An Ale of Two Cities

by Sarah Fox

  I wasn’t mistaken.

  “Aunt Gilda?”

  “Merry Christmas, honey.” She wrapped me in a hug as Grayson shut the door behind her.

  I returned the hug, surprised and confused, but ready to burst with happiness.

  “I don’t understand,” I said when I pulled back. “You’re supposed to be in Savannah.”

  “Not this year.” Aunt Gilda gave me another squeeze before unbuttoning her coat. “I’m going for New Year’s instead. I wanted to spend Christmas with you and we decided to surprise you.”

  I glanced at Grayson. He was grinning.

  “Is that what you two were whispering about at the snowshoe race?” I asked them.

  Grayson laughed. “We weren’t whispering, but yes.”

  “I wanted to be here for your first Christmas in Shady Creek,” Aunt Gilda said.

  “I’m so glad you are,” I told her.

  She handed me a gift bag.

  “But you already gave me a gift,” I protested.

  “And now I’m giving you another one.”

  I peeked into the bag and saw a thin, square book.

  While Gilda unwound her scarf and Grayson hung her coat in the closet, I pulled the book out of the bag. Tears welled in my eyes. It was a photo book, the kind you could design and order online. On the front was an old photo of my dad lifting me up so I could put a star on the top of our family’s Christmas tree.

  I opened the book and turned the pages. Aunt Gilda had filled it with pictures from Christmases past, mostly photos featuring me and my dad. Here and there, among the pictures, were copies of the inscriptions he’d written in the books he’d given me over the years.

  Suddenly everything made sense. “I thought someone had stolen the books,” I said, struggling not to cry. “But then they reappeared.”

  Aunt Gilda squeezed my arm. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice they were gone. I only took two at a time so it wouldn’t be so obvious. I’m sorry for making you worry.”

  I shook my head. “It’s okay. Better than okay.” I closed the book and hugged it to my chest. “This is perfect. Thank you.”

  “I know you miss him, but you’ve got beautiful memories.”

  I nodded, fresh tears welling in my eyes. “I do.”

  I slipped the book back into the gift bag for safekeeping. Grayson offered Aunt Gilda some apple cider and she followed him toward the kitchen. I was about to trail after them when the doorbell rang again.

  “Sadie, would you mind getting that?” Grayson called as he disappeared from sight.

  I set the gift bag on the foyer table and wiped away the stray tear that had managed to escape one of my eyes.

  I opened the door, wondering who else Grayson had invited to dinner.

  My jaw dropped.

  I let out a scream of excitement and threw myself at my younger brother, wrapping him in a bear hug.

  “Taylor!” I squeezed him hard before stepping back. “I can’t believe it.”

  Taylor grinned, the cold wind ruffling his blond hair.

  “Merry Christmas, Sis.”

  I pulled him inside and shut the door.

  Grayson and Aunt Gilda returned to the foyer, Gilda with a steaming mug in hand. They both had smiles on their faces.

  “You were in on this too,” I said to both of them.

  “We thought it would be a good surprise,” Aunt Gilda said.

  “You’re not kidding.”

  I hugged Taylor again. I hadn’t seen him in months and I’d missed him terribly.

  “I don’t understand. You were going to Costa Rica.”

  “Still am,” he said as he pulled off his gloves. “Just not for another four days.”

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  Aunt Gilda put an arm around my shoulders. “You’ve had a lot of changes in your life over the past year. We wanted to make sure you had a memorable Christmas.”

  I beamed at all three of them.

  “It’s a perfect Christmas,” I said. “Absolutely perfect.”

  Cocktails & Recipes

  Count Dracula Cocktail

  4 oz blood-orange juice

  2 oz cranberry juice

  ½ oz simple cinnamon syrup

  ¼ oz coconut rum

  cinnamon stick

  Fill a cocktail shaker ¾ full with ice. Add all ingredients. Shake vigorously and strain into a glass. Garnish with cinnamon stick. Makes one cocktail.

  Evil Stepmother Cocktail

  1 oz vodka

  ½ oz sour mix

  3 oz white grape juice

  3 oz ginger ale

  Fill a cocktail shaker ¾ full with ice. Add vodka, sour mix, and grape juice. Shake vigorously and strain into a glass. Add ginger ale and stir. Makes one cocktail.

  Evil Stepmother Mocktail

  ½ oz sour mix

  4 oz white grape juice

  4 oz ginger ale

  Fill a cocktail shaker ¾ full with ice. Add sour mix and grape juice. Shake vigorously and strain into a glass. Add ginger ale and stir. Makes one mocktail.

  Paradise Lox

  12 baguette slices, ¼ inch thick

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  6 tablespoons salmon cream cheese

  1¼ teaspoons lemon juice

  1¼ teaspoons dried dill

  3 oz lox

  Preheat oven to 350° F.

  Brush both sides of each baguette slice with olive oil. Place slices on baking sheet and bake in oven for 3 to 4 minutes. Turn slices over and bake for another 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.

  Mix together the cream cheese, lemon juice, and dill. Spread some of the mixture on each baguette slice. Top with a piece of lox. Serve.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to extend my sincere thanks to several people whose hard work and input made this book what it is today. I’m truly grateful to my agent, Jessica Faust, for helping me bring this series to life, and to my editor, Martin Biro, for taking a chance on this series and for his enthusiasm and guidance. The entire Kensington team has been fabulous and I love the beautiful covers the art department has created. I’m also grateful to Samantha McVeigh and the rest of the publicity department for all their hard work. Thank you to Sarah Blair and Jody Holford for reading my early drafts and cheering me on, and to the Cozy Mystery Crew, my review crew, and all my wonderful friends in the writing community.

  In USA Today Bestselling Author Sarah Fox’s delicious Pancake House Mystery, it’s up to Marley McKinney to sort through a tall stack of suspects . . .

  CRÊPE EXPECTATIONS

  Although it’s a soggy start to spring in Wildwood Cove, the weather clears up just in time for the town to host an amateur chef competition. Marley McKinney, owner of the Flip Side pancake house, already signed up to volunteer, and chef Ivan Kaminski is one of the judges. But when Marley visits her landscaper boyfriend Brett at the site of the Victorian mansion that’s being restored as the Wildwood Inn, she discovers something else pushing up daisies: human remains.

  The skeleton on the riverbank washed out by the early-spring floodwaters belonged to eighteen-year-old Demetra Kozani, who vanished a decade earlier. While the cold case is reopened, Marley must step in when some of the cook-off contestants fall suspiciously ill. Stuck in a syrupy mess of sabotage and blackmail, it falls to Marley to stop a killer from crêping up on another victim . . .

  Read on for a special excerpt of Crêpe Expectations, on sale now.

  Chapter 1

  A banner with bold lettering rippled in the breeze. It gave a snap now and again when a stronger gust tried to wrest it free of the table it was fastened to, but it remained in place, the thick paper refusing to tear. So far the banner had done its job, grabbing people’s attention and directing them to the table where I sat with a stack of papers in front of me.

  “Looks like we’ve got the makings of a great competition this year,” Patricia Murray commented from the chair next to mine.

&
nbsp; “I had no idea it would be this popular,” I admitted, running my eyes down the list of names written on one of the papers.

  I leaned back in my folding chair and stretched my legs under the table set up in the parking lot of Wildwood Cove’s grocery store. It was early on a Saturday afternoon, and normally at that time of day I’d be at my pancake house, the Flip Side, closing up and tidying the restaurant. Today, however, I’d agreed to volunteer my time to help with registration for the Olympic Peninsula’s annual amateur chef competition.

  Each year, one of the peninsula’s communities hosted the competition, and this time it was Wildwood Cove’s turn. The event would take place over the following three weekends, and already several residents of Wildwood Cove and other towns had signed up. I’d been sitting at the registration table for two hours, and people were still arriving to put their names down for either the teen division or the adult category.

  “I was worried with all the rain this year that most people wouldn’t want to come out and participate,” Patricia said. She owned a bed-and-breakfast three properties away from my beachfront Victorian, and she was also on the organizing committee for the amateur chef contest.

  “We’re definitely lucky the weather decided to change,” I said before Patricia greeted the latest person to approach the registration table.

  I’d spent many of my summer vacations in Wildwood Cove while growing up in Seattle, but I’d only moved to the seaside town permanently the previous spring and had never been present for the cooking competition. It sounded like fun, though, and I was eager to be involved with the community, so I hadn’t hesitated to volunteer when Patricia had asked me to help out. My participation would be limited to assisting with registration, but I’d been assured that I was providing some much-needed help.

  As Patricia registered a teenage girl with dark hair even curlier than mine, I breathed deeply, enjoying the fresh air and the lack of rain. The peninsula had seen very little sunshine over the past two months, and the rainfall had been so heavy and persistent that the nearby river had flooded its banks, damaging some homes and causing a slew of problems. Now that we’d had a few days without any rain, the floodwaters were finally receding, allowing everyone to breathe easier, even though many people had a long road of cleanup and restoration ahead of them.

  I sat up straighter when I noticed a fifty-something woman approaching the registration table. She had her light brown hair tied back in a bun, and she walked with careful steps. A man about her age followed along behind her and hung back when she reached the table. I greeted her and provided her with the registration form. Her name was Dorothy Kerwin, I noted as she filled in the form with her name, address, and the division she was entering. When she’d completed the form, I provided her with the booklet that every entrant received. It contained the rules and the event schedule.

  “Hi, Dorothy,” Patricia said with a smile when she’d finished registering the teenage girl. “How are you doing these days?”

  “Better, thank you,” Dorothy replied with a hint of a smile.

  “Are you ready to go, Dot?” the man hovering behind her asked as he glanced at his watch.

  “Sorry,” she said to me and Patricia. “I’d better be on my way.”

  Despite the man’s impatience, he didn’t hurry Dorothy once they set off, one of her arms tucked into his.

  “Had you met Dorothy and Willard Kerwin before today?” Patricia asked me once we were alone.

  “No.”

  “The poor woman has been through a lot over the past year or two. She fell off a stepladder and broke her back, and then her twin sister passed away while Dorothy was still in the hospital.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said, with a surge of compassion for the woman.

  “I think this is the first time she’s participated in any community event since all that happened, so it’s nice to see her getting involved.”

  I was about to agree with her when I caught sight of my boyfriend, Brett Collins, out of the corner of my eye. I smiled and waved as he approached, carrying two take-out cups from the local coffee shop, the Beach and Bean. The light breeze ruffled his blond hair as he reached the table.

  “A coffee for you, Patricia,” he said, setting one of the cups in front of her. “And a matcha latte for you, Marley.” He handed the second cup to me.

  We both thanked him. Since no one was waiting to be registered at that moment, I got up to give him a hug and a quick kiss.

  “Did you get something for yourself?” I asked.

  “Yep. A sandwich and a coffee. I put them in the truck.”

  “I’m guessing you have to head back to work now?”

  “I do, but I should be done for the day in about three hours.”

  He was on his lunch break from his landscaping work at an old Victorian mansion that would soon be opening to guests as the Wildwood Inn. Brett ran his own lawn and garden business, and the new owners of the mansion had hired him to landscape and prepare the gardens before the inn’s grand opening, which would be marked by a garden party later in the month. The mansion’s owners, Lonny and Hope Barron, had spent the past several months restoring the Victorian and getting it ready for its new life as an inn.

  “I’ll see you at home, then,” I said, leaning into him for another hug before reluctantly releasing him.

  “Hello, everyone!” Brett’s sister, Chloe, breezed over to us, her blue eyes bright.

  She caught sight of the cups Patricia and I held. “Drinks from the Beach and Bean? That’s where I’m headed.”

  “That makes more sense,” Brett said.

  “More sense than what?” Chloe asked.

  “For a second there I thought you were here to register for the cooking competition.”

  “Why wouldn’t that make sense?” Patricia asked as Chloe’s smile morphed into a frown.

  Brett slung an arm across Chloe’s shoulders. “Because my kid sister couldn’t cook to save her life.”

  “I can so cook,” Chloe retorted, giving him a shove. She looked to me for support.

  “You make good cookies,” I said. “I know that much.”

  “You mean the ones Jourdan made for the Fourth of July barbecue?” Brett asked, referring to their cousin.

  “Hey, I helped,” Chloe protested.

  “Right. I seem to recall that you spooned the dough onto the cookie sheets and Jourdan did the rest.”

  “I’m sure you can cook,” I said to Chloe, wanting to placate her before things escalated.

  “Of course,” Brett said, trying to keep a straight face. “She can make toast, rubbery scrambled eggs, and pasta—as long as the pasta comes from a store and the sauce comes out of a jar.” He addressed his sister. “And what about that time you tried to cook a family dinner and nearly burned down the house?”

  Chloe’s gaze hardened. “It was a tiny little fire, and I put it out right away.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, and beside me Patricia was struggling to contain a smile.

  “You’re no help, Marley,” Chloe said, turning her frown on me.

  “I’m sorry.” I quickly took a sip of my latte to keep myself from laughing again.

  Chloe grabbed a pen off the table. “Registration form, please,” she said to me.

  I glanced at Brett and then back at her before handing over a form.

  “What are you doing?” Brett asked.

  “Exactly what it looks like.” Chloe wrote her name on the form. “I’m signing up for the competition.”

  “Hasn’t the town seen enough disaster lately with all the flooding?”

  Chloe pressed the pen so hard against the paper that I was surprised when it didn’t tear. “Just you wait. I’m going to make you eat your words.”

  “They’ll probably taste better than your scrambled eggs.”

  Chloe threw the pen at him. He caught it right before it smacked him in the face.

  Chloe passed me the completed form, and I gave her a booklet.

&
nbsp; “You’ll see,” she said, swatting her brother’s arm with the booklet before storming off, heading in the direction of the coffee shop.

  “Brett,” I said, “you shouldn’t tease her like that.”

  “But it’s so fun,” he said with a smile.

  I shook my head, and he wrapped his arms around me.

  “I’ve got to run,” he said into my ear. “See you later.”

  After giving me a quick kiss, he left for his truck, parked on the street. A group of three teenagers arrived to register for the youth division, so Patricia and I kept busy for the next several minutes. Two adults registered after that, but then we had another lull. Patricia’s cell phone rang, and she got up from the table, walking a few steps away before answering the call. While she was still occupied, Logan Teeves arrived and asked to register. Logan was seventeen and lived next door to me with his dad, Gerald. He’d dated Patricia’s daughter, Sienna, for a while, and although they’d broken up, they were still friends.

  “I didn’t realize you liked cooking,” I said as Logan filled out the registration form.

  He shrugged and brushed his fair hair off his forehead. “My dad doesn’t cook, so we’d always be eating takeout and frozen dinners if I didn’t learn.” He shrugged again. “It’s kind of fun.”

  “Well, I think it’s great that you’re entering.” I handed him a booklet. “Good luck.”

  Logan wandered off, and Patricia returned to the table, dropping into her seat with a worried frown on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “That was Sid Michaels on the phone.”

  “The owner of Scoops Ice Cream?”

  Patricia nodded. “He was supposed to be one of the judges for the competition, but now he has to make an unexpected trip to San Francisco. He’s not sure when he’ll be back, but he thinks he’ll be gone at least two weeks.”