Breader Off Dead

  Table of Contents

  © 2020 Tegan Maher

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Author’s Note

  Connect with Me

  Other Series by Tegan Maher

  About the Author

  The Deadly Daiquiri

  © 2020 Tegan Maher

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, by any means electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system currently in use or yet to be devised.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or institutions is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal use and may not be re-sold or given away to others. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase a copy for that person. If you did not purchase this book, or it was not purchased for your use, then you have an unauthorized copy. Please go to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting my hard work and copyright.

  Chapter 1

  “WHO DO YOU THINK THAT is?” Maisey asked as we pulled up in front of the café. “She sure is dressed to kill. Why, just those shoes alone had to have set her back a couple hundred bucks. And she has her nose so far in the air, she’d drown if a good rainstorm blew up.”

  I smiled at how quickly she’d caught up on fashion since she’d started watching trashy reality shows when she thought nobody was looking. In this case, though, she wasn’t wrong on either count. Everything about the leggy blonde striding toward the café screamed money and sophistication with a healthy dose of condescension tossed in for good measure.

  “Probably just somebody passin’ through,” I replied. “She doesn’t look like anybody who’d have business in Mercy.”

  Maisey’s translucent face creased with doubt and she hovered a little farther above the car seat than usual. Ever since she figured out she could ride in the car with us, she didn’t often miss an opportunity to go out. After all, for the last hundred and fifty years, she’d been stuck haunting the lodge she and her husband had built, and it had been empty for the bigger portion of the last century. Plus, cars were a novelty for her. She’d died in horse-and-buggy days. Who could blame her?

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But she looks like trouble.”

  “She may be perfectly nice for all we know. Maybe she’s just having a crappy day.”

  I always tried to see the good in people, but even I was having a hard time with this one. The woman’s high cheekbones, surgically perfect nose, and eyebrows that were trimmed and penciled just so gave her an elegant appearance, but the way she wore that haughty expression gave me the feeling it was just as much a part of her face as her luminous blue eyes.

  Maisey sighed and floated out the passenger door. “We’re never going to find out sitting here. Annie’s already here, too, so let’s not keep her waiting.”

  She was right—Annie’s blue Toyota was parked several slots down from ours. I marveled at how full the lot was compared to the first time I’d clapped eyes on the diner.

  On my first night in town, I’d come here for dinner because it had been the only place I could find. At the time, I’d just figured it was dead because we were, after all, in a small town and most of the town rolled up the sidewalks at five. One exchange with the sourpuss owner and a soggy, raw cheeseburger later, and the real reason was obvious.

  That night had been both my best and one of my worst days in town. I’d met Dee, my best friend and business partner, that night, but I’d also met her Aunt Fiona, a horrid woman who was murdered the next morning. That’s another story, though; the important part is that Dee inherited the restaurant and had turned it from a sad place barely limping along to a thriving farm-to-table café in just a few months.

  She’d kept the cheery bell that Fiona’d hung above the door, but now it didn’t sound incongruous at all. The scents of bacon, coffee, and fresh biscuits made my mouth water, and I smiled as Katie, the morning waitress, greeted me.

  “Coffee?” she asked as she pulled a menu from the rack and led me toward my favorite little booth. Annie was already seated with a cup of coffee in front of her.

  “Please,” I replied, “And I already know what I want. I’ll have the breakfast burrito.”

  That was one of the specialty items Jeremy, Dee’s chef, had added once he’d been given free rein with the menu.

  Annie laughed and wrinkled her freckled nose. “You’re gonna turn into a burrito.”

  I slid into the booth and smiled. “That’s not a thing. Trust me, if it were, it would have already happened. Either that, or I’d be a Snickers, a cup of coffee, or a bottle of wine.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, then stretched. “It feels so good to be out. I love that I’m getting design jobs, but I’ve been stuck pouring over wallpaper and paint samples for the last two days and my neck feels like it’s broken.”

  “Why have you been doing that? It usually comes easy for you.”

  “Yeah, I know, but Mrs. Guthrie is being difficult. She sees exactly what she wants in her head but can’t manage to get it across to me. All she says is she wants wallpaper the color of the summer sky right before a rainstorm or upholstery the color of Lucille Ball’s hair. And don’t even get me started on how on earth I’m going to put those two colors together into something cohesive.”

  “Yeah,” I said as Katie set a cup of coffee in front of me, “but is it really as bad as all that? I mean, would you rather be working an extra shift at the bar for fifty bucks?”

  For years, Annie’d held down two jobs—one as a waitress here at the diner, and another as a bartender at The Dead End, her uncle’s bar. That’s where we’d met.

  “Nooo,” she replied, holding her hands out in front of her. “Absolutely not. I’ll take Mrs. Guthrie over Gus any day.”

  Gus was an old reprobate who was a regular at the bar. He never did anything overt, but the way he looked at you, you just knew he was picturin’ you naked.

  “Same.” I dumped a teaspoon of sugar into my coffee along with five creamers. I turned my head when a fuss kicked up by the register.

  The woman Maisey and I had discussed was standing there waving her check. “I’m not paying an extra three bucks for a couple slices of bacon.”

  “I’m sorry,” Katie said, “but you asked for a side of bacon, and that’s what it costs.”

  “I did no such thing,” the woman said, shoving her nose up so she could glare down it at the poor waitress. “I said I wanted bacon on the side. God, this place is as backwoods as I remember it.”

  To her credit, Katie refrained from rolling her eyes, which was better than I could have done. “But ...” She sighed. “You know what? Just never mind. I’ll take it off.”

  The woman handed over what I imagined was close to exact change before stomping out the door.

  “Who in the world is that?” I asked.

  Annie furrowed her brow in thought. “I’m not sure. She looks familiar, but I can’t for the life of me place her. Too bad she didn’t pay with a credit card—we could have sneaked a peek.”

  Katie stopped by to fill Annie’s coffee, so we asked her.

  She shook her head, brows raised. “Satan’s younger, cheaper, whinier sister? She didn’t stop complaining from the time she got here
to the time she left. No latte because the machine’s being serviced, and I didn’t know if the bacon was grass-fed. I told her probably not because I ain’t ever seen a pig eat grass!”

  I smiled at her outrage. “Some people.”

  She huffed. “You got that right. I don’t know who she is or where she came from, but I hope she’s going back there soon.”

  Maisey swooped in through the front glass and Annie gave a little start. Katie, of course, couldn’t see her, so we made a concerted effort not to look like we were talking to somebody who wasn’t there.

  “There’s a brochure that says Hertz on it layin’ in the passenger seat of her car,” Maisey said.

  “That’s a car rental company,” I said as Katie bustled off with the pot of coffee. “She probably flew in, then.”

  I gave a mental head shake. A year ago, I was living in Orlando, where just about everybody was a stranger. Now, in Mercy, somebody new stood out like a sore thumb.

  “Oh well,” Annie said, pulling out a fabric book. “I have three fabrics I want you to look at before you go to your hair appointment. I want to get the settee and wingback chair done so the sunroom will be finished.”

  Annie has been slowly but surely decorating Mercy Lodge, the B&B where I both lived and worked. It had been a wreck when I’d bought it, but we’d restored it to its former glory, and Annie had played a big part in that. So had Dee and Scout, the next-door neighbor and the guy I was dating.

  She opened the book and pointed to a country-blue crushed-velvet swatch. “Do you like this one or one of these better?”

  She turned the page and pointed to a pretty dusty-rose swatch that had a black geometric pattern, and a turquoise paisley one.

  I had her switch back to the country blue one and sighed. I hated this part. I was bad at it because I had a hard time picturing any of those on the furniture.

  “None of them,” Maisey said. “Would you mind turning the pages so I can see what other options we have?”

  For once, I was perfectly happy handing a decision over. Though it was technically my house, it had been hers first, and she arguably had a better head for that than I did.

  “There,” she said, pointing to a swatch. “The distressed grey with the clocks.”

  I took a look at what she was referring to and had to agree. It was a nice fabric. It had all sorts of little clock faces—pocket watches, ones with roman numerals, farmhousey-looking ones—and I thought it looked quaint but classy.

  “It won’t show dirt and it suits the lodge. Time has passed, but it’s as strong as ever,” Maisey said with a decisive nod. Her silvery bun wavered as she crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Does that work for you, Toni?”

  I nodded. “It’s perfect.”

  “Clocks it is, then,” Annie said, closing the book. “I’ll grab some throw pillows to go along with it, and we’ll be in business.”

  Katie brought our food just then, and we settled into the business of eating. Jeremy’s food deserved nothing less than our full attention.

  Chapter 2

  THE SUMMER HEAT WAS oppressive, and I was glad my friend Nikki was working at the salon. The cutesy name—Hair Today, Buns Tomorrow, or Buns for short—was a throwback to the woman who’d opened the shop back in the seventies. The interior design dated back that far, too, and not in a good way. It made Nikki, who was a big fan of modern design, crazy. It was the only shop in town, though, unless she wanted to cut hair at one of the chain places out on the highway.

  “Hey, ladies!” I said as I stepped into the salon. Nikki smiled and it struck me again how awesome her new look was. A few months before, she’d started dating a new guy and had toned down her makeup. When I’d first met her, she’d worn so much 80s-style eyeshadow and kohl that I had barely recognized her the first time I’d seen her without it. Now she still wore a full face, but it was a much more modern look that I thought really made her look the part of a chic, professional cosmetologist.

  “Well aren’t you just the chipper one,” Minerva, the owner, said to me as she rolled the last strand of Gertrude Strauss’s salt-and-pepper hair into a perm roller. “I swear, I don’t know how you’re so sickly sweet all the time.”

  “Ignore her,” Nikki said, flapping a hand. “She’s just sore because they raised her property taxes.”

  “By three hundred dollars a year!” Minerva said. “That’s criminal!”

  “They hadn’t raised them in over a decade, though,” the older portly woman in her chair pointed out. “I know. I’m the one who sends out the notices. ’Sides, with what you charge for a perm, it ain’t like you’re gonna notice a measly three-hundred bucks. And you better not go raisin’ your prices, either.”

  The woman jabbed her finger at Minerva’s reflection in the mirror.

  “Keep it up and I’ll charge you extra for havin’ to put up with you,” Minerva snapped back.

  “C’mon,” Nikki said to me as she took my purse and hung it on a peg by her station. “They’re always like that. Then they meet up in the evenings and go play bridge. It’s just how they roll.”

  I climbed into the chair, tuning the two older women out, then leaned back and enjoyed the AC. Being from Florida, you’d think I’d have been used to the heat, but the cool spring had thinned my blood.

  “Are you going to let me do what I want, or do you just want me to trim it?” Nikki asked as she pulled the scrunchy from my chestnut hair.

  I pressed my lips together and examined my hair in the mirror and tried to picture something other than the long dark-chestnut than it was. “I don’t know,” I said. “I like the length. What do you want to do with it?”

  “You should cut it short,” Minerva said, squirting solution over Gertrude’s pink curlers. “Your face is shaped just right for a nice shag with a perm. You could go red, too. You’ve got the right skin tone.”

  I stared into the mirror at Nikki in horror, picturing myself in a Little Orphan Annie haircut. “She’s not cutting it short, and—no offense, Gertrude—people don’t get perms anymore.”

  “I think I like it just the way it is, thanks. I’m not quite that ... adventurous,” I added, trying to smooth away the scowl on Minerva’s wrinkled face even though I wasn’t even sure that was possible. The only time I’d ever seen her smile was at Scout when we’d run into her and her card club at the county yard sale and craft fair, but everybody smiled at him.

  “How about some bronze highlights, though?” Nikki asked. “It would add texture and is a great look for summer.”

  “Sure,” I said after considering it for just a split second. Really, anything would have sounded okay after Minerva’s unsettling suggestion. “Let’s see what you can do.”

  “Oh crap,” I said, jumping out of the chair before she could get the cape around me. “I forgot to bring your cookies in, Minerva. Dee asked me to bring them to you.”

  “What cookies?” she asked, her face screwed up in confusion. “Oh yeah, for the club tonight. Good thing I didn’t order cupcakes. They’d be melted to goo already. I swear people don’t know how to use their heads for anything other than hat racks anymore.”

  The censure in her voice grated, but I shook it off. She was always gruff and snarky, but she wasn’t usually mean.

  I hustled out to my SUV and grabbed them. I was almost back inside when I glanced toward the courthouse, which was just a block down. The woman from this morning was pulling up.

  I yanked the door open. “Nik!” I hissed, motioning to her. “C’mere a minute.”

  She tilted her head at me, questioning, but did as I asked.

  “Do you know who that is?” I pointed toward the courthouse.

  Nikki held her hand up to make a visor over her eyes and squinted toward the woman as she climbed out of her car. She sucked in a breath, then walked a few yards up the sidewalk.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” she said almost to herself. “I didn’t think I’d ever lay eyes on her again. And never would have been too soon, the
way she acted before she left.”

  “Who is it?” I said, my voice tinged with a mix of burning curiosity and impatience.

  Nik shook her head. “I barely recognized her. She used to be a brunette. The blonde’s new, but there’s no mistakin’ the way she shoves her nose in the air like she’s better than everybody.” She turned toward me and pulled in a deep breath. “Where’s Dee?”

  “At the lodge working on a cake. Why?”

  “Because that’s Darlene Stephens. Or whatever her last name is now.”

  “Stephens?” I said, my mind racing. “As in Gabe Stephens?”

  Gabe was our sheriff and Dee’s boyfriend.

  “The one and only,” I said. “That she-wolf is his ex-wife, and if she’s here, you can bet nothing but trouble will follow.”

  She ambled back toward the salon, her brow furrowed in thought. “I have no idea why she’d come back here. The entire reason their marriage fell apart was because she hated this town. Darlene is a city girl through and through.”

  A string of worst-case scenarios zipped through my head. The divorce was screwed up somehow and didn’t finalize. She’d found out after she’d left that she was pregnant. She’d had a change of heart and wanted Gabe back. I discarded that last one. Obviously, Gabe had chosen to divorce rather than move to suit her and she sure didn’t look like a love-struck woman. The other two were possible, though.

  Once we were back inside, I handed the cookie platter to Minerva and climbed into the chair. Nikki flung the cape around me, but was worrying her lip with her teeth.

  “What was so all-fire important outside?” Minerva asked as she stuck Gertrude under the hairdryer. She was having none of it, though. Not until she heard our answer.

  “Darlene Stephens is back in town,” Nikki said, running a brush through my hair.

  “Oh, that,” Minerva said, flapping her hand. “I heard she was comin’, but I didn’t know when.”

  Nikki spun around to face her. “You knew? Why didn’t you say anything? You know I’m friends with Dee.”