by Lyndsey Cole
Before Annie followed Jason to his car, she called out to Tess. “I have something for you.”
Tess cocked her head a little to one side. “Something for me?”
Annie dug in her pocket, reached for Tess’s hand and put something in her open palm.
Tess’s mouth opened in delight. “Where did you find the missing sapphire?”
“I was in the right place at the right time. Now your grandmother’s bracelet will be complete again.”
***
It took Annie about an hour to explain everything to Tyler, and with each word she felt a bit lighter. Jason waited and brought her back to his house where Leona and Mia were busy preparing Annie’s favorite comfort food, macaroni and cheese with broccoli and a big tossed salad.
They both hovered around her like a couple of mother hens when she finally walked inside and collapsed on the couch. Roxy jumped up next to her, giving her a big lick from her chin to her forehead.
“Ewww, I could do without that Roxy.” But she hugged her faithful companion anyway.
Annie was exhausted but there was still something she needed to know from Leona. Staying on the couch, she sipped a glass of wine which helped to relax her over-stimulated nerves and ate some of the delicious macaroni and cheese while the conversation drifted around her.
Setting her bowl on the coffee table, she fixed her eyes on Leona like laser beams. “Are you going to finish telling me your secret?”
“Maybe we should wait until tomorrow.”
“No. I need to know now.”
Leona set her glass on the table and sucked in a long deep breath. “Okay. But you have to promise to listen to my whole story. Don’t rush to judgment before I’m finished.”
Annie nodded.
Leona gazed off to the dark windows. “You know I had an affair with Hank McGuire, but what I didn’t tell you was that I got pregnant. Annie, I’m your birth mother.”
Hearing the words said out loud pierced her heart like an arrow. Annie stood up, red in the face and ready to start shouting at Leona and Mia. Jason gently made her sit back down. “You promised to hear it all. You owe that much to Leona.”
Annie clenched her jaw and sat at the edge of the couch, tense and prepared to flee.
Leona continued. “When I threatened to blackmail Hank, naïvely thinking he would give me a pile of money and I’d be on my merry way, he came back with a different offer. One I couldn’t refuse.”
Annie felt tears starting to fill her eyes and she quickly wiped them away.
Leona stared at Annie. “Hank said if I continued with my foolishness, he would take the baby and I’d never see you again. Or, if I promised to never talk about what happened, he would let Mia adopt you and he would stay out of your life. Of course, I accepted his offer. I couldn’t bear to think I would never see my baby. And, with Jason’s father’s help, I forced Hank to agree to put one hundred thousand dollars in a trust fund in your name to be given to you after his death, and if he married, after his wife’s death.”
Leona sat back, waiting for Annie’s reaction.
Tears streamed down Annie’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Leona looked at Mia. “Honey, we tried but you ran away as soon as you heard the word adopted. You didn’t wait around long enough for us to explain everything. Can you forgive me for making a decision that kept you in my life?”
Annie smiled through her tears. “Well, I have two mothers, how lucky am I?”
Behind the scenes with Lyndsey
Growing, and of course eating, fresh picked strawberries is one of my all-time favorites. The nice thing about growing your own strawberries is that if you plant ever-bearing varieties in the spring, you could be harvesting your own juicy delicious fruit later in the summer. With the June-bearing varieties, you have to wait until the following year. But in the fruit world, that’s about as good as it gets for waiting.
My grandsons, Mark and Danny, are great strawberry finders and eaters. I think the eating part might be a bit better than the finding part, but hey, what can you expect from a five and a three year old.
Besides finding and eating the strawberries in my garden, the adventure always turns into a nature lesson. Sometimes, they find big fat slugs hiding under the mulch, waiting to come out at night and take a bite from a juicy, ripe berry. Or they love to pick up big earthworms which I tell them don’t bother the berries, but they do freak out their mother, and the worms do an amazing job keeping the garden soil healthy.
Besides the slugs damaging the berries, chipmunks love to sample the tasty fruit. I always tell the boys that it’s okay to share with the other creatures in the garden, but I’m really thinking to myself that I hope all my hard work doesn’t get eaten up by those other critters.
Assuming we have any berries left in our basket to bring in the house, our next project is always lots of fun. And lots of mess! We create our own version of chocolate covered strawberries—Strawburied in Chocolate. Because in my house, that is what happens nine times out of ten!
While the two boys sit at my kitchen island eating a few chocolate chips—five for Mark and three for Danny—I melt the rest of a 12 ounce bag of chocolate chips in the microwave. The trick to melting the chocolate chips and not ruining them is to do it slowly. I start with 30 seconds, then stir them well and melt for 15 seconds more. Keep melting for 15 second intervals and stirring well each time until the chips are just about all melted. The last bit of melting actually happens while stirring. The next step is to stir in 2 teaspoons of shortening, and that’s it for enough dipping chocolate (or burying chocolate) for about a pound of strawberries. Make sure the strawberries are dry or the chocolate won’t stick.
I give each boy their own small bowl with melted chocolate and they cover the berries and their fingers and faces with the chocolate. Once the berries (not the boys!) are covered with chocolate, the boys place them on wax paper. When they’re all done, pop the berries into the fridge for a few minutes for the chocolate to harden. They aren’t always the most beautiful looking chocolate covered strawberries, but they still taste delicious!
Hope you have as much fun as we do.
~Lyndsey
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lyndsey Cole lives in New England in a small rural town with her husband, dogs, cats and chickens. She has plenty of space to grow lots of beautiful perennials. Sitting in the garden with the scent of lilac, peonies, lily of the valley or whatever is in bloom, stimulates her imagination about mysteries and romance.
ONE LAST THING …
If you enjoyed this installment of The Black Cat Café Cozy Mystery Series, be sure to join my FREE COZY MYSTERY BOOK CLUB! Be in the know for new releases, promotions, sales, and the possibility to receive advanced reader copies. Join the club here—http://LyndseyColeBooks.com
OTHER BOOKS BY LYNDSEY COLE
The Black Cat Café Series
BlueBuried Muffins
Annie Fisher is scared. She’s scared of the mess her boyfriend, Max Parker, is in the middle of and she has to get out of his house. She puts a whole state between them and drives like a madwoman from Cooper, NY to her hometown of Catfish Cove, NH where she hopes she’ll be safe.
She decides to start a new life, a life she ran away from two years ago but is finding herself missing as soon as she gets home. Annie immediately has a place to live, a job at her Aunt Leona’s new café—Black Cat Café—and plenty of boyfriend prospects. Unfortunately, she also has plenty of bad things follow her.
Like Max Parker. Only the next time she sees him he’s dead. Suddenly everyone she runs into turns into a potential suspect. There are ghosts from her past and new neighbors that make her hair stand on end. And right in the middle of everything is Annie with Max’s last warning to her—Don’t trust anyone. Will those words prove to keep her safe or put too much distance between Annie and those trying to help her?
StrawBuried in Chocolate
Annie Fisher wakes up on Friday the thirt
eenth, but she reminds herself she’s not superstitious. The Black Cat Café is loaded up with special Valentine’s Day goodies, the most popular being Annie’s chocolate covered strawberries. She is so looking forward to a romantic weekend with current flame, landlord and neighbor, Jason Hunter.
But when her Aunt Leona finds a body in Jason’s house, all plans for that romantic weekend are scrapped. All Annie, Leona, Mia and Jason can think about is who killed Lacy McGuire and why.
With more and more clues pointing toward Leona as the killer, they need to work fast to figure out who the real killer is before Leona ends up in jail for good. To complicate matters for Annie, information surfaces about her birth parents, a mystery she’s been working on for the past few years. She thinks she wants to find the answers, but will it destroy her world?
Now, Annie must struggle to save her aunt, but as she questions neighbors and relatives, will she put herself in danger with the real killer? Will she save her aunt but get herself killed in the process?
BlackBuried Pie
The Fourth of July weekend promises lots of excitement for the cozy town of Catfish Cove. A dog parade, bonfire, barbecue and fireworks are sure to bring in the crowds and give a boost to all businesses, including the Black Cat Café.
To prepare for the onslaught of customers, Annie Fisher has to keep their supply up of blackberries from Hayworth Fruit Farms for everyone’s favorite, blackberry pie. But when she finds the berry farmer unconscious in his field, her mind immediately goes to the worst possible scenario. To make matters worse, the farmer’s neighbor turns up dead and anonymous messages drag Annie into the mystery when all she wants to do is spend time with her handsome boyfriend.
With clues pointing in every direction, Annie needs to figure out who’s lying and who she can trust before she ends up as the next victim in the killer’s web of deceit.
Very Buried Cheesecake
This should be an exciting time for Annie with the opening of her new art gallery, but she’s stressed and distracted preparing for her first photography opening. With her friend Martha and her new employee, Camilla, working to get the gallery set up, everything seems to be on track.
But when Annie stumbles on a body floating at the edge of Heron Lake, her worst fears are realized. Memories of her previous photography exhibit and the ensuing murder investigation come back to haunt her.
To make matters worse, the new detective in town points her finger at Annie right from their first meeting at the crime scene. Is this an ominous sign of what’s in store for Annie? With mysterious money disappearing and stolen jewelry showing up from thin air, a pre wedding dinner cruise and Martha’s on again/off again wedding, all is not what it seems.
Now Annie struggles to avoid being sucked into the mayhem. Will she be able to put her fears aside and figure out how to stay ahead of the killer?
RaspBuried Torte
When renovations on an old house in Catfish Cove take a turn for the worse, Annie finds herself at odds with the new detective in town. Again. Not only did Annie find the body, but Detective Christy Crank seems to have a chip on her shoulder that she takes out on Annie.
Rumors of hidden fortunes in the walls of the old house bring out treasure hunters in droves. Could one of them have killed to secure their own fortune? And if so, who was it?
As Annie digs deeper to clear the name of her friend, and Cranky’s top suspect, Danny Davis, she uncovers lies about alibis that only add more suspects to her list. Dreams of wealth make plenty of people look guilty, but who is the real murderer?
Annie knows she has to figure it out with the help of her friends before Danny takes the fall for something he didn’t do. Will she make it in time before the killer comes back to cover their tracks?
The Lily Bloom Series
Begonias Mean Beware
Misty Valley has a new flower shop in town, and as soon as Lily Bloom hangs the open sign, she lands the biggest wedding in town. Plus, the handsome new guy moves in right next door to Lily. She’s well on her way to a successful and exciting season.
But when the groom is found dead in her kitchen just days before he’s supposed to be walking down the aisle, Lily has to arrange the trail of flowers to try to solve the mystery. With the help of her scooter-riding, pot-smoking mother, Iris, her sister, Daisy, and her dog, Rosie, Lily races from one disaster to another, all the while keeping herself out of the killer’s sight.
Will she solve the cascade of events in time or get caught by the criminals running illegal gambling and selling drugs in Misty Valley? Will romance blossom between Lily and her new neighbor?
Queen of Poison
Business at Lily’s Beautiful Blooms Flower Shop is growing like weeds after a rainstorm. She’s been asked to do the main flower arrangement for the Arts in Bloom opening at the Misty Valley Museum. Everything seems to be coming up rosy and she’s even falling head over heels for the man of her dreams, Ryan Steele, her neighbor and the police chief of Misty Valley.
Until she sees a sleek red convertible drive into his driveway. And an even sleeker red head climbs out of the car. She thought that was all she had to deal with until the founder of the museum drops dead in her arms and another body has all fingers pointing toward Lily.
With help from her mom, Iris, her sister, Daisy and their friends Marigold and Tamara, Lily tries to arrange the clues to point to the real killer. Can she sort it out in time before a third body—maybe hers—ends up in the morgue? Can she get her romance growing again with the handsome police chief of Misty Valley? Or will she be left to sort through the clues alone?
Roses are Dead
Business is popping for Lily as wedding season is in full swing. The brides are all over the place from easy-to-please to last-minute-panics. But one in particular stands out—a leggy brunette who is looking for plenty of red roses for her wedding to Police Chief Ryan Steele.
Lily is beside herself with betrayal that Ryan would lead her on like that, all the while engaged to this beauty. It’s almost too much to take until the bride is found dead, surrounded by none other than the very roses she’d been admiring.
Lily shoots to the top of the suspect list, a place she’s been all too often lately. And as she starts to uncover more about the woman’s past, she’s thrown into another game of cat and mouse. Only she’s not sure if she’s the cat or the mouse. Will she be able to follow the clues to the real killer in time? Or is everyone connected to Ryan Steele in danger and Lily could be next?
Drowning in Dahlias
The business is heating up at Beautiful Blooms and Lily’s flower arrangements can be found all over Misty Valley at any type of event. And to add to the chaos, she’s lost the full time help of her sister, Daisy, who has started a specialty cake making business on the side. Together, they make the perfect team, especially when wealthy estate owner, Walter Nash, enlists both of them to cater and decorate for the 55th birthday party for his wife.
But when they show up with their deliveries and find the love of his life, Harriet Nash, dead on the floor, the dynamic duo is suddenly threatened. With a house full of family and friends to celebrate her birthday, there are too many suspects to keep straight.
Lily’s biggest challenge now is to find the killer before the killer finds her. But without a murder weapon at the crime scene, the questions continue to pile up without any answers. Who would have wanted Harriet dead the most? She had plenty of money, but would someone have been so greedy? As Lily and Daisy get closer to solving the murder, things take a turn for the worse with a threat on Lily’s life.
Hidden by the Hydrangeas
Lily Bloom can’t seem to keep her thoughts away from marriage. Maybe it’s just because her mom tied the knot with her childhood sweetheart Walter Nash, but it’s gotten Lily thinking about her own relationship with Ryan Steele and if it’s going anywhere.
But those thoughts are quickly replaced with who is carrying a dead body, and who that dead body might be. The only thing Lily knows is th
at she’s been spotted by the killer so she has to hope this mystery is solved before she’s the next one in a body bag.
When Walter’s best friend turns up as the likeliest suspect, Lily’s mom is beside herself with worry and convinces Lily that she’s the best person to solve this case. But suspects keep piling up with not quite enough evidence to prove anything. Will Lily be able to put all the pieces together before the killer sniffs out her trail?
Christmas Tree Catastrophe
Lily Bloom couldn’t be more excited for Christmas Eve when she will say “I do” to the man she loves. She just has the library opening to get through and then all the town’s focus will be on her.
But things start going wrong almost from the very first moment she’s getting setup for the library’s event. Not only is there plenty of disagreement among those helping, but one of the co-chairs who is in charge of the whole event winds up dead the day before the ceremony.
With everyone who was helping setup under a microscope, Lily is in a race against time to be able to get married. When one of her best friends winds up in jail for the murder Lily knows she didn’t commit, the pressure’s on to find the real murderer.
Will Lily be able to prove her friend’s innocence? Or will she find herself in even more trouble and face a wedding in a jail cell or the hospital? Or worse—will there be no wedding at all because the bride is the new target?
