Honey-Baked Homicide

by Gayle Leeson

  She smiled softly. “I’ve been keeping a watch on this house off and on pretty much since you had me come get that cigarette butt. Tell Roger the security cameras are nice, but they’re not in the same league as a mom with a softball bat.”

  “Amen to that.”

  Chapter 23

  A week later, things were pretty much back to normal in Winter Garden and at the Down South Café. My first customer that morning—even before Dilly—was Walter Jackson.

  “Good morning, Mr. Jackson!”

  “I imagine you’re surprised to see me.”

  “I’d thought you were returning to Oklahoma soon, but I’m glad you’ve decided to extend your stay.”

  He nodded. “Actually, I’ve decided to stay on here in Winter Garden. I’d already realized I had nothing and no one to return to in Oklahoma, so I’m looking for a place here. My landlord is going to send my belongings to me.” He chuckled. “I’m glad of that. I’m too old to go all the way across the country for some clothes and a few books.”

  I smiled. “You know, I thought I saw you in the grocery store shortly after Stu Landon Carver’s funeral. I called to you, but you didn’t seem to hear me.”

  “I did hear you, and I apologize for being so rude. It’s just that at the time, I believed everyone in Winter Garden thought I was involved in Stu’s death and that I was up to no good.” He looked down at the floor. “But then I ran into Dilly at the bookstore a couple of days later. She’s actually the one who convinced me that if I gave Winter Garden half a chance, they’d give me one too.”

  “That certainly is true.”

  I’d barely gotten the words out of my mouth when Dilly came into the café.

  “Good morning! There’s my handsome breakfast date.”

  My eyes widened. Dilly and Mr. Jackson were dating? A flurry of thoughts went through my mind: Good for Dilly. Wait—she hardly knows this man. All any of us know about him is what he’s told us. But she looks so happy. And so does he. Oooh, Aunt Bess is going to be jealous.

  • • •

  Madelyn Carver came in for lunch. She, too, had plans to stay in Winter Garden—for a while, at least. She’d told me earlier that she was planning to hang around until after Fern and Chad’s trials. She wanted to see her father get the justice he deserved.

  Jackie popped her head into the kitchen. “Madelyn wants to talk with you.”

  My lips tightened. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go chat with Madelyn. I just had so much to do. We were slammed.

  “I’ll take over for you for a minute,” she continued. “Let me finish preparing this chef salad while you talk with our guest.”

  “All right. Thanks so much. I’ll make this as quick as possible.”

  I took off the gloves I’d been wearing and tossed them into the trash can. Madelyn was sitting at a table in the far-right corner.

  “How are you?” I asked, perching on the edge of the seat across from her.

  “I’m good. I wanted to let you know that Brendan has gone back home to Cookeville. I think that his being away from Joey is good and that being back home with Mom and Douglas is even better.”

  “I’m glad. I know you’re hoping he’ll return to school.”

  She nodded. “I’m pretty sure Mom and Douglas will make him enroll somewhere—if not at the college he’d been attending, then somewhere closer to home.”

  “That’s great. I’m really looking forward to meeting your Brendan one of these days, as opposed to Joey’s.”

  “I’m looking forward to that too. By the way, I resigned my position in Cookeville and had accrued so much vacation time that I don’t have to work out a notice.”

  “Fantastic!”

  “Yeah. I’ve got an interview for a paralegal position at a law firm in Abingdon tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.”

  “I wish you all the best. What can I get you for lunch?”

  She went with the special of the day—baked ziti with meatballs and garlic bread.

  • • •

  That night, several of us gathered at the big house for dinner. Roger and Jackie were there, as were Ryan, Homer, Sarah, John, Mom, Aunt Bess, and me. We had fried chicken, party house rolls, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, potato salad, and butterscotch cake.

  We were all seated around the table enjoying some lighthearted conversation when Roger asked Mom, “Hey, Babe, would you pass the potato salad?”

  She frowned. “Sure, sweetheart.”

  He laughed. “I’m calling you Babe, as in Babe Ruth . . . the Sultan of Swat.”

  “Oh, ha-ha. Very funny. I still worry that I hit that poor woman too hard.”

  “Too hard, my fanny,” said Aunt Bess. “Had I been there, I’d have knocked her plumb out into the yard. In my day, I was a pretty fair ballplayer.”

  “I bet you were,” Roger said.

  And given that encouragement, Aunt Bess was off, telling us about the best game she ever played in.

  Recipes from the Down South Café

  Chocolate Pistachio Cake

  Yield: 1 Bundt cake

  1 package white or yellow cake mix

  1 package pistachio pudding mix

  ½ cup orange juice

  ½ cup water

  4 eggs

  ½ cup vegetable oil

  ¾ cup chocolate syrup

  Preheat oven to 350º. Combine the cake mix, pistachio pudding mix, orange juice, water, eggs, and oil in a large mixing bowl. Blend to moisten, then beat 2 minutes at medium speed. Pour about ¾ of the batter into a well-greased and floured Bundt pan. Add the chocolate syrup to the remaining batter and mix well. Pour over the batter in the pan. Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean.

  Cole’s Chicken Salad

  (Contributed by Cole Hileman)

  Yield: Approximately 7 cups

  3 pounds of chicken breasts

  ¾ cup diced onion

  ¾ cup diced celery

  1 teaspoon chicken base (we use Better Than Bouillon)

  2 cups mayonnaise

  salt and pepper to taste

  Boil the chicken to an internal temperature of 165°. Let the chicken cool and cut it into small pieces. Mix the onion, celery, chicken base, and mayonnaise. Add the chicken and salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate and serve.

  Party House Rolls

  Yield: Approximately 20 rolls

  1½ cups warm water

  ½ cup shortening

  ¼ cup sugar

  2 teaspoons salt

  2 eggs

  ⅓ cup powdered milk

  2 packages active dry yeast

  5 cups sifted plain, unbleached flour

  Preheat oven to 450°. Pour the water over the shortening, sugar, salt, eggs, and powdered milk. Add the yeast. Mix well.

  Add the flour gradually. Mix well and cover with a tea towel. Let the dough rise for about 1 hour until doubled in bulk. Roll out onto a well-floured board and cut with a biscuit cutter. Dip in a mixture of warm melted margarine and shortening (50-50 ratio). Fold the biscuit over your thumb to make a Parker House roll. Place the rolls touching in the pan. Do not crowd or leave any open space.

  Let the dough rise again, covered with the tea towel, for about an hour or until doubled in size. Bake at 400° for 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown.

  Butterscotch Cake

  Yield: 1 cake

  1¾ cups brown sugar

  ¼ cup butter

  1½ cups milk

  3 cups sifted cake flour

  ½ teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  ½ cup shortening

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  3 eggs, beaten

  Preheat oven to 350°. Combine 1 cup brown sugar, butter, and ¼ cup milk in a saucepan. He
at, stirring constantly. Cook until a small amount will form a hard ball when dropped into a cup of cold water. Remove from heat.

  Heat the remaining milk and stir into the syrup mixture. Cool.

  Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together. Cream the shortening and vanilla with the remaining brown sugar. Beat the eggs until light, and add to the creamed mixture. Add the dry ingredients and the butterscotch syrup mixture. Beat thoroughly. Bake in a greased and floured loaf pan for 50 to 60 minutes.

  Butterscotch Icing

  Yield: Approximately 2 cups

  1 cup brown sugar

  2 tablespoons butter

  ¼ cup milk

  1 tablespoon light corn syrup

  2 cups confectioners’ sugar

  ¼ cup shortening

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  3 tablespoons hot milk

  Cook the brown sugar, butter, milk, and corn syrup until a small amount of the mixture forms a hard ball when dropped into a cup of cold water. Remove from heat. Cream together the sugar, shortening, and salt. Add the hot milk and then the butterscotch mixture. Beat until smooth and thick enough to spread onto the cooled cake.

  If you are enjoying the Down South Café Mysteries, keep reading for an excerpt of the first book in Amanda Lee’s Embroidery Mysteries . . .

  The Quick and the Thread

  Available wherever books are sold!

  Just after crossing over . . . under . . . through . . . the covered bridge, I could see it. Barely. I could make out the top of it, and that was enough at the moment to make me set aside the troubling grammatical conundrum of whether one passes over, under, or through a covered bridge.

  “There it is,” I told Angus, an Irish wolfhound who was riding shotgun. “There’s our sign!”

  He woofed, which could mean anything from “I gotta pee” to “Yay!” I went with “Yay!”

  “Me, too! I’m so excited.”

  I was closer to the store now and could really see the sign. I pointed. “See, Angus?” My voice was barely above a whisper. “Our sign.”

  THE SEVEN-YEAR STITCH.

  I had named the shop the Seven-Year Stitch for three reasons. One, it’s an embroidery specialty shop. Two, I’m a huge fan of classic movies. And three, it actually took me seven years to turn my dream of owning an embroidery shop into a reality.

  Once upon a time, in a funky-cool land called San Francisco, I was an accountant. Not a funky-cool job, believe me, especially for a funky-cool girl like me, Marcy Singer. I had a corner cubicle near a window. You’d think the window would be a good thing, but it looked out upon a vacant building that grew more dilapidated by the day. Maybe by the hour. It was majorly depressing. One year, a coworker gave me a cactus for my birthday. I set it in that window, and it died. I told you it was depressing.

  Still, my job wasn’t that bad. I can’t say I truly enjoyed it, but I am good with numbers and the work was tolerable. Then I got the call from Sadie. Not a call, mind you; the call.

  “Hey, Marce. Are you sitting down?” Sadie had said.

  “Sadie, I’m always sitting down. I keep a stationary bike frame and pedal it under my desk so my leg muscles won’t atrophy.”

  “Good. The hardware store next to me just went out of business.”

  “And this is good because you hate the hardware guy?”

  She’d given me an exasperated huff. “No, silly. It’s good because the space is for lease. I’ve already called the landlord, and he’s giving you the opportunity to snatch it up before anyone else does.”

  Sadie is an entrepreneur. She and her husband, Blake, own MacKenzies’ Mochas, a charming coffee shop on the Oregon coast. She thinks everyone—or, at least, Marcy Singer—should also own a charming shop on the Oregon coast.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I’d said. “You expect me to come up there to Quaint City, Oregon—”

  “Tallulah Falls, thank you very much.”

  “—and set up shop? Just like that?”

  “Yes! It’s not like you’re happy there or like you’re on some big five-year career plan.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “And you’ve not had a boyfriend or even a date for more than a year now. I could still strangle David when I think of how he broke your heart.”

  “Once again, thank you for the painful reminder.”

  “So what’s keeping you there? This is your chance to open up the embroidery shop you used to talk about all the time in college.”

  “But what do I know about actually running a business?”

  Sadie had huffed. “You can’t tell me you’ve been keeping companies’ books all these years without having picked up some pointers about how to—and how not to—run a business.”

  “You’ve got a point there. But what about Angus?”

  “Marce, he will love it here! He can come to work with you every day, run up and down the beach . . . Isn’t that better than the situation he has now?”

  I swallowed a lump of guilt the size of my fist.

  “You’re right, Sadie,” I’d admitted. “A change will do us both good.”

  That had been three months ago. Now I was a resident of Tallulah Falls, Oregon, and today was the grand opening of the Seven-Year Stitch.

  A cool, salty breeze off the ocean ruffled my hair as I hopped out of the bright red Jeep I’d bought to traipse up and down the coast.

  Angus followed me out of the Jeep and trotted beside me up the river-rock steps to the walk that connected all the shops on this side of the street. The shops on the other side of the street were set up in a similar manner, with river-rock steps leading up to walks containing bits of shells and colorful rocks for aesthetic appeal. A narrow, two-lane road divided the shops, and black wrought-iron lampposts and benches added to the inviting community feel. A large clock tower sat in the middle of the town square, pulling everything together and somehow reminding us all of the preciousness of time. Tallulah Falls billed itself as the friendliest town on the Oregon coast, and so far, I had no reason to doubt that claim.

  I unlocked the door and flipped the CLOSED sign to OPEN before turning to survey the shop. It was as if I were seeing it for the first time. And, in a way, I was. I’d been here until nearly midnight last night, putting the finishing touches on everything. This was my first look at the finished project. Like all my finished projects, I tried to view it objectively. But, like all my finished projects, I looked upon this one as a cherished child.

  The floor was black-and-white tile, laid out like a gleaming chessboard. All my wood accents were maple. On the floor to my left, I had maple bins holding cross-stitch threads and yarns. When a customer first came in the door, she would see the cross-stitch threads. They started in white and went through shades of ecru, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, gray, and black. The yarns were organized the same way on the opposite side. Perle flosses, embroidery hoops, needles, and cross-stitch kits hung on maple-trimmed corkboard over the bins. On the other side of the corkboard—the side with the yarn—there were knitting needles, crochet hooks, tapestry needles, and needlepoint kits.

  The walls were covered by shelves where I displayed pattern books, dolls with dresses I’d designed and embroidered, and framed samplers. I had some dolls for those who liked to sew and embroider outfits (like me), as well as for those who enjoy knitting and crocheting doll clothes.

  Standing near the cash register was my life-size mannequin, who bore a striking resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, especially since I put a short, curly blond wig on her and did her makeup. I even gave her a mole . . . er, beauty mark. I called her Jill. I was going to name her after Marilyn’s character in The Seven Year Itch, but she didn’t have a name. Can you believe that—a main character with no name? She was simply billed as “The Girl.”

  To the right of the door was the sitting area. As much as I
loved to play with the amazing materials displayed all over the store, the sitting area was my favorite place in the shop. Two navy overstuffed sofas faced each other across an oval maple coffee table. The table sat on a navy, red, and white braided rug. There were red club chairs with matching ottomans near either end of the coffee table, and candlewick pillows with lace borders scattered over both the sofas. I made those, too—the pillows, not the sofas.

  The bell over the door jingled, and I turned to see Sadie walking in with a travel coffee mug.

  I smiled. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “It is, if you think it’s a nonfat vanilla latte with a hint of cinnamon.” She handed me the mug. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

  “Thanks. You’re the best.” The steaming mug felt good in my hands. I looked back over the store. “It looks good, doesn’t it?”

  “It looks fantastic. You’ve outdone yourself.” She cocked her head. “Is that what you’re wearing tonight?”

  Happily married for the past five years, Sadie was always eager to play matchmaker for me. I hid a smile and held the hem of my vintage tee as if it were a dress. “You don’t think Snoopy’s Joe Cool is appropriate for the grand opening party?”

  Sadie closed her eyes.

  “I have a supercute dress for tonight,” I said with a laugh, “and Mr. O’Ruff will be sporting a black tie for the momentous event.”

  Angus wagged his tail at the sound of his surname.

  “Marce, you and that pony.” Sadie scratched Angus behind the ears.

  “He’s a proud boy. Aren’t you, Angus?”

  Angus barked his agreement, and Sadie chuckled.

  “I’m proud, too . . . of both of you.” She grinned. “I’d better get back over to Blake. I’ll be back to check on you again in a while.”

  Though we’re the same age and had been roommates in college, Sadie clucked over me like a mother hen. It was sweet, but I could do without the fix-ups. Some of these guys she’d tried to foist on me . . . I have no idea where she got them—mainly because I was afraid to ask.