Gingerbread and Ghosts (Peridale Cafe Cozy Mystery Book 10) by Agatha Frost

Author:Agatha Frost [Frost, Agatha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pink Tree Publishing LTD
Published: 2017-12-11T22:00:00+00:00

9

After closing the café and squeezing in a spot of Christmas shopping at the out of town retail centre with Jessie, Julia found herself wrapping up the results of her spending on the sitting room floor.

She took a sip of wine, her finger holding the wrapping paper together over the twin pack of socks for Sue’s husband, Neil. She ripped off a small piece of tape, secured the paper in place, spun it around, and folded in the edges before taping them down. She had never thought socks were an adequate gift, but according to Sue, Neil was in desperate need of new socks because he did not have a matching pair in his collection. After writing the tag, Julia popped it under the tree with the baby clothes she had bought for Sue’s twins.

Leaning into the crackling fire, Julia sipped more of her wine as the Christmas music station played on the TV. Barker was in the dining room, tapping away on the typewriter while he worked on his debut crime novel. She was waiting for her Christmas spirit to kick in, but as long as her gran was behind bars, she was not sure it was ever going to happen. She leaned across to the coffee table she had pushed out of the way earlier, grabbing her mother’s photo album, which she had hidden between two magazines. She flicked through the pages, landing on another picture of her parents’ wedding, this time with all four of her grandparents.

Her mothers’ parents, Frederick and Barbara Dixon stood on her mother’s side, grinning at the camera. Frederick died before Julia was born, and Barbara died when she was a baby, so she had no memory of either of them, but her mother had always painted a lovely picture of them. They were much older than her father’s parents, having had their only daughter, Pearl, in their forties. On her father’s side stood Dot, looking much like the woman outside the court from the front of The Peridale Post, her arm looped around Albert. From looking at this picture as a little girl, Julia had regretted not knowing Grandpa Albert the most. Even through the picture, he looked so jolly and happy.

“What are you looking at?” Barker’s voice asked from behind the couch, startling Julia.

Out of habit, she snapped the album shut as he threw a cushion on the floor to sit next to her. For a moment, they sat in silence staring into the fire before Julia opened up the book.

“My parents,” Julia said, passing him the photograph of her mother and father. “It would have been my mother’s sixty-fourth birthday on Christmas day.”

“She was a Christmas baby?” Barker said, accepting the album before flicking through some of the pictures. “She was so beautiful. You look just like her.”

“I do?”

“You could be her sister.” Barker held up her picture to Julia’s face. “Spitting image. I was never sure if I should ask about her, or if I should wait for you to open up.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.