Sweets, Suspects, and Women Sleuths Cozy Mystery Set

by Meredith Potts

  I winced at the image her story had put in my head.

  “It was crazy how quickly it happened. One minute I was arguing with him and the next he was on the ground, dead. He’d put me in such a rage that I almost felt like I was having an out of body experience. As if I was watching someone else kill him. But in reality, it was me. When I snapped out of my rage, I couldn’t believe what I’d done, how I’d let my anger get the best of me. I immediately wished that I could take it back, but it was too late. He was dead, and I’d killed him. In one moment of anger, I’d done something to change the course of my entire life.”

  Sophie looked up at me with tears in her eyes and continued.

  “I’m going to regret what I did for the rest of my life, but, no matter what I do, I can’t take it back.”

  For the first time since this case began, I believed everything she said. And, despite the recent disturbing changes in her personality, I knew she regretted what she had done. Sophie wasn’t a psychopath. She wasn’t a woman who acted with inherently malicious intent. As she had said, she’d just gotten wrapped up in the heat of the moment. Unfortunately, by allowing her anger get the better of her, she’d made a fatal mistake.

  I could hear the regret in her voice. In my heart, I knew that was genuine. The problem was, no one cared what I thought. Ultimately, it would be up to the jury to decide her fate. Most likely, that meant a life sentence. After all, she could try to rationalize her actions all that she wanted, but it wouldn’t change the fact that she’d done it. Reluctant or not, she was a killer, and nothing would change that.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “For dragging you into this. For sending you on a wild goose chase. I panicked. I know I haven’t been a good friend to you. I can’t apologize enough. I’m just so sorry.”

  I could have belabored the point and told her what a big mistake she had made, but she already knew that. As I looked into her eyes, I saw how much she was beating herself up for her actions. And, while it wasn’t easy an easy decision to make, I decided to accept her apology.

  “No, you haven’t been a good friend,” I replied. “But I forgive you.”

  Epilogue

  No matter how much I wanted them to, some Hollywood stories just didn’t have happy endings. Sophie ended up being convicted of murder and was given a life sentence. To this day, I still can’t think about that day without breaking into tears.

  Which is why, when I did think about Sophie these days, I pictured the old friend that I used to know. The one that was full of hope and optimism. The woman who always found a way to be positive, against all odds.

  In reality, I knew the Sophie I was picturing was long gone. But that was the thing about Hollywood—it was a land of dreamers. Of make believe. And when it came to my friend, I wanted to believe that the Sophie I used to know still existed, even if she was long gone.

  The End.

  The Killer Holiday Office Party

  Chapter One

  “There’s nothing like a man who knows how to cook,” I said.

  My boyfriend, Daniel Jacobsen, smiled at me as he stood in front of the stove in his kitchen. He was a tall, handsome, athletic man in his early forties with short, sandy-brown hair, hazel eyes, and soft, kissable lips.

  It turned out that Daniel knew how to do more than just cook—he was so good at it that he owned a highly popular restaurant in town. People happily parted with their hard-earned money so they could get a meal from his place. I was lucky enough to eat his food for free. As an added bonus, Daniel even baked for me at home sometimes. That was one of my favorite treats about our relationship.

  “You are only buttering me up because I’m making Christmas cookies,” Daniel replied.

  There were few words in the English language sweeter than “Christmas” and “cookies.” When combined, they were a delight to my taste buds. Daniel’s frosted sugar cookies were delicious, soft-baked, and impossible to resist.

  It was hard enough to go wrong with cookies to begin with, but Daniel had a way of making his cookies taste especially sweet. Part of it was because he didn’t skimp on ingredients. It was hard to overstate what a difference using real butter made instead of using cheap substitutes. Thankfully, he never baked with margarine.

  There was also something to be said about a dessert that was cooked with love—that was homemade and not just mass-produced for the public.

  My mouth was watering just thinking about taking a bite of his cookies. “You can’t go wrong with sweets.”

  “Tell that to my diet.” Daniel looked down at his belly. “According to my calorie count—you can’t go right with sweets.”

  “It’s the holidays. If there has ever been a time to live a little, it is now.”

  “And, there went the last of my willpower,” he cracked.

  “Don’t worry. Our diets will be waiting for us in the new year.”

  “I’ll bet they will.”

  The holidays used to be a bittersweet time for me. I loved the season and all the Christmas parties that came with it but hated stressing out about eating too much or trying to restrain my appetite. Denying myself sweets just took the fun out of going to the parties in the first place, as I spent most of the time fixating on the food other people were devouring that I had to find a way to resist. In the end, I always ended up giving in to my cravings for sweets, only to feel bad about it later.

  Recently, I had come to a realization. The holidays were going to be a diet disaster. That was just a fact. It was almost impossible to survive the Christmas season without having five extra pounds to show for it. This newfound paunch was like the Christmas present I never asked for but somehow always seemed to get anyway—very much like that pack of tube socks that my aunt always sent me.

  Knowing that it was futile to try to resist temptation during the holidays, I decided to stop the constant wrestling with my willpower. I accepted that there was no way to avoid gaining those five dreaded holiday pounds. My new plan was to lose enough weight before the holidays began as a buffer to be able to properly enjoy cookies and other sweets when the season arrived.

  I had just finished a crash diet and now had five pounds to spare, just in time to go cookie wild.

  I gazed into my boyfriend’s eyes. “Don’t worry. We’ll be just fine.”

  “Do you know what I love about you?” Daniel replied.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “No, but I’m curious to hear your answer.”

  “That you don’t lose hope.”

  “Except when I have to wait too long for cookies,” I teased.

  He leaned in and gave me a kiss. “They are coming right up.”

  My daydreams about cookies were suddenly interrupted by the sound of Daniel’s doorbell ringing.

  Daniel looked puzzled as his head turned toward his front door.

  “Are you expecting someone?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  I bit the corner of my lip, just as befuddled as he was. “Who could it be?”

  Daniel was dismissive. “It’s probably someone trying to sell me something. Just ignore it.”

  Whoever was at the door wasn’t about to give up. They gave up ringing the bell and began knocking.

  “Are you sure you want to ignore them?” I asked.

  Daniel sighed. “All right. I’ll tell them I’m not interested in whatever they are selling.”

  Just as Daniel began approaching the front door, I heard another set of knocks, which was followed by a deep voice.

  “Hope,” the male voice said.

  Daniel stopped in his tracks and raised his eyebrows. “Apparently, they want to see you.”

  The male voice called out again. “Hope, are you there?”

  My boyfriend urged me along. “You should probably get the door.”

  Even though the voice was muffled by the door, I recognized who it was. For some unknown reason, my brother, Detective Joe Hadley of the Hollywood Police Department, was at my boyfriend’s front door ask
ing for me.

  I reached the door and opened it, sure enough revealing my brother—a clean-shaven, crew-cut, blue-eyed man in his late thirties with no neck to speak of. Joe had a grim look on his face.

  Uh-oh.

  This situation had bad news written all over it. I held out hope that I was wrong. After all, it was the holidays, a time of peace and revelry. After I had been unexpectedly called into service to investigate a murder last Christmas, I was especially hoping for a tranquil holiday season this year. All of that could have been thrown in jeopardy depending on what my brother had to tell me.

  “Joe, what are you doing here?” I asked.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” Joe replied.

  “That’s what a phone is for. Why did you come all the way over here?” I said.

  “I went to your place first. When you weren’t there, I figured I could find you here.”

  “That’s not what I asked. Why didn’t you just call me?”

  Once again, my brother didn’t answer my question. “Can I please come in?”

  I called him out. “Why are you avoiding my question?”

  “I’ll explain everything. Can I just come in first?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  I let my brother in then closed the door behind him.

  “Now, what do you have to tell me?” I asked.

  Before Joe had a chance to answer, Daniel peeked his head out from the kitchen.

  “Want some cookies, Joe?” Daniel asked.

  My brother shook his head. “Thank you, but not right now.”

  “All right. Your loss,” Daniel replied.

  Daniel then returned to his cookie preparations.

  By that point, my patience was shot. I needed an answer. “Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

  Joe sat me down on the couch, which was the latest indication that trouble was to come.

  “Nick Newton is dead.”

  My jaw dropped. I was in complete disbelief—to the point where I convinced myself that I had heard that wrong. “What?”

  “It looks like the result of a burglary gone wrong,” Joe revealed.

  I wasn’t just imagining this. It was really happening. This was devastating news. Worse than I ever could have expected. No wonder my brother hadn’t wanted to deliver the news on the phone.

  Nick was an old friend of mine. We had known each other for years—dating all the way back to elementary school. For a brief time in high school, we were even a couple. It didn’t take us long to realize that our personalities were too different to ever make a romantic relationship work, but we had a surprisingly amicable breakup and had remained friends in the decades since then.

  Back in the present, for him to be dead, just like that, was almost impossible for me to fathom. That realization was even more difficult to come to grips with considering I was talking about Christmas cookies with Daniel just three minutes before I had heard this news.

  At the same time, there was something about my brother’s theory of Nick’s death being from a burglary gone wrong that didn’t sit right with me.

  I addressed that with my brother. “You think a burglar killed him?”

  Joe nodded.

  “That’s crazy,” I said.

  Joe tried to comfort me. “I know it’s hard to believe.”

  No amount of sympathy was going to make this sit right in my head, especially since my gut instinct was going wild on me.

  I corrected my brother. “You’re wrong. It’s impossible to believe.”

  “It’s not impossible. As horrible as it is, it happened. I saw his body with my own eyes. I just left his house, as a matter of fact.”

  Joe wasn’t following my logic.

  I clarified my point. “I think there’s some confusion. I don’t doubt what you saw. What I have a hard time believing is that a burglar killed him.”

  Instincts were an odd thing. I had nothing to back up my opinion, but my gut was telling me the burglar theory rang false deep inside me. My instincts had rarely betrayed me in the past, so I had no reason to do anything but believe them now.

  Joe came at this from a different vantage point. “Hope, I saw the scene. His place was trashed. It’s not hard for me to believe a burglar did this. The crime scene had all the markings of it.”

  Hearing my friend’s house being referred to as a crime scene sent a shiver down my spine. I still had plenty of shock that I was trying to work through. As hard as it was to do, I had to find a way to get over it. There were more pressing matters at hand.

  The problem with my instincts was that they were a little vague for their own good sometimes. They told me something was wrong in a general sense, but gave me no specifics. I had to go digging for those.

  That’s just what I did. “Joe, let me ask you this—was anything major stolen from his place?”

  “My team is still going through the place, but it doesn’t look like it.”

  “How about his Golden Ad statuette? That was his most prized possession.”

  Nick owned a local advertising agency. They produced a number of television, radio, and print ads. If it was up to Nick, his agency would be known for its public service announcements and serious ads dealing with a wide number of topics ranging from suicide prevention to combating poverty to wounded veterans services. Nick had actually won his Golden Ad statuette for producing a thirty-second television ad warning of the dangers of text messaging while driving.

  While Nick cherished the acclaim he received for producing those serious ads, the general public knew him as the producer of schlocky television ads for Morton’s Mattress Warehouse and Renegade Reggie’s RV Rodeo. Ironically, the serious ads brought the agency plenty of prestige, but very little money. Meanwhile, even though the schlocky ads dragged down the agency’s reputation, they lined Nick’s pockets with plenty of cold, hard cash.

  Nick had once told me that when he came home from filming a schlocky mattress ad, it gave him comfort to see his Golden Ad statuette on his mantel because it reminded him that every once in a while, he produced something of value.

  Joe shook his head at me. “That Golden Ad statuette was still on his mantel.”

  That only led to more skepticism on my part. “How do you explain that?”

  “The burglar might have planned to take it, but panicked when they spotted Nick catching them in the act of robbery.”

  I furrowed my brow. “That could be.”

  “I have seen it plenty of times. When a burglar realizes that they aren’t alone in a house, their original plans tend to go right out the window. After killing Nick, the burglar probably left in a hurry, so they didn’t get caught,” Joe replied.

  In most cases, that would be a plausible theory. Not this time.

  “That doesn’t take into account one thing,” I said.

  My brother scrunched his nose. “What’s that?”

  “There were some huge blow-up fights at Nick’s holiday office party last night.”

  That was all news to my brother. “There was?”

  I nodded. “Oh yeah. A fight to the death kind of deal.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Chapter Two

  I didn’t get very far through my story before my brother stopped me with questions.

  “Anthony Rogers had it out with Nick right there at the office party?” Joe asked.

  I nodded. “He sure did. Clearly, Anthony didn’t take his firing in stride.”

  Anthony had been canned by Nick the day before the party. Being fired was never easy, but it was an especially hard thing to deal with during the holidays. Of course, Anthony handled being pink-slipped worse than most.

  At the same time, Anthony’s firing was completely warranted. He had been in client relations. His job was to keep the agency’s clients happy. Unfortunately, the relations he was having were of the sexual variety—with Morton Horton’s wife.

  Around town, Morton was known as the Mattress Maestro. He also happened
to be the agency’s biggest client. So when Morton found out Anthony was sleeping with his wife, he dropped his account with the agency and took his sizable advertising budget elsewhere.

  Having been the catalyst for the agency losing their biggest client, Anthony’s job became a casualty. I knew Nick would have preferred not to get rid of Anthony during the holidays, but he was just so angry at him that he didn’t want to keep Anthony around another minute.

  While I was caught up in the backstory leading to Anthony’s newfound unemployment, my brother was focused on another wrinkle in the situation.

  “Obviously, being fired at the holidays is awful, but for Anthony to just show up at the office party and cause a scene in front of everyone, is just unbelievable,” Joe said.

  I nodded. “That’s why it’s called blind rage. When you’re that angry, you can’t think straight.”

  “So much for holiday spirit,” Joe deadpanned.

  “The problem was, Anthony had drunk a little too much before crashing the holiday party, if you know what I mean,” I said.

  “It sure sounds like it.” My brother pulled out a pad of paper and started scribbling on it. “It looks like I’m going to be paying Anthony Rogers a visit.”

  “Let’s hope he has calmed down.”

  My brother turned his attention to another subject. “By the way, how did you know this stuff about the holiday party?”

  “Daniel’s restaurant catered the event,” I replied.

  “Sounds like your boyfriend got more than he bargained for,” Joe cracked.

  I sighed. “More than you know.”

  The look in my eyes troubled Joe.

  My brother followed his hunch. “Did anything else out of the ordinary happen at this party?”

  I reluctantly nodded. “The scene Anthony caused was just the tip of the iceberg.”