Cocktails and Cowardice (Peridale Cafe Cozy Mystery Book 20) Read online

  Cocktails and Cowardice

  Peridale Cafe - Book 20

  Agatha Frost

  Contents

  About This Book

  Newsletter Signup

  Also by Agatha Frost

  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

  Thank You!

  A BRAND NEW COZY SERIES FROM AGATHA FROST!

  Vanilla Bean Vengeance - Chapter 1

  Also by Agatha Frost

  Published by Pink Tree Publishing Limited in 2020

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Pink Tree Publishing Limited.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For questions and comments about this book, please contact [email protected]

  www.pinktreepublishing.com

  www.agathafrost.com

  About This Book

  Released: April 28th 2020

  Words: 73,000

  Series: Book 20 - Peridale Cozy Café Mystery Series

  Standalone: Yes

  Cliff-hanger: No

  Julia's memories of her great-aunt Minnie Harlow are vague at best. Despite annual birthday and Christmas cards throughout her childhood, Julia has never actually met the glamorous former model and actress, so she was more than a little surprised to find out her great-aunt was alive and well and living in the south of Spain.

  Her surprise only grew when her gran, Dot, informed her that Minnie's boutique hotel, La Casa, which she ran with her daughter, Lisa, would be the stunning location of their much anticipated joint honeymoon along with Barker and Percy. Halfway through her pregnancy, Julia was looking forward to the sun, sea, alcohol-free sangria, and hopefully no sleuthing, and she also couldn't wait to get to know her distant relatives.

  But their reunion and honeymoon quickly take a turn for the worse when they arrive in the gorgeous town of Savega nestled in the tree-covered mountains. Savega has secrets, and Julia can smell them. Why is Minnie terrified of leaving her hotel? Why is Lisa pressuring her mother to sell? A ransom note, a stabbing, and suspected gang activity set Julia, and her private investigator husband, Barker, on their hardest and most personal case yet. Will they ever get to have the honeymoon they deserve?

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  Also by Agatha Frost

  Claire’s Candles

  1. Vanilla Bean Vengeance

  2. Black Cherry Betrayal

  3. Coconut Milk Casualty

  Peridale Cafe

  Book 1-10 Boxset

  1. Pancakes and Corpses

  2. Lemonade and Lies

  3. Doughnuts and Deception

  4. Chocolate Cake and Chaos

  5. Shortbread and Sorrow

  6. Espresso and Evil

  7. Macarons and Mayhem

  8. Fruit Cake and Fear

  9. Birthday Cake and Bodies

  10. Gingerbread and Ghosts

  11.Cupcakes and Casualties

  12. Blueberry Muffins and Misfortune

  13. Ice Cream and Incidents

  14. Champagne and Catastrophes

  15. Wedding Cake and Woes

  16. Red Velvet and Revenge

  17. Vegetables and Vengeance

  18. Cheesecake and Confusion

  19. Brownies and Bloodshed

  20. Cocktails and Cowardice

  1

  Julia

  No matter the condition, the weather always provided an endless source of conversation amongst the regulars in Julia’s café, and today had been no exception. Thanks to the morning news forecast of heavy rain before the end of the evening, no one had talked of anything else.

  “It simply cannot rain!” Amy Clark, the church organist, had cried earlier that afternoon while fanning herself with one of Julia’s laminated menus. “We’re having the most glorious summer in years!”

  “Decades,” amended Shilpa Patil, the owner of the post office. “I blame global warming.”

  “Thank global warning!” Amy fired back. “I’ve never seen us all with such lovely tans.”

  “The tea leaves predicted the forecast would be incorrect,” said Evelyn Wood, the mystic owner of the local B&B, “although, I’d quite like a touch of rain for my garden’s sake. My poor flowers have never looked so dry.”

  And so the conversation had continued throughout the day. Some were adamant it couldn’t possibly rain, while the rest begged for some relief from the heat.

  While Julia most enjoyed her village during the summer months, this August had been one of the hottest on record. The heat wasn’t as pleasant as usual while being twenty-one weeks pregnant. She wasn’t sure how many more nights of waking up soaked in sweat she could take.

  The fan balanced on the pile of books on Julia’s coffee table swivelled past her face again. The breeze licked at her dampened chocolatey curls, threatening to send them springing out from behind her ears. Warm air poured through the open sitting room windows, dancing the net curtains enough to reveal the perfectly clear sky. Streaks of pink and orange already stained the horizon, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky to be seen. How could the day still be so hot this close to sunset?

  Of course, in twelve hours, Julia would be on an aeroplane heading to Spain’s southern coast, where the current temperature was somehow five degrees hotter than Peridale’s sizzling thirty-one degrees celcius. If it weren’t for Spain being more equipped to deal with the heat than the usually chilly island of Great Britain, she might have suggested they go somewhere cooler for their honeymoon. Thankfully, the boutique hotel they’d booked into had air conditioning throughout.

  The fan shuddered around, teetering on the pile of hardbacks she’d pulled from Barker’s collection of vintage mystery books. Though the placement had been meant to ensure the cooler air would hit her face with each pass, the top-heavy fan had tilted its face down until only her chin, the ends of her hair, and the old shoebox of cards and photographs on her lap felt it.

  Too exhausted to move and tilt it back up, she slouched further into her favourite armchair by the fireplace, which hadn’t been lit for months, and back into the stream of the fan’s air. With her chin resting on her chest and her baby bump jutting upwards through one of the few vintage dresses that still fit twenty-one weeks into her pregnancy, she could only imagine how ridiculous she looked. The fan provided only minimal relief, but it was enough t
o justify her poor posture.

  Turning her attention back to the shoebox, she plucked out another card. The front of the card, with a log cabin nestled in fluffy snow felt vaguely familiar and was enough to indicate it had been sent at Christmas, but nothing more concrete formed in her memories. The message inside was almost identical to the others: To Julia. Merry Christmas. From your great-aunt Minnie. There were no kisses or personalised messages in any of the tatty old cards, just the same generic phrases written in the same perfect swirly handwriting.

  Julia hadn’t thought about her great-aunt Minnie in years. She’d been an enigma throughout Julia’s childhood – a glamorous model and actress who sent Christmas and birthday cards every year until Julia’s mid-teens. Each came with a cheque for ten pounds, and more bizarrely, a modelling headshot.

  They had never met in person, and yet Julia had a collection of at least two dozen signed headshots of the woman. She hadn’t remembered their existence until her gran recently unearthed the box from a dusty corner of her attic where it had lived for the best part of three decades.

  “You must remember your great-aunt Minnie!” Dot had said when she’d handed over the shoebox. “She’s your grandfather’s younger sister.”

  In Julia’s defence, Grandfather Albert died in 1974, five years before her birth. According to Dot, Minnie left the village almost immediately after to pursue her dreams of becoming a star, and she hadn’t been back since. The vague cards and gloriously 1980s photographs were all Julia had to work on.

  After the surprise of remembering her great-aunt’s existence had worn off, Julia was doubly surprised to learn Minnie was now living in the south of Spain, where she owned a small boutique hotel with her daughter, Lisa – yet another relative Julia hadn’t known existed.

  The surprise only grew when Julia learned that this boutique hotel owned by mysterious relatives was where she and Barker were going to be spending their honeymoon. Not that they were going alone; Dot and her new husband, Percy, were joining them.

  Dot had insisted on sorting out every detail of the two-week honeymoon. Even though her initial plan, which included a five-star resort in the Canary Islands, had changed when Minnie reached out after so many years, the alteration didn’t trouble Julia. She’d looked up Minnie’s hotel, La Casa, online, and it seemed like the perfect place for a relaxing vacation.

  “Wow, is that her?” asked Jessie, Julia’s nineteen-year-old adopted daughter, when she finally came in from sunbathing in the back garden. “What’s wrong with her hair? She looks like she sucked her finger and shoved it in a socket.”

  “It was the 80s.” Julia chuckled, turning the photograph over, where the handwritten date confirmed it was taken in 1984. “The makeup was loud, and the hair louder still.”

  Jessie collapsed onto the sofa and took the stack of glossy signed pictures from Julia. She flicked through them, her eyes popping out of her face as though she had never seen anything so outrageous. Jessie’s personal style had once comprised of only black hoodies, baggy jeans, and Doc Martens. However, the older she got, the more it evolved. Recently, she’d cut her long, dark hair even shorter, to just above her jaw, and dyed the tips ice blonde. She now wore less black in favour of paler shades. Her usually milky complexion had a warm, olive glow, bringing out faint freckles across her nose and cheeks, thanks to the weather.

  “Absolutely ridiculous,” Jessie said, tossing the pictures onto the coffee table and narrowly missing the stack of books holding up the fan. “I guess she’s sorta kinda my great-great-aunt?”

  “Sorta kinda.”

  “Isn’t it going to be weird meeting her for the first time and staying in her hotel?” Jessie asked, stretching out and yawning. “She must be properly ancient.”

  “I think she’s in her early seventies.”

  “Like I said, properly ancient.”

  “Well, I’m looking forward to it.” Julia placed the shoebox on the side table and picked up her leftover peppermint tea. “Not only am I looking forward to having a break from the village—”

  “Who are you, and what have you done with my mother?” Jessie cut in, arching a brow. “You were only saying this afternoon how much you were going to miss the café.”

  “And I will.” Julia rested her hand on her bump and gave it a soft rub. “But I’m also aware that I’m now halfway through this little one growing inside me, and he or she will be here before I know it. People have been warning me for weeks to ‘enjoy the calm while I can’, so I intend to. Besides, you’ve looked after the place on your own enough times now. I trust you with the café.”

  “Can I get that in writing?”

  “Very funny.” Julia pulled the cushion from underneath her back and tossed it at Jessie. “But yes, I’m looking forward to the holiday, and I’m looking forward to getting to know Minnie properly. And Lisa, for that matter. She’s around my age. According to the internet, she’s my first cousin once removed, and before you ask, I have no idea what that means, but they’re family. That’s all that matters.”

  “Get them to like you, and we can have free holidays for life.” Jessie leaned into the fan and tilted it until the cold air hit both of them; since Jessie slouched all the time naturally, Julia remained as she was. “Where’s that husband of yours, anyway? I’m starving. He went to pick up Chinese food nearly an hour ago.”

  “Good point.” Julia reached for her phone, which had been facedown on the side table and no doubt set to silent. “Oh, three missed calls and a text message. ‘Sorry, had to rush off to do one last thing for Mrs Morton. She’s paying me triple time. Promise it’s the last thing for the next two weeks. Will be back tonight.’ Oh.”

  “So, no Chinese?”

  “I guess not.” Julia quickly replied and let him know there was no problem. “I haven’t been shopping since we won’t be here, but there’s frozen pizza in the freezer?”

  “Life’s too short for frozen pizza, Mum.” Jessie pulled her phone from her pocket. “Leave it with me.”

  Forty minutes later, a fresh pizza arrived as the last of the light faded from the sky. The sun slipping over the horizon took some heat with it, but the air left behind was still thick and humid.

  They ate pizza while watching an old repeat of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? By the time the last contestant, fifty-seven-year-old Steve from Wiltshire, walked home with only £8,000 because he didn’t know that ‘Funny Spice’ wasn’t a member of the Spice Girls, Jessie was yawning every couple of minutes and clearly ready for bed.

  “Don’t get up,” Jessie said, taking the last slice of pizza as she stood. “I can’t bear those groaning sounds you make every time you get out of a chair these days.”

  “My middle doesn’t move like it used to.” Julia pulled herself upright from her slouch, resisting the urge to grunt or groan. “You try having a belly this big.”

  “I’m alright, thanks.” Jessie leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Have a nice honeymoon and all that. Send a postcard, if those are still a thing. And don’t worry about anything here. For the next two weeks, Peridale doesn’t exist for you. I’ve got it all covered. The café, Mowgli, your plants. It’ll all be here in one piece when you get back.”

  “I have complete faith in you.”

  “I’m glad one of us does.” Jessie winked. “Kidding, of course.”

  Jessie tossed her denim backpack over her shoulder and headed for the door with one final wave. Julia thought she was going to leave without following through with her usual routine, but Jessie stopped and popped her head into the guest room, as usual. It hadn’t been Jessie’s bedroom since she moved into the small flat above the post office next to the café five months earlier, but she still looked in every time she stopped by. Not much had changed, except the addition of boxes of flatpack nursery furniture Barker had been promising he’d put up for weeks. Julia had also thrown paint samples on the wall. They had yet to decide on a shade of yellow.

  For the next few hours, Julia pottered a
round the cottage packing up the last of her holiday things, one eye always on her watch. She’d grown used to Barker’s late-night investigations since the start of his private investigation business earlier in the summer. He’d already had a handful of small local cases, although Mrs Morton had been the most demanding of them. She also happened to be the wealthiest, and it seemed she’d pay any price to prove her suspicions of her husband’s infidelity.

  Julia tried to force herself to stay awake for Barker. Still, when the hands slipped past midnight, she drifted off in the armchair with another Millionaire? repeat playing in the background.

  A little after one in the morning, a key slotting into the front door stirred her from her light sleep.

  “Don’t get up,” Barker whispered, kissing her on top of the head, a bunch of red roses in his hand. “I’m so sorry I’m this late. Mr Morton has had quite a night of it.”

  “It’s alright.” Julia rubbed her eyes and sat up as much as she could. “Have you proved Mrs Morton’s theory?”

  “Not quite.” He handed over the flowers. “But I think he might have a serious gambling addiction. Followed him to two different casinos in the city, and it looked like he was kicked out of both. You go back to sleep, and I’ll quickly pack my case.”