Strawberry Shortcake Sins

  Strawberry Shortcake Sins

  MURDER IN THE MIX 21

  Addison Moore

  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

  Recipe

  Preview: Bow Wow Big House

  Chapter One

  Books by Addison Moore

  Acknowledgments

  Connect with Addison

  Copyright © 2020 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.

  Copyright © 2020 by Addison Moore

  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.

  A couple of feuding food vloggers descend upon my bakery to shoot an episode of their culinary videos and it quickly evolves into a strawberry shortcake disaster. And then there is Everett with his new reality taking over his existence—and don't get me started on Noah. That dark secret he just uttered has the power to destroy everything he's worked for and perhaps so much more. It's spring in Honey Hollow and heartache is sprouting up everywhere. But there is a murder to solve and a cute little ghostly corgi to help me do just that. The heat index is rising in Honey Hollow and it's shaping up to be a real killer.

  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 One

  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 an entire kitchen full of my strawberry shortcake dessert in all of its incarnations. I’m talking dozens of eight-inch round cakes, dozens upon dozens of ten-inch round cakes, hundreds if not thousands of small paper dessert cups filled with the creamy fruity concoction. It’s a virtual sea of cake layered with fresh farm-to-table juicy red strawberries whose sugary juices have macerated into the spongy vanilla cake and, of course, there are layers upon layers of heavy whipped cream smothered throughout.

  It’s late on a Saturday afternoon in May, which would usually be a slow stretch of time for the Cutie Pie Bakery and Cakery, but it feels as if all of Honey Hollow—heck, all of Vermont has gathered in and around my little sweet bake shop.

  My best friend, Keelie Nell Turner, waddles into the kitchen with her back arched and her belly distended to the size of a basketball. Her blonde hair trickles down her shoulders in a glacial cascade of curls, her lips are full, and her skin is impeccable, nothing but glowing peaches and cream.

  “Keelie”—I’m quick to greet her with a warm embrace—“pregnancy really does become you. I think Bear should knock you up more often,” I tease.

  She grunts as the kitchen staff continues to swirl around us.

  “Lottie Lemon, don’t you put that curse on me.” Keelie gasps as she grabs her belly. “Just got a wild kick.” She laughs as she rubs a circle to the left of her beach ball-like belly. “Okay, I hear you. You’re a blessing. A big one, too.” She winks my way. “But seriously, Lot? Lucky for me, you have enough strawberry shortcake here to feed all of Vermont.”

  I crane my neck past her to get a better look into the café at the front of the bakery.

  “I guess that’s why all of Vermont showed up.”

  Lily Swanson breezes into the kitchen with her dark hair in a messy bun, her cheeks pink from running back and forth.

  “Lottie, the next time you decide to host all of Hollywood, count me out. There are more divas in this place than I care to number.” Her lips twitch as she looks to Keelie. “And in case you’re wondering, your sister is the biggest diva of them all.”

  “Is Naomi here?” Keelie snatches up a strawberry shortcake cupcake before waddling right back out of the kitchen.

  Naomi Turner used to be Lily’s BFF, but that whole best friends forever thing didn’t actually pan out for them. A few months back they were both dating the same guy and things ended disastrously as predicted.

  “Lily, why don’t you move a couple more cakes to the front and I’ll take care of the rest. Maybe you can help thin out the crowd, too. We can’t have everyone in here,” I say, picking up a giant platter that houses one of the bigger strawberry shortcakes before elbowing my way out into the café.

  The bakery itself is painted a cheery yellow hue and the furniture is mix-and-match with no two pieces looking exactly alike, considering the fact they were all secondhand store finds. Bear Fisher, Keelie’s soon-to-be husband, is a contractor and he helped put this place together as well as paint the furniture every shade of pastel. There’s a huge walkway that leads to the Honey Pot Diner next door, and in the Honey Pot there’s an overgrown oak tree that sits in the middle of the dining room. Its branches extend over the ceiling of the Honey Pot and enter into the café portion of my bakery as they float all along the ceiling. Each branch is strewn with twinkle lights and it gives both places an enchanted appeal.

  It’s wall-to-wall bodies in the bakery as the film crews set up their cameras and equipment.

  Carlotta spots me with my arms loaded with enormous shortcake goodness and she gives an obnoxious whistle with her fingers.

  “Coming through!” she shouts as she uses her body to axe a pathway through the wall of humanity. I finally manage to put the cake down on one of the many conjoined bistro tables that have been pieced together and laden down with the yummy desserts.

  Carlotta is my birth mother, and the woman who raised her was Nell Sawyer, my wonderful grandmother who owned both the Honey Pot Diner and the bakery itself. And when Nell died she gifted them both to me, along with almost all of Vermont and a beach house in Nantucket. Carlotta is my doppelgänger in every way, with her caramel-colored waves and hazel eyes—with the exception of her crow’s feet, deep laugh lines, and stray wiry gray hairs that are starting to outnumber her original color.

  Carlotta smacks me on the back. “Lot Lot, I think
it’s official. Today is the day you get your lucky break into showbiz.”

  “Newsflash, Carlotta, I’m not trying to break into showbiz,” I tell her. “I think today is the day I’m going to work extra hard to hold my sanity together.”

  Last month, my half-sisters, Kelleth and Aspen Nash, asked if a friend of theirs named Cricket Flannery could host her food show here, and I agreed without realizing what melee this would bring into my life. It turns out, Cricket is also a friend of the Turner family, and once Keelie heard about Cricket wanting to host her show in my bakery she all but begged me to go through with it. And suffice it to say, between the Turner family and the Nash clan, there has been a friends and family extravaganza congregating around the bakery all day, along with Cricket’s thousands of fans.

  “Don’t worry, Lot,” Carlotta says, taking a look around. “You’re the winner in all this. Think of all the exposure you’ll be getting. And it’s not just one popular food show—it’s two that are descending on the bakery today.”

  It’s true.

  Not only is Cricket here, along with the YouTube production team that helps her churn out her show Head Over Meals, but her so-called food vlogger rival, Ben Daley, from the ever popular the Daley Dish show is here as well. They’re filming a double episode set to air on both of their channels, and I suppose that means double exposure for me. It’s what I have to keep reminding myself when I take in the fact I was asked to donate the desserts in exchange for all the “priceless” free advertising they keep reminding me about. But I’m not doing this for the advertising. I’m doing it for my best friend, Keelie. I would do anything for that girl, including eat the cost of about a thousand strawberry shortcakes.

  A dark-haired deity enters in through the bakery doors and it’s as if a hallelujah choir breaks out. Every woman in the bakery pauses for a moment to offer the aforementioned Greek god the ogling respect that’s due to him.

  The deity in question would be the honorable and yet heart-stoppingly handsome Judge Essex Everett Baxter—my husband. Okay, fine. The legal union he and I share is nothing more than a technicality. He needed a wife in order to receive the lion’s share of his inheritance and I willingly stepped in and saved the financial day.

  Essex actually prefers people call him by his middle name, Everett. His formal moniker is strictly reserved for those he’s done the horizontal mambo with, and even though I’ve mamboed with Everett more times than you can shake a coital stick at, I prefer to call him by the name I first knew him by.

  His lids hood over those cobalt blue eyes as he wraps his arms around me and my insides detonate in honor of his otherworldly glory. Everett has always had the command of every woman’s attention and I’m certainly no different. He’s tall, dark, and vexingly brooding, and any smile he offers is extremely short-lived and hard-won. He has about five years on me, seeing that I’m in my late twenties and he’s just hitting his mid-thirties stride. Some would say he’s the right age for just about everything, and I would happen to agree.

  “Lemon,” he says it low and deep, sending the sound of his voice echoing right down to my bones, and every last molecule in my body laps up the sound. Everett has only ever called me by my surname for as long as I can remember. “You look delicious.” His lips curve upward before he glances to the table next to us. “And the dessert doesn’t look so bad either.”

  A laugh rattles through me as I cinch my arms around this wall of a man. Everett is built like a linebacker, and not one woman has ever complained. He’s wearing a three-piece suit, dark and inky, his signature look, and a navy tie. But it’s the scent of his thick, expensive cologne that pulls me into his spell.

  “How did it go at the courthouse?” I ask apprehensively. I happen to know he was there on a Saturday battling it out with Cressida Bentley’s lawyers as both Cressida and her daddy’s money do their best to contest the charges she’s up against. Cressida was stalking me a few months back by way of threatening notes. It turns out, she’s also the mother to Everett’s fifteen-year-old daughter Everly, who goes by Evie.

  Everett’s chest expands to the size of all of Honey Hollow.

  “Don’t worry, Lemon. I’m not letting her sweet talk her way out of this one.”

  “It’s not anything that comes from her mouth that I’m worried about. It’s all that green coming out of her father’s bank account, anxious to buy her a get out of jail free card, that has me quaking with anger.”

  Carlotta pops up between us. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Sexy.” And yes, that’s a bona fide nickname gifted to Everett by baristas the world over. “Speaking of which, I need a new bed, new mattress, headboard, and the whole shebang. The bigger, the better.” She gives a hard wink to the beefy wall of muscles next to me. “See what I did there?” Suffice it to say, Carlotta has a bit of a salty edge to her. She’s also been holing up in my back bedroom while we repair the plumbing damage and black MOLD at Nell’s old place, Carlotta’s former home. I’m terrified of the four letter M word.

  “What’s wrong with the bed in the guest room?” I ask.

  Carlotta blinks back as if I struck her. “That old rusted out squeak-fest stuffed with combustibles built for one? Why, I can’t hardly get a good night’s rest on it let alone entertain the occasional guest.”

  By “occasional guest” she means Mayor Nash—who, come to find out, also happens to be my biological father.

  I steal a moment to take a nice, deep, cleansing breath. Over the last few months of rooming with Carlotta I’ve learned a nice, deep breath is necessary for a lot more than living. Some days it’s solely responsible for holding my sanity together.

  “The room is too small to fit more than a twin in there. I’ve got a better idea,” I say. “How about we go apartment hunting? That way you can entertain all the people you want, whenever you want, on the world’s biggest mattress?”

  Carlotta sputters and gags. “Don’t you think for a minute I’m going anywhere, missy. You can’t kick me out. I gave you life.” She leans in hard. “I’m the reason you see clearly to the other side of the great rainbow divide, and when push comes to strawberry shortcake shove, I’m probably the reason you bake so well. We all know Mama Nell was kneading up trouble in the kitchen long before you were a sparkle in Mayor Nash’s very married eye. It’ll be a cold day in H-E-double-hockey-sticks when you shove me out the door.”

  She stalks off as I let out an egregious loud moan, not that anyone can hear me over the boisterous sound of laughter and hum of conversation going on around me.

  The fact of the matter is, there was some truth to Carlotta’s rant. She is, in fact, the reason I’m what’s known as transmundane, further categorized as supersensual. And being supersensual entails the fact I can see the dead. Not all of the dead—just those who have come back for a very specific purpose. Their presence used to signify something ominous, albeit petty, was about to happen to the one that cherished them most, but as of late it almost always means murder is afoot.

  Everett’s chest rumbles against me as he gives a silent laugh.

  “You don’t really want Carlotta to go anywhere. She’s a riot. Plus, she keeps you on your toes.”

  A smart-aleck comment is about to missile out of my mouth just as Evie strides up in a tight pair of ripped up blue jeans, a white T-shirt that hardly covers her midriff, and a pair of high-heeled booties which look far too cumbersome on this warm spring day, but then, Evie has been prone to suffer for beauty now and again in the short time I’ve known her. I’ve really taken to Evie, and she’s really taken to me. So much so she’s asked to call me Mom. Of course, I said yes. Evie feels every bit my daughter as she is Everett’s.

  “Hey, Mom.” She quickly locks me in a warm embrace. With her boots on she’s taller than me by three whole inches but feels more like three feet. Her long dark hair rides down her back in perfect ringlets, and her cobalt blue eyes are the exact representation of her daddy’s. “Hey, Dad.” She tips her head to his shoulder a moment. “Gues
s what? Carlotta just said she’d teach me how to play Texas hold ’em. We’re going to get a bunch of my friends together from my old boarding school and take them for a ride. Whatever that means.” She glances to the door. “I gotta go. My dates are here.”

  She zips off, leaving both Everett and me with our jaws rooted to the floor.

  “Texas hold ’em?” I say to Everett.

  “Dates?” The word snips from him with a dangerous edge. “All right, I’m on board. We’re getting rid of Carlotta.”

  A gentle laugh rolls through me. “If only it were that simple.”

  “Lottie!” my mother calls out in her all too familiar trill—that would be my other mother, my adoptive mother, Miranda Lemon. Way back when Carlotta had me, she soon realized that her sixteen-year-old self could no more care for an infant than she could a pet rock. She quickly abandoned me on the floor of the local firehouse and a kind man by the name of Joseph Lemon found me. The rest is adoption history.

  Mom has creamy blonde hair that’s well coifed and curled as it dusts her shoulders. She’s a blue-eyed beauty who somehow forgot to age, and she has the personality of an effervescent bottle of champagne that’s been shaken up and left to explode all of its bubbly goodness onto the unsuspecting world below.

  She scuttles up with her best friend by her side, Becca Turner, Keelie’s mother. Becca has strawberry blonde hair that touches down just past her neck and a twinkle in her eyes that reminds me every bit of my bestie. It takes a moment for me to realize that her hand is conjoined with that of a younger woman about my age with long straight caramel-colored hair, squinted eyes, and a wide smile. Her forehead is fringed with bangs and her tiny nose and pointed chin give her a childlike appeal.