Macaron Massacre Read online

  Macaron Massacre

  Murder in the Mix 10

  Addison Moore

  Contents

  Books by Addison Moore

  Book Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  19. Preview Wedding Cake Carnage

  Chapter 1

  Books by Addison Moore

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Edited by Paige Maroney Smith

  Cover Design: Lou Harper, Cover Affairs

  Copyright © 2019 by Addison Moore

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This eBook is for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase any additional copies for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Mystery

  Little Girl Lost

  A Sublime Casualty

  The First Wife’s Secret

  Cutie Pies and Deadly Lies (Murder in the Mix 1)

  Bobbing for Bodies (Murder in the Mix 2)

  Pumpkin Spice Sacrifice (Murder in the Mix 3)

  Gingerbread & Deadly Dread (Murder in the Mix 4)

  Seven-Layer Slayer (Murder in the Mix 5)

  Red Velvet Vengeance (Murder in the Mix 6)

  Bloodbaths and Banana Cake (Murder in the Mix 7)

  New York Cheesecake Chaos (Murder in the Mix 8)

  Lethal Lemon Bars (Murder in the Mix 9)

  Macaron Massacre (Murder in the Mix 10)

  Wedding Cake Carnage (Murder in the Mix 11)

  Donut Disaster (Murder in the Mix 12)

  Romance

  Just Add Mistletoe

  3:AM Kisses (3:AM Kisses 1)

  Winter Kisses (3:AM Kisses 2)

  Sugar Kisses (3:AM Kisses 3)

  Whiskey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 4)

  Rock Candy Kisses (3:AM Kisses 5)

  Velvet Kisses (3:AM Kisses 6)

  Wild Kisses (3:AM Kisses 7)

  Country Kisses (3:AM Kisses 8)

  Forbidden Kisses (3:AM Kisses 9)

  Dirty Kisses (3:AM Kisses 10)

  Stolen Kisses (3:AM Kisses 11)

  Lucky Kisses (3:AM Kisses 12)

  Tender Kisses (3:AM Kisses 13)

  Revenge Kisses (3:AM Kisses 14)

  Red Hot Kisses (3:AM Kisses 15)

  Reckless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 16)

  Hot Honey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 17)

  Shameless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 18)

  Value 3:AM Kisses Boxed Sets

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 1-3

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 4-6

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 7-9

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 10-12

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 13-15

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 16-17 (+Bonus)

  The Social Experiment (The Social Experiment 1)

  Bitter Exes (The Social Experiment 2)

  Chemical Attraction (The Social Experiment 3)

  Low Down & Dirty (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook1)

  Dirty Disaster (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 2)

  Dirty Deeds (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 3)

  Naughty By Nature

  Heartless (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 1)

  Wicked Heart (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 2)

  Stone Cold Heart (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 3)

  Beautiful Oblivion (Lake Loveless 1)

  Beautiful Illusions (Lake Loveless 2)

  Beautiful Elixir (Lake Loveless 3)

  Beautiful Deception (Lake Loveless 4)

  The Solitude of Passion

  Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)

  Someone Like You (Someone to Love 2)

  Someone For Me (Someone to Love 3)

  BOXED SETS

  Spitfire Kisses Boxed Set

  Breakers Canyon Boxed Set (Books 1-3)

  Lake Loveless Boxed Set (Books 1-3)

  A Totally ‘80s Romance (Books 1-3)

  3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook (Books 1-3)

  3:AM KISSES (Books 1-3)

  Just Add Mistletoe (Christmas in Gingerbread, Colorado)

  Young Adult Romance

  Melt With You (A Totally ’80s Romance 1)

  Tainted Love (A Totally ’80s Romance 2)

  Hold Me Now (A Totally ’80s Romance 3)

  Paranormal Romance

  (Celestra Book World in Order)

  Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1)

  Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2)

  Burn (Celestra Series Book 3)

  Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4)

  Vex (Celestra Series Book 5)

  Expel (Celestra Series Book 6)

  Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7)

  Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 8)

  Elysian (Celestra Series Book 9)

  Perfect Love (A Celestra Novella)

  Ephemeral (The Countenance Trilogy 1)

  Evanescent (The Countenance Trilogy 2)

  Entropy (The Countenance Trilogy 3)

  Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)

  Season of the Witch (A Celestra Companion)

  Celestra Forever After (Celestra Forever After 1)

  The Dragon and the Rose (Celestra Forever After 2)

  The Serpentine Butterfly (Celestra Forever After 3)

  Crown of Ashes (Celestra Forever After 4)

  Throne of Fire (Celestra Forever After 5)

  Book Description

  My name is Lottie Lemon, and I see dead pets. On occasion I see a once upon a human, too, but mostly it’s just cute little furry beasts who have come back from the other side to warn me of their previous owner’s impending doom.

  Mayor Nash is up for reelection, and I’ve been asked to furnish the sweet treats for his campaign kickoff. So when I stumble upon a corpse at the party, everything predictably goes haywire. But this isn’t just any old corpse. This is a personal attack on our family. Not to mention the fact that someone seems to be stalking Everett. Something isn’t right in Honey Hollow. It seldom is. There is only one saving grace in this chaos, and it’s the fact that Nell Sawyer is back. If I have anything to say about it, she’ll be back for good—and the only way to ensure that is to let the case grow cold.

  Lottie Lemon has a brand new bakery
to tend to, a budding romance with perhaps one too many suitors, and she has the supernatural ability to see dead pets—which are always harbingers for ominous things to come. Throw in the occasional ghost of the human variety, a string of murders, and her insatiable thirst for justice, and you’ll have more chaos than you know what to do with.

  Living in the small town of Honey Hollow can be murder.

  Chapter 1

  I see dead people. Mostly I see dead pets, and on the rare occasion I do see a dearly departed of the human variety, but right now, I’m seeing a man that I wish I could kill with my bare hands.

  Rich Dallas has his own leathery mitts around my mother’s waist as they observe a tower of macarons I’ve assembled for the shenanigans about to be employed at the Honey Pot Diner next door. He’s tall, stalky, has a shock of silver hair, and sports an orange glowing faux tan—even though it’s June and he could get a real tan outside.

  The three of us stand in the kitchen of the Cutie Pie Bakery and Cakery, the very bakery that a sweet woman by the name of Nell Sawyer gifted me in her will—along with a good stretch of Main Street right here in Honey Hollow, and perhaps my fair share of the great state of Vermont, too—but that’s all up for debate at the moment and tangled up in legal red tape. I won’t fight my newfound uncle William for anything, with the exception of this bakery. I live, eat, and breathe the Cutie Pie. I bet if you took a microscope and looked hard enough, you’d find that it was inscribed over my DNA.

  I take in a deep lungful of the rich vanilla scent still permeating the air. I’ve been whipping up macarons all week, and the last flavor I baked was French vanilla. Macarons, not to be mistaken for macaroons, which are typically a coconut based cookie, are one of my all-time favorite treats. They’re colorful and flavorful with a light crunchy shell and a variety of creamy flavors sandwiched in between.

  “Let’s get this locked and loaded into the next room, little woman,” Rich Dallas barks at my mother. Rich happens to be my mother’s most recent romantic regret. They’ve been together for a few unfortunate months now, and, at the end of April, she accidentally found herself engaged to the brute. She may have said yes, initially, but has wisely since regretted it.

  She did put in an effort to shake him last month but to no avail. They met as volunteers at the hospital, but my mother has since ditched that altruistic gig in an effort to ditch the madman she’s unwittingly leashed herself to.

  Rich is controlling to a fault, forcing my mother to check in with him regarding her whereabouts every twenty minutes. His vocal cords only seem to work at top volume, and, as of late, he’s accused her of cheating. Okay, so he may not be too far off base in the cheating arena. My mother seems to have acquired a mad hankering for her bestie’s ex—another eye-popping relationship sin that Mother sees nothing wrong with. And the sin in question’s name is Mayor Harry Nash.

  My mother’s blonde locks bounce as she pulls forth a platter of macarons in the shape of a two-foot tall pyramid. My mother is beautiful, feisty, and has been perhaps a little too friendly with the opposite gender ever since my father died over a decade ago. Joseph and Miranda Lemon adopted me right after my father found me squirming on the floor of the firehouse where he worked. But last January, my biological mother, Carlotta Sawyer, popped back into the scene. It turns out, she asked the Lemons—via a note—to give me her name, and although they complied, they promptly nicknamed me Lottie.

  “Mom, be careful,” I warn as I head over to help her.

  “Ah ah!” she scolds, slowly pulling the platter off the white marble island. “I’ve got this, Lottie. You just finish up the rest of those delectable discs. Rich and I will take care of everything else.”

  “Please don’t call them discs. That makes them sound like Frisbees.” My macarons are the furthest thing from that. They’re no bigger than a silver dollar and come in every color and flavor. The bottom rung of the tower she’s holding is comprised of a layer of pink raspberry macarons followed by lemon, vanilla, blueberry, chocolate, pistachio, salted caramel, and finally, a new experimental flavor, strawberry cheesecake. It’s a magnificent tower of deliciousness, if I do say so myself.

  My mother tucks her tongue to the side of her lips, something she does frequently when deep in concentration.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing, Lottie. Ooh, and remember, Rich’s children will be here. We’ll need a cake. How about writing Happy Birthday Rich in navy?”

  Rich grunts, “That’s a good manly color,” he huffs my way.

  “You bet.” I shrug to no one in particular. Rich might think he’s the epitome of a macho man, but my sisters and I have pegged him more as the epitome of a psycho killer.

  Mom pauses before they hit the front of the bakery. “Oh, and before I forget, Mayor Nash’s children will be here as well!”

  “Oh goody.” I don’t bother hiding my disdain. I grew up with Mayor Nash’s spoiled brood. I know all about their wily ways, and if my afternoon goes in the direction I plan, I’ll expertly dodge them.

  Mom makes a face at my less than enthusiastic response. “And, Lottie, thank you so much for making your world-famous macarons.”

  “Please”—I try to shrug it off, but I secretly eat up every ounce of my mother’s praise—“they’re hardly world-famous.”

  “They will be once Mayor Nash becomes president! Oh, Lottie, that man has the capability to rule the world! He can truly do no wrong.”

  Rich ushers her out of the kitchen as if the bakery were on fire, and suddenly I’m fearing for both my mother and the macaron tower in her hands. Rich doesn’t take kindly to my mother bringing up another man. And my mother can’t seem to help but bring up her new obsession.

  No sooner does my mother and her psychotic suitor leave the kitchen than I get back to the millions of macarons I’ve spent the better part of a week crafting and carefully arrange them onto yet another platter. It’s done for the most part. I’m just putting the finishing touches on it now. I’ve decided since there were two events we’re celebrating next door that the occasion boasted the need for two spectacular towers.

  The Honey Pot Diner, the scene of the blunder that’s about to take place, is connected by way of an opening in an adjoining wall that leads from the café portion of the bakery into the dining room of the Honey Pot.

  The Honey Pot Diner was Nell Sawyer’s first real estate love. She opened the restaurant almost a half a century ago. It’s casual or formal, or anything in between you’d like it to be. They have two five-star chefs on hand, and the décor is whimsical with a large resin oak tree planted smack in the middle of the restaurant. Its branches fan out over the ceiling and ebb their way over into my own café—and the best part is, each branch is intertwined with white sparkling twinkle lights. It looks perfectly magical, especially as the sun starts to set.

  A pair of strong hands land carefully over my shoulders and spontaneously begin to give me the best massage known to man. I can feel a rather familiar frame hovering behind me. The scent of that warm cologne lets me know I’m carnally familiar with the hands currently casting a rather enticing spell over me. It’s my boyfriend, Everett—or as the citizens of Ashford County like to refer to him, Judge Baxter.

  “Yes,” I moan it out like a promise. “Keep it going.” I close my eyes and roll my head from side to side. “Oh yes! Has anyone told you those hands should be certified as trained weapons?”

  A tall, dark shadow appears at the back door of the bakery, and I can vaguely make it out with my peripheral vision. Truth be told, I’m enjoying the massage too much to care who it might be darkening my doorway. Besides, with Everett around, I always feel safe.

  “The only thing he’s trained for is the circus,” the shadowed man quips, sounding decidedly like Everett, and I glance over to affirm the fact in a fit of terror.

  A short-lived scream evicts from me as I hop out of range from those strange hands indulging in my flesh, only to find they’re connected to another all too familiar face.


  “Noah!” I shout before swatting him with a dishrag. “How dare you creep up on me like that.”

  Everett grunts, “Emphasis on creep.”

  Noah’s dimples press in deep as he sheds the hint of a wicked grin. Noah Corbin Fox is the lead homicide detective down in Ashford County, and he just so happens to be the cad that broke my heart. Okay, so Noah wasn’t exactly a cad by true definition, but we dated, and I’m embarrassed to say mated, for months before his wife walked back into the picture. I swear on all that is holy, I thought she was his ex. But as my luck in the love department would have it, she’s still the legal missus whose ring finger bears the diamonds he parked over it on their wedding day. Noah admitted later that they were separated, but it didn’t do much as far as making me feel any less like the other woman, and how I loathe the other woman.

  “Sorry, Lot”—the smile melts off Noah’s face—“but I was just proving a point.” Noah is handsome to a fault, face of a god, the aforementioned dimples, dark hair that turns red as fire in the sun. He’s built like a linebacker, and considering his career in law enforcement, he’s packing heat nearly twenty-four seven.