Death and Dacquoise (A Seaside French Patisserie Mystery Book 1) by Kat Bellemore

Author:Kat Bellemore [Bellemore, Kat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: KB Press
Published: 2024-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

11

Nope. This was not happening.

I refused to believe it.

Our pastry chef did not kill Florence. Autumn was not guilty. Our bakery wasn’t going to shut down after only one evening of being open, and we were all going to live happily ever after.

I’d promised Dottie that if Autumn was guilty, we’d hand her over to the sheriff. I realized I’d only said it to make my sister feel better—I’d never give Autumn up, even if all evidence pointed to her. It was a good thing that Jessie hadn’t entrusted us with Autumn’s location. Now we didn’t have to lie.

Which Dottie wouldn’t have done, but I’d have lied straight to the sheriff’s face without an ounce of guilt about it.

Dottie had been stunned into silence—a rarity—and after a few moments, I spoke up. “The whole town was at our bakery last night. Half of them ate the dacquoise, and no one else ended up dead.”

“Correct,” the sheriff said slowly, like he’d thought of that. “But no one else ate from her dacquoise. The one that Florence purchased.”

“Well, no, but how would Autumn know that Florence was going to purchase a dacquoise, let alone how many slices and which ones they would be?” I asked. “Autumn wasn’t even behind the counter selling the pastries. She was mingling and answering any questions people had about the various desserts we had out.”

“Right,” the sheriff said. And then he just stared at me, like I was supposed to be understanding something that I’d apparently missed.

“So…what’s the problem?”

Dottie hadn’t needed the sheriff’s help to interpret his silence. She slammed her hands down on the table with such force that I nearly had a heart attack. Everyone in the diner looked our way.

“Don’t you dare try to pin this on Jo,” Dottie said. “Look at her. Do you really think she’s capable of something like this? She believes everyone has good inside them, much to her detriment. Her hair has that damn-near blinding shade of pink in it, and she believes that breakfast should be eaten three times a day, every day, because breakfast food is the only food worth eating.”

She glanced at my plate. “Unless you offer her Mexican or Thai food. Then she makes an exception.”

I glanced between Dottie and the sheriff. “Wait, you don’t mean… You couldn’t actually think that⁠—”

“Yes,” Dottie said, turning her fierce gaze on me. “Sheriff Hart thinks that you poisoned Florence. You were the one selling the pastries and were the only one behind the counter. This would have been after Florence’s insults, after your speech when you came to Autumn’s rescue, and you would have had plenty of opportunity to slip something into Florence’s dacquoise amid all the commotion of the party.”

I’d thought Dottie was supposed to be on my side, but she’d just laid out a really convincing argument about why, and how, I could be the killer.

I let out a single barking laugh. “Right, because I have poison just sitting around so I can sprinkle it on people’s purchases as I see fit.

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