Chloe asked.

“Depends on what the judge says. But he confessed to killing George Janson.”

I stopped what I was doing, pen in hand. “I knew it. He denied even knowing him and you don’t do that unless you have a very good reason. Why did he kill him?”

“George worked at the lumber yard before he worked at the aquarium. Roy had gotten him the job. But George didn’t like to work with his hands so he wasn’t a very good employee and eventually got fired. That made Roy angry. He felt like he put his own job on the line by putting in a good word for him. They argued whenever they ran into each other around town.”

“Over a job?” I asked.

He nodded. “Then George threatened to sue Roy. He said he was harassing him and he was going to call the police. That made Roy angrier. He felt he was the one who had been wronged and George had some nerve threatening to sue him.”

“He said that?” I asked.

He nodded. “He said that.”

“So he killed him?” Chloe asked.

“Apparently that wasn’t the plan. After Roy had visited your ice cream shop, he ran into George out on the street and they argued again. George said he was going to make Roy’s life a living hell. That only made Roy angrier and they fought.”

“If they fought, how did he shove that ice cream down his throat?” I asked. I was working on the logistics of this maneuver.

He grinned. “That was what started it. George knocked it out of his hand. Then they fought and when Roy had him on the ground, the ice cream was laying there and he shoved it into his mouth and down his throat where it lodged. He choked on it. Roy said he didn’t intend for that to happen, he was just angry. The bruises on George’s arms tell a different story.”

I shook my head. “But he didn’t call for an ambulance, or try to help him.”

“No, he did not. In fact, he dragged him behind the dumpster while he was still struggling to breathe and he watched him die.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling nauseous. “That’s horrible.”

“It certainly is.”

I finished signing the papers and pushed them back over to him. “And he wanted to kill me because I opened my mouth about looking for the killer.”

He nodded. “Yes. He was worried that you knew more than you did.”

I sighed, looking at Chloe. “At least your mom isn’t going to jail.”

“You can say that again.”

We talked to the detective for a few more minutes before he left. I decided that maybe he wasn’t the class-A jerk that I thought he was.

Chloe and I took Oliver out to the backyard and sat on the porch. “I hope business picks up at the shop again.”

“Me too. Maybe now that the real killer has been arrested it will be back to normal.”

I hoped so. And after my experience with a real killer, I decided that becoming a police detective probably wasn’t in my future. At least, not any time soon. But I was looking forward to summer and scooping ice cream and hanging out with my friends. That was enough excitement for me.

The End

Sneak Peek

Murder with a cherry on top

Chapter One

“Well, Oliver, I guess it’s another Friday night watching television.” My orange-striped cat, Oliver, jumped up on the couch and snuggled close to me as I flipped channels on the television, looking for something to watch. I wasn’t fooled. It was the bowl of buttered popcorn sitting in my lap that he was interested in.

“Meow?”

I looked down at him. “I don’t suppose you’d like some popcorn?”

“Meow.”

“I knew it.” Oliver loved his buttered popcorn. I dropped a piece in front of him, and he licked the butter off before crunching on the popcorn. Oliver was a gourmand. He only liked real butter. When I picked up margarine on a recent grocery shopping trip, he refused the popcorn, meowing forlornly. There was no fooling him.

I gave him another fluffy piece and went back to flipping channels. With two hundred channels, you would think there would be something interesting on, but I guess the television programmers figured everyone was out on a date on a Friday evening in June. I didn’t mind spending my date nights with Oliver. The last several guys I had gone out with before moving back to Lilac Bay the previous month had all been duds. I’m sure they were great guys for somebody, but that somebody wasn’t me.

My best friend and co-worker, Chloe, had managed to snag a date with a guy we used to go to high school with. I wasn’t envious. Much. But I did wonder how it was going. She would fill me in at work tomorrow.

Oliver pawed my leg, signaling a need for more popcorn. I tossed him another piece and settled on a true-crime drama. Sighing, I sat back on the couch and did what Oliver was doing. Eating popcorn. It had been a beautiful day, warmer than most here on the central coast of California, and I had my windows open to catch the mild breeze. Air conditioners were pretty much optional around here, and I preferred the soft breezes that brought the scent of saltwater into the house.

Oliver and I ate popcorn and watched the story unfold on the screen. When your baby mama turns up dead, and you only have your homies as your very weak alibi, it’s not hard to figure out who did it. I glanced at Oliver, who was trying to fish out a kernel of popcorn that had slipped between the couch cushions. “The baby daddy did it.”

Oliver ignored me, still working on his piece of popcorn.

“Here, have a fresh one.” I tossed him another. I needed to vacuum between the couch cushions anyway, and I’d get it the next time I did that. Not that that would be anytime soon.

A flash of light hit the one window that was still closed, and I turned to look. It was almost 10:00, and the neighborhood was quiet. The TV was playing commercials, and I glanced at Oliver. Had I imagined it? Or was it a passing car? But I hadn’t heard a car, and this was a quiet neighborhood with little traffic at this time of night.

I turned my attention back to the tv when the show resumed. Ten minutes later, I heard what could best be described as a grunt that came from outside. A shiver went down my spine. Was I imagining things? Turning down the television, I strained my ears to hear, but there was only silence. I had heard something, hadn’t I?

I put the bowl of popcorn and the remote on the coffee table and grabbed my phone. Next, I flipped the lights off inside the house and went to the nearest open window, but the neighborhood was quiet. I stared out into the front yard and then looked over at the neighbors’ houses, but I didn’t see anything moving. Blue light showed through Mr. Farmer’s living room window across the street. I wondered if he was watching a true-crime drama too. Me and the elderly lived exciting lives on Friday nights. I sighed. I had imagined the sound, hadn’t I?

I went back and sat on the couch, leaving the lights off. Oliver had rolled over to the other side and closed his eyes.

“Too much excitement for you?”

He sighed.

I sat back, picking up the bowl of popcorn, and this time I heard a voice say, “no.” It was a loud whisper and came from outside my open window. I jumped up and grabbed my phone, almost dumping the bowl of popcorn before I got it onto the coffee table. I ran to my door, throwing it open, only to be greeted by silence. Was I hearing things? I shook my head and stepped outside onto the front step. My neighbors on the right side were gone, but the ones on the left were home. But no one had come out of their house to see what was going on. Was I the only one who heard it?

“Is someone here?” I said, not too loud, but loud enough that if someone were close by, they would hear me. There was no answer. Not that I had really expected any.

The bushes between my house and the neighbors on the right suddenly shook, and it wasn’t from the blowing breeze.

“Hey!” I called. “Who’s there?” I was greeted by more silence, and then I heard footsteps running down the street. I hurried over to the tall bushes where I had seen movement, my phone gripped in my hand, and parted them, but I didn’t see anyone. My neighbors had forgotten to leave their porch light on, and it was dark. Whoever had been running away was out of sight. My heart pounded as I tried to calm my breathing, wondering if I was losing my mind. Taking a deep breath, I pushed my way through the bushes, tripping and falling over something. I landed on my stomach with an oof that took the air right out of me. I was stunned for a moment, and it took a few seconds to be able to breathe again. When I hit the ground, my phone had flown from my hand. It was lying just out of reach. I got to my knees and crawled over to it in the dark. Picking it up, I turned the flashlight on and shined it back toward the bushes. There was a pile of what looked like clothing between the bushes. Except, as I moved the light along the pile, I realized that this pile had a human head. I screamed.

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Books by Kathleen Suzette:

A Cookie’s Creamery Mystery

Ice Cream, You Scream

A Cookie’s Creamery Mystery

Murder with a Cherry on top

A Cookie’s Creamery Mystery

A Lemon Creek Mystery

Murder at the Ranch

A Lemon Creek Mystery, book 1

The Art of Murder

A Lemon Creek Mystery, book 2

Body on the Boat

A Lemon Creek Mystery, book 3

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery Series

Clam Chowder and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 1

A Short Stack and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 2

Cherry Pie and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 3

Barbecue and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 4

Birthday Cake and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 5

Hot Cider and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 6

Roast Turkey and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 7

Gingerbread and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 8

Fish Fry and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 9

Cupcakes and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 10

Lemon Pie and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 11

Pasta and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 12

Chocolate Cake and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 13

Pumpkin Spice Donuts and a Murder

A Rainey Daye Cozy Mystery, book 14

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery Series

Candy Coated Murder

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 1

Murderously Sweet

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 2

Chocolate Covered Murder

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 3

Death and Sweets

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 4

Sugared Demise

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 5

Confectionately Dead

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 6

Hard Candy and a Killer

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 7

Candy Kisses and a Killer

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 8

Terminal Taffy

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 9

Fudgy Fatality

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 10

Truffled Murder

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 11

Caramel Murder

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 12

Peppermint Fudge Killer

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 13

Chocolate Heart Killer

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 14

Strawberry Creams and Death

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 15

Pumpkin Spice Lies

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 16

Sweetly Dead

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 17

Deadly Valentine

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 18

Death and a Peppermint Patty

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 19

Sugar, Spice, and Murder

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 20

Candy Crushed

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 21

Trick or Treat

A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 22

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery Series

Apple Pie a la Murder,

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, Book 1

Trick or Treat and Murder,

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, Book 2

Thankfully Dead

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, Book 3

Candy Cane Killer

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, Book 4

Ice Cold Murder

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, Book 5

Love is Murder

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, Book 6

Strawberry Surprise Killer

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, Book 7

Plum Dead

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 8

Red, White, and Blue Murder

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 9

Mummy Pie Murder

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 10

Wedding Bell Blunders

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 11

In a Jam

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 12

Tarts and Terror

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 13

Fall for Murder

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 14

Web of Deceit

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 15

Silenced Santa

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 16

New Year, New Murder

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 17

Murder Supreme

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 18

Peach of a Murder

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 19

Sweet Tea and Terror

A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery, book 20

A Gracie Williams Mystery Series

Pushing Up Daisies in Arizona,

A Gracie Williams Mystery, Book 1

Kicked the Bucket in Arizona,

A Gracie Williams Mystery, Book 2

A Home Economics Mystery Series

Appliqued to Death

A Home Economics Mystery, book 1