Pancake Panic Read online

  Pancake Panic

  Murder in the Mix 17

  Addison Moore

  Hollis Thatcher Press, LTD.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  A Note from the Author

  Books by Addison Moore

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Addison Moore

  Edited by Paige Maroney Smith

  Cover by Lou Harper, Cover Affairs

  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.

  Hollis Thatcher Press, LTD.

  Copyright © 2019 by Addison Moore

  Created with Vellum

  Book Description

  My name is Lottie Lemon, and I see dead people. Okay, so I rarely see dead people. Mostly I see furry creatures of the dearly departed variety, aka dead pets, who have come back from the other side to warn me of their previous owner’s impending doom.

  It’s the morning of the big all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast and everything that can go wrong has. I’m burning breakfast for the entire town, I’ve run out of syrup, the ghosts from my mother’s B&B have shown up to stage a protest, and my ex has arrived with another woman dripping off his arm. Some days I wish I had stayed in bed, curled up with my cats. And to make matters worse, I find a body facedown in a plate full of my light and fluffy pancakes. The new year is off to a terrifying start at best.

  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

  My name is Lottie Lemon, and I see dead people. Okay, so rarely do I see dead people. Mostly I see furry creatures of the dearly departed variety, aka dead pets, who have come back from the other side to warn me of their previous owner’s impending doom. But right now, I’m not seeing a dead anything. I’m seeing a stack of pancakes that seems to be touching the ceiling, as I help replenish the supply of the never-ending treats for everyone who came out for the fire department’s all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast.

  I happen to be in charge of feeding the masses and, believe me when I say everything that can go wrong has. My staff from the bakery had to push me aside and take over flipping the countless number of flapjacks because I happened to be charring them to death.

  I confess, my mind is on other things.

  I’m running short on both supplies and patience, the syrup is quickly dwindling, and we’ve run out of plates and seats, not to mention the stove has threatened to go out on us twice. That would be the last thing we need. You can’t cook an endless supply of pancakes on a tiny little hotplate. And the fine residents of Honey Hollow have come out in full-force with every bit of their appetites intact.

  Lily Swanson, the girl who works the register at my bakery, hands me a platter full of golden delicious pancakes that are practically bouncing as if they were on springs. They’re that light and fluffy.

  “Why don’t you leave the kitchen for a bit, Lottie?” Lily swings her chocolate-colored ponytail as she moves. Lily is Barbie beautiful with large doe eyes and bee stung lips. She spent a majority of our formative years hating me by proxy because her best friend did, but that’s a story for another day. “You’ve been here since four in the morning, and you’re about to burn down the firehouse. Clearly, you’ve hit your pancake-loving limit.”

  “Oh, I hit that yesterday just preparing for the event,” I say, glancing to the opened door in the back. It’s been wide open all morning even though it’s practically a blizzard out there, but it’s far too warm in the kitchen to complain. “There’s no way I can leave. I’m seeing this hotcake catastrophe right through to the syrupy end.”

  Lily winces. “And speaking of that, we may have completely run out of maple syrup.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut tight.

  “And the strawberry syrup”—she continues—“and the blueberry syrup, and your special chocolate sauce.” Lily lifts a finger while taking off her apron. “And that’s exactly why I’m on my way to the Cutie Pie Bakery and Cakery to pick up more of everything. Don’t worry, Lottie. I’ll be right back. Alex has offered his muscles to assist with the endeavor.” She gives a cheeky wink as she takes off for Alex Fox pastures. Alex Fox is an ex-Marine turned investment banker who has opened up shop right here in Honey Hollow. Something tells me she’s far more interested in Alex than she is in replenishing the supplies at hand. Here’s hoping I see her again anytime soon.

  I take the stack of pancakes from her and make my way into the expansive garage of the fire department where the trucks have been removed and most of the tables for the event have been set up. The mess hall is full as well and so is the foyer of the structure. Suffice it to say, the good people of Honey Hollow have come out in droves in a show of support, as well as every fireman assigned to the house. The Ashford Sheriff’s Department has had a significant presence here, too, sans one handsome homicide detective whose heart I may have accidentally broken—and in turn he’s broken mine.

  Mom claps her hands as if trying to garner everyone’s attention. Her shoulder-length vanilla waves bounce around her shoulders and she’s stylishly dressed in an auburn sweater dress with matching suede boots. My mother never fails to stun, not even in the middle of a snowstorm in January. She has never looked her age—or acted like it, but that’s all a part of Miranda Lemon’s charm.

  “Remember”—her cheery voice booms across the firehouse with its green garland still strung up around the periphery, leftover from the holidays—“all proceeds go directly to refurbishing the community center! Call your friends, call your family to come and join the delicious festivities!”

  A murmur of delight circles the blooming crowd. It’s wall-to-wall bodies, and almost every one of them is a familiar face.

  As of late, crowds make me anxious. It seems it’s always at one of these hyper-populated events that I seem to stumble upon something nefarious—like a body. And believe me, I’ve stumbled upon my fair share. I guess you could say I’m feeling a bit cursed these days.

  For just a moment before I left the house, I thought of bringing that trusty Glock Noah and Everett teamed up to gift me a few months back. It’s small and sleek, and I nicknamed her Ethel out of the blue one day because she just so happened to look
like one. But considering I knew this place would be brimming with firefighters and sheriff’s deputies, I didn’t feel the need to bring Ethel along for the ride.

  Keelie steps up. “Lottie, these really are delicious.” Her lips twitch as if contesting the idea.

  Keelie Nell Turner and I have been best friends since preschool, and just last year we discovered we were cousins. But blood-related or not, Keelie has always felt like family to me. Her blonde mane is swept up into a messy bun and she looks adorably toasty in a white scarf and bright red vest. Keelie has that fresh-faced girl next door look about her. And these days she glows like the morning star.

  Before I can say a word, my ex-boyfriend, Otis Bear Fisher, runs up.

  “Keelie, are you okay?” He wraps his surly arms around her. Bear is a dirty blond, buff looker who runs a successful construction company right here in Honey Hollow. Bear and Keelie recently got engaged, and even more recently, Keelie found out they’re about to have a baby. Keelie never did think much about doing things in order, but she has always thought highly about doing them in style. I’m assuming both her wedding dress and the baby’s wardrobe will be to die for.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I wince over at her. “You do look a little green around the gills.”

  She lets out a horrid moan. “That’s because the pancakes are about to make a reprisal.”

  Bear hustles her out of the room so fast you’d think he morphed into a poltergeist.

  Speaking of those supernatural specters—I really can see them. At first, they were simply a sign of bad things to come for the person they were last emotionally attached to, a scraped knee, a sprained toe, but as of late they almost always mean that murder is afoot.

  And just a couple of weeks ago, I was visited by the ghost of my own father. Well—my adoptive father, who, let’s be frank, is my real father in every sense of the word.

  Joseph Lemon found me as an abandoned infant, right here in this firehouse, squirming away while swaddled in a blanket with a note asking whoever found me to please name me Carlotta. Not only did Joseph Lemon do just that—he and his gorgeous, yet feisty, wife, Miranda, adopted me. And that is exactly how I ended up the middle daughter of Joseph and Miranda Lemon.

  An older version of myself runs my way and takes the towering stack of pancakes from me.

  “Lottie Dottie!” Carlotta sings. Yes, another Carlotta. This one happens to be my biological mother who made a reentrance in my life a year ago—just over a quarter of a century after she dropped me off to begin with. “You look like you just saw a ghost.” Her hazel eyes bug out as she presses her gaze to mine. Carlotta and I share the same caramel-colored waves, same hazel eyes, and pretty much the same everything else. I’m her doppelgänger sans the gray hair and fine lines forming around her eyes and mouth. “You don’t see a ghost, do you, Lottie?”

  She does a quick once-over of the burgeoning crowd just as an explosive bout of laughter erupts from my mother’s table up front.

  Both Carlotta and I are transmundane, further classified as supersensual—meaning we can both see through to the other side—or more accurately, we can see the ghosts that choose to show themselves to us.

  “No,” I say. “And thank your unlucky stars and mine. I don’t want to see a single disembodied entity—mostly because I don’t want another homicide on my hands.” I bite down hard over my lip as I scan the crowd, ironically for the very thing I just confessed to not wanting to see. “Go ahead and take those pancakes to the buffet table for me, will you?”

  “You bet. Oh, and hey, don’t forget. There’s a big transmundane convention coming up in New York City and I’ve already booked a hotel for us in midtown.”

  “That’s very generous of you, thank you. I just might be looking forward to it.” I offer a wry smile as I speed off toward my mother’s table.

  The truth is, I’m not really looking forward to the big supernatural convention. But only because I attended one of those spooky kooky meetings—that happened to be hosted at my own bakery without my consent—and I really didn’t learn a thing. I just hope this next metaphysical meeting doesn’t end up being another fantastic waste of time—and poor Carlotta’s scant monetary resources. A hotel in midtown doesn’t come cheap.

  I try to navigate the crowd on the way to my mother’s table and run smack dead into a rock-hard body. I pull back, only to gaze at the dreamiest cobalt blue eyes you ever did see—and lucky for me, they happen to belong to my husband.

  “Lemon.” Everett’s lips flicker with a barely there hint of a smile. Lemon is the only name I remember Everett calling me. Judge Essex Everett Baxter is gorgeous to a fault with his sleek black hair and aforementioned stunning blue eyes. His bone structure is straight from Mount Olympus and he’s got the body of a deity to match. He’s been Vermont’s premier playboy for so long, half the women we run into have garnered the right to call him by his formal moniker, Essex—a parting gift he saves for those he’s done the mattress mambo with. And yes, I’ve mamboed with Everett many a time myself, and yet I still prefer to call him Everett. But for the last year he’s been ever so faithful to me even though we were never quite in a commitment. And despite the fact we’re technically married, we’re still not in a committed relationship. That whole matrimony thing is a rather long story.

  He brushes his thumb over my cheek. “You look amazing.”

  “And you look as if you’re about to do a hostile takedown of every woman’s good senses in this room.” It’s true. Women of every age and stage of life have always craned their necks just to get a better look at this gorgeous specimen—and I can’t say I blame them. “Every woman here is looking at you.”

  “I’ve got the only eyes I need looking in my direction.” His cheek flinches in lieu of the smile that he’s always slow to part with. “No word from him yet?”

  Like a reflex my head turns toward the entry. “Not a single one. Face it, he just can’t stand me.”

  The infamous he would be Detective Noah Corbin Fox, Everett’s old stepbrother, my ex-boyfriend and husband in exactly that order. My marriage to Noah was no more real than my marriage to Everett. Even still, we were trying to make our relationship work, but life and his ditzy ex-girlfriend got in the way.

  “Never mind him.” I sniff hard, pretending not to care that Noah has all but put a moratorium on any kind of a relationship with me over the last few weeks. “Let’s say hello to my mother and her friends.”

  Everett threads his arm through mine. “Anything for you, Lemon.”

  And I know this much is true.

  Everett has helped me with more than one homicide investigation that I’ve inadvertently pulled him into. It’s safe to say he’s put his legal eagle neck on the line for me one too many times. The fact I married him in an effort to help preserve his inheritance was simply me returning the favor. Of course, it wasn’t Everett’s idea. I volunteered to be his bride. I figured it was either me or that pariah who’s been trying to pin him down to a Pinterest wedding board, Cressida Bentley.

  Cressida is an annoying socialite who wandered into Honey Hollow a couple of months ago and demanded to have her Essex back. But she’s far too mean and shallow for him in my opinion. I couldn’t let her stick her nose, or her wedding finger, where it didn’t belong, so I stepped up to the proverbial altar and did the deed myself.

  The entire firehouse roars with the din of laughter and the murmur of robust conversations as they circulate throughout the room. It’s elbow to elbow in here with an epic turnout. There’s even a reporter from the Honey Hollow Hive roaming the grounds, taking pictures as he chronicles the event.

  We come upon the table where my mother sits with a group of people, most of which I’ve never met before. But next to my mother is her very best friend, Chrissy Nash, Mayor Nash’s ex-wife, who I’ve known for as long as I can remember.

  Chrissy and my mother share the same blonde hair and devilish blue eyes and the same naughty smirk on their crimson painted lips
. Chrissy is the mother to my three half-siblings that I met last summer after I learned that Mayor Nash was my biological father. Mayor Harry Nash is a notorious philanderer, so it probably shouldn’t have shocked me as much as it did to learn that he fathered me while still married to poor Chrissy.

  “Lottie!” Mom jumps from her seat just as I take up Everett’s hand. “Good morning, Judge Baxter. You both know Chrissy.” She points just beyond her blonde bestie at an older man with salt and pepper hair—mostly salt, and a kind, squinted smile aimed right at the two of us. “And do you remember Eugene Alexander? Chrissy’s brand new steady Eddie—or I guess it’s steady Eugene!”

  Both my mother and Chrissy break out into a hum of laughter.

  The older gentleman’s lips expand in a warm smile. “Please, call me Flip. I’ve been flipping houses on the side for as long as I can remember and the nickname just stuck.”

  “Hey! I do remember you,” I say. “We met at my bakery last month. You said you were a fireman, too. You mentioned you were working right here at the firehouse the day my father found me squirming on the floor.”

  “That I was.” His eyes brighten a notch. “Good man, your father. Great golfer, too.”

  “Thank you,” I say as Everett gives my hand a squeeze. Everett certainly knows how much I miss my father. He lost his father a while back, too.

  Flip stands. “Everyone”—he looks to the rest of the people seated around him as he garners their attention—“this is Lottie Lemon. She owns the Cutie Pie Bakery and Cakery right down on Main Street. And she singlehandedly made all the light and fluffy pancakes we’ve been feasting on for the better part of an hour.” He slaps his slight paunch. “And we’re still going strong.”