Pink Lemonade and Penalties

by Allyssa Mirry

  Pink Lemonade and Penalties

  Sticky Sweet Cozy Mysteries, Book 16

  Allyssa Mirry

  Summer Prescott Books Publishing

  Copyright 2019 Summer Prescott Books

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication nor any of the information herein may be quoted from, nor reproduced, in any form, including but not limited to: printing, scanning, photocopying, or any other printed, digital, or audio formats, without prior express written consent of the copyright holder.

  **This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons, living or dead, places of business, or situations past or present, is completely unintentional.

  Contents

  1. Lost in Thought

  2. Rival Thoughts

  3. The Station

  4. Cones and Cola

  5. Girl’s Night

  6. Possible Poison Points

  7. Ice Cream Meeting

  8. A Brotherly Visit

  9. Suspecting Amber

  10. The Divorcee

  11. Mel’s Marina

  12. Station Secrets

  13. A Knock at the Door

  14. Fishing Friends

  15. Realizations

  16. The Trap

  Epilogue

  Also by Allyssa Mirry

  Author’s Note

  Contact Summer Prescott Books Publishing

  1

  Lost in Thought

  Lydia was on autopilot as she created her newest flavor of saltwater taffy in her boardwalk shop. She kept replaying the night before in her mind and was barely aware of adding the pink coloring to her recipe. Luckily, she had been making so much of the end-of-summer sweet treat the last few days that she knew the proportions by heart.

  The evening had started off well. There were no open murder investigations in Ocean Point at the moment, so her detective brother had no reason to get annoyed with her if she found a reason to start hunting for clues on her own. She had unpacked most of her moving boxes, so she could say that she had officially moved into her new house, and her dog Sunny loved that its location was right in front of a dog beach. Her business was still going strong. It had been busy with tourists making their final trips to the beach before the summer season ended. Her store had been especially crowded the last week, but she still decided that they would close a little early last night so that her whole staff could attend a show that one of their coworkers was performing in.

  Kelsey was fantastic in the scenes she acted in at “Shakespeare in the Sand,” and Lydia was pleased that this show had less murderous drama backstage than the last show that her employee was involved in. The rest of the staff enjoyed supporting their friend, and her surfer employee Jeff had even said that he understood what “that Shakespeare guy” was saying when Kelsey spoke it.

  Lydia had also enjoyed the company she kept in the audience. Besides her employees, Lydia was joined by several friends. Her best friend Trina came to admire the Elizabethan hairstyles that she had helped the cast members recreate at her salon. Lydia’s brother, Leo, attended, claiming that he was there in an official capacity in case crowd control was needed, but he spent more time chatting with his girlfriend that he recently reunited with than he did reminding audience members not to litter popcorn on the beach.

  The lifeguard that Lydia had been spending a good deal of time with that summer sat beside her on a beach towel as they watched the show. However, Daniel had started to become as quiet and brooding as he had been when she had first met him. She wondered if this was because his good friends from his previous life before he moved to Ocean Point had just left after a recent visit.

  She tried to get him to talk, but he had seemed unwilling to engage. This, unfortunately, made her fall back into her old nervous habit of saying somewhat ridiculous things and putting her foot in her mouth. When she first met Daniel Brine, she began unintentionally insulting him and calling him old as she tried to explain that she thought he was older than most of the teenage lifeguards who took summer jobs at the Jersey Shore. Last night, apparently inspired by Shakespeare, she spoke at length about how much mutton she thought that Daniel could eat.

  She had been grateful when the show started, and she had to pay attention to the scenes and was forced to stop talking. Greeting the actors and congratulating Kelsey afterward had gone well too, but after that was over, Daniel asked if Lydia wanted to take a walk by the water.

  She felt happy about this, thinking that Daniel might have felt willing to open up to her again. She was half-right. Daniel did want to talk to her, but it was to tell her the one thing that she had been dreading.

  She knew that Daniel’s friend, Gavin, had been encouraging him to return to his former career in the Coast Guard. It had been something that was important to Daniel a few years prior, but he had left to care for his dying wife. After her death, he needed time to heal. He eventually moved to Ocean Point to work as a lifeguard for a needed change. However, it seemed that Daniel now was ready to go back to the life he used to have.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out the right way to tell you this,” Daniel said as they walked along the water that seemed almost ominous in the dark. “And it’s not just because of Gavin and Gwen’s visit. It’s because I’m no longer the shell of the person I used to be – like I was when I first arrived here. That’s in no small part to you. But I think I do want to return to the Coast Guard. Maybe want isn’t the right word. It’s a calling. But I want you to know how much this summer has meant to me.”

  Lydia knew that there wasn’t anything she could say to change his mind. She also didn’t want to stop someone she cared about from following his calling. At the same time, she didn’t want to listen to a rehearsed speech about how much she was cared for as she was abandoned. She had made an excuse about being cold so she could leave without finishing the conversation and hurried to find Trina who she had carpooled with.

  “Are you okay, boss?” Jeff asked, knocking Lydia out of her memories.

  “What?”

  “It’s just that you’ve been pulling that batch of taffy by hand when we usually use the machine for big batches,” Jeff said frowning. “This makes me think that something is bothering you.”

  Lydia realized that he was right. She had been absentmindedly using the candy hook on the wall that was used to stretch and pull taffy. However, because of the mass amounts of taffy that they needed to make to maintain full displays and because she didn’t want to tire every employee’s arms out, they usually used a large taffy pulling machine to aerate the candy. The hook was just in place in case she wanted to make smaller test batches of a new flavor and needed a little more pull than just the strength in her hands.

  “I suppose I am a little stressed,” Lydia admitted. However, even though she thought of her employees almost like family, she didn’t want to discuss her relationship woes on the job. “I’ve just been thinking about upcoming changes.”

  Jeff nodded. “Yeah. I get what you mean. It will be different around here when Quinn and Kelsey go back to school. And I guess we won’t be as busy here after the summer.”

  “I’m planning on having more limited hours starting in September. But there will still be work for you, Annette, and Mona if you want it. We’ll still have the locals who need their sweet teeth satisfied.”

  “And Cones and Cola is only open during the summer, so we might be the only place that they can get it,” Jeff said, referring to the ice cream shop on the boardwalk. The owner of the shop, Amber Allen, and Lydia had never really gotten along – mostly due to Amber’s decision that they should be rivals because they both sold sweets and Amber had done what she could to make life difficult for Lydia.

  “I
hope that doesn’t make her even angrier with us,” she said with a sigh before pushing the thought away. She had enough to deal with without imagining a problem before there was one.

  “Change doesn’t have to be bad though,” Jeff said, focusing on the positive. “Your taffy flavors are always changing, and people love that. I do too. And I really like this pink lemonade one.”

  Lydia smiled. “I thought it was a great choice for what might be our last big summer flavor. There will be a lot fewer people coming here to enjoy the beaches after Labor Day, but I think pink lemonade sounds like the perfect treat.”

  “And it’s the right balance of sweetness and tartness. I’m not usually one to eat pink food, but I do like this one.”

  Lydia thanked him again and then focused on finishing the taffy that she had started to pull by hand. She tried not to dwell on her feelings for Daniel and how hurt she was that he was going to leave. She knew that even though she had run away from it the night before, she was going to have to finish their breakup talk. Could it even be called a breakup if they hadn’t officially called themselves a couple? She considered it. She thought that they had been taking things slow because of their emotional baggage and losses. Maybe he simply hadn’t felt as strongly for her as she did for him.

  She sighed and wondered how long she could put off having this talk with him as she heard the shop door open.

  “Lydia, we need to talk.”

  Lydia turned to face the speaker. Though she didn’t want to have the conversation, she might have expected to hear something like this from Daniel. She didn’t expect to hear it from Amber Allen, who was now standing in the middle of her shop with mascara dripping down her face as if she had been crying.

  2

  Rival Thoughts

  Lydia was momentarily frozen. She had never seen Amber less than perfectly put together. It seemed shocking that Amber would allow herself to be seen this way, especially in front of someone that she considered an enemy.

  “Well?” Amber demanded. “Should we go to your office? Or do you want to do this here?”

  Lydia recovered quickly and handed the pink lemonade taffy mixture off to Jeff. She walked up to Amber and gestured to her office.

  “Right this way.”

  Amber stalked into the office and took Lydia’s seat behind the desk as soon as they were inside. Lydia wanted to roll her eyes at this choice but was too curious about what this was all about.

  “You probably know why I’m here,” Amber said, sniffling.

  “Well, if this is about my plans to stay open year-round, you can’t talk me out of it. I think taffy will still be popular at certain holidays and I want to maintain my staff.”

  “This isn’t about your stupid taffy shop,” Amber said angrily.

  Lydia cast around her head for something else that she could have done to upset the other woman. She finally thought of something that might merit a visit from her.

  “Is it about Brie?” she asked, referring to Amber’s reporter best friend. “I didn’t know that Detective Grey would overhear what we were saying. But I don’t think that it was right that she was dating him for exclusive scoops on stories. He thought that she really cared about him. And I won’t say that I’m upset that she can’t use him anymore.”

  “Are you toying with me?” Amber demanded.

  Lydia guessed this meant that this wasn’t the reason why she was here either. However, she didn’t know why else she would have come crying into her shop.

  “Amber, I don’t know what’s going on.”

  Amber glared at her for a few moments. Finally, she stopped and dabbed her eyes. “You haven’t heard of Bill Vector’s death?”

  Lydia shook her head. “I’m sorry. I haven’t. I didn’t know him. Did you?”

  “We’d been dating for a few weeks.”

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” Lydia said. She still wasn’t sure why Amber had come here to tell her about this, but Trina had been on a date with a man who died soon after their coffee shop visit and Lydia knew how upsetting this could be.

  “I thought you might have heard about it from your brother. Bill was murdered.”

  “Murdered? Leo told me that he doesn’t have any open murder cases.”

  Amber balled her hands up in anger. “But he was murdered. Why don’t they see that? I don’t know why the police are so hung up on the idea of suicide. Bill wasn’t the type of guy who would kill himself. He just wasn’t.”

  “I’m sure they must have evidence if they think it was suicide. Sadly, some people hide their demons and can’t ask for help. It’s not your fault if you didn’t see this coming,” Lydia said, trying to make her feel better. She wondered whether she should try putting an arm around her.

  However, it seemed that Amber had not come here in search of comfort. She jumped up from the chair and glowered.

  “I don’t think that it’s my fault. I think it’s the fault of the person who killed him.”

  Lydia took a step back. “Sorry. Look, I really hadn’t heard anything about this until you came here. Why don’t you tell me what happened? Why don’t the police think it’s murder?”

  “I don’t know exactly why they think it’s suicide,” Amber said. “It’s probably because he was alone on his boat. But he might not have been. He couldn’t have been if someone killed him. I really don’t know the details. I just know that Bill didn’t kill himself. He had a lot to live for. He was happy with his job. He was happy with his fishing. He was happy with me. He wouldn’t have done this.”

  “Did you tell this to the police?”

  Amber scoffed. “I told your stupid, ineffectual brother, and his response was to recommend that I visit a grief counselor.”

  “Don’t talk about my brother like that,” Lydia said, thinking that he had probably suggested the most reasonable course of action. Right now, it did sound more like Amber didn’t want to admit that someone she had been dating had taken his own life rather than having any proof to back up this idea.

  “Fine,” Amber said with an annoyed sigh. “Look, I don’t like being here any more than you like having me. Are you going to help me or not?”

  “Help you?”

  “Figure out who really killed Bill Vector,” Amber said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Clearly, somebody did. And if the police aren’t going to look into this, then someone needs to. I don’t know exactly how to go about doing this, but then I thought about how you’re always poking around into murder cases. I thought it was a gross habit to have, but your skills might be useful now.”

  “You want me to solve a murder for you?” Lydia asked.

  “Why are you so slow on the uptake? Yes. And I think we have to move fast. There’s a time limit on these things, isn’t there? Cases grow cold.”

  Lydia felt like she was still having trouble processing this request from Amber. Was it possible that this was some sort of trap?

  “I don’t know about this.”

  “Couldn’t you at least ask the police about the case? See what your brother says? I know that Bill didn’t kill himself, so if you talk to them, I’m sure you’ll find out something suspicious about the circumstances about his death. I’d go back and ask for details, but I might have thrown something at Detective Doherty’s head last time I was there. It missed, and he decided I was grieving and didn’t press charges. But I don’t think I should press my luck.”

  Lydia did not really want to get involved in this case. She didn’t want to do a favor for Amber when she wasn’t sure that she could trust her. She didn’t want to get in her brother’s way and annoy him when she didn’t have to. She also thought it might be worse to tell Amber that she agreed that the death was self-inflicted rather than to refuse to take on the case in the first place.

  However, at that moment, there was a knock at her door, and Daniel entered. He looked surprised when he realized that Amber was the other person inside the office but soon recovered.

  �
�Lydia, do you have a moment?” he asked.

  “No. I’m sorry,” Lydia said quickly. “I just told Amber that I would go to the police station. I need to look into a potential murder for her. And I need to go now. I don’t want the case to go cold!”

  Then, with that, she rushed out of the office.

  3

  The Station

  Lydia entered the police station feeling empty-handed. Whenever she wanted information on a case so she could help, she tried to put the detectives in a good mood by bringing a box of saltwater taffy to share. Today she had been in her shop, but she was in so much of a hurry to avoid Daniel that she left without grabbing anything. She had just made sure that Jeff and Mona would be all right without her for a little while and ran out the door.