Sour Cherry Turnover

by P. D. Workman

  Bella didn’t look dismayed by this news. Maybe she already had a new job lined up.

  “What if you didn’t have to rebuild? What if there was another possibility?”

  Erin stared at Bella.

  “What if there was another bakery that was already set up and you could just step in?”

  “The Bake Shoppe?” Erin demanded. “I can’t exactly walk in and take over Charley’s business.”

  “Now that Davis has pled guilty and Charley’s getting the whole of Trenton’s estate, she’s looking for a partner to invest in The Bake Shoppe so that she’ll have the money to get a house.”

  Erin felt the first real glimmer of hope. “Well… I’ve got money I could invest, and I could help run it… but The Bake Shoppe is a conventional bakery. I’d have to give up on the idea of having a gluten-free, specialty bakery.” Was half a dream better than no dream at all? She hated to think of Peter and her other precious customers having to go back to driving to the city to get second-rate factory-made gluten-free products.

  “You’d have to discuss that with Charley.” Bella had a mischievous twinkle in her eye, “but she figured that since that was your specialty, and you’re the one with experience running a business like this…”

  “You think she’d be open to making it gluten-free? Just like Auntie Clem’s?”

  Bella sat back in her chair, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. “Well, that’s what she said.”

  “You negotiated me partnering with my half-sister to open a gluten-free bakery without even talking to me first?”

  “I know your business. I didn’t want to get your hopes up with a bunch of pie-in-the-sky ideas…”

  “Gluten-free pie-in-the-sky,” Erin giggled, feeling giddy. “It won’t be Auntie Clem’s, but I think I’m okay with that.”

  “Oh. She did say something about your name having better goodwill than The Bake Shoppe, with all of its associations with the Plaint family and murders and organized crime activities… so she’d like to open it as Auntie Clem’s…”

  Erin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she did both, unable to contain herself, in full view of all of the patrons of the Bald Eagle Falls public library.

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  ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

  Mystery/Suspense:

  Auntie Clem’s Bakery

  Gluten-Free Murder

  Dairy-Free Death

  Allergen-Free Assignation

  Witch-Free Halloween (Halloween Short)

  Dog-Free Dinner (Christmas Short)

  Stirring Up Murder

  Brewing Death

  Coup de Glace

  Sour Cherry Turnover

  Apple-achian Treasure (Coming Soon)

  Vegan Baked Alaska (Coming Soon)

  Reg Rawlins, Psychic Detective

  What the Cat Knew

  A Psychic with Catitude

  A Catastrophic Theft

  Zachary Goldman Mysteries

  She Wore Mourning

  His Hands Were Quiet

  She Was Dying Anyway

  He Was Walking Alone

  They Thought He was Safe (Coming Soon)

  He was Not There (Coming Soon)

  Her Work was Everything (Coming Soon)

  Kenzie Kirsch Medical Thrillers

  Unlawful Harvest (Coming Soon)

  Cowritten with D. D. VanDyke

  California Corwin P. I. Mystery Series

  The Girl in the Morgue

  Stand Alone Suspense Novels

  Looking Over Your Shoulder

  Lion Within

  Pursued by the Past

  In the Tick of Time

  Loose the Dogs

  Young Adult Fiction:

  Tamara’s Teardrops:

  Tattooed Teardrops

  Two Teardrops

  Tortured Teardrops

  Vanishing Teardrops

  Between the Cracks:

  Ruby

  June and Justin

  Michelle

  Chloe

  Ronnie

  June, Into the Light (Coming Soon)

  Medical Kidnap Files:

  Mito

  EDS

  Proxy

  Toxo

  Breaking the Pattern:

  Deviation

  Diversion

  By-Pass

  Stand Alone YA novels

  Stand Alone

  Don’t Forget Steven

  Those Who Believe

  Cynthia has a Secret

  Questing for a Dream

  Once Brothers

  Intersexion

  Making Her Mark

  Endless Change

  Gem, Himself, Alone (Coming Soon)

  SNEAK PREVIEW

  APPLE-ACHIAN TREASURE

  Erin fit her key in the lock and found herself holding her breath as she turned it. The lock clicked smoothly open and Erin pushed the door open. She turned to look back over her shoulder at Vic as she entered.

  “It feels pretty weird,” she said.

  Vic nodded. “I know. But it’s just a different location. It’s still Auntie Clem’s Bakery.”

  Erin took a deep breath in and let it out again. “Yeah… just the same.”

  But it didn’t feel the same. She knew she should be ecstatic about being able to open the bakery again. If not for her half-sister, Charley, allowing her to become half-owner in The Bake Shoppe and to reopen it as Auntie Clem’s Bakery, that would have been the end of Erin’s dream. She would have had to liquidate everything and to figure out how she was going to make a living without the bakery.

  Charley’s offer had seemed like a godsend at the time, but Erin had become increasingly worried about how it was all going to work out. She barely knew Charley. They hadn’t grown up together and their personalities were diametrically opposed. It seemed like everything Charley did rubbed Erin the wrong way, even when she wasn’t really doing anything wrong.

  And now they were connected not only by blood, but in the business. They had to agree on advertising campaigns, product lines, prices, and promotions. They had to agree on everything that Erin had previously set up, like the ladies’ tea after Sunday services, catering for the book club at The Book Nook across the street, and the children’s cookie club.

  Even just stocking the kitchen had been an ordeal, since Charley wanted to use all of the equipment that had remained from The Bake Shoppe and Erin couldn’t use gluten-contaminated bowls and baking sheets to make her gluten-free baking. While Charley had agreed to continue to keep Auntie Clem’s Bakery gluten-free, she didn’t have the understanding Erin did and thought that they could cut a few corners. Erin wasn’t willing to put the health and lives of her allergic or intolerant customers at risk.

  Erin turned on the lights and looked around the kitchen. It was her bakery. It was the new normal. She and Vic could continue to work together, just as they had in the shop that had burned down. It would be almost the same.

  Almost, but not quite.

  Vic strode into the kitchen, where she pulled a clean apron off the hook and tied it around her slim form, then put on a hat, making sure that her long blond hair was all properly tucked away. Normal, routine actions, just like she had followed every day at the old Auntie Clem’s. Erin followed suit. She was considerably shorter than Vic and her hair was shorter and dark. She felt a little better once suited up. Her uniform helped to set the mood.

  She went to the fridge and started pulling out the batters they had made the night before, working through her mental checklists to get everything started in the right order so that they would have the case filled effici
ently by the time the bakery opened in a few hours.

  “Do we have chocolate chip muffins today?” Vic questioned.

  “Yes. And blueberry. And the rice brain. I’m going to work a high-protein muffin into the lineup once we’ve had a chance to settle back into the schedule. Not today, but maybe next week. I’m hoping we can tap into the low-carb and paleo markets.”

  Vic nodded, already aware that Erin had been working on it. “You’re finding some low-carb recipes that don’t rely on nut flours?”

  They worked side by side, finding their rhythm even in the less familiar kitchen.

  “I’m focusing on some of the less allergenic seeds like sacha inchi. It’s one of the new flours out there and becoming more available. We can grind it here so that we know that they haven’t been processed on the same equipment as peanuts or tree nuts.”

  “You’re always on top of all of the new developments.”

  “Well, that’s my job.”

  Vic glanced at the clock on the wall. “I thought Charley said she was going to come in this morning to help out.”

  Erin didn’t look at Vic and tried to keep her expression neutral. “That’s what she said.”

  “But you didn’t expect her to get here, did you?”

  “Uh… no. She’s really not a morning person, and this is early even for morning people. Maybe if Charley came in and helped out now, and then went home and went to bed…”

  Vic chuckled. “She’s like a teenager. If she wants to be a business owner, she’s going to have to make a few changes to her lifestyle.”

  Erin turned on one of the mixers, then went around to the ovens, setting the preheat temperatures. It was the coolest part of the day, but that was about to end. Once they had the ovens going, even the best air conditioning wasn’t going to keep it cool.

  “It’s supposed to be fall, but I’ll be glad when the temperature starts to drop.”

  “Still got a ways to go before then.”

  They worked in silence for a few minutes. “When do you think Charley is going to show up?” Vic asked.

  Erin straightened and looked at her. “Are you trying to get me to badmouth my new boss?”

  “She isn’t your boss, she’s your partner.”

  “I’d like to think so,” Erin said slowly, “but I don’t think that’s the way she sees it. If we can’t agree on things, who do you think is going to get the final say?”

  “You’re partners. You’ll work it out together.”

  Erin shrugged. That remained to be seen.

  “So…?” Vic pressed.

  “I think we’ll be lucky to see her before noon.”

  Vic giggled. “How about a bet? If she gets in before noon, you win. After noon, I win.”

  “And what do we win?”

  “How about… a foot massage.”

  Erin shook her head. “Okay. You’re on.”

  # # #

  Charley didn’t make it in before noon. Vic was chuckling to herself.

  “I’m looking forward to that foot rub,” she commented.

  “I did say we’d be lucky to see her before noon. I hope nothing happened to her…”

  “Nothing happened to her. She’s just sleeping, like every day.”

  “I know… I just worry.”

  “She’s fine. She said she was going to be here, but she hasn’t got the sense of a cross-eyed goose. She’s just like a kid. She’s going to have to grow up if she’s going to run a business.”

  Erin raised her eyebrows. Vic herself was barely an adult.

  “I’m grown up,” Vic shot at her. “It doesn’t have anything to do with chronological age.”

  “No, you’re right. She may be a few years older; she may even have been on her own for longer than you have, but she doesn’t have the same sense of responsibility.”

  Vic nodded. There were parallels between Vic and Charley. Both had left home at an early age, rebelling against the way that they had been raised. But Charley had left, apparently, because she wanted a more exciting life on the opposite side of the law, and Vic had come out about her gender identity, transitioning to female. Despite her not aligning herself with the gender she’d been raised as, Vic still had strong moral standards and an attachment to her family. They were the ones who had forced her to leave. Erin was glad that Jeremy, one of Vic’s older brothers, had recently moved into town. It was good for Vic to have contact with someone in her family. Jeremy accepted her for who she was and did his best to respect her identity.

  “Think she’ll show up after lunch?” Erin asked.

  “Do you want to go double or nothing?”

  “No. Just wondering. It’s opening day, you’d think she’d at least make an appearance.”

  “You would think,” Vic agreed.

  Mary Lou and Melissa arrived together. Erin was glad to see them together more often again lately. Mary Lou needed the support of her friends more than ever, and Erin suspected that Melissa wasn’t having the easiest time since she had started visiting Davis in prison. The ladies of Bald Eagle Falls were not very tolerant of what they perceived as wrong choices.

  Mary Lou looked around the bakery and raised her brows. “I was expecting a better turnout for your opening day. Isn’t this a little… quiet…?”

  Erin shrugged, her face getting warm. “We actually didn’t want to do a great big grand reopening. We didn’t think it was a good idea, after…”

  Mary Lou gazed at her blankly.

  “Because of the deaths,” Melissa piped up eagerly. “Angela was killed on opening day of Auntie Clem’s Bakery and Mr. Inglethorpe was killed the night before the grand reopening for The Bake Shoppe. Were you afraid of jinxing it?”

  “No,” Erin insisted, though she had to admit to a little superstitious twinge over the thought of another murder around the bakery opening. So far everything had been quiet, and she hoped that it would stay that way. They didn’t need any bodies to spice things up. “I just didn’t want people to make that association.” She looked significantly at the other patrons of the bakery, hoping that Melissa would get the hint and keep her voice down. “Even if it’s unconscious… I didn’t want them to think… bakery opening… someone might die…”

  “That makes perfect sense,” Mary Lou acknowledged.

  “It’s really too bad, though,” Melissa said. “I wouldn’t mind a free muffin…”

  Erin smiled. “You buy a dozen for the Police Department, and I’ll throw in a free one for you.”

  “You’d do that anyway.”

  Mary Lou and Melissa looked through the case at the baked goods on offer.

  “I think… a loaf of the rustic bread,” Mary Lou pointed to a hand-shaped loaf. “That would go nicely with supper. And maybe some cookies that I can throw in the freezer. We don’t go through them very fast, with it just being Josh and I now, but we are starting to get a little low.”

  “Anything in particular, or just an assortment?” Erin asked.

  “Surprise me.”

  Erin suspected that Mary Lou wasn’t going to be eating any of them anyway. She was very careful to maintain her slim figure. Josh, on the other hand, was a teenager and could probably put away the whole dozen in a sitting without consequences.

  “How are the boys?” she asked politely.

  “As well as can be expected. Josh is finding high school very challenging. And Campbell… well, I don’t know what to think of Campbell. He at least calls me once every week or so, which is more than one can expect from a boy his age. He says he’s well, that things are going fine… but he’s not going anywhere. I don’t even know how he’s supporting himself without any marketable skills.”

  “You don’t know what he’s doing?”

  Mary Lou shook her head. “He’s finding himself. Whatever that means.”

  Erin wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She finished assembling the cookies for Mary Lou and handed them over to Vic to ring up at the till. She looked at Melissa. “So, a dozen muffins?�
�

  “No, not today. Maybe on Friday. How about…” Melissa studied the display case seriously. “How about a brownie?” She motioned to the chocolate-dipped brownies that Erin had recently added to the product lineup. “Those are addictive. They should be a controlled substance.”

  Erin nodded. “You’d better not tell Officer Piper that. I don’t want him slapping me with any fines. Or jail time.”

  Melissa gave one of her wide smiles, her eyes dancing. “What you and Officer Piper do behind closed doors really isn’t any of my business…”

  For the second time, Erin felt a wave of heat go over her face, and was sure that this time she was turning a brilliant red. She shouldn’t let Melissa get to her like that. Blushing would only encourage her in the future. But she couldn’t keep a dispassionate mask when she thought about Terry Piper and their relationship. They had only recently taken things to the next level with the good-looking officer, and Erin wasn’t to the point where she could be casual about it.

  “You mind your manners,” Vic drawled, her southern accent more pronounced that usual. “Don’t be teasing Miss Erin or she’ll be adding something to your tea this Sunday.”

  Melissa responded with a blush of her own. She tittered and gave Vic the money to cover her bill. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m sure.”

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if Officer Handsome himself hadn’t happened to enter the bakery at that very moment.

  The bells jingled as Terry walked in the front door, K9 poised at his side in perfect form, as usual. Erin’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of her sweetheart in uniform, but she was already embarrassed by Melissa’s comments and couldn’t help but feel even more awkward at his appearance on the scene. She glanced over at Vic.