Lemonade & Loathing

by Beth Byers

  Table of Contents

  Lemonade & Loathing

  Dedication:

  Summary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Also By Beth Byers

  Also By Amanda A. Allen

  Copyright

  Lemonade & Loathing

  The 2nd Chance Diner Mysteries

  Book 9

  By Beth Byers

  For Auburn.

  Glad you’re feeling better.

  Summary

  Rosemary is in the middle of planning her wedding. Tasting cakes, touring venues, planning her honeymoon. She and Simon are looking forward to their big day and some well-deserved time off.

  When Rose and Simon go to visit a local resort, they expect to try out some of the food and check out the ballroom. They certainly don't expect to trip over a body on the golf course or to get sucked into yet another murder. Will they be able to discover the murderer before someone else falls victim?

  Chapter 1

  “I could eat cake endlessly,” I said to Zee as we walked into Bridal Cakes. The little shop was about as cute as could be with large windows filled with decorate styrofoam cakes, fairy lights, and glass cake toppers. I loved the two little dogs snuggling covered in glitter. Something like that needed to top my own cake. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted. Maybe something simple with fresh flowers. I was far more concerned that the cake be knock your socks of delicious. I was ok with it being topped with something pretty and shiny though.

  Shiny things were awesome. Dogs were even better. So of course, I loved that cake topper. Simon, my fiancé, and I had seven dogs between us. To be honest, though, he was more of a one or two dog man, while I fell for every dog I met. I was entirely responsible for our pack of dogs, but Simon rolled with my dog-flavored flaw. In fact, we’d met over a pile of puppies. I should have known it would be true love right then. Could anything be more kismet than a pile of puppies and a handsome man? Let alone a handsome, kind man?

  I was a lucky woman which was why I was taking one for the team and trying twenty kinds of cake for our wedding. It helped, of course, that my kind, handsome, boring man wanted chocolate cake. I got to choose the other flavors and they were all going to be weird. I grinned and knew if there was any day I could get him to try something different without objection it would be our wedding day. I had no doubt, however, that my getting him to experiment with pink champagne cake or rose cake would end with him smiling and then lying to me about how it was good. He might try for honest and say it was different or interesting. The look of tolerant agony on his face would add a little spice to my day.

  As for me, I couldn’t wait to try all the weirdest flavors they had. I grinned at Zee and said, “Cake is one of God’s many gifts to mankind. It would be ungrateful of me if I didn’t eat cake nearly everyday.”

  “Womankind,” Zee snapped and sniffed.

  “Humans. And dogs if it’s not chocolate. I heard you could order dog cupcakes. I think I’ll get some for the wedding.”

  “You have problems,” Zee told me meanly. She snorted in that derisive way that was typical of her, and I winked back. Zee snarled, just a bit, but I didn’t take it personally. She was my best friend, so I already knew she was a cactus-covered teddy bear. I loved her, but even I had to admit that loving her was a bit dangerous.

  You got pulled into hijinks and random acts of service. Also, murder investigations. We’d first bonded over a murder investigation in the diner I owned, and she ran. Someone dropped dead over a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, and I’d been the main suspect. Given that The 2nd Chance Diner was built on my dream of leaving behind my call center slave job and I’d barely escaped when someone died in the diner, I had been especially unwilling to lose the dream I’d just attained. In fact, it drove me to find the killer myself. Working with Zee, we’d been successful and our friendship had been born.

  I lifted the dog cake topper after we’d gone inside the shop and showed it to Zee who snorted again. Zee would need one with a grumpy cat and a strangely tolerant looking dog. She was marrying Silver Falls’ sheriff. Their relationship was both perfect and weird. Carver Jones was possibly the only man on the planet who could roll with Zee’s attitude and not be affected.

  I told her she needed a grumpy cat cake topper, she didn’t even react.

  “You know,” she mused in that slow way that told me was she going to say something nasty, “You do eat cake endlessly.” Then she let her gaze run down my admittedly curvy body. I owned a diner, so of course I ate a lot of cake. And waffles. I just considered those things part of what made life worth living.

  The words slim or slender could never be used to describe me although I had slimmed out since coming to Silver Falls. I’d gone from sitting all day and boredom eating to spending all day on my feet. I was either working at The Second Chance Diner or my new dog shelter, The Second Chance Adoption Center. Both of those jobs had me up and around which had the delightful outcome of balancing out my waffle and cake habit.

  Plus, I’d almost died over the summer. Having a hard time swallowing had left me with a tea habit and a new wardrobe from my smaller body. I wasn’t sure how much longer that my smaller size would last but I was determined to keep it through my wedding pictures and honeymoon.

  Silver Falls was on the Oregon Coast, surrounded by forests. Just outside our downtown area was Highway 101 where you could head south to hit Neskowin and Lincoln City or go north and hit Tillamook and Astoria. It was the fall which occasionally made our town a little busy over the weekends, but the weekdays were slow. The busy season hit during Spring Break and didn’t let up until Labor Day weekend. So, we needed to be back from our honeymoon before the Silver Falls busy season hit when all the tourists would descend on our perfect beach town. Our vacation needed to be over before everyone else’s started.

  Since it was the fall, we had buckets and buckets of rain, windy days, gray skies, and the smell of something crisp and clean in the air. The problem with the Oregon Coast was that the truly sunny days were rare, and the need for a jacket on the beach was far more common than the need for a swimsuit. I was going to pack only swimsuits and sun dresses for our honeymoon. Simon was surprising me with our location, but he’d promised tropical which was all I cared about.

  I showed Zee a cat cake topper. She scowled at me because I loved teasing her about her herd of cats. She was a crazy cat lady with more cats than any one person should have. And this came from a woman who had seven dogs and ran a dog shelter.

  “No,” Zee snapped and then said, “Carver wants to go to Vegas and get married there. Just him, me, you, and Simon. Not even kids. That way my family won’t show up either. Outside of Mum, the rest of them are trying to be nice now.”

  I raised my brows. They’d met Carver when her mom had been trying to break up them in favor of a guy Zee had dated in high school. Ridiculous. Zee was in her 50s and well past the time when she needed her mom’s input on her relationship. Lucky for Zee all that business was over. Unlucky for the guy, however, his face had been bashed in by Zee’s brother after he realized that his long-time best-friend had been sleeping with his wife and planning to steal both his own and Zee’s inheritance.

  It had been a drama filled summer with murders and my own near-death. But it had ended with her family estrangement not so much as being solved as being shuffled around while her siblings tried to fix it. None of them bothered to note that Zee would just a
s soon leave things as they were.

  “Please say you’ll have Elvis marry you.”

  “I don’t care if we get married at all, but Carver does,” she said. “He said he doesn’t want me to have an out.”

  I laughed at that. Possessive and a little weird. Perfect for those two.

  “He won’t have an out either.”

  “He’ll have my name stamped on the back of his neck to keep the Silver Falls single women from trying to snatch him up,” she said. “Not that I need it.”

  “They’re a nasty crew,” I told her, hiding my grin. “Your knitting circle might not care if you’re married. They know you’re a free spirit. They know he’s a good guy with a good job. He’s basically a prince among men.”

  She scowled at me. Then she grinned. She was so entwined in our small town that I doubted anyone would really try to move in on whoever Zee was dating.

  “Hi,” a girl said. She’d crept up on us while we’d been chatting.

  We both turned. She was young, probably barely past high school if that. Her hair was streaked with a rainbow of colors and her perkiness was almost jarring. She eyed us as if she was a bit confused, and I supposed we were a little older than the traditional bride.

  “This is Rosemary Baldwin,” Zee said. “She has an appointment.”

  “Oh!” The girl grinned and tried to hide that somewhat shocked expression. “You’re the one with all the weird flavors to sample.”

  I grinned at Zee’s snort and she added, “That’s definitely Rose.”

  She girl smiled, glanced over her shoulder, and her grin faded. “I’m Joy. We’re running a little…” She looked around again, avoiding our gazes, and said under her breath, “Well someone is having a bit of a breakdown. Do you have some ideas of what you want your cake to look like?”

  Zee’s gaze spiked with sudden interest and she demanded, “Why is the girl breaking down? Is ordering cake all that hard? We’ll take a big one. White frosting. Slap some flowers on it. Maybe right on the side, ‘I hope your wedding lasts longer than this cake.’”

  Joy glanced over her shoulder again and then stepped closer and said, “It looks like the wedding might be falling apart. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone shove so much cake into her mouth, and I sell cake by giving out test flavors.”

  I blinked and couldn’t help a flash of sympathy. Cake wouldn’t be enough to get me through an afternoon if Simon and I were falling apart. Just the idea made my stomach hurt.

  “Why?” Zee snapped, placing a hand on my shoulder. She could read me too well. Or maybe I just looked so green my thoughts were obvious.

  “Well…she…I guess…there’s this really attractive guy who works at most of the catering companies for weddings. He’s just…smooth. Sometimes he’s an usher, sometimes he’s just running around managing things. Sometimes he just works as a waiter or a DJ. But it seems he works at nearly every wedding that happens around here.”

  “And?” Zee snapped.

  “And…it looks…well, I’d guess that Lila Cage either slept with him or was caught kissing him pretty flagrantly.”

  I took in a slow breath, relief rushed me like a tidal wave. I would never cheat on Simon. Never. Ok. This breakdown of her wedding wasn’t catching. This wouldn’t happen to me. My wedding would be fine. I sniffed once and then said, “Oh my goodness. I…”

  “It’s pretty bad,” Joy whispered. “The bride has mascara all over her face, and her mom is telling her it’ll be okay, but it doesn’t sound like it. The mom keeps saying it isn’t her fault, and the bride, Lila, keeps telling her to shut up. Then they snip at each other and suddenly they’re arguing about the mom never understanding the daughter. And the mom is saying the daughter never applied herself, and they’re just going for the gullet.”

  “Sounds to me like she screwed up,” Zee said. “Sounds to me like this is what happens to cheaters.”

  “SHUT UP!” Someone shrieked from behind us. We turned, and I could see exactly what Joy was talking about. Long trails of black were rolling down the woman’s face. She looked like she was in her late-30s, but the bags under her eyes declared she was older than that or that she’d really had ruined her wedding.

  “I’m…” Joy was clearly going to apologize and limp away, but Zee cut in first, demanding “Did you cheat?”

  The other bride stepped back and then demanded, “What business of yours is it?”

  I blinked as I tried to process that wail.

  Zee looked her over and then said, almost gently, “I’ve been around a long time and I’ve seen relationships recover from almost anything. Including cheating. Did you cheat?”

  She sniffed, lower lip trembling until she pressed her hand to her lips.

  “Leave her alone,” an older version of the bride snapped. She wrapped an arm around her daughter’s shoulders and said, “There, there.”

  “You can’t comfort away a bad case of infidelity,” Zee said. “But you can apologize. You can change. You can make amends. You can beg for another chance and you can make things right. Eventually. That isn’t something that is over with an apology.”

  “I kissed him. Danny. I kissed him and Tyson saw us,” the bride, Lila, said. She sniffed, her gaze fixed on Zee.

  “Baby…” her mother said.

  “No, Mom! Tyson isn’t answering my calls. He isn’t responding to my texts. I’ve tried what you said, and it isn’t working. I’ll do anything.”

  “Then I suggest you admit what you did, you give full details, you answer every, single question he has for you and then you beg. And when you’re done begging you make sure he knows exactly why you messed up and exactly how much you love him. You make sure that he knows it’ll never happen again, and you grow up.”

  The bride sniffed, wiping her nose on her wrist like a toddler while her mother’s gaze shot daggers at Zee and myself.

  “A simple mistake…”

  “Kissing another man isn’t a simple mistake,” Zee said, flatly. “That’s the first problem here, stop lying to your daughter.”

  “Excuse me?” The mother asked dangerously, elbowing her way in front of Lila. “Tyson will come around, Lila. Just downplay it and give him some space.”

  Lila, however, shot her mom a nasty look and stepped to the side. She listened carefully as Zee said, “If your Tyson has to wonder whether you slept with him, you need to make sure he knows you didn’t. And you need to make sure he knows you love him. You don’t do that by lying.”

  The bride slowly nodded, standing straighter as she moved away from her mom. “You don’t like Tyson. I’m…she’s right…I’ll…”

  She pulled out her phone and told Zee, “This can’t be done over the phone.” Lila tucked the phone back into her pocket as Zee agreed, “No. It can’t.”

  Lila gave Zee a spontaneous hug as she said, “Thank you.” She didn’t even speak to her mother as she stalked out of the shop.

  I took in a deep breath and asked, “How can you do that?”

  “What?” Zee snapped.

  “Change the course of her life like that. She was breaking down, and you got her to go and own up to what she did. Her fiancé has to know she was lying to him. Maybe you gave them a second chance. Maybe you changed her life forever.”

  “Maybe her fiancé won’t answer the door and will take the honeymoon tickets and use the time to get over her.”

  I ignored that flash of negativity. I knew Zee well enough to know she’d said what she said because she hoped Lila could fix things. Zee was a romantic under all that prickliness.

  I said, “Well. That was shockingly uncomfortable.”

  “You were,” Joy glanced after the bride and then back at Zee, “I wanted to say that so bad to her. Her mom was making it seem like nothing when it clearly was something. But—” She trailed off and Zee shrugged in reply.

  “You can count on Zee for uncomfortable truths,” I told Joy.

  Zee glanced at me and then said, “Your pants are getting ti
ghter. If you don’t watch it, your dress won’t fit.”

  I shot her a nasty look and then said, “See?”

  Chapter 2

  Simon had salmon on the grill when I got home. There was shrimp cocktail on ice and I was carrying two large slices of the chocolate cake from Bridal Cakes.

  “Hey, Rose,” he said, planting a kiss on my forehead and hugging me close. I got a second kiss on my lips before he checked the fish.

  I squeezed him tight, digging my face into his back while he grilled our food and breathed him in. He laughed before he turned back around, tilting my face to his, and searching my eyes. “Hey there.”

  “Hey,” I said, breathing him in again.

  “Is everything all right?”

  I looked up at him, not letting him go a bit as I said, “I will never, ever cheat on you. Not even one kiss.”

  He blinked and then smiled before placing another kiss on my forehead as he said, “Yes love, I know.”

  “Also,” I said much more brightly, “I love you.”

  I let him go, and he checked the salmon before pulling it from the grill. While he did, I pulled the bread from the oven and the salad from the fridge, setting the table. I added candles because sometimes you needed to celebrate not being engaged to a cheater.

  As I set the table and caressed all of our dogs, I told him the story of the cake place and the bride, Lila. I fed my sweet Daisy a bit of the bacon Simon had wrapped around my salmon before skipping the bread and the dressing on my salad. Zee was right, my dress was going to be too small if I didn’t watch it. I probably shouldn’t have bought it when I was still in recovery from being choked and locked in a burning house. These were the type of stupid decisions to haunt you on your wedding day.

  “So he caught her kissing the maybe-waiter, maybe-DJ for their own wedding?” Simon sounded as baffled as me.

  I nodded and then told him what Zee had said. His brows rose as I added, “Zee got that girl to ignore her mother and go after her fiancé. To apologize for real. Do you think she has a chance?”