Brownie Points for Murder

by Nicole Ellis

  Brownie Points for Murder

  A Jill Andrews Cozy Mystery

  Nicole Ellis

  Copyright © 2018 by Nicole Ellis

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Acknowledgments

  1

  With the last white linen tablecloth accounted for on my inventory list, I exited the storeroom into the main hallway of the Boathouse Event Center. Outside, waves slapped against the pilings, drawing me to the picture windows overlooking the dock. I’d lived in the Seattle area for over ten years, but the ever-changing scenery of Puget Sound never failed to fascinate me.

  Today, the unseasonably warm April weather had lured hundreds of eager boaters to the water. Motorboats churned up waves behind them and sailboats slid like silk through the blue-gray water, sails flapping in the strong spring breeze. Further away, the Willowby Island car ferry chugged toward the Ericksville dock.

  One of the few things that could distract me from the view, the aroma of melting chocolate, wafted through the building. I followed the scent to the kitchen, where I found Desi Torres, my sister-in-law and baker extraordinaire, peering into an open oven. She beamed and waved an oven mitt at me before reaching into the oven.

  “Jill, you’ve got to try these. I think I may have created the world’s most perfect dessert.” Desi set the hot pan on a wire cooling rack on the kitchen island’s gray marbled countertop. She cut a piece off of a previous batch and held the caramel-coated confection out to me.

  I eyed the treat and mentally counted the calories I’d consumed earlier in the day. Eh, who was I kidding? There was no way to resist. I bit into the bar cookie and nearly swooned.

  “What is it?”

  Desi smiled smugly and smoothed a cocoa-smudged apron over her very pregnant belly. “I’m calling it a Caramel Chocolate Caress—perfect for the dessert bar at the wedding reception tomorrow.” She took one for herself and refilled her coffee mug from the carafe on the counter. “Want a cup?”

  “Sure, why not?” Cutting carbs and caffeine could wait another day. I reached for another cookie before I could stop myself. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be taking it easy?” I asked.

  “I am taking it easy.” She sat down on a stool. “See? I’m sitting.”

  I took the coffee cup from her. “Well, let me know if you need help with anything. That’s why I’m helping out at the Boathouse, so you don’t have to work so hard.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “I appreciate your offer, but I’m fine. Oh, and look at this.” She grabbed a pipette filled with blue icing and deftly drew a heart on top of one of the cooled cookie bars. Not for the first time, I found myself envying her talents in the kitchen.

  “Your mom’s going to love them.” My mother-in-law, Beth, oversaw the majority of the event planning at the Boathouse and took great pride in the details.

  “I hope so. Normally, big weddings don’t faze Mom, but this bride is stressing her out.” She took a bite of the frosted cookie bar. “Yum. I think I’ll serve these at the café too. I’m planning a three-year anniversary celebration for the BeansTalk Café. Our customers will go crazy for these.”

  “You’re lucky to have the BeansTalk. Sometimes I feel like the only people I ever see are under four.” I sat on a metal stool facing Desi.

  “Adam’s still traveling a lot? Are things getting better for you guys?” She sipped her coffee and watched my face.

  I gulped my coffee instead of responding. Saying that my husband traveled a lot was an understatement. A lawyer for a large Seattle firm, he’d been out of town for much of the last two weeks while working on a big case.

  She arched one eyebrow. “I take it he hasn’t been around much?”

  “He’s still out of town more than he’s here. I feel like a single parent and I know Mikey misses him.” I tapped my feet against the bottom rung of the stool. Our preschool-aged son talked about his dad frequently and didn’t understand why he was never home. At this stage, our infant daughter was too young to miss him, but soon her father’s absence would affect her too. “I’ve been thinking about going back to work, but I don’t know if this is the right time.”

  “There’s never a right time. Sometimes you just have to go for it and make it the right time. Tomàs and I leapt into opening the café when we saw the Available for Lease sign on the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, and we haven’t once regretted our decision.”

  I didn’t want to say anything to Desi, but in case things didn’t work out between her brother and me, I wanted to have income of my own. Before having kids, I’d had a career of my own and hadn’t had to depend on Adam for money. He and I still loved each other, but I’d seen friends go through rough patches in their marriages that eventually ended in divorce. I didn’t want that to happen to us. Our marriage hadn’t come to that point yet, but as his work travel increased, our relationship had been relegated to the back burner. I knew we needed something to change to get us back on track, but I wasn’t sure how to make things better.

  I was considering Desi’s advice about jumping into the job market when a man burst through the open doorway. Caterpillar eyebrows nested above his furrowed, beet-red face. Most people would describe the wrinkles as laugh lines, but anyone acquainted with Samuel Westen, my neighbor and Desi’s landlord, knew laughter to be an improbable cause.

  “Mrs. Torres.” He strode over to Desi, his wing tip shoes squeaking on the kitchen tiles. “Your café is located in my building. You can’t make changes to the exterior without my permission.” He marked every sentence with a shake of his brown leather briefcase. I shuffled back a few steps to avoid being hit.

  With slow, precise movements, Desi used a paper towel to wipe the chocolate residue off her fingers and the icing pipette.

  “Mr. Westen. How nice to see you.” Her icy tones belied her calm appearance. “What can I do for you? If this is regarding the BeansTalk Café, I will be happy to make an appointment to see you. As you can see, I’m in the middle of something right now.” She motioned to the mixing bowls and overflowing countertops.

  “The banana-yellow paint you used on the window shutters and trim at the café is not permissible by your lease.” He retrieved a sheaf of papers from the briefcase and searched for a clean space to lay them down. Finding none, he grimaced and placed his briefcase on the ground, as far away as possible from a dusting of spilled flour. Rifling through the documents, he stabbed his pudgy finger at a paragraph in a legal document. “See?” he said. “No leasehold improvements without prior approval from the owner.” He puffed out his chest. “And I most certainly did not approve that horrid color.”

  Desi’s placid smil
e had slipped from her face and she set down the icing pipette. I knew enough about her temper to back away even further from the two of them.

  “It’s paint. If I need to, I can paint over the yellow with a different color. But I’m not going to paint over it. I think the yellow makes the building more appealing. In fact, in the two days since I had the trim painted, I’ve received several compliments.” She grabbed the lease from him and flipped through it until she found the page she was looking for. “And see?”

  She held the lease up so close to his face that he wouldn’t need glasses to see the text. Strands of curly auburn hair had escaped her tight bun, and her fair skin flushed with indignation.

  Westen leaned back and took the lease from her as she continued speaking.

  “It also says, ‘landlord will maintain the exterior of the premises.’ The exterior of the ‘premises’ hasn’t been power washed by you since I signed the lease three years ago. My husband had to do it last year after the building got so grimy from a late winter storm that you couldn’t see the original paint color. The yellow trim improves the appearance of the building.” With her hands on her hips, she stared at him, daring him to disagree.

  He paused for a moment and then recovered his composure. Returning her stare, he said in a loud definitive voice, “Well, you aren’t going to have to worry about that for much longer. I won’t be renewing your lease next month. I have a developer interested in the property for condos.”

  Desi’s face blanched and she eased herself onto a kitchen stool, rubbing her belly with one hand.

  “But my café has been there for years. You can’t do that.”

  Westen smirked. “Your lease is up. Do you know how much that property is worth? You’ve been leasing it for a steal all these years. I decided to rent it out while the economy was bad, but I always knew once things got better the developers would start sniffing around. I may even be able to induce a bidding war.” Desi slid further back on the stool.

  “Can you do that?” I asked. “Isn’t the BeansTalk Café building a historical site? It’s next to the Ericksville Lighthouse.” I looked out the window, past the towering lighthouse, to the lighthouse keeper’s cottage. Cheerful yellow shutters bracketed white window boxes planted with red tulips.

  “Yeah, you can’t tear it down. The Historical Society would have a fit if you tore down the keeper’s cottage,” Desi said. Although she stared defiantly at Westen and tried to hide it, I saw her wince and hold her stomach tighter.

  I took a few steps forward, inserting myself between Westen and Desi. I picked the briefcase off the floor, making sure to drag it through the spilled flour before I shoved it at him. “It’s time for you to go. If you’d like to discuss this further, please call Desi later.”

  He glared at me and then took a parting shot.

  “The property isn’t designated as a historical site, and I can do with it whatever I want. Well, I can after the town council meeting tonight.” Westen snatched up the lease papers and stomped out of the room. As he exited, he pushed past my mother-in-law, who was standing in the doorway.

  “Excuse me,” Beth called after his retreating form. Shaking her head, she walked toward us. “What was Samuel Westen doing here? I swear, that man thinks he owns everything in this town.”

  Tears slipped down Desi’s face, and she fiddled with the icing pipette on the counter. “That’s the problem, he does own half the town—including my café building.”

  “Desi, please don’t cry.” Beth reached out to hug her and then stepped back to look at her daughter. “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s not renewing my lease,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically flat. “He wants to turn the property into condos.”

  “Condos? On the lighthouse grounds? I don’t think so.” Fire glowed in Beth’s eyes. “He can’t develop that property. It’s a significant part of Ericksville’s history.”

  “Well, he seems to think he can sell it to a developer, and he tends to get what he wants,” I said. With Westen as my closest neighbor, I’d run up against him a few times myself. “He indicated the town council would be approving the sale at their monthly meeting tonight.”

  “But he’s on the town council. That’s a conflict of interest to use his influence to benefit his own business dealings. I’m going to go down there and give them a piece of my mind,” said Beth. “The café building is part of our town’s heritage, and he’s not going to mess with my daughter’s business.” She wrapped well-toned arms around Desi’s shoulders, her eyes burning with determination.

  “Mom, you don’t have to do that.” Desi pulled away, drew herself up to her full height of five feet, two inches and jutted out her chin. “I’m going to go tonight and present my case to the town council. They can’t do this. The BeansTalk Café is a huge part of this community, and they sure as heck aren’t going to take that away from me or the town. Even if he gets approval tonight, I’m going to do everything I can to keep the building from being torn down.” Her eyes blazed with a flame that rivaled her mother’s.

  “I’ll go with you. Together, we’ll put a stop to this.” Beth squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Now, time to get back to work.” She clapped her hands together. “Chop, chop, girls. This wedding isn’t going to put itself on.”

  Beth turned toward me. “Jill, can you do me a favor?”

  I nodded. “Sure, what do you need?”

  “I need as many peanut butter M&M’s as you can get your hands on by noon.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Peanut butter M&M’s? Why?”

  “I’ll explain later. Let’s just say it’s a bride thing.”

  “Enough said.” I’d helped out with a number of weddings at the Boathouse and knew clients often made strange requests. “I’ll check out the Target and Walmart in Everton. Are the kids still doing ok?” When I’d left for the kitchen, my son, Mikey, and Desi’s son, Anthony, were playing in the cavernous main hall. My infant daughter, Ella, was fast asleep in her grandmother’s office.

  “They’re fine. I think the boys managed to enlist one of the waitstaff to play in their game of broomball, and Ella is still sleeping,” Beth said. She unclipped the baby monitor from her back pocket to look at it, and I heard the faint sounds of my daughter snoring. “I’ll be back in my office in a minute.”

  I turned to Desi. “Thanks for the treats. These are a definite winner. And don’t worry, we’ll figure something out to stop Westen from developing the property.” I gave her a quick hug and swiped another Caramel Chocolate Caress for the road.

  On the way out of the Boathouse, I ducked my head into Beth’s office and confirmed Ella was still asleep. As I exited, I popped the bar cookie into my mouth. Like the others I’d sampled, the chocolate and caramel melted on my tongue, but after hearing Mr. Westen announce his plans to sell the café building, it didn’t taste quite as sweet.

  That man certainly knew how to stir up trouble. Desi and her husband had sunk their life savings into the café. To lose it now would devastate them, and I didn’t want to know how it would affect Desi’s pregnancy.

  2

  When I arrived back at the Boathouse with the candy, I couldn’t help but remember Mr. Westen’s threat to Desi. How was it possible for anyone to be so awful? Still deep in thought, I pulled some bags of candy out of the back of my minivan. A soft breeze scented the air with salt and distracted me from my negative thoughts. With the picturesque lighthouse on the other side of the parking lot and the ferry landing behind it, I felt as though I were in the world’s most realistic painting. That is, until a crazed man ran past me muttering “azure blue, azure blue,” dove into a Jeep, backed up within two inches of my left foot, and careened out of the parking lot.

  I screamed and dropped bags full of M&M’s on the asphalt. My legs wobbled and almost gave out. Closing my eyes, I rested against the back bumper of my minivan. When I reopened my eyes, Beth stood in front of me.

  “Jill, are you ok? I came out to the parking lot just
in time to see what happened,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” This wasn’t the first time my tendency to daydream had put me in danger, and it wouldn’t be the last. I opened the minivan’s trunk and jumped to the side as an avalanche of candy spilled onto the ground.

  “And you thought your mother was joking when she said sweets could kill you,” Beth said, reaching for the fallen candy.

  “Who was that maniac?” I grabbed the remaining bags and slammed the liftgate. “He almost creamed me.” I fought the urge to tear open one of the bags and cram soothing chocolate down my throat until my pulse returned to a normal rhythm.

  “That would be the groom,” Beth said with a wry grin on her face. “His bride-to-be has him worked into a frenzy about the need for the perfect shade of blue carnation for his tux tomorrow. She wants it to match the sky for their outdoor ceremony.” She nodded at the plastic bags I held. “How many did you get?”

  “Forty-seven bags of peanut butter M&M’s. I think I cleared out every store within an hour of Ericksville. We’re lucky the Everton Target restocked their candy aisle this week after they clearanced out the Easter merchandise,” I said. “Why do you need so much?”

  “You’ll see.” Beth held the front door open, and we walked through the lobby to the back of the event center. The handles on the plastic bags dug into my hands, and I shifted the weight of the candy several times before we arrived at Beth’s office.

  I stopped in the doorway of her office to stare at the state of the workspace. It had been transformed into a candy store. Several crystal bowls held brown and blue peanut butter M&M’s. The discarded colors of candy were piled high in a large plastic container.