Cheesecake murder, p.1
Cheesecake Murder, page 1
Cheesecake Murder
A Milly Pepper Mystery Book 3
Rosie A. Point
Contents
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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
More for you…
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Cheesecake Murder
A Milly Pepper Mystery Book 3
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Copyright © 2022 by Rosie A. Point.
www.rosiepointbooks.com
All Rights Reserved. This publication or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored, distributed, or transmitted in any form—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise—except in the case of brief quotations for review purposes.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons alive or deceased, places, or events is coincidental.
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Rosie
One
“I understand that you’re having a moment,” I said, inhaling deeply through my nose to relieve the pressure building in my chest, “but I’m not going to give you a piece of carrot every time we stop. It’s not good for you, Waffle.”
My adorable pet bunny, with his fluffy brown patch on the top of his head, and his penchant for carrots, horror movies, and long walks, had been acting strangely of late. Then again, he was a strange bunny most of the time, but I knew Waffle, and stopping five times under every tree during one of our walks through small town, Star Lake, wasn’t normal for him.
This is my fault.
I moved the end of Waffle’s new blue lead from one hand to the other. “We’re both going through it,” I said. “I understand, trust me.”
Waffle gave me one of his all-knowing bunny looks but refused to budge. He plucked a few blades of grass from under the tree and chewed on it lazily.
Spring was here, and the temperature was perfect for a leisurely stroll with my bunny. It was the type of weather that warranted a denim jacket, but there was no real bite to the cool air. The smell of flowers and fresh green grass filled this particular suburban street in our quaint town.
We should’ve been relaxed. We should’ve been done with this walk, with Waffle hanging out in my tiny boxy home, and me already on the way to work for the day at my dad’s cafe.
Except none of that mattered at this time of year.
Not the spring air, the smiles of my neighbors, nor the fact that the cafe, which had once been struggling and failing, was now doing a rip-roaring trade. It didn’t matter that people liked me, and I’d made more friends in Star Lake. And today of all days, I couldn’t have cared less that I’d been invited to attend a party at my best friend’s house.
Because today was the anniversary of my father’s passing.
And while Waffle hadn’t known my dad, he could feel my mood, my anxiety… Everything.
I sat down on the grass beside my bunny rabbit, heedless of the fact that we were on someone’s front lawn.
I stroked Waffle’s ears. “Sorry, buddy,” I said. “I know I’m stressing you out.”
He bumped his body against my thigh and continued gnawing on grass.
“I think the best thing we can do is act normal. If we pretend everything’s OK, then it’ll have to be OK.” A “fake it til’ you make it” mentality had worked for getting back into the good graces of the citizens of Star Lake. It probably didn’t transfer to grief.
“Or maybe we’re just meant to go through it for a while.” I swung my tote from my shoulder and rooted around inside it.
Waffle’s ears perked up.
I removed our container of snacks and popped it open. “We both need a carrot.” I placed one in the grass for Waffle, and he attacked it with admirable ferocity.
I crunched off a piece of carrot myself, shutting my eyes.
Frank, my father, had been well-loved in town. And by our family. With the help of Gran, my other favorite person in the world, he had raised me and run the Starlight Cafe until his passing. A car accident.
I swallowed my bite of carrot, grief building in my throat.
This wasn’t fair.
None of this was fair. I had to act like this was a normal day, and that—
“Meoooow!”
My eyelids snapped open. I frowned at Waffle. “Did you just…?”
He had stopped nibbling on his carrot.
“You couldn’t have. I’ve gone from sad to delusional,” I said, sighing and turning my attention to the street. It was early, and there weren’t many people out of their cutesy homes with white picket fences yet. I went to take another bite of my carrot and…
“Meow!” This time it was more insistent.
I glanced down at Waffle. He gave a belated chew of his carrot then thumped toward the trunk of the tree we’d seated ourselves beside.
I lifted the carrot I’d been eating and eyed it. “Man, when the guy at the General Store said these were organic, he wasn’t kidding. Did I hallucinate a—”
The third meow came, and my gaze danced upward into the tree, searching for the source. A ginger cat with a sparkling red collar clung to a branch above our head, claws fully extended.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh no.”
Waffle waited patiently at the base of the tree as if to say, “Hurry up. We both know what you’re going to do next.”
I put my carrot back in its Tupperware then got up, dusting off the seat of my pants, gaze fixed on the cat. “Hello, sweetheart,” I called up to it. “It’s OK. I'm going to help you, all right?”
The cat gave a distressed “meow” in response.
I wasn’t exactly wearing the best clothes for climbing trees—my jeans would surely get scraped up, but hey, that was meant to be the fashion nowadays.
“Wait here,” I said to Waffle. “If I fall, hop up to the house and get them to call 911, would you?”
Waffle gave a wriggle of his cute bunny nose in the affirmative.
I picked my way up the tree, palms scraping against the bark and almost losing my footing twice. Sweat beaded on my forehead, but I made my way to the branch where the cat was trapped. I dragged myself along it toward the ginger fur ball, determined not to look down.
There was a reason I had chosen a career as a police officer rather than a firefighter. I didn’t agree with heights on a cellular level.
“Almost there,” I said, nerves whooping in my belly. “I’m coming, kitty.” Somewhere, in the back of my anxiety-ridden, foggy mind, it occurred to me how threatening that sounded.
The cat’s eyes were wide as it considered me, hooked into the tree as it was, flipping its tail back and forth, and I couldn’t help imagining what I looked like to it.
A sweaty, thirty-something year old woman, pink in the face with flaming red hair stuck to my cheeks, dragging myself along the branch like some monster risen from the deep.
I snorted a laugh at the image then reached out a hand. “I’m here. I—”
The cat gave a derisive “meow” and promptly unhooked its claws from the tree. It jumped from one branch to another, onto the grass below, and padded off toward the house.
“I—You—” Words failed me. I’d been tricked by a cat.
I wrapped my arms around the tree branch, hugging it for dear life while I contemplated my decision to come up here in the first place.
Noble but stupid.
Then again, what if the cat had actually been stuck? Or gotten hurt? Or worse? I would never have forgiven myself. I knew what it was like to lose a loved one. To a lot of people, cats were “fur babies” and—
“Milly?” The warm, melted chocolate voice came from below.
My heart leaped.
“Milly Pepper, is that you?”
Please, let this be a bad dream that I’m going to wake up from.
I cracked an eyelid, and the nerves from earlier tripled.
Luca, the owner of the hottest pizza place in town, stood beneath the branch, peering up at me with humor sparkling in his gorgeous blue eyes.
Two
The last time I had s
Luca had been gracious and kind. He had bought me a coffee. We had chatted. He had even complimented me on how I looked and hinted at a second date.
And then, the thought of a future with him reared its ugly head in my thoughts, and I had panicked, excused myself to go to the ladies room and climbed out the window. Later, I’d texted him an apology for my behavior and that was that.
“Milly?” he repeated, a smile parting his lips.
“Hi,” I managed. “There was a cat.”
“A cat?” Luca ran tan fingers through his thick, dark hair.
“In the tree.” I gestured to Waffle. “He’s my witness.”
Luca spotted my pet bunny for the first time and did a double-take. “Uh…”
“So, yeah,” I said. “There was a cat. I don’t just climb trees for nothing.”
Luca’s lips squirmed as if he was about to burst out laughing, and my cheeks grew even hotter, not that it should have been possible.
“It’s good to see you again,” Luca said.
“Yeah,” I managed. “How’s the pizzeria? How are you?” At this point, I was basically one with the tree. Scooching backward would make me look like a dog with an itch in its behind.
“I’m good,” he said, tilting his head to one side and considering me. “Do you need help?”
“No, no, I’m—”
A siren whooped in the street, and a cruiser bearing the Brune County Sheriff’s Department logo on the side pulled up.
Oh. So this situation can get worse.
Sheriff Rogers himself emerged from within the cruiser. He removed his hat from his head and dropped it into his car, eyeing Luca, Waffle and then me in the tree that was now basically my new home and place of work.
“Milly Pepper,” Sheriff Rogers said, striding over to the tree, tucking his hands into his pockets. His attention was fully on me, a sneer twisting his lips.
“Good morning, Sheriff.” I forced a smile that probably came off as a grimace. The sheriff didn’t like me, particularly because I was a police officer working toward taking my detective’s test when my father had passed. And because I’d gotten involved in two of his murder cases so far.
“Ma’am, we’ve gotten several complaints about a deranged woman climbing trees,” he said.
“It was just the one tree.” My stomach dropped like a stone. “And there was a cat in it.”
“A cat,” Sheriff Rogers said, in a monotone.
Why was this so difficult for everyone to believe? Cats climbed trees all the time. Granted, women usually didn’t, but still.
“Yes, Sheriff,” I said. “There was a cat stuck in this tree. I was trying to save it.”
“And where is this cat now?” Sheriff Rogers readjusted his belt.
“It ran into the house,” I said.
“So you freed it?”
“Kind of,”I replied. “It sort of jumped out of the tree once I got up here.”
“It jumped out of the tree,” Sheriff Rogers said. “So, it wasn’t really stuck, was it then, Miss Pepper?”
“It seemed stuck when I started climbing. I’m not deranged,” I said. “I swear.” Which only made me seem more deranged. “I was taking my pet bunny for a walk when I spotted the cat stuck in the tree and—”
“This true?” Rogers asked Luca.
Luca hesitated, opening his mouth. He hadn’t seen the cat, apparently. Was he going to throw me under the bus? “Yeah, it’s true,” he said. “I saw the whole thing.”
“Yet you didn’t jump in to help,” Sheriff Rogers sniffed. “Guess it’s true. Chivalry’s dead after all.”
“He only came after he saw me start climbing the tree,” I said. “Luca’s plenty chivalrous.” I knew because I was the coward who’d climbed out of a window during our date. Huh. Climbing things seemed to be a common theme with me.
Luca flashed me a brilliant, white-toothed smile, and I cringed inwardly. It didn’t help that he was gorgeous. I’d thought I’d dealt with my fears of committing or losing loved ones, but I’d been so, so wrong. I couldn’t envision a world in which I would actively love a man only to lose him later on.
Because that was always how it ended, right? Whether it was divorce or death. Life was about loss.
“Regardless of the intent,” Sheriff Rogers grumbled, “we got a report about a deranged woman in a tree, and it’s my job to get that woman out of said tree.”
“You came yourself, Sheriff?” Luca arched an eyebrow at the other man. “Why not send a deputy? It doesn’t seem worth your time.”
“It’s not my job to answer to you,” Rogers said.
“As one of the voting citizens of this county, it definitely is.” Luca’s reply was instant, and my insides squirmed at how confident he was. How unafraid of upsetting the apple cart.
Rogers opened his mouth and closed it again. He turned his attention back to me. “Do you need me to call the fire department to assist you in getting out of that tree, Miss Pepper?”
“I’m good.” And then I did the backward squirm, trying not to watch their reactions to it. I slipped, caught myself, sweating profusely, and dropped out of the tree a good way from Waffle. He hopped over to me, trailing his lead, and I lifted it. “We should get going. I need to get to the cafe.”
“It was good seeing you again, Milly,” Luca said. “I’ll drop by the cafe some time for a waffle. We should catch up.”
I forced a laugh that sounded like something out of Stephen King’s It. “Sure,” I managed. “Yeah. Come on, Waffle. Let’s go.”
“Behave yourself, would you, Miss Pepper?” Sheriff Rogers called. “Don’t go scaring the residents of Star Lake again.”
I ignored the Sheriff, swept up my tote bag and started off down the street. The humiliation of the morning had distracted me at least. And Waffle had clearly enjoyed the interlude—he didn’t stop once on our way back to Juniper Avenue.
We approached our comically small home with its duck’s egg blue walls, and I picked up Waffle and carried him into the front yard, pausing to let him down once the gate was secure, thoughts of my father and the cafe running through my mind. I hadn’t heard from my alleged long-lost brother, Thomas, in a while, and it was a good thing too. I was liable to snap at him if he interfered.
My phone rang in my tote, and I scooped it out, smiling at the sight of Gran’s name flashing on the screen.
“Good morning, Gran,” I said. “How are you today?”
“Milly,” my Gran, the epitome of dynamite coming in small packages, whispered my name down the line.
“Gran? What’s wrong?”
“Something terrible has happened.”
Three
“Gran? What’s wrong?” My heart leaped into my throat.
Waffle’s ears perked up, and he hopped over to me. I bent and stroked his ears, taking comfort from the action.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. “Did you fall?”
“Fall? Did I fall?” Gran scoffed. “Oh, please, Milly, as if I could ever fall. You know I’m fit as they come. I get more cardio than you do.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But what’s wrong? Why were you whispering?”
“Because something simply awful has happened.”
“What is it, Gran?”
A hesitation. Waffle wriggled his bunny nose from side-to-side, curious.
