A Berry Home Catastrophe Read online

  A Berry Home Catastrophe

  A.R. Winters

  Contents

  Foreword

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  A Berry Home Catastrophe

  Copyright 2018 by A.R. Winters

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Welcome to The Berry Home: where the food is to-die-for!

  Life is sweet for Kylie Berry: rebranding Sarah’s Eatery into her very own The Berry Home, tackling new recipes one step at a time, juggling two gorgeous suitors, and surviving near-death experiences by the skin of her teeth!

  When another murder mystery lands smack dab on Kylie’s doorstep—in the most literal way—she swears off her sleuthing in favor of safer pursuits. But then her gorgeous suitor Brad comes calling with a highly unusual request: “I need you to investigate Hank’s murder.”

  Brad’s sister, Samantha, is the prime suspect for the murder of her longtime boyfriend Hank Harrison. Out to prove her innocence at all costs, Brad entreats Kylie and her best friend Zoey to do the legwork that the Camden Falls police won’t…

  But who wanted to see Hunky Hank dead? A fitness nut and purveyor of fine exercise equipment, Hank was well-liked within the tiny community—at first glance, anyway.

  But what about the jealous glares from men envious of his physique? The heated glances from young women he trained with at the gym? Did his business partner stand to make a fortune from Hank’s death? And did Samantha actually have something to gain from her boyfriend’s demise…?

  With tech genius Zoey and police offer Brad by her side, Kylie dives headfirst into the mystery of who killed Hank Harrison—and fingers crossed, she’ll make it back to the café before the dinner rush!

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  1

  I slid a plate of pancakes across the counter to Jack. His expression was normally inscrutable, but once the pancakes were in front of him, that changed.

  Even his thousand-dollar tailored suit couldn’t save him from looking unsure of himself, and the rich ebony skin of his upper lip was dotted with beads of sweat.

  The café’s resident octogenarian, Agatha, leaned in close on one side. Zoey Jin—local tech guru, scary wunderkind, and my best friend—leaned in close on his other side.

  “You don’t have to eat that,” Agatha said. Her multitude of bracelets tinkled as she lifted a supportive hand and rested it upon Jack’s back. Her white pixie cut emphasized her high cheekbones and piercing dark eyes, while her dangling hoop earrings emphasized her long, elegant neck, and her low-hanging necklace highlighted the fearlessly plunging neckline of her gauzy cotton periwinkle blue dress. She had an angelic quality about her.

  “He gave his word,” Zoey countered. Her midnight black hair wiggled and waved around her face, untamed and almost alive. Her flawless honey skin bore brilliant, jewel red eyeshadow and a silvery black metallic eyeliner that was much thicker under her eyes than above and which stretched to a fine tip in a truly glorious cat eye.

  My name was Kylie Berry, owner, operator and mostly inept head chef of The Berry Home, previously named Sarah’s Eatery. And though I wouldn’t go so far as to say Zoey looked demonic, she certainly wasn’t playing Agatha’s angel card.

  I looked at the pancake platter in front of Jack. I’d tried my best. I’d done everything just as he’d shown me. Honest! …Probably. …Okay, possibly.

  “Zoey is right,” Jack’s rich baritone voice intoned. He picked up his fork. “I gave my word.”

  “Guys,” I whined. “Come on! It’s not like I’m asking him to eat strychnine! They’re just pancakes.” Thick grease sponges that were at least three times heavier and denser than anything that I’ve ever seen Jack make. I was starting to feel guilty, but I really wanted Jack to taste them. I was hoping that if he tasted them he’d be able to tell me what I’d done wrong.

  Jack cut a triple-stacked wedge. He put it in his mouth, then chewed. “Oh my God,” he said before he’d even swallowed. “They’re like rubber.”

  Agatha patted Jack on the back, Zoey snickered, and I died a little inside.

  “Can you show me how to fix it?” I asked.

  Jack swallowed. “Coffee,” he groaned.

  “I can fix it with coffee?” Hope filled me.

  “No, I need coffee.”

  I topped off his cup and he drank it down straight without adding any sugar or milk. When he put the cup back in its saucer, he shuddered.

  “I’m sorry, Kylie,” he said. “I’ve failed you.”

  “Failed me? No!”

  “No, I have. There is no saving these pancakes, and as your teacher I can only blame myself.”

  “I’ll keep practicing,” I said in a small voice.

  Jack shuddered again. “Please don’t…”—my heart fell—“…stop trying.”

  “Please don’t? …Stop trying? Or please don’t stop trying?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Any of those will do.”

  Defeated, I topped off his coffee cup again, which he drained right away. It seemed to stabilize him after his harrowing experience with my pancakes.

  He stood and buttoned his suit jacket. “Your coffee is getting close to good.” Then putting on his fedora hat and tipping it to us, he said, “Ladies,” and was gone.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked after he’d gone. “My coffee is close to good!” Abject glee didn’t even begin to touch on what I was feeling. Pure bliss. That was it!

  “And speaking of coffee,” Zoey said, “how about hooking me up with one of those French presses you finally started using?” She glanced over at the menu board that listed my full priced fare, as compared to my Oops Board, which was where all my cooking mistakes got listed at steep discounts. I suspected that the pancakes had no place on either board. “I see you’re not being shy about what you’re charging for a cup.”

  “Nope! Not shy at all.” It was true. That high of a price felt weird at first, but I had sat down and done the math. I evaluated how much ground coffee each serving took, the cost of the French presses themselves, and the quality of the coffee they produced. Then I priced accordingly, and I suspected that they represented the most expensive coffee in town. Yet they were selling. People were loving them!

  I fixed Zoey an individual-sized French press full of a chocolate-flavored roast, steeping the grounds in the hot water. I slid it over in front of her just as the café’s front door chimed with the entrance of a new customer. Rather than make his way to a table to sit, he headed straight for me, where I stood behind the grill’s counter.

  “Good morning!” the newcomer said, as he extended a hand across the counter in offer for me to shake. He looked to b
e in his later twenties to early thirties, and I couldn’t stop myself from staring even as I shook his hand. I hadn’t known anyone could be more handsome than Brad. I didn’t know that it was physically possible, but I think this man might have actually managed it. He had black hair and a complexion the color of a light mocha latte with olive undertones. His skin was as flawless as porcelain with no signs of age. His cheekbones were high, his lips were full, and his eyes were a luminescent ice blue.

  But his perfection didn’t stop there. No. He was around 6’1”, lean, and sculpted, and though the weather was still cool outside, he was wearing cargo shorts, a form-hugging short-sleeve polo and designer sandals. He looked ready for a trip to the beach. But despite the weather and his light dress, there were fine beads of sweat on his upper lip and his eyes look pinched at their edges.

  “Good morning,” I replied. I did my best to hide my puzzled attention so as not to come off rude.

  “This is a beautiful space,” he said, turning around to take in the café. He had one hand pressed flat against his side, but he had a coffee cup in his other hand. It was a to-go cup from Yancy’s Ground Up, a coffee shop that doubled as a smoothie bar, located right next to the local gym. I’d only been in there once, on a day that I’d gone around to all the local eateries to check out what they offered, their quality, and what they charged. “Is this where you hold all your events?”

  Events… “Um, yeah,” I said. Agatha brought her knitting group here. The Saturday walkers usually stopped by afterward for coffee. I knew that I had some college-student regulars who liked to study here…

  I couldn’t think of any “events” other than those. We did sometimes have a customer appreciation day to highlight Patty’s amazing baking, so maybe he meant those.

  Patty was a previously homeless woman with schizophrenic tendencies and a talent for making pastries fit for kings and queens. She worked whatever amount the voices in her head would let her.

  “How many people do you think the place would hold with all of the tables and chairs cleared away?” he asked.

  “Uh…” I was like a deer frozen in headlights. I couldn’t help but feel like he was having a conversation that I hadn’t yet caught up with.

  The café’s door chimed open and a small man with wavy black hair rushed in.

  “Roberto,” I said, but the little man of Italian descent ignored me. He only had eyes for the gorgeous man with the to-go cup from Yancy’s Ground Up.

  Roberto Bianchi had once been the chef at my café. The café I now owned had until very recently been owned by my cousin Sarah, and Roberto had been her chef. He’d been my chef, too—for one day. He didn’t come back for day two, but he did eventually come back as the local health inspector to try to put me out of business.

  “Hank!” Roberto exclaimed, throwing up his arms in greeting. His hands were on Hank, directing the bigger man to turn and start moving toward the café door as soon as he reached him. “It’s so good to see you. Come, come. We will find what we need outside.”

  Hank didn’t even get a chance to say anything before Roberto shepherded him out the door. I watched as the pair turned to face the building—my building—and looked up. Hank pointed at the second floor, which would be my apartment.

  “What are they up to?” I said, watching them with growing unease.

  “Who cares what they’re up to?” Zoey said with a dreamy quality to her voice. She was sitting with her chin propped on her hand, staring out the window at Roberto and Hank.

  I was sure that the focus of her fascination wasn’t Roberto. Not that he wasn’t a fine enough looking man. It was just that he was barely noticeable standing next to Hank. And I had to admit, Hank was nice to look at. He looked even more glorious out in the early morning sun. It made the warm color of his skin glow. He was simply beautiful.

  Before I knew it, I was leaning against the counter with my chin propped up in my hand, too.

  “Girls, girls,” Agatha chided. “Trust me, you don’t want him. He’s nice to look at but not nice to play with.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “He’s a womanizer,” Agatha said.

  Now, Agatha might have been in her early eighties, but the woman was no prude. She had nothing against the attentions of a handsome man. I knew that men didn’t come much older than her, and the fellows her age were getting fewer and fewer, but there had been no shortage of younger men who had turned their gaze her way during the short period of time that I’d known her. So if she said that Hank the Hunk was a womanizer, I was ready to sit up and listen.

  “Who’s he womanizing with?” Zoey asked.

  “Brad’s sister, for starters,” Agatha said.

  “Brad’s sister?” I felt my cheeks heat. Brad was a police officer and one of the two men I had been, well… getting to know. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a courtship. I’d been out with Brad on one official date, and we hadn’t actually gone out at all. We’d stayed in, and he cooked for me before dazzling me with his smooth dancing skills. He’d made me forget all about my lecherous ex-husband. And for a few minutes, he’d even made me forget about Joel, owner of the local newspaper and the other man vying for my affections.

  What had my cheeks heating was that I hadn’t even known that Brad had a sister! It was such a small detail. And truly, it was none of my business. Yet, that I hadn’t known belied how little I actually knew about him.

  That wasn’t a pebble I could throw too far or too hard, though. I hadn’t told him about any of my family, either. He knew a little bit about my ex-husband and how nasty he’d gotten during our divorce. He also knew about my local ex-in-laws. But that was it.

  If I hadn’t been willing to open up and share with him, how could I blame him for not opening up and sharing with me?

  “I think that Kylie should spend some time letting Hank womanize her,” Zoey said. Her comment zapped me out of my Brad-themed reverie.

  “Womanize me? I’ve already got my hands full, thank you very much.” Brad and Joel’s rivalry for my affections had left me questioning my sanity more than once. But I simply couldn’t choose! I liked them both so much. And to be honest, neither one of them had stepped up to do any serious dating. I was pretty sure that winning me had more to do with beating each other than it had to do with becoming the exclusive focus of my heart.

  I turned my attention to Agatha. “What about you?”

  Agatha ducked her chin and bore down on me with her dark, steely eyes. “What about me?”

  I waved a hand out the window. “A handsome man…” Then I waved my hand at her. “A lovely woman…”

  “Ha!” Agatha laughed. “Puh-lease. The boy’s too young for me.”

  I seriously doubted that.

  “What I want to know is why Zoey isn’t out there stealing Hank’s attention away from Roberto.” Agatha’s laser gaze turned on Zoey. “Don’t you think it’s time to tame another bull?”

  Rather than laugh or joke, some of the zestful fun drained away from Zoey’s eyes. “That’s a hard pass for me.” Over the last year, Zoey’s heart had been pulverized in a blender, fed to ducks, had the resulting bird droppings scooped up, told they were wonderful, and then set on fire.

  Agatha tsked. “I’m so sorry, dear,” she said, patting Zoey’s hand. “I didn’t mean to push too hard too soon.”

  It was time to get this love affair of looking at Hank the Hunk back on track. “I wonder what he looks like doing pushups… under a waterfall.”

  Zoey laughed. “Under a waterfall?”

  “Look at him and picture it!” I defended while laughing with her.

  We all turned our gaze to the windows to let our imaginations do what they did best, but mine was witch-slapped—I’ll say witch-slapped rather than the alternative—by who I saw coming in my café’s front door. It was my ex-aunt-in-law, Dorothy, and with her arrival my dreamy morning was at risk of instantly becoming a nightmare.

  2

  “Aunt,” I st
arted to say but then choked and coughed. I had been married to her nephew, Dan Hibbert, for eleven years, and old habits were hard to break. “Dorothy,” I said, this time without the aunt-in-law label. “What a pleasant surprise.” A little bile rose up in my throat at the terrible, terrible lie.

  My ex-aunt-in-law Dorothy hated me. She always had, from the moment she met me at Dan’s and my wedding. While Dan was nine years older than me, Dorothy wasn’t actually very much older than him, and to say that my ex-husband was her favorite was a little like saying the Easter bunny liked eggs. It was an understatement tantamount to calling Mt. Everest a tall hill.

  Psychotic. That was the word I was looking for. Her affection for him was… psychotic.

  “Hello, Kylie,” Dorothy said in greeting. There was only the barest hint of malice, and her civility made my heart freeze in fear in my chest. Her long, straight hair was pulled back in a bun, and she wore white jeans and a tucked in pastel yellow blouse that washed out her complexion.

  This is it! I’m going to die. She’s going to kill me, and that’s why she’s being nice.

  At least I had Agatha and Zoey there to witness my gruesome end. They could tell the police what happened.

  “What can I do for you today?” I asked, already weighing my options internally. Duck under the bar when she made her move, or risk turning my back on her and running for the café’s back door?

  “I would like a cup of coffee.” Dorothy almost managed not to sneer in disgust as she said it.

  “Clever,” I whispered, and then realized I’d said it out loud. I’d turn my back to her while getting her coffee, and that’s when she’d do… it. Whatever it was.