Ouna Bay Cozy Mystery Boxed Set (4-Book Bundle)

by Deany Ray

  Rosalie frowned. “And I didn’t even get to taste one single bite of cake.”

  Chapter Three

  The next morning I got the news as I mixed batter for the cake of the week: red velvet layered with white chocolate. I called it Red and White Delight.

  The door swung open and in burst Rosalie. “It was cyanide!” she yelled. “Someone poisoned Ada!”

  I nearly dropped my whisk. “Rosalie! How do you know?”

  “I just talked to Dwight.” She sat down at the counter and began furiously writing in a notebook. What, I wasn’t sure.

  I sunk down on the nearest stool in disbelief. “Do they know who might have done it?”

  “No, but Dwight says they’re testing all the cakes.” She furrowed her brow in thought and then resumed her scribbles. “I guess the cake will tell the tale – when they get to the right one. But Dwight says that will take a while. Did you know there were thirty cakes?” She jumped up. “I’ve made a list.” She pushed her notebook into my lap. “Every contestant I could think of. Can you think of anyone I’ve missed?” My best friend watched too many detective shows. She thought that qualified her to leap right in and try to solve any crime that might disturb the peace in Ouna Bay.

  “Rosalie, why are you doing this? You know we have these people – we call them the police. And they’re trained in solving crimes. I’m sure they’ll get right to it.”

  “The more minds on this one, the better. The sooner they’ll get it solved.” She looked over at the mixing bowl. “Hey, is it okay if I lick that spoon? And I need some coffee. Cause this is gonna be a tough one. I don’t have any leads.”

  “Have at it with the spoon.” I stood up to carefully pour the red velvet batter into the cake pan and slide it into the oven. The white chocolate layer was all ready. Although my mind was no longer on whether people would like my new creation and if I should sprinkle fruit or candy on the top.

  “I just can’t imagine who would kill her,” I told Rosalie. It seemed incredible still to think that Ada was really gone. The woman had seemed too much in control of everything to fall down like that and die. Unless it was on her agenda, in black ink with a fine tipped pen and double and tripled checked.

  Rosalie licked the spoon then looked longingly at the almost empty bowl. “I wouldn’t mind another spoonful. You did good on that one, hon.” She jumped up and scraped up the bits of batter stuck to the side of the bowl. “Sugar can get the investigative juices going. Hmm. I wonder if that’s why the policemen in cartoons are always eating doughnuts.”

  I started another pot of coffee and looked down at Rosalie’s list. I knew a few of the people: my first grade teacher, for example, and the florist across the street. And the elderly cashier at the market who always had a new (and very lengthy) story about her calico cat. None seemed like the murdering type.

  I saw the scene in my head: the eager contestants standing behind their cakes on a day that seemed too sunny, too hopeful, too sugary sweet to warrant an undertaker. I tried to picture the contestants one by one, wondering who could have had it in them to mix a deadly ingredient in with the eggs and sugar.

  I poured a second cup of coffee and sat down. Half the town hated Ada. But who could have hated her that much?

  I thought it out with Rosalie. “I think Wilma Lewis was hurt last year when she only got third prize, being a cookbook author and all. But that’s hardly a motive for cyanide. Just cause someone snubs their nose at your blueberry-lemon cake. And Bill Manger hated Ada. You remember that. Because Ada was the deciding vote when the beautification council told him he couldn’t paint his shop bright yellow.

  Rosalie thought, then shook her head. “Insufficient motive.”

  “Well, let’s face it,” I said. “Give me a list of thirty contestants and I’ll give you a list of thirty people that Ada has made mad.”

  “Isn’t that the truth. This case won’t be easy. That’s why I got up early to try to puzzle it out. To figure out who. And why.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, thank goodness you’re on the case. I’m sure the police are so relieved.”

  She had on her thinking face. “Let’s look first at all the people who would have baked their cakes in their own kitchens with nobody there to see what ingredients they used.”

  I guess she had a point. Some couples had entered together; there was a shared entry from the birdwatchers’ club. And some of the Methodist women worked together in the kitchen at the church. I think it might raise some eyebrows if you had a little bottle of cyanide sitting by the sugar. The eagle-eyed ladies in the prayer group would be sure to notice that.

  Rosalie grinned. “Didn’t I have a great idea for narrowing down the list? I am good at this. I’ll call Dwight and tell him.” She glanced down at her phone. “Nah, I think I’ll wait. I stopped at his office this morning and he was really busy with the case and all.” She stood up and walked toward the coffee pot for a refill. “Becky, he was just so cute talking all official-like about cyanide and perpetrator and estimated time of death.”

  Adorable, I thought.

  We’d finished the pot of coffee and I had my cake all ready when I realized that something was wrong. Where were the customers? A scandal in town was usually very good for business. A seat at one of the tables at the Blue Bay Café pretty much guaranteed that you were caught up on all the news.

  I looked at the muffins and cookies that were fresh and smelled so good. I had come in early and made extra because a juicy subject to debate always got peoples’ taste buds going. Gossip went well, it seemed, with a little sugar on the side.

  “I guess this was a good week for Maia to be off,” I said, glancing at the empty tables. My long-time employee was on a well-deserved vacation with her husband and her daughter. Maia was a treasure. With her husband’s income, she could afford to stay home and indulge in her love of painting landscapes. But she liked to be needed, she said. And what did people need more than a coffee pot that was always full and sweets that were still warm from the oven?

  When noon rolled around without a single customer to taste my Red and White delight, I decided to take a walk through town to see if I could figure out why everyone had disappeared. I joked with Rosalie. “Zombies? Natural disaster? Did we miss the apocalypse?”

  I popped in next door at Angela’s where she was giving Mrs. Louisa Jones a perm.

  “Hey doll,” Angela waved a comb at me. “Oh sweetie, how are you?” She ran over to give me a hug.

  “Kinda lonely at the café. Nobody’s coming in. And that never happens. Where did everybody go?”

  Angela ran to check on a customer who was sitting under a dryer. She patted the woman’s hand. “Just a few more minutes, dear, then you’ll be beautiful.” Then she turned her attention to me and, for some reason, she looked sad. “I’m gonna be honest with you, doll. People are just real scared.” She lowered her voice. “Because they’ve found out what happened to Ada Sinclair. They say it’s cyanide.” She said the last bit very softly as if the word itself might attack you if you said it loud enough.

  “Yeah. I heard that from Rosalie. But why is it so quiet in town? Where is everybody?” Well, not so quiet at Angela’s place. Almost every chair was full.

  She looked at me with pity. I still didn’t understand.

  She signaled to Mrs. Jones that she would be right there to finish up the perm. “Well, doll, here’s the thing. People have this image of Ada taking a bite of cake. And I think we all know that didn’t end too well. The thing is, it’s hard to come into the Blue Bay Café and not take a bite of something sweet.” She gently touched my arm. “Becky, I’m so sorry. I’m sure that this will pass.”

  I sunk down in an empty chair by one of the shampoo sinks. I’d never thought of the connection. Murder by cake was apparently very bad for business.

  I ran back to tell Rosalie that there was good news and bad. The good news was that she would have a Red and White Delight to eat all by herself.

  The ba
d news was that we had work to do. We had to solve this murder before the next month’s rent came due.

  Chapter Four

  “I need my notebook! Where’s my notebook?” Rosalie got down to business. She found it tucked away behind a stack of pastry boxes. “And my pencil? Have you seen it?” She was rifling through a drawer when I pulled her glittery pencil from behind her ear and held it out to her.

  She couldn’t stand still. She walked quickly to the coffee pot but, in her excitement, forgot to fill her mug. She put a doughnut on a plate but forgot to take a bite. “We need to find a suspect, hon. And a motive would be good. We’ve got lots of work to do.”

  I studied the list of bakers. Or at least the ones we could remember. Some of the contestants had been people I didn’t really know. In recent years lots of newcomers had discovered Ouna Bay.

  Some contestants were business acquaintances. But none of them seemed like the type to commit a felony. They owned restaurants or cafes; some worked in catering. We all knew each other’s names and often traded stories about the sometimes difficult business of making a living with food.

  I looked around at the empty tables. Although the stack of bills was on my mind, it wasn’t just the income that I missed. I missed the creative high of coming up with a new recipe and being happy with the way the flavors came together to make something really special. I missed people bursting through the door with little bits of news. I missed knowing what was up.

  Hey. That gave me an idea.

  Rosalie noticed the look on my face. “You’ve thought of something! What?” She clapped her hands in glee, then put on her detective face. “Have you narrowed down a suspect?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “That would only happen on one of those goofy shows you like to watch.” I tried to imitate the kind of deep voice that was sometimes used to narrate Rosalie’s detective shows. “A café owner meditates behind her case of lonely pastries. Then suddenly she’s got it! She knows who the killer is! And just like that, Ouna Bay is saved.”

  “You looked like you’d thought of something,” Rosalie pouted.

  “Actually, I did.” I took a sip of coffee. “Not a theory on the murder. Just a thought on how we might begin to try and figure it out.”

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” she said, opening her notebook.

  “Well, everybody in this town knows everybody’s business.”

  She started to write. “You got that one right.”

  “So I’ll bet somebody noticed something that could turn into our first clue.” I grabbed my purse off of the counter. “I think I’ll stroll around and chat a bit, see what people have to say.”

  “Well, we sure aren’t going to hear anything hanging around this place.” Rosalie grabbed her coat and was headed toward the door before I could get my sentence out.

  “Hold up, Rosalie. Someone has to stay here. On the off chance that a customer might walk through the door and want one of these poor doughnuts.”

  Her face fell as I walked past her out the door.

  I headed first to Angela’s salon. Because where did people speak more freely than seated in one of Angela’s chairs, relaxing while they got a cut, a color or a blow out?

  Luckily, I caught Angela during a free moment in what looked like a busy day. She was wiping her counters down. A few customers were paging through magazines as stylists cut their hair or shaped their long tresses with brushes and curling irons.

  “Hey!” Angela said. “Since you’ve got a break in business, why don’t we give that pretty hair color of yours a new shine?” She said, inspecting my hair. “And I could get rid of those split ends for you.” She knew better than to try to talk me into a brand new style. We’d had that discussion many times.

  “I’m worried about business, not my hair,” I said. I loved my trademark ponytail. It was quick and easy in the mornings, perfect for a working girl. Even if, at the moment, there wasn’t any work.

  I leaned across the counter. “I was wondering what people were saying about who could have poisoned Ada. Tell me. What’s the buzz?”

  “Well, if you’re asking who had a grudge with her, the list is pretty long. Not to speak ill of the dead, but she was more hated than I thought. Did you know she told Karen Bennett that she needed to lose some weight?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t surprise me. But how awful.”

  “And she told the town council last week that she thought it was time to discontinue the beauty pageant. Said the girls were showing too much skin when they modeled their bathing suits. That didn’t sit well with some of the mothers who thought their girls might be in line as the next Junior Miss Ouna Bay.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me either,” I said.

  Angela looked around, and then whispered in my ear. “And there’s something else.” She looked eager to tell the news. “I heard that after this year as a cake judge, she was finished, gone, kaput. They were kicking her off the judges’ panel. She’d made one too many people angry. And they decided that - finally - they’d had enough.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” I said. Ada had been part of the contest for as long as I could remember. I wondered if Angela had it wrong. “Who did you hear that from?” I asked.

  “Burt and Celia Purdy. From Purdy’s Coffee Beans,” she said. I’d been to their place a few times just outside Ouna Bay. Excellent lemon squares. I could never get mine to be as sweet and creamy as Celia’s always were.

  “But who decided to kick her off? What did she do to make them mad enough to do a thing like that?” I asked and Angela shrugged. A customer came in just then so I hurried toward the door to give my report to Rosalie.

  “We’ll talk real soon,” called Angela. She held out a magazine. “Think about those split ends. And maybe a cut like the one right here on this cover. Don’t you think it looks real cute on Angelina Jolie?”

  Rosalie was intrigued by the information I brought back.

  “I need to talk to the Purdys,” I said. “And I have another thought. I should see if that reporter knows something that could help. She talked to the contestants right before the judging started. Maybe one of them was mad. Or maybe one of them said something that, in retrospective, might just be a clue.”

  “Let’s talk to the Purdys first.” Rosalie bounced in place like she did when she got excited. “And I do mean we.” She took her glittery pencil from behind her ear and pointed it straight at me. “I’ve got more important business than sitting in this place waiting for customers who don’t show.”

  I knew she was right. I hung the Closed sign on the door. It was the only thing that made sense. You won’t sell too many sweets when someone’s just been murdered and the deadly weapon was a cake.

  ***

  Purdy’s Coffee Beans is a quaint place, the kind where the owners list the specials of the day on a chalkboard behind the counter. That day’s features included Hazelnut Latte, Cinnamon Coffee Roast and Celia’s Butterscotch Squares. But, like the Blue Bay Café, the coffee shop was deserted. The door was unlocked, the lights were on, but there were no signs of customers - or of Burt or Celia Purdy.

  Nobody answered my shouted “Hello!”

  We walked through a swinging door at the end of the bar that led into the kitchen. But still no Burt or Celia. Maybe that was a good thing, a chance to look around. After all, everyone was a suspect until we ruled them out.

  I studied a bulletin board that was crammed with notes and flyers. My eye was drawn to a clipping that had been cut out from the Ouna Bay Gazette. Oddly, someone had covered up part of it with a jagged sheet of paper. I moved closer to check it out. The ripped up square of paper was clearly meant to hide a photograph. But a tiny detail of the picture was still visible. I could still make out the very top of someone’s head.

  And the hairstyle was eerily familiar. I know of only one person in Ouna Bay who wore her hair (or had worn it until recently) in an old-fashioned, uptight bun.

  “It’s her,” I whis
pered to Rosalie. “And they’ve covered up her face. Why would they do that?”

  “Whoa. They must have really hated Ada.” She moved closer and started to read the headline and the story. Something about a cake and a first-prize ribbon at the fair.

  That’s when we heard a door open. Then we heard the shuffle of footsteps and the sound of voices. We were not alone.

  “What do we do?” Rosalie whispered.

  “It will all be fine,” I said, and hoped that I was right.

  Chapter Five

  “Who’s there?” Burt Purdy shouted. The giant of a man almost filled the doorway.

  With his big muscles and bushy beard, he looked more suited for swinging a hammer or ax than serving fancy coffee with dainty pastries on the side. His tiny wife peeped out from behind him. Wide-eyed Celia Purdy looked as frightened as I felt.

  Rosalie was frozen in fear, so it was up to me to speak. “We didn’t mean to startle you. We were just hoping to have a word. We didn’t see anyone up front so we thought we’d peek back here.”

  He sighed. “Well, as you can see, business is kind of light. So we thought we’d unload a few supplies.” He frowned at the boxes in his arms. “Not that we’re gonna be needing napkins and cups anytime real soon.”

  Celia came out of hiding from behind her large husband. At the same time, Rosalie stepped out slowly from her corner. Both had apparently decided they were safe.

  Celia was mouse-like with a short bob that she dyed platinum blonde. She glanced at me in recognition. “Becky, right? Don’t I know you girls? You’re both from the Blue Bay Café. You’re feeling our pain, I guess. Isn’t it just the worst thing ever? I never thought I’d see a day I’d have leftover sugar cookies and a full case of brownies when it came to closing time.”

  Burt shook his head. “People used to buy Celia’s cookies like they were going out of style. We haven’t sold a cookie or a slice of cake since this whole thing began.”