Bake Off
Page 1
Bake Off
Cozy Mystery
S Y Robins
Contents
Copyright
About the Author
About the Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
BONUS
Crafty Murder
The Death Next Door
Murder by Cheesecake
Gone Missing
Spicy Murder
Copyright © Lovy Books Ltd, 2016
S Y Robins has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Lovy Books Ltd
20-22 Wenlock Road
London N1 7GU
About the Author
S.Y. Robins lives in Surrey, England and is a short story author. Despite being partially blind and suffering from kidney failure at a young age, she is perpetually happy and lives in a laughter filled home. S.Y. has turned her personal tragedy into unimaginable strength by envisioning brand new worlds through her writing.
When not writing she spends time with her guide dog, Mochi and reading anything she can get her hands on.
It is very important for S. Y. Robins that her book is available for the visually impaired like herself. After finding out that Braille production is rather expensive for small indie author like herself, S. Y. Robins has decided to make her book available in the version of Audio book. Her first book, Scoop Away is now available to buy on Audible and iTunes.
About the Book
Suzanna has always dreamed of more. For years, she’s wanted to move to the big city and open a tearoom with her family cookie recipes and proper Southern sweet tea. And finally, it’s all in reach—in two weeks, she’ll be heading to Savannah to meet with a potential business partner.
There’s just one small problem: she’s been framed for murder.
No matter how Suzanna pleads her case, the fact is that she and Joel Smith were arch-rivals pretty much from kindergarten onward. Joel pulled her hair, copied her homework, and later, at a school competition, took the cookies she’d baked and passed them off as his own. Charming and handsome, Joel was everyone’s favorite. And now, he’s missing and an anonymous tip has said that Suzanna was seen pushing him into the river. If Suzanna can’t prove it wasn’t her, she’ll be locked up and her dreams will be gone forever. But there are no leads other than her…
1
Suzanna emerged from the county jail into the flash and click of cameras and shouted questions. Blinking in the sunlight, disoriented, she clung to her sister’s hand as she was hurried down the steps and across the sidewalk to her mother’s waiting car.
“Don’t talk,” her sister intoned. “Don’t say anything.”
She wouldn’t have—she couldn’t think of anything at all to say. None of this made sense. But as she turned her head to look at the reporters, Suzanna knew that pictures of her shell-shocked face were going to make it into every local paper tomorrow, and would probably be plastered across the websites by this afternoon also. She had hardly slept in the little jail cell. She was rumpled, afraid, with her makeup half worn off…
Eliza pushed her into the car almost like a police officer, hand on her head, and Suzanna curled into the seat, turning her face away as reporters crowded around the car. They fell back only reluctantly at her mother’s liberal use of the horn, and the minivan sped off toward the highway.
“Where are we going?” Suzanna asked hesitantly.
“Our house.” Her father turned to look at her, his eyes full of pity. “We went and got some things from your place, Suzanna, but there are reporters just camped outside there. We didn’t think you’d want to be there, especially alone. We made up the guest bedroom for you."
Suzanna felt her eyes well up with tears at the kindness. None of them were asking her if she’d done it. They didn’t even consider that she might have. As far as her family was concerned, this was all just a terrible mistake and everything would get cleared up soon—and they were here to give her support while her lawyer figured everything out.
But Suzanna hadn’t trusted her lawyer since the moment she first saw the woman. Overworked and brusque, the woman would only say that the case didn’t look good, and Suzanna was seriously doubting her ability to follow through on promises of tracking down other leads and alibis. The law’s hands were tied, everyone kept telling her. She was the only suspect. They had to do something.
“I didn’t murder Joel,” she said finally.
There was a stricken sort of silence and her mother turned off the radio. Everyone looked at her, even her mother.
“We know, darling,” she said quietly, before returning her eyes to the road.
“I just…had to say it.” Suzanna felt her eyes well up with tears. Twisting her head, she could already see news vans behind them. This was the biggest news in Droefield since last winter, when someone had tried to drive a tractor over the paper-thin ice of the river. “And no one seems to believe me.”
“Darling, no one really thinks you did it.”
“They do, though! The police put it all out there and then I was arrested and it’s like people don’t even care if they believe it or not, they’re just excited to see the spectacle of it all. And…next week…”
Next week was supposed to have been the best week of her life. She was finally breaking out of this tiny town, making her dream come true. All of her hard work had paid off, and she was on her way to meet with investors so she could start Suzanna’s Sweet Eats—in Savannah, far away from the gossip and terrible, endless boredom of a small town. In the city, Suzanna was sure that her family recipes and small-town charm would win the hearts of anyone who ventured through her doors.
Only it seemed the world wasn’t going to let her live that dream.
She had been so close.
“Okay, get ready to run.” Her father’s voice was tight. “Eliza, the door.”
“Got it.” Eliza was out of the car even before it stopped, running ahead of them to the front door, and Suzanna’s father ushered her out the next moment. She was herded into the house not a moment too soon, reporters swarming out of their cars and onto the sidewalk, and as her mother locked the door with a grimace, Suzanna burst into tears.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Her mother reached out to enfold her in a hug, and Suzanna stooped to lay her head on her mother’s shoulder. She had outgrown her mother’s five foot-nothing frame, but there was nothing more comforting than a mother’s hug.
Suzanna straightened up with a sniff, wiping her eyes and looking at herself in the hall mirror. Her auburn hair was mussed, and her green eyes were red rimmed. The heart shaped face that normally looked so sweet now looked suspicious even to her. Were there murderous intentions behind those green eyes? It would be so scandalous if a pretty Southern girl killed a man like that, wouldn’t it? She could just hear the twitters of the old ladies as they gossiped.
“So…explain to me what they even think happened?” Eliza’s voice was skeptical.
“Eliza!” Her mother shushed her.
“I want to know!”
“You can read the papers.”
“But Suzanna says they’re not—”
“It’s fine,” Suzanna interrupted. “I can tell. It’s fine.” She glared at them both, the little sister with short dark hair and a fierce grimace on her face, and her mother with the grey hair pulled back neatly. Despite their coloring and age, there was no mistaking the resemblance. Suzanna was the odd one out there, as she was in so many things.
“Only if you want to, darling,” her mother said cautiously. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to bake.” Suzanna hurried into the kitchen and began pulling out cookie sheets, setting the oven, pulling out bowls. Flour came down from her mother’s top shelf in its metal canister, sugar was pulled out of a cupboard, and Suzanna set about assembling the spices while her family watched. From their expressions, she was beginning to look a little bit deranged. “Baking calms me,” she said moodily, and thankfully none of them commented on her tone of voice.
As she put the butter into the microwave to soften—she was not waiting for it to sit out—Suzanna sighed.
“So, two weeks ago, Joel sent me a message on Facebook.”
“I thought he hated you.” Eliza leaned on one of the counters.
“No, I hated him. Joel…didn’t care about me.” Suzanna couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice, and she took a deep breath, resting her hands on the counter. “But I didn’t kill him.”
“We know that.” Her father’s voice was deep. He came to take her shoulders. “Suzanna, everyone who’s ever met you knows that the tip was a lie.”
Suzanna couldn’t match his cautious smile. She turned away, taking the plate of butter out, and dumped the contents into a mixing bowl. Sugar followed, and she set to creaming the two.
“He said he wanted to make amends and start over.”
“How much could he start over?” Eliza’s voice was skeptical. “Isn’t he married?”
“Exactly. That was my first thought, too.” Suzanna shook her head. “But it’s not like we ever dated.”
“Everyone kind of thought you might, though, didn’t they?”
“You aren’t helping, you know.”
“Sorry.” Eliza took out one of the stools by the buffet counter and curled onto it, one leg up and her chin propped on her knee. The golden light that filtered through the windows lit her dark hair to a warm brown. The place was small, close, already warming as the oven threw off heat. It would have been claustrophobic to have four people here if Suzanna wasn’t lost in memory.
“So he wanted to meet up, and I said it was fine and he could forget everything. I didn’t want anything to do with him.”
“Wow, that’s cold.”
“I’d been burned before.” Suzanna gave her a look. “He’s not exactly the world’s nicest man, but everyone gets taken in by him. My friends didn’t even believe how bad he was.”
There wasn’t even a good reason for it. Joel Smith might be disrespectful, lazy, and downright mean, but he looked the part of the all-American heartthrob. From his soft golden hair to his warm blue eyes and chiseled jawline, Joel was the guy every girl wanted to be with, and every guy wanted to befriend. Suzanna had watched as he left a trail of broken hearts through the school, and the girls didn’t even blame him for it for a moment.
And for some reason, Joel had always, always picked on Suzanna. In first grade it was pulling her hair. In second grade it was dumping her notebooks in a mud puddle. In third grade, he snuck into the changing room and hid her clothes. By sixth grade, things had escalated to claiming her homework was his, getting her in trouble for his cheating, and spreading ugly rumors behind her back. And while all the rumors stuck and Suzanna cried in the high school bathrooms, everyone laughed and told her how funny the pranks were. No one seemed to understand why she might want to leave this town behind.
“Honestly,” she said now as she folded oats into the batter, “I thought he was just setting me up for another prank.”
“Well…that’s true.” Eliza looked at her sadly. “Then what?”
“He kept pestering me, and I finally thought if I just went and got a cup of coffee with him, he’d leave me alone. I don’t know, I guess I’d thought he might have changed.” Suzanna shook her head. “He kept asking questions about the bakery, and I must have let slip more than I realized and…” She leaned on the counter, squeezing her eyes shut.
“And what?”
“Last week, the people called to say they’d heard from my manager how I was a bad employee and they didn’t think they wanted to work with me anymore. And I called him and he said he’d wanted to work with them so of course he had to get me out of the way.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “And when he told me he was fishing at the river, I just stormed down there without thinking.”
“Did you see him?”
“No! He wasn’t there at all, it had been another trick, he was probably at his house or across the street, watching me storm off…” Suzanna shook her head. “And then that afternoon…”
Well, that afternoon the police had called to say that someone said they saw her push Joel into the river and drown him.
2
“Well, but there has to be other leads.”
“I’m telling you there aren’t.” Suzanna slammed one of the cupboards with feeling and stared at her mother. “They say there’s no one else. No one’s found Joel’s body, and…”
“Well, they shouldn’t have arrested you before they had a body,” Eliza opined from the living room.
“You’re not helping!” Suzanna yelled. She turned away to look out the window, tears gathering in her eyes. Leaves were drifting prettily onto the lawn and somehow that made it worse. She loved fall, loved everything about it, and this fall was supposed to be the best autumn of her life. And how was she spending it? As a suspect for murder in what was beginning to feel like some sort of Halloween nightmare.
Halloween. The only thing she didn’t like about fall.
“Darling.” Her mother had not left.
“Go away. I’m going to make a cake.”
“In a minute. Listen to me, there have to be other leads they’re looking at. Anyone Joel knew is a person of interest right now.”
“But they’re sure it was me! They know what he did right beforehand, they have everyone telling them how he and I hated each other in school, everything is lining up. And they have the tip, and what can I tell them? I was there. And I was alone.”
She pushed her way back to the cupboards. Her mother didn’t budge.
“What? I need the flour, move.”
“I’m not moving until you give me one name,” her mother said.
“What? Why?” But Suzanna knew why. Her mother was part of this town through and through, and while the ladies no longer met up for tea every week, their gossip network thrived on through text messages. “I’m not going to start anything on that texting circle of yours.”
“Of course not, dear.” But her mother was giving her the look of steely-eyed determination that Southern women were famous for. Delicate flowers they might appear, but underneath they were tough as nails. She did not need to repeat her request for a name.
“Fine.” Suzanna caved. “What about his wife?”
“Emma? A very good thought.” Her mother moved aside gracefully. “And darling, maybe this cake should be vanilla.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve made eight already and the Gundersons—you know the Gundersons, darling—have a birthday party tomorrow. We could frost it and drop it off.”
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
“I’m taking it very seriously. You, on the other hand, are being defeatist.” Her mother left, already pulling out her phone, and Suzanna heaved a sigh as she pulled out the ingredients. Plain, old, boring vanilla cake. She’d make it vanilla bean with homemade frosting if she was at home, but she wasn’t, and her parents didn’t stock some of the more esoteric ingredients.
Her vanilla bean cake was the cake. The
Cake, always with a capital T, capital C. The cake that was going to make her famous in Savannah. The cake, as it happened, that Joel had tried to steal the recipe for in high school, when Suzanna was still perfecting it. Everyone who ate it wanted more. Everyone who ate it told their friends. It was incredible. Up until now, The Cake had been the one thing Suzanna was known for in this town. She figured the murder would probably come out on top without a fight.
It occurred to her that she was almost as angry about that as she was about being framed for murder.
She stopped, in the middle of stirring the cake batter. Had she been framed? That was the only thing that made sense, wasn’t it? Not to the police, of course. To them, Suzanna had a motive and there was evidence. But she knew she hadn’t done it, so she knew that the person who called in the tip was either wrong…or lying.
And who would lie? Emma, perhaps? It might even be out of pure motives, thinking Suzanna had killed Joel and wanting there to be evidence.
“I have to go talk to Emma,” she said, when her mother came back into the kitchen.
“I was just about to suggest the same thing.” Her mother raised her eyebrows. “Why do you say so?”
“You first.” Susanna frowned. “What did you hear?”
“A great deal of interesting things.” Her mother gestured with the phone. “For one, Emma and Joel just took out big life insurance policies on Joel.”
“Emma took one out on him?”
“It’s not actually uncommon,” her mother said, with the tone of voice she used for recently acquired knowledge on which she now considered herself an expert. “It’s easier when the person dies, because the one who owns the policy is still alive.”
“Oh. But they both took ones out on him, you said. They didn’t just swap.”