Hot Fudge Murder by Cynthia Baxter

Author:Cynthia Baxter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Ice Pops began in 1923, when Californian Frank Epperson patented a “frozen ice on a stick.” While he originally called them Eppsicles, he soon changed their name to Pop’s Icle—which eventually became Popsicle. He made seven flavors, including cherry, the most popular. They sold for 5 cents each.

—http://www.expo2015.org/magazine/en/economy/a-short-history-of-ice-cream-from-ancient-roman-snow-to-love-with-a-heart-of-cream.html

Late Tuesday afternoon, I left the shop in Emma’s hands. As always, I was confident she could handle anything that came up.

And business continued to be shockingly light. Lickety Splits’ only customers were a smattering of locals who needed a quick ice cream fix in the form of a cone or a Bananafana Split. One woman bought a half gallon of Classic Strawberry for a family barbecue. But when it came to tourists, they were still avoiding Wolfert’s Roost.

As I headed home, I was preoccupied. But for a change, I wasn’t obsessing about how bad business was or Omar DeVane or even new ideas for ice cream flavors. I was ruminating about my date with Jake.

Not that it was a real date. It was just . . . a movie. Maybe with ice cream afterward.

But definitely not anything that would be considered a date in the classic sense. At least that was what I kept telling myself.

Once upon a time, Jake and I were boyfriend and girlfriend. He and I had fallen for each other—hard—back in high school. During our junior and senior year, we were inseparable. That is, whenever he wasn’t playing baseball. He was our school’s star player, his impressive record culminating in hitting the ball out of the park during the big game against Rhinebeck High, our school’s number-one rival.

So it was inevitable that the two of us would go to our senior prom together. At least, that was the plan.

Then the big night arrived. I’d spent hours getting dressed, taking a long bubble bath, and fussing endlessly with my hair and makeup. At last it was time to put on the perfect dress, one I’d spent weeks shopping for. The flatteringly cut strapless gown was the same shade of blue as the sky on a perfect day. I actually gasped when I looked at the final result in the mirror.

But Jake never showed up. Seven o’clock rolled around. Then seven-fifteen, then seven-thirty . . . I’d waited until almost nine, certain that this couldn’t be happening. And then, finally, I’d thrown myself across my bed, crying for hours. Poor Grams did her best to comfort me, but I was beyond being consoled.

After that night, Jake disappeared. For the next fifteen years, I heard nothing. Not an apology, not an explanation, not even a posting on Facebook.

It had been only a few weeks earlier, right after Lickety Splits opened, that I’d finally learned the truth about what had happened that night. The reason Jake had stood me up was that he’d had to rush over to the police station, dressed in his rented tux. His father had been driving drunk—again. But this time he’d been in a car accident in which three people were injured.

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