Pancakes and Corpses: A Cozy Murder Mystery (Peridale Cafe Mystery Book 1)

by Agatha Frost

  “You never had a secret affair with William,” Julia said. “Instead, you killed your half-brother.”

  “He was going to go to the police!” Rachel cried, shaking the knife in Julia’s face. “He called the lawyers and his mother had been stupid enough to give them my name over the phone! They wouldn’t tell the police, but because William was the heir to Gertrude’s estate, they revealed the nature of the phone call. When he confronted me, he suspected that I had some information on his mother. I was blackmailing her, and that’s why she was blackmailing people herself. He was so furious, so I told him the truth. At first, he was happy to find out he had a half-sister. He told me he had always resented being an only child. Resented that his mother had waited so late in life to have him, and yet here I was the whole time. William told me his dad, Frank, had always wanted a daughter too. What good was that information to me? It was all too late. His happiness didn’t last long when he figured out what I had done. He wouldn’t listen. He got out of the car and started walking to the police station, so I did what I had to do.”

  “You murdered your half-brother in the middle of the village green and you let Amy Clark take the blame.”

  “Nobody saw me!” Rachel said, almost pleased with herself. “And Roxy was at home to be my alibi. I was there when she arrived and fell asleep, and if the police ever suspected me, she’d tell them I was there when she woke up. Everything fell into place perfectly. Even you didn’t notice it was me when you saw me at Gertrude’s house! You almost caught me, so I smashed the window and made a run for it. I went to Roxy’s house instead, and I saw that she had gone. By then, I knew the truth about Roxy’s lover, but I knew nobody else did, so if she had run away, it would make her look guilty.”

  Julia was speechless. She stared at Rachel, a woman she had known since childhood, but she didn’t recognise her. She had always been a little distant and cold, but she had never suspected she would be capable of murder, or willing to let her own sister take the blame.

  “You’re sick,” Julia said.

  “Oh, shut up, Julia!” Rachel yelled, raising the knife above her head. “You always were a little know-it-all!”

  She struck the knife down, but Julia grabbed Rachel’s wrist. They wrestled for what felt like an age, and the blade floated dangerously close to Julia’s face. She expected to see her life flash before her eyes, but she didn’t. Instead, she felt an intense feeling of survival she had not experienced before. She was suddenly reminded of all the things she had to live for, and she wanted to live for them. She needed to live.

  “You would have let them arrest me?” Roxy’s voice floated around the corner of the gallery, her lipstick smudged and her hair messy. “Rachel, I can’t believe what you’ve done.”

  Rachel turned and watched Roxy and Violet walk towards them from the shadows, just long enough for Julia to knock the knife out of Rachel’s hand with her handbag. She turned to Julia, but Julia wasn’t going to take any chances. With strength she didn’t know she possessed, she pushed Rachel into the wall and brought the slashed Georgia O’Keefe painting down around her body.

  “Get Detective Inspector Brown!” Julia told Violet as she kicked the knife away. “Hurry!”

  The entire party crowded outside the gallery and watched as Detective Inspector Brown escort Rachel towards the flashing lights of the police car. Julia was surprised by how she wasn’t putting up a fight.

  Julia couldn’t begin to imagine what it would feel like finding out you were adopted after thinking you knew where you came from for thirty-nine years. She could imagine how resentful Rachel had felt towards the woman whose meddling had caused her to live a lie, but she couldn’t imagine that feeling ever driving her to murder. She couldn’t imagine Gertrude knowing she had signed her own death certificate decades ago with her desperate attempts at saving her broken marriage.

  “I’m sorry you had to find out like this,” Julia whispered to Roxy. “If I’d have known you were there -,”

  “If I wasn’t there she would have tried to kill you,” Roxy said, wrapping her fingers around Julia’s. “I had missed Violet so much, so we broke away from the party to – you know. I would like to say that I always knew I was adopted deep down, but I didn’t. My mother and father are the people who raised me, not two strangers who created me. I don’t know why Rachel couldn’t see that. How did you figure out it was Rachel, and not me?”

  “Rachel told me that you told her about Violet when you went to visit her the morning of the murder, but I figured out that you probably didn’t visit her at all.”

  “I didn’t,” Roxy said. “How did you know that?”

  “When I went to Rachel’s cottage to ask her about the lipstick, you talked about the blackmail and running away, but you never once mentioned that Violet was your lover. You were being very conscious about your words, so I suspected that Rachel had found out about the relationship from another source, and there was only one woman in the village who knew.”

  “Gertrude!”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Roxy said with a heavy sigh. “My own sister would have watched me go to prison.”

  “I would never have let it get to that,” Julia whispered, pulling Roxy into a hug. “I figured this out to stop that from happening.”

  When Roxy finally let go, she thanked Julia and walked towards her mother, who was sobbing on the edge of the road, while being comforted by Violet. Despite everything, Julia knew they were going to be okay.

  “How did you piece it together, Julia?” Amy Clark asked loudly enough to grab the attention of the watching crowd, who all turned their attention from the police car to Julia.

  “It all came down to the lipstick,” Julia said. “I saw a lipstick stain on a coffee cup in William Smith’s car and I knew the unique shade belonged to Rachel. Gertrude and Frank divorced in 1978, so when I suspected Martha Tyler had a secret baby, and that Martha had been in Peridale a month ago, I knew the murderer had to be that baby, and had to be somebody who was thirty-nine. Looking back, Rachel was the only person I spoke to who never denied killing Gertrude or William.”

  “But why would she do such a horrific thing?” Dot asked as she glared at the police car as it drove away.

  “She was just a lost girl who didn’t feel like she fit in,” Julia said. “Gertrude symbolised that pain, and William just got in the way.”

  An hour later, Julia was standing behind her counter in the café with most of the village crammed into the tiny space. Her till was filled with what she suspected to be record takings, and the place was bursting with more life than the busiest Saturday at the height of summer. She felt like Gertrude’s two-star review was already a distant memory.

  The bell above the door rang out and another person wrestled their way through the thick crowd to the counter. Julia smiled when she saw it was Detective Inspector Brown.

  “Can I have a word?” He said, his expression stern.

  Julia took him through the beaded curtain to the kitchen, and she leaned against the steel counter in the middle.

  “Next time you have vital information about a murder case, I’d appreciate it if you told me before you approach the suspect,” Barker said, his tone firm, but his eyes and smile soft. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”

  “I was fine.”

  “I’m being serious, Julia,” he said, shaking his head as he paced in front of her. “When I found out she had a knife, my heart sank. She wouldn’t have hesitated to make it a third murder.”

  Julia knew he was right, but she was touched that he seemed to care more about her wellbeing than she did. In that moment, she had been running on adrenaline, but it had taken multiple sugary teas in the café to calm her nerves.

  “How is she doing?” Julia asked.

  “She’s currently confessing to everything,” Barker said, and he stopped pacing and leaned against the counter next to her. “How were you so certain it was her? Rachel Carter wasn’t
even on my radar! I was trying to find an accomplice of Amy Clark. I was so sure she had something to do with it.”

  “I wasn’t completely certain until I approached her, but this was the final nail in the coffin,” Julia said as he pulled Rachel’s police report from her dress. “I stole this from your car. When I came to speak to Amy Clark yesterday, Rachel came with me because she told me she had been having a secret affair with William Smith. I found evidence that she had been in his car, and she claimed to have broken things off hours before he was murdered. When I saw the police report in that file on your passenger seat, and I saw that she had reported a stolen mobile phone, I knew she had lied to me. On the surface, she seemed like the only person without a motive, but Amy Clark’s story allowed me to piece history together to figure out what happened in the present. You heard the same information as I did in that interview, but sometimes it takes a close ear to the ground and a finger on the pulse of the village to really listen to the information you’re being told.”

  Barker turned to her and for a moment he looked angry, but his expression softened and he smiled, their eyes locking like they had in the gallery’s garden.

  “I really underestimated you, Julia,” Barker said. “You did something I couldn’t do myself. You ignored the obvious and you listened to people’s stories.”

  Hearing what Julia had wanted to hear all along didn’t fill her with the same happiness she had expected. She realised she hadn’t just been trying to prove Barker wrong about her, but to prove him wrong about the village she loved so much. For that, she felt she had succeeded.

  “Did you just come here to tell me off?” Julia said, glancing back through the curtain at the busy café.

  “Actually, there was something else,” Barker said, sucking the air through his teeth. “How would you like to grab a coffee sometime?”

  “Coffee?” Julia asked. “I own a café.”

  Barker dropped his head and laughed softly.

  “I’m trying to ask you out on a date, Julia,” he said quietly, his cheeks flushing.

  “Oh, I know,” Julia said.

  “So?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You’ll think about it?” Barker said, arching a brow. “Is that all I get?”

  “Yes,” Julia said, nodding sternly. “I’ll think about it.”

  Barker pushed the air out of his lungs and shook his head once more. He smiled at Julia and nodded, before turning on his heels and walking back through the beaded curtains. When she was alone, Julia allowed herself a moment to let the grin spread from ear to ear. She intended to go on that date with Detective Inspector Brown, she just wanted to let it eat away at him for a couple of days, just like it had with Julia when they first met.

  “I love a happy ending,” said Sue when the café finally closed just a little after midnight. “Promise me you won’t get involved in another murder case?”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “That’s not the same as a promise.”

  “None of us know what’s around the corner,” Julia said. “Although Barker asked me out on a date.”

  “And you said yes?” Sue gasped, clutching her hand over her mouth. “I knew he liked you!”

  Julia thought back to the almost kiss at the gallery earlier in the night, and she was surprised her Gran hadn’t already told Sue. Perhaps that was one piece of gossip she would keep to herself until Julia was ready.

  “I didn’t say yes,” Julia said. “But I will.”

  “That’s still a happy ending in my eyes,” Sue said as she leaned in to kiss Julia on the cheek. “I’m going to go home and snuggle up to my husband and let him know he’s the luckiest man in the world to have somebody like me, and not somebody like Rachel Carter as his wife. Goodnight, love.”

  “Goodnight,” Julia said.

  “Oh, and thank you for not telling the police I was the one who slashed the painting,” Sue said as she walked through the beaded curtain. “I saw that awful flower and I was sure it was worthless.”

  She watched her sister walk through the messy café, and for the first time since Julia had opened the café, she was going to leave the clearing away for the morning because there was something else she needed to do for things to truly be a happy ending.

  Julia almost fell asleep in a chair in the dark corner of her stone yard behind her cafe, so when she saw the shadowy figure creeping through the night, she bolted upright and forced herself to wake up.

  “Hello again, Jessie,” Julia said.

  Jessie sprung up from picking up the box of cakes Julia had left as bait. She glanced from the gate to Julia, but she didn’t run. Julia opened the back door of her café and invited Jessie into the light.

  After pulling down her hood and letting her dark hair fall forward, and eating an entire victoria sponge, Jessie sat back in her chair and looked around the café, a lot more at peace than she had seemed before.

  “I have an offer to make you,” Julia said. “It’s a little different from the last one.”

  “I’m listening,” Jessie said, staring down her nose the way she did.

  Julia pulled out the chair across from Jessie and sat down. When she put her hands on the table and locked them together to stop them from shaking, she realised she was more nervous now than she had been hours earlier staring at Rachel’s glittering blade.

  “The room you stayed in at my cottage,” Julia said, looking Jessie directly in the eyes. “It’s of no use to me and I rarely have guests. How would you like to rent it?”

  Jessie arched a brow and immediately started laughing. She shook her head and leaned across the table at Julia, her dark hair falling over her hazel eyes.

  “Don’t you remember, lady? I’m homeless. I don’t have money.”

  “I know,” Julia said, nodding carefully. “That’s why I’m offering you a job here, in my café. I’ll pay you a fair wage, and I won’t charge much for the room, just enough for the upkeep. We’ll have to contact social services, but I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement.”

  Jessie stared at Julia, and she wasn’t sure if she was going to burst out laughing again, or make a run straight for the door; she did neither. Instead, she stared down her nose directly at Julia for the longest time.

  “You mean – like – foster me?” Jessie said.

  “If that’s what it takes, and if it’s okay with social services, then yes.”

  Julia had come up with this plan the night Jessie had slept in her guest bedroom, she just hadn’t been sure she wanted to go through with it until tonight. Roxy’s words had made her see that family is who you choose to be with, not who you are forced to. Jessie hadn’t found a family, and Julia hadn’t had the children she thought she would, but she could see the good in Jessie, even if Jessie couldn’t.

  “I’m not good,” Jessie said. “I’ve done stuff.”

  “I know,” Julia said, pulling out the piece of paper Barker had given her earlier that day. “All of this, it will need to end. That is my only condition. You treat me with respect, and you get it right back. What do you say?”

  Jessie didn’t say anything. She jumped out of her chair and wrapped her arms around Julia’s neck. It took Julia a moment to realise what was happening, but when she did, she wrapped her arms around Jessie and hugged the girl she doubted had been hugged for a long time.

  “Thanks, lady,” Jessie whispered.

  “Is that a deal?”

  Jessie pulled away, tear streaks marking her dirty cheeks. She nodded furiously and held her hand out. Julia accepted it, and she was surprised by the strength of Jessie’s grip.

  Julia didn’t know what the future held, but for the first time since arriving back in Peridale, she didn’t feel like she had a weight looming over her. She knew that when she got home, the first thing she would do was face reality and open her divorce papers.

  Julia pulled the ‘HELP WANTED’ sign out of the window and looked down at it. She glanced over to Jessie,
who was tucking into more cake. It was going to take a lot of hard work to get Jessie ready for working in the café, but if she enjoyed baking cakes as much as she enjoyed eating them, Julia knew they would be just fine.

  “Come on, Jessie,” Julia said as she opened the door. “Let’s go home.”

  The End

  • • •

  The second book in the Peridale Café series, Lemonade and Lies is coming February 17th 2017! Join Julia South and friends for another murder mystery adventure. Turn the page for a sneak peek at the first chapter!

  • • •

  If you enjoyed Pancakes and Lemonade, don’t forget to leave a review on GOODREADS and AMAZON!

  Lemonade and Lies

  Peridale Café Mystery – Book 2

  Coming February 17th 2017

  Chapter 1 Sneak Peek!

  Julia awoke to the sound of banging again. She stared up at her bedroom ceiling, but darkness suffocated her vision. She tossed and turned, clutching at her eyes. She forgot she was wearing an eye mask.

  The first hints of the oncoming sunrise were slipping through the darkness, but since February had ended and March was in full swing, it was probably earlier in the morning than Julia would like to acknowledge.

  Rubbing her eyes, she stared up at the dark beams in her small Cotswold cottage’s low ceiling. She almost forgot why she had woken in the first place, until another low thud echoed through the darkness.