A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery Box Set Read online

  For something to do, I moved the tray of candy apples to the other side of my table. I had crafted each apple by hand, dipping each one in buttery caramel, and adding a candy Jack O’ Lantern face. The caramel coating was a special recipe I had created, and they were the best candy apples I had ever tasted if I did say so myself.

  My pumpkin hand pies came complete with cutout Jack-o'-lantern faces. They were the cutest things I have ever made. I still had an assortment of other pies I needed to run home and pick up as well. I had baked Pumpkin, blackberry, cherry, coconut cream, chocolate cream and raisin sour cream. They were cooling on my kitchen counter top and I was anxious to get home to pack them up for the bazaar.

  “I can’t believe this,” Lucy said, leaning against a wall.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to her.

  “So, did I hear you right? Is this your booth?” Alec asked me.

  “Um, yes. It is my booth. Would you like a candy apple?” I asked him.

  On hearing it was my booth that Diana had been found dead in, he narrowed his eyes at me. “Really?”

  “Oh, don’t you start that,” I said. “All I know is I arrived to decorate my booth, and I found her where she’s at right now. I called the police immediately.” We had been through a murder investigation before and I wanted no part of that. It had made me a nervous wreck, thinking I might end up behind bars in a garish orange prison jumpsuit. It would have clashed with my red hair.

  “And where is Diana’s booth?” he asked, ignoring my remark.

  I pointed at the booth next to mine and he walked over and entered it. He looked everything over and then bent down. When he stood up, he had the partially eaten red candy apple wrapped in a handkerchief in his hand. He looked at me. Then he peered over at my tray of candy apples and looked at me again. “One of yours?”

  “What? No! Why, I never!” I said. That extremely poor specimen of a candy apple that he was holding was an insult to candy apples everywhere.

  He tried to hide his grin. “Not up to your standards?”

  “Not even close. That thing is an abomination!” I said, folding my arms across my chest. How dare he even think I had made something like that!

  “I see,” he said and handed the half-eaten apple off to Yancey.

  Yancey pulled out a small plastic bag and dropped it in and sealed it.

  The hall door opened and coroner Brant Olney walked in. He was middle-aged and portly and moved at a snail’s pace. I sighed as I watched him shuffle his way across the room, his loafer-clad feet seeming to move only inches with each step.

  “At least he’s finally here,” I said to Alec. “I just hope you can get him to move a little faster.”

  “I’ll give it my all,” he said.

  “You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

  Alec glanced at me, his dark blue eyes glinting with mirth at my distress. “If you have something you’d rather be doing, feel free to go. We’ll be tied up with this for a while. Of course, I’ll need to question you more about what happened when you get back.”

  “I do have some pies to retrieve from my house.”

  “Great. Maybe when you get back, you can help man the door and keep people occupied while we finish our work in here,” he said.

  “Sounds good. Lucy, come on,” I said, grabbing her by the hand. I hoped they had this investigation wrapped up and Diana down at the morgue by the time we got back. Otherwise, we would have a very realistic decoration for Halloween.

  Chapter Three

  “I just don’t understand,” Lucy sobbed. “She was fine this morning. Do you think she had a heart attack? She ate an awful lot of fast food.”

  “I don’t know, honey. She wasn’t that old. But you know, it seems like people are having heart attacks younger and younger,” I said. Diana was on the go all the time, but as far as I knew, she never did any formal exercise. I was thankful that I had taken up running, years ago. I was pretty sure I was never going to have a heart attack.

  She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a now well-worn tissue. “I wish Ellen wasn’t there. It seemed like she was almost glad Diana was dead. Did you see her?”

  I nodded. “I know it. That Ellen is something else. I don’t know how a person can harbor such ill will toward a person.”

  I pulled into my driveway and we got out of the car.

  “Nice day for a stroll,” my neighbor Clyde McCoy, called as he walked past us.

  I nodded. “Sure is,” I said and headed for my front door.

  “It’s not that nice,” Lucy said and I could tell by her voice she was getting ready to sob uncontrollably again. “Diana Bowen just died!” she wailed and then she did start crying again.

  “Oh?” Clyde said. “I’m sorry to hear that. I was just in her shop last week, buying flowers for Mrs. Smith’s funeral. She seemed fit as a fiddle. What did she die of?” Clyde walked toward us, his balding head shining in the afternoon sun. Clyde was a good neighbor, but he liked to talk. He had retired from the fire department seven years earlier and seemed to have trouble finding enough things to do to take up his time. I really wanted to get the pies and get back to the recreation hall, but it looked like we were going to have a holdup.

  “We don’t know yet,” Lucy said. “The police think it might have been a heart attack.”

  “Oh? Have they done the autopsy?” he asked, moving in closer.

  “No,” Lucy sobbed again. “They just found her. About an hour ago.”

  “Oh, I see,” Clyde said. He rubbed his chin thinking about that. “Well, I’m sure they’ll figure it out. I sure hope it wasn’t a murder.”

  “What? Why would you say that?” Lucy asked in alarm.

  “Oh, Lucy, we don’t know anything right now. I’m sure it was all that fast food she ate. We need to get my pies down to the bazaar,” I said, turning to put my key in the door.

  Lucy looked at Clyde and sniffed. “I’m sure it was a heart attack,” she said weakly.

  He nodded. “Ayuh, I’m sure it was. Well, I don’t mean to detain you. I’ve got to get home and feed my little Sadie,” he said and turned to go. Sadie was his poodle and his world revolved around her. Sadie insisted on being fed at the same time each day, and thankfully, that was going to save us from having to stand around and talk to Clyde all afternoon.

  Lucy followed me into the house.

  “What do you think? Do you think someone murdered her?” she asked, trailing me as I headed to the kitchen. I mentally cursed Clyde. Why did he have to get this started?

  “Honestly, Lucy. It’s way too early to know anything,” I said, pulling out a box of plastic wrap from a drawer. I had sixteen pies and only four pie keepers, so plastic wrap it was. “There’s no sense in worrying over something we don’t know for sure.”

  “But why were the police all there?” she whined. “If it was a heart attack, why would so many be there?”

  I sighed. “Lucy, there was a body found in a rather unexpected place. Of course the police are going to come. They need to check things out, but no one is going to know anything until an autopsy is done,” I said, wrapping a pecan pie.

  I glanced up and saw my house phone blinking. I had one of those old-fashioned ones that had lots of buttons and lights. My kids made fun of me, saying no one even had house phones anymore. Well, I did.

  “Here,” I said, handing Lucy the box of plastic wrap. “Work on getting these pies wrapped, will you? We need to get back to the bazaar as soon as we can.”

  I headed over to the phone and picked up the receiver and dialed voicemail. Lucy sniffed behind me and started wrapping pies.

  “Allie, this is Diana,” the voice said and paused. My blood ran cold and my heart stopped.

  Then she began again, “Listen, I need to talk to you. I would talk to Lucy, but I don’t want to upset her, you know how she can be. God love her, she’s high strung,” she said and chuckled. “Anyway, if you can get to the bazaar a little early, that would be great.”


  Then there was a click. My heart started beating again, and I felt faint. Voicemail said the call was left at 8:53 AM. Where had I been that I didn’t get the message earlier? And what on earth did she want to talk to me about that she couldn’t talk to Lucy? I hit 9 to save the message and glanced over my shoulder at Lucy. She was fumbling with the clingy plastic wrap.

  I stared at the wall in front of me, receiver still in hand. My mind swirled. I had really only had contact with Diana through Lucy. We ran into each other occasionally and once in a great while, I stopped in to buy flowers. What did she want to talk about? She had sounded fine, just like any other day.

  I inhaled, trying to get my heart to slow down. It was eerie, listening to a recently dead person’s voice on your own phone.

  “What are you doing?” Lucy asked after I had stood there a couple of minutes.

  “What?” I asked, snapping back to reality, and hanging up the receiver. “Oh, nothing.”

  She stood with the box of plastic wrap in hand, staring at me. “Are you sure?”

  I forced myself to smile. “Yes. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” I hurried over to her and picked up one of the wrapped pies and put it into a reusable shopping bag. “We need to get a move on.”

  “Sure,” she said, still watching me.

  We finished wrapping the pies and carefully put some of them in the trunk of my car and the rest on the back seat. They had to sit single level so they wouldn’t get smashed, and I was worried they would slide around or fall off the seat. I would have to drive slowly and hope nothing terrible happened to the pies. My nerves were on edge from the phone message and I almost asked Lucy to drive, but she drove like a New Yorker on a good day. With what we had been through today, there was no way she was going to be able to get the pies safely to the bazaar.

  ***

  When we got back to the bazaar, we slipped in through the back door. The police and the coroner were still working on Diana, and it took everything Lucy had to keep from breaking down again.

  “Here, Lucy, go get some of those pies,” I said, handing her my car keys. Maybe I could keep her busy running back and forth to the car for a few minutes.

  I went to Alec. “How’s it going?” I whispered.

  “We should be done here in a few minutes,” he said.

  I glanced over my shoulder, but Lucy was still outside. “Does it look like foul play?”

  “It doesn’t look like foul play, but that doesn’t mean much. We’ll have to wait and see what the medical examiner says.”

  I nodded. No use worrying about it until then. It was a tragedy, either way. I considered whether I should mention that Diana had called me earlier. But I wanted to listen to the recording again. I was so shocked when I listened to it the first time that I could have missed something.

  Lucy brought some more pies in, biting her lower lip to keep from crying. I patted her on the shoulder and set the pies out. I wasn’t sure how we were going to get through the night.

  “Guess what?” I said brightly.

  “What?” she said, sadly.

  “I’ve got costumes for us!”

  “Seriously?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Come on,” I said and hurried out to my car. She followed along behind me, and I unlocked the trunk and pulled out a shopping bag. “You can be a cheerleader or a 1950s sock hop girl.”

  I almost saw her eyes light up.

  “1950s sock hop girl,” she said.

  “You got it! Let’s run to the bathroom and change,” I said. I thought this might take her mind off things for a few more minutes.

  Chapter Four

  The coroner managed to get Diana’s body out the back door around 5:30. That didn’t give us much time to finish decorating, but Lucy and I moved as fast as we could. There was a crowd gathered outside the recreation hall by the time Diana’s body was removed from the building. We swung the double doors open and were greeted by a lot of grumpy people.

  “It’s about time,” Rudy Gallo complained, his arms full of decorations. He owned a plumbing store on Main Street. I wondered if he was going to raffle off pipe.

  “Come on, Lucy, we ain’t got time for this!” Larry Owens said, pushing past her and bumping her. His arms were full of small tools and he dropped an orange tape measure as he pushed past.

  “You dropped something, Larry,” Lucy said, rolling her eyes. Larry and Lucy had dated in High School and he had stood her up for the Sadie Hawkins dance in tenth grade. Lucy had never forgiven him for it.

  “Thanks, Lucy, I owe you one,” he said and gave her a wink that could only be interpreted as sarcasm.

  Lucy narrowed her eyes at him and turned her back without a response.

  “Hey, Allie, what was the ambulance and the cop cars here for?” Julie Sommers asked. She came in empty-handed and I wondered why she was here. She didn’t own a local business, nor did she have a job as far as I knew. She was obviously a lookie loo. Plenty of people around here made chasing sirens a hobby, so they’d have something to gossip about at the local coffee shops.

  “Oh, you know, probably a drill or something,” I said, giving Lucy the eye. I didn’t want to be the one to spread the news of Diana’s death. Too many people were related in this small town and I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad tidings.

  “A drill? I’ve never heard of the EMTs and cops doing a drill before,” she said suspiciously.

  “Julie, you know, the bazaar doesn’t start until seven. We really need this time to decorate and prepare for it,” I said, hoping she’d get the hint and hit the road without me having to ask her to leave.

  “Are you asking me to leave?” she asked, her blue eyes squinting up at me. She wore Coke-bottle glasses that didn’t seem to do much for her vision. At 4’11”, she looked up to everyone.

  “It would be helpful. Just for the next hour or so,” I said as sweetly as possible.

  She huffed air out of her mouth, then pursed her lips. I thought she was going to blast me, but then she turned around and left without another word. I shrugged my shoulders at Lucy and we propped the doors open. We still had work to do.

  I went to my booth and straightened things up. I had decided to sell some of the pies by the slice. They would make more money than selling whole pies. I moved my candy apples front and center. I was particularly proud of those. They were the best I had ever made.

  I glanced over at Diana’s booth. Lucy was inside, leaning against the back of it. She had a frown on her face and looked bereft. I sighed. There wasn’t a lot I could do for her. I wondered if Diana’s family had been told. She had two sons in high school and I felt bad for them. My own children had had such a difficult time when my husband, Thaddeus, had been killed by a drunk driver.

  Lucy and I went around offering our help with decorating where needed. I kept an eye on the clock and seven o’clock was here before I knew it. Lucy and I headed back to our booths.

  Kids in costumes streamed through the doors with parents in tow, stopping at each booth to trick or treat and collect a handful of candy. Halloween was one of my favorite holidays. I got a kick out of seeing the little ones dressed up, plus I got to relive my high school days in my cheerleader costume. What could be better?

  “Trick or Treat!” a little girl dressed as Cinderella said. Someone had taken the time to put makeup on her, including false eyelashes, complete with glitter on the ends of the lashes.

  “Hi, sweetie, how are you?” I said, reaching for the bowl of candy I had put out for the kids.

  “Fine,” she said shyly. “My grandma brought me here.”

  “She did?” I said and I picked up a handful of candy for her. She was adorably shy.

  She nodded at me and looked behind her. I looked up as Mary Payne was walking toward us with a smaller girl in tow. Ah, so these are the mayor’s daughters. Mary Payne was the former principal of the only high school in Sandy Harbor, and mother of the town’s mayor.

  “Hello, Allie,” Mary said with a smile. �
��I have another trick or treater.”

  “So I see!” I said brightly. The little girl she led to my booth looked to be about four and was even shyer than her sister. She was dressed as sleeping beauty and was just as adorable as her big sister.

  “Say trick or treat,” Mary coached.

  The little girl turned and buried her face in Mary’s side.

  “I’m sorry,” Mary said, looking at me. “She’s a shy one.”

  “That’s okay,” I said and picked up another handful of candy. “She gets candy just for being cute.”

  “Thank you,” Mary said as I dropped it into the little girl’s bag. “Oh, is Diana here?” she asked, looking over at Diana’s booth.

  “Um, no, she’s indisposed,” I said. It sounded lame, but I didn’t want to blurt out that she was dead, especially in front of the little girls.

  “Oh, that’s a shame,” Mary said. “I know she worked so hard on setting up the bazaar. I wanted to congratulate her on a job well done. Will she be here later?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Gosh, I haven’t spoken to her,” I said. Which was completely true. I hadn’t spoken to her because she was already dead when I got here.

  “Well, that is disappointing. I would have expected her to be here reaping the fruits of her hard work. I’m so glad Diana was chosen to run the bazaar. She does such a great job on everything she does. If you see her, tell her I said hello,” she said with a smile, and took the girls by the hand and moved on to another booth.

  “I sure will,” I said to myself. There was going to be a lot of surprise in the community when the news got out. I hoped Ellen Allen wasn’t posting it on Facebook. That would be awful, especially if Diana’s sons found out that way.

  “How much for a piece of pie?” Charles Allen asked, leaning over my booth to look at the assortment of pies. He must have just gotten off work from his job as a fry cook at Henry’s Home Cooking Restaurant because he smelled like onions.

  “Four dollars,” I said. He narrowed his eyes at me. Charles and I sort of had a history. We both had been suspects in Henry Hoffer’s murder. I knew I hadn’t done it, so I was convinced it was him. Then he had squealed on me and told Detective Alec Blanchard that I had had an argument with Henry the night before his murder. Of course, that put the spotlight on me. He also happened to be Ellen Allen’s cousin, and I was suspicious of her, so now I was suspicious of him again.