Cupcakes and Casualties (Peridale Cafe Cozy Mystery Book 11)

  Cupcakes and Casualties

  Agatha Frost

  Published by Pink Tree Publishing Limited in 2018

  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 pinktreepublishing@gmail.com

  www.pinktreepublishing.com

  www.agathafrost.com

  Edited by Keri Lierman and Karen Sellers

  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

  Thank You!

  Also by Agatha Frost

  Newsletter Signup

  About This Book

  Released: March 27th 2017

  Words: 51,000

  Series: Book 11 - Peridale Cozy Café Mystery Series

  Standalone: Yes

  Cliff-hanger: No

  The residents of Peridale don't like change, so when the famous actress, Candy Bennett, rolls into the village to demolish a historic cottage, things don't go as smoothly as she would have hoped. With the 'Peridale Preservation Society' protesting her plans to build a modern home on the land, things quickly turn sour. Days into the project, Candy's lead builder, Shane, is murdered and the task to solve the mystery once again falls into Julia's lap.

  Did one of the protestors kill the builder to make a statement, or was he murdered by someone from within his own team? With the preservation society, the actress, the architect, and the builders all keeping secrets, Julia soon has her hands full gathering evidence, but it's a familiar-looking new arrival in the village that commands her attention. Julia's life is torn apart when she learns of the stranger's true identity, but will she be able to focus on the challenging case before another body turns up? The only certainty is that Julia's life will never be the same again.

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  Also by Agatha Frost

  The Scarlet Cove Seaside Series

  Dead in the Water (Book 1) - OUT NOW

  Castle on the Hill (Book 2) - OUT NOW

  Stroke of Death (Book 3) - OUT NOW

  The Peridale Cafe Series

  Pancakes and Corpses (Book 1) - OUT NOW

  Lemonade and Lies (Book 2) - OUT NOW

  Doughnuts and Deception (Book 3) - OUT NOW

  Chocolate Cake and Chaos (Book 4) - OUT NOW

  Shortbread and Sorrow (Book 5) - OUT NOW!

  Espresso and Evil (Book 6) - OUT NOW

  Macarons and Mayhem (Book 7) - OUT NOW

  Fruit Cake and Fear (Book 8) - OUT NOW

  Birthday Cake and Bodies (Book 9) - OUT NOW

  Gingerbread and Ghosts (Book 10) - OUT NOW

  Cupcakes and Casualties (Book 11) - OUT NOW

  Blueberry Muffins and Misfortune (Book 12) - COMING SOON

  1

  Julia South loved the way her pearl engagement ring caught the light as she flicked through a bridal magazine by the window in her café. She was barely paying attention to the dresses on show, her eyes instead on the glittering pearl in the middle of the silver band.

  "What about this one?" Sue, her sister, asked as she spun the magazine around on the table. "This is really pretty."

  "Maybe for someone half my age," Julia replied quickly. "I'm two years off forty, and that's backless."

  "So?" Sue said with a heavy sigh. "You haven't liked any of them."

  "It's not my first time going down the aisle," Julia reminded her. "I want something classic and timeless. Something just like Mum's dress."

  "This one?" Sue stabbed her finger down on a beautiful figure-hugging dress worn by an equally beautiful slender model in her twenties.

  "Maybe if I lost a stone," Julia said with a chuckle. "Actually, make that two."

  "Why don't we join the slimming club together?" Sue said as she patted her almost flat stomach. "I feel so fat since the twins were born."

  Julia arched a brow, wondering if her sister was serious. She peered into the pram where her two-month-old nieces, Pearl and Dottie, were sleeping soundly. If Julia had not been there when the babies had been born on Christmas Day, she would not have thought they were Sue's. Her body had 'snapped back', which according to their gran, was a trait of all South women. Julia thought it had more to do with her sister being only a few weeks away from her thirty-third birthday, and if Julia ever got pregnant, she would balloon to the size of a house and stay that way until her dying breath.

  "You're already back in your old clothes," Julia said as she reached for the last piece of her cream and jam scone. "If I lost some weight, I'd instantly go out of business. Nobody in Peridale would believe I'm still sampling my cakes before selling them. They say never trust a skinny chef, but I say never trust a skinny baker."

  Sue pursed her lips as she turned to the next page in the magazine. She snapped it shut and turned it over. There was a glossy advertisement for a film on the back. The red-headed woman in the advert looked vaguely familiar, and Julia was sure she had seen her in something before, not that she could remember her name.

  "You've got cream on your chin," Sue said as she stood up. "I should go home before these two wake up. I can feel a feed coming on. They don't tell you about the sixth sense you develop when you become a mother, but I just know when they’re about to get hungry."

  "I'll take your word for it," Julia said before leaning into the pram to kiss her sleeping nieces on their foreheads. "I want a cuddle next time. They're always asleep when you come and see me."

  "Because it's the only time of day I get any peace," Sue said with an exhausted chuckle. "I had to buy industrial strength under-eye concealer to stop people from asking if I was 'coping'."

  "Well, your big sister thinks you're coping just fine," Julia said as she kissed her on the cheek. "Maybe Gran was right when she said one baby felt like one, but two felt like twenty."

  "Make that twenty-thousand." Sue waved as she headed to the door. "You've still got cream on your chin."

  Julia wiped off the cream in the reflection of a spoon. As she closed the half a dozen bridal magazines Sue had brought with her, Julia looked around her empty café.

  February had always been an uncertain month for her business. Sometimes, spring started early and brought beautiful weather, but more often than not, it was the second-coming of winter before the daffodils blossomed. The year had already brought hail, snow, and enough rain to feed the lawns of the village for the coming decade. Looking out of the window at the clear blue sky and the vibrant village green, it w
as easy to pretend it was not bitterly cold thanks to the protection of the café's radiators.

  After scooping up the magazines, Julia walked through to the kitchen. She had thought the quiet month would be a good time to start putting together ideas for the wedding, but it was proving to be more complicated than she remembered. The whole event was beginning to feel like a giant house falling from the sky to land on her at any minute.

  "Whatever happened to simple?" she mused as she flicked through one of the magazines on the stainless-steel counter in the middle of the kitchen. "None of these dresses will suit me."

  She landed on a page Sue had ear-marked. It depicted a model closer to her age than most of the women in the magazine. She was slightly shorter than the others too, but she was still incredibly slim. Julia turned to the fridge and assessed her blurry reflection in its shiny surface. She held the magazine up beside her and breathed in as far as she could.

  In her flared 1940s-style black dress with its flattering waistline and covered shoulders, she looked slimmer than she knew she was underneath it. She had been a slim child and even a slim young adult, but every year, usually around Christmas, she gained a couple of pounds. To reflect that, her dress size had slowly crept up, making her two sizes bigger than she had been on her thirtieth birthday.

  "What are you doing?" a voice asked from behind, startling her.

  Letting go of her breath, Julia spun around to see her foster daughter, Jessie, parting the pink beads into the kitchen, a confused look on her youthful face.

  "Do you think I should lose weight for the wedding?" Julia asked as she looked at the picture again. "Not a lot, just a little bit."

  "Why?" Jessie asked, arching a brow as she tucked her hands into her black hoody pocket. "You look normal."

  "Bride normal, or normal woman normal?"

  "Huh?"

  "Do you think I'd suit this dress?"

  Jessie looked down at the picture in the magazine. She gave her shoulders a shrug, her dark eyes as uninterested as Julia should have expected from a seventeen-year-old girl more comfortable in baggy black clothes and Doc Martens than dresses.

  "Wedding dresses look dumb," Jessie offered as she scratched the back of her dark hair. "Why do you care so much?"

  "Because the photographs last forever," Julia said as she stared blankly at the beaming model in the magazine. "Ignore me. I'm being silly."

  Jessie squinted and looked down her nose in the way only she could. It only lasted a second before she shrugged again and set off across the kitchen to the white boxes on the side.

  "Are they all correctly labelled?" Jessie asked, her tone switching from 'teenager' to 'adult'. "You mixed up Evelyn's fairy cupcakes with Shilpa's red velvets."

  "I'm sure they didn't mind."

  "That's not the point," Jessie snapped. "It's my name on the label, not yours."

  Julia looked at the colourful 'Jessie's Cupcakes on Wheels' logo that they had designed and made into stickers for the cake boxes. When Jessie had come to Julia with the idea of starting a cupcake delivery business to tide them over in the quiet winter months, she had thought it was a brilliant idea.

  Since then, Jessie had been taking the venture seriously, and to Julia's surprise, it had taken on legs of its own. What she had thought would start as Jessie riding around on her bike dropping off the odd cupcake here and there had resulted in orders coming in thick and fast. With the cold weather keeping people in their homes, Julia was glad her cakes were still being enjoyed around the village, and she was also pleased that it was helping the café's bank account even after Jessie had taken her cut.

  "Double checked," Julia said with a wink. "I can triple check if you want, boss?"

  "I'll take your word for it," Jessie said as she stacked the boxes. "If the orders keep coming in like this, the bike basket won't be big enough. I'll have to start taking your car."

  "Pass your test, and I'll happily let you," Julia said with a pat on Jessie's shoulder. "But until then, we'll keep the roads of Peridale safe."

  "The test guy was an idiot!" Jessie cried with a roll of her eyes. "He should have been more specific when he said, 'follow that car'. I didn't know he wanted me to stop at the lights."

  "The light was on red."

  "I was paying attention to the car!"

  "And the other five tests?"

  "Not my fault."

  "I'm sure you'll make a great driver," Julia assured her as Jessie headed back to the beads. "But until then, it's the bike!"

  Jessie mumbled something under her breath as she headed for the café door. Julia chuckled to herself as she gathered up the bridal magazines. She had lived with Jessie long enough to know that teenage mood swings made it impossible to guess which Jessie she would get from hour to hour.

  She looked down at the happy women on the covers. The only thing stopping her putting the magazines in the bin was knowing how much Sue had paid for each of them.

  "They're models," she reminded herself as she tucked them away in a drawer. "Women paid to look beautiful and sell me a lie."

  When Julia closed the drawer, her fiancé, Barker Brown, walked into the café. He was wearing his usual detective inspector suit, but it was missing the usual tie, which she quickly noticed was clutched in his fist.

  "I'm officially off for two weeks!" he exclaimed as he tossed the tie onto the nearest table. "If the station calls, I'm not answering."

  "Chocolate cake to celebrate?" Julia asked, already taking a slice of Barker's favourite from the display case. "Do you think I should lose some weight?"

  Barker lowered himself into the chair nearest the counter, a sceptical look on his face. His lips parted to reply, but the words did not form.

  "I feel like that’s a trick question," he said finally as he accepted the chocolate cake. "You look perfect as you are."

  "Perfect enough for the wedding?"

  "Whose wedding?" Barker mumbled through a mouthful of cake.

  "Ours!" Julia said, holding up her pearl engagement ring. "Unless you're retracting your Christmas Day proposal?"

  "Oh," Barker chuckled, spilling crumbs down the front of his white shirt. "Why would you want to lose weight for that?"

  "Because brides are beautiful."

  Barker’s eyes widened as he munched another mouthful of cake. Julia walked back to the counter and plopped a peppermint and liquorice teabag into a cup before filling it with hot water. After making Barker his usual Americano with an extra shot, she sat across from him, the models on her mind.

  "Are you trying to insinuate that you're not beautiful?" Barker asked, a dark brow arching up his forehead. "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever met, Julia South."

  "Love is blind."

  "And so are you if you think you need to lose weight," Barker replied with a roll of his eyes that reminded her of Jessie. "Is this that sister of yours? Has she been whispering in your ear again?"

  Julia did not say anything, but she knew her face gave it away. She blew on the hot surface of the tea to disguise her blushing.

  "You're perfect," Barker said. "And you'd still be perfect if you doubled - no - tripled in size. Do you think I really care about that?"

  Julia shrugged, knowing full well he did not care about such trivial things, but also unable to take her mind off the brides in the magazines.

  "Well, I don't," Barker said before licking the chocolate icing off his lips. "If anyone needs to diet, it's me. I think your gran was right about me getting soft around the middle. I blame your cakes."

  "I'm not forcing you to eat them."

  "But you'd be upset if I didn't," Barker whispered as he leaned across the table to kiss her gently on the lips. "You've got cream on your chin."

  Julia picked up Barker's chocolate-covered knife to use as a mirror, a speck of the cream on her chin having evaded her previous attempt to wipe it away. She rubbed until her chin turned bright red.

  "Ignore Sue," Barker said as he leaned back in the chair before unbutton
ing his shirt collar. "You look normal."

  "Bride normal or normal woman normal?"

  "Huh?"

  "Never mind," Julia said with a shake of her head, her chocolatey curls springing free of her ears. "Any plans for your two weeks off?"

  Before Barker could answer, the roaring of an engine caught their attention. They turned to the window and watched as a giant yellow digger rolled past the village green, followed by a truck carrying a giant skip. The convoy crawled towards the opening of the lane leading up to Julia's cottage before disappearing from view.

  "Looks like they're knocking down what's left of my cottage today," Barker said as he wiped his finger along the crumbs on the plate. "I wonder who the mystery buyer is."

  Five months had passed since a violent storm had destroyed Barker's cottage, forcing him to move in with Julia further up the lane. In that time, he had been trying to sell the ruins without much success until a mystery buyer reached out through their lawyers. The offer had been low, but Barker had bitten their hands off just to offload the property. The money from the sale had been enough to pay off the mortgage, leaving Barker with a couple of thousand pounds to put aside into his savings.

  In the weeks since the sale, the gossip channels had talked of little else. That chatter had only intensified when plans for a modern redevelopment had surfaced, prompting a taskforce of locals under the collective name of 'The Peridale Preservation Society' to start a petition. Many of those in the group, including Julia's gran, put part of the blame on Barker, not that he had known what was to become of his cottage when he sold it.