Ice Cream Corpse

by Stacey Alabaster

  Ice Cream Corpse

  A Bakery Detectives Cozy Mystery

  Stacey Alabaster

  Fairfield Publishing

  Contents

  Copyright

  Message to Readers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Copyright © 2017 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Thank you so much for buying my book. I am excited to share my stories with you and hope that you are just as thrilled to read them.

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  FairfieldPublishing.com/cozy-newsletter

  Chapter 1

  I was clinging onto the front counter, trying not to faint. Edging just a little to the right, I found the faintest chill of cool air, but the air conditioning was humming like it was about to give up the ghost. In fact, the rumbling had grown so loud that I didn’t even hear the front door to the bakery open, and didn’t even realize we had a customer, until she was right in front of me.

  I tried not to jump. It was too hot for that anyway. No one wants to jump in one hundred and five degree heat.

  “Good morning?” I said, a little unsure. How could it only be morning and already be this hot? The newspapers said this was the worst heat wave in Belldale history. The hottest summer on record.

  The woman was dressed in a loose shirt and shorts, but she still looked hot. “Hello, dear,” she said, in that same way everyone was speaking that day. Struggling to get the words out with parched throats getting in the way. “I couldn’t trouble you for an iced coffee, could I?”

  She wasn’t going to like my answer. “I’m sorry, we’re all out of ice blocks. I’ve got some more freezing in the back, but they are still water at the moment…”

  “Oh dear. Well, what about ice cream? Can you put a dollop of that in my latte instead, to cool it down?”

  “I’m sorry, we’re all out of ice cream too,” I had to tell her, nodding toward the machine that made only regular, hot coffee with boiling water. “But I can make you a normal coffee.” I tried to smile.

  She looked at it like it was going to poison her and ran out. Well, she shuffled out as fast as she could; no one was running on a day like that.

  I moved back to my cool spot and closed my eyes, fanning my face with a napkin. I just knew the air conditioner was on its last legs. It wasn’t chilling the whole room like it was supposed to, instead just acting like a glorified fan.

  I opened my eyes. It looked like the road outside was melting, but it was really only a mirage, the heat bouncing off the asphalt.

  Pippa, my best friend and co-worker, walked in the door lazily. More than lazily, actually. She stumbled heavily through the door, like a zombie, or like walking any quicker would take too much energy and produce too much heat. She had her pink-streaked hair tied up in bunches and cut-off jeans on. She’d clearly come straight from the farm.

  “Come stand here, it’s the only safe place.”

  She joined me in the direct line of fire, the cool shoot of air blowing on both of us. “What is wrong with this thing?” she asked. “It sounds like a lawnmower.”

  Pippa looked at the threadbare row of cakes and pastries. Not the result of a busy day. More the result of a day where I couldn’t subject our apprentice baker to the heat. “I let Bronson go home early. No one should have to stand in front of an oven on a day like today.”

  She nodded slowly. “Fair enough.”

  Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion that day.

  “You know what I could really go for?” Pippa murmured. “Some ice cream.” Her eyes lit up, wild, like a person who had been in the desert for weeks and had just seen her first drop of water. “We’ve got some, don’t we? Isn’t there a tub in the freezer?”

  “Well, we did…” I tried not to look guilty.

  She looked like she was about to attack me. Maybe she would have if it wouldn’t have taken so much energy.

  Instead, she collapsed on the counter. “Oh no…” she said, wailing like an injured animal.

  I shook my head. “It’s not that dramatic, Pippa.”

  She stood up. “Can we go to the supermarket and buy some more?” She was suddenly full of hope again.

  I shook my head. “The corner market is out of every last box or tub of anything frozen or sweet. No ice cream, no ice pops, nothing.”

  “That’s why we’ve got no customers!” Pippa decided. “They are all at home, in front of air conditioners that actually work, munching on all the ice cream they bought at the supermarket.”

  Maybe she had a point. “Either that or they’re at the pool.”

  She clapped her hands together. “Well, I say, we join them! Come on! It’s not doing us any good, standing around here, sweating to death.”

  I didn’t need much convincing. It was too hot to argue anyway. I shut off the coffee machine, made sure all the ovens and lights were off, and hoped for a cooler day tomorrow.

  On the way, I decided to circle past the outside of a rival bakery in town, called Dough Planet. I wanted to know how their business was surviving in this brutal heat. Surely they must be struggling just as badly as we were? “This is not the way to the pool,” Pippa pointed out, her head hanging out the window like a dog. There was no air conditioning in my little old car so the only thing to do was to roll the widows down and drive fast. Which you couldn’t really do in town in the middle of peak hour traffic.

  “I know,” I said. “I just wanted to take a look at Dough Planet. I’m sure they’re closed for the afternoon too. No one can work in a place that needs ovens and a coffee machine on a day when the temperature has barely dropped below a hundred degrees.” I slammed my foot on the brakes. “What is going on here?” I asked, pointing to the small line out the door. I moved the car a little closer and saw the big sign outside the door offering a special: “Ice Cream Sandwiches, $4!”

  My mouth started to water a little in spite of myself. Okay, an ice cream sandwich did sound amazing right about then. They had always been my absolute favorite when I was a kid. “How much money do you have on you, Pippa?” I glanced into the coin tray. Was there four dollars in there? Hang on. No, that was not the reason we were there. We were there to spy on Blake, not give him our money.

  Blake was the very young owner of Dough Planet. The place had started out as a pop-up but he now rented a very small building, which was more of a hole in the wall. But business was quickly expanding and he was going to need a larger building.

  “Look!” Pippa pointed out. “Blake is selling all kinds of frozen things, not just ice cream sandwiches. He’s advertising frappes…snow cones…”

  I shrugged. “So, what is the big deal?”

  She gave me a meaningful look. “Maybe we should follow suit?”

  I stared at her. “Well, I tried to get another tub of ice cream today. The supermarket was all out.”

  She stared at me like I was entirely missing the point. “No, what I meant was, maybe we should sell ice cream officially. Put ice cream products on the menu.”

  “Pippa, we are a bakery. Not an ice cream parl
or.”

  Pippa sighed. “Maybe we have to be more than one thing. Like Blake. Look, he’s smart. He always adjusts to what people want.”

  Yes, but Blake’s products were also organic and dairy-free. Was that really what people wanted their ice cream to be? Or was Blake just pushing what he wanted onto other people?

  Pippa clearly had a well thought out plan that she wanted to tell me about, though. “There’s a factory, about twenty minutes out of town. They supply ice cream to the entire county. They are called Pure Gelatosphere. I was thinking that we could go down to the factory—they give out tours with a free sample!—and pick out whatever flavors we want to stock. The factory is never going to run out of ice cream like the supermarket does, and they’ll deliver the tubs, the giant tubs I might add, right to our door.”

  I was a little shocked. “And how much is this going to cost us?”

  “Well, we’ll get wholesale prices…”

  “Where would we even keep these giant tubs of ice cream?” I asked. I still thought it was a ridiculous idea. I watched another happy customer exit Blake’s store with an ice cream sandwich in his hand.

  “We’ve got a freezer, silly,” Pippa pointed out. “Anyway, we can rent freezers from the factory. Don’t worry, I’ve done all the research.”

  I shook my head. “We’re a bakery, Pippa. We don’t need to change into a makeshift ice cream stand just to keep customers. The heat wave will break by tomorrow.”

  Blake spotted us spying so I put my foot down on the gas. “Come on, let’s go home. I’m not in the mood for the pool, it will be too overcrowded. Like I said, tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.”

  Well, normal was relative.

  I didn’t usually turn on the TV in the corner of the bakery except to run a screensaver that showed our weekly specials, but on that day, I had it tuned to the local news.

  The newscaster looked as weary as the rest of us. Her blonde hair was struggling to stay in place despite heavy amounts of hairspray and she looked like she wanted to tear her jacket off and throw it across the studio.

  “With yet another record high temperature in Belldale, authorities are urging people to stay cool and to consume plenty of cold food and drinks…”

  I turned it off and shuffled back to my safe spot in front of the air conditioner. Relief, at last, if only temporarily.

  But after a few last coughs and splutters, it stopped blowing entirely. It was dead.

  Chapter 2

  “It’s actually slightly cooler out here, don’t you think?” Pippa asked, pulling her sunglasses up to her head so she could read the map that she was clutching for some reason.

  “Only because we are covered by trees,” I pointed out as I drove. What was up with the map? We were in the woods, trying to find this mystical ice cream factory. We had a name, Pure Gelatosphere, and a vague location, but there was no sight of it so far. “As soon as we pull out into a clearing and the sun hits us, we’ll be in big trouble again.”

  Pippa frowned and turned her map upside-down, like that might help.

  “Where is your phone?” I asked. The map on the phone would just read the directions to us, or we could follow the helpful little blue dot.

  “Digital diet,” Pippa said, dropping the map into her lap for a second. “Remember we were pretending to do one a month or so ago? Well, I figured it sounded like a great idea. You know, it’s all part of my new attitude and life. I’m getting back to nature and slowing down.” She grinned at me and pointed to the pine trees. “See, nature? And now that I’m a farmer, it’s really suiting me to not be glued to a screen all of the time. I’m kind of stepping back in time. It’s inspirational, isn’t it?”

  Oh yes, that was right. Pippa was really one with nature these days. She’d just moved to a farm—well, sort of a farm—just outside Belldale where she had a couple of cows, some pigs, and a row of fruit trees. And now suddenly she was mother nature. Very inspirational.

  “Well, use my phone then,” I said, nodding toward my purse.

  “I can’t! That’s still a violation of the rules,” Pippa said, sounding appalled that I would even make the suggestion.

  “Well, then you’d better figure out how to read a regular map.”

  Pippa shook her head. “I can’t. I think this map was printed before the ice cream factory was built.” She made a face. “Either that, or we are on the wrong side of the town.”

  I pulled the car over and used my own phone to search for the factory. It only took a few seconds to type the name in and to get a result. “There,” I said, pointing at the screen. Pippa quickly turned her head away as if even looking at it would to be toxic to her. “We need to double back that way and take that turn off we missed while you were too busy looking at your map.”

  Pippa crossed her arms. “There’s nothing wrong with good old-fashioned maps. As long as they are up to date.”

  I double-checked the new map on the screen and pulled the car back on the road, watching out for the sign for Pure Gelatosphere. We hit a clearing; there was no more tree cover and the sun was almost blinding. Pippa pulled her map up to her face and used it as a shield. Hey, I supposed it was good for something then.

  Finally, we found it. I was too exhausted to let out a yell of hooray so I just found the coolest spot to park my car so that the seats wouldn’t burn us when we returned to it in an hour. That was how long the tours lasted, apparently, but Pippa and I were also there to buy stock— maybe—so we might be gone even longer.

  There was a little rainbow hanging above the factory door, which lent color to the otherwise grey building. “Ice cream factory” sounded exciting, but when you actually saw it in person, it looked like any other factory. They could have been manufacturing spark plugs in there for all we knew. Underneath the rainbow, there was the name of the company, Pure Gelatosphere, written in a cursive font with an exclamation point. I recognized the logo now that I saw it and realized that I had eaten the brand several times before. A few cafes in town stocked it, as well as a local mall. It might have even supplied a local ice cream parlor, if I was remembering correctly. And, if I was also remembering correctly, their ice creams and gelatos were extra smooth and creamy, and you could tell that they were extra fresh and manufactured locally.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Hey, maybe even branching out wasn’t such a bad idea. Maybe once the heat wave had broken, we could keep the ice cream display freezer and make frozen treats part of our brand.

  As soon as we walked in, the scent of vanilla hit us. And the air conditioning. If anywhere was going to be cold, it was an ice cream factory, I supposed, but it was still a blessed relief. I just stood there for a few seconds with my arms outstretched, taking it in.

  A friendly woman with blonde curls and high-waist black pants and white shirt walked over to us. She was wearing a red beaded bracelet and a necklace to match. “Hello, ladies. You must be here for the tour.” She laughed and threw her head back a little. “We’ve been a very popular location the past few days.” Her nametag said her name was Athena and that she was our tour guide.

  I nodded and glanced around. Looked like this current tour was almost at capacity, with nearly twenty people crammed into the small lobby. The guided tour would show them all how the ice cream was mixed and flavored, and along the way, they would get to try samples of any flavor that took their fancy.

  “We’re also here in a professional capacity,” I explained, handing her one of our business cards. It had the name of the bakery—Rachael’s Boutique Bakery—and our contact numbers on it. Luckily, it was my cell phone number and not Pippa’s, or Athena would get an out of service message if she ever tried to call it. “We’re thinking about stocking your product in our store.”

  “Wonderful,” Athena replied with a grin. “I’ll have to give a tour of our stock freezers and storage options as well then. If you like what you see, you can choose the products you want to stock and fill out the order form today.�
��

  Athena called for the group to assemble and handed all of us white caps to wear so that our hair wouldn’t fall out and contaminate anything. When there were a few frowns and grumbles, Athena laughed and said she also had to put one on and piled her blonde curls into one.

  “Look at all these flavors,” Pippa whispered as we walked along a hall that listed every single flavor that the factory made along with a photograph. There were over two hundred and fifty flavors. We were nearing the end of the tour, and now that we’d seen how the product was made, we were ready to find out what it looked and tasted like. “I want to get raspberry and macadamia! Ooh, and they have green tea flavor! That is super popular these days, Rachael.”

  Yeah, it sounded like the sort of thing that Blake would stock.

  “I think we’ll have to just keep it simple. Stick to the basics. Vanilla, chocolate, peppermint, hazelnut.” I looked up at the wall while the rest of the tour group got away from us.

  Pippa looked a little disappointed. Then she gasped when she saw another flavor on the wall. She pointed to excitedly. “What about goat cheese flavor?”

  “Pippa, we’re trying to make money, not lose it.”

  Her face fell. “Aww. But I was thinking about getting goats for my farm.”

  “Pippa, concentrate.”

  “What about licorice?” she asked. “That’s a little more normal.“

  “Gross!”

  “You’re crazy,” she said, shaking her head. “Licorice is the best flavor.”

  “You’re the crazy one if you think that… Oh, shoot, we’ve lost the rest of the tour!” I spun around and craned my neck, but there was only silence apart from the hum of machinery. We had to run to catch up before we missed the sampling part of the tour.