Chicken murder soup, p.1
Chicken Murder Soup, page 1
Chicken Murder Soup
A Sunny Side Up Cozy Mystery Book 3
Rosie A. Point
Contents
Meet the Characters
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
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Murderoni and Cheese
More for you…
Thank you, Reader!
Copyright Rosie A. Point 2021.
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Cover by DLR Cover Designs
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Created with Vellum
Meet the Characters
Sunny Charles—Sunny has gone through an incredibly messy divorce with an ex-husband who was a criminal. She’s come to Parfait to live with her aunt while she gets back on her feet and has taken over her aunt’s Sunny Side Up Café! Can she keep everything in order while Aunt Rita is away?
* * *
Rita Jackson—Sunny’s friendly, funny, and popular aunt. Rita is on a well-deserved break from small-town Parfait and her café, cruising with her best friends. She monitors things from afar by keeping in contact with Sunny.
* * *
Didi Washington—A server at the Sunny Side Up Café, Didi’s a young, college-aged woman who is a K-pop fan. She’s got a sweet personality and is adventurous. One of Sunny’s biggest supporters.
* * *
Nick Talbott—Nick is the chef at the Sunny Side Up Café. He’s going through a divorce at the moment but is still super dedicated to his work at the café—so much so that he’s going away on a five-day baking course to improve his skills. Handsome and kind.
* * *
Bodger—Aunt Rita’s crotchety cat. He’s slowly warming up to Sunny’s presence in the home. As a rescue cat, Bodger’s got some issues, but with love and care, he’s slowly working through them.
* * *
Mildred Shaw—Pamela’s sister. She works at the Parfait Animal Shelter and needs all the help she can get. She’s well-meaning but interferes in other people’s business.
* * *
Alexei Shaw—Pamela’s Russian nephew. Alexei carries the Shaw surname but was born in Russia. After Sunny’s experiences with Russian crime bosses and the people who were after her post-divorce, Sunny struggles to trust Alexei.
* * *
Mrs. Brent—A local chef’s mother, Mrs. Brent is well-connected in Parfait and one of Sunny’s new friends. She always wants to help others.
* * *
Detective Garcia—The accomplished local detective who transferred over from the Miami Dade County. His wife wanted them to settle down in a small town to avoid danger and drama.
* * *
Katy Pyle—The new assistant at the Parfait Animal Shelter. She’s a shy young woman who has a propensity for staring at Sunny. How strange.
* * *
Damon Stokes—Sunny’s ex-husband. Tall, smartly dressed, and a total conman. He’ll tell you anything to get you to trust him and will use you for money.
* * *
Henry Bowles—The local cricket club owner. British, kind, and quite proper, he’s horrified at the thought of anyone at his club having been involved in the murder.
* * *
Gwendoline Meyer—Founder of the Baking Biddies, the most exclusive baking club in Parfait. She’s a snob and exceptionally wealthy.
* * *
Frances Grace—Sunny’s most demanding customer, who seems to like Sunny a great deal and wants to be friends with her. She lives in a cottage on the other side of Parfait.
1
“Can I tell you a secret?” I whispered the words into the early morning, my grip firm on the end of Fudge’s lead. Bodger, my aunt’s crotchety cat, padded down the sidewalk next to me, keeping pace easily. Occasionally the kitty would stop to meow or sniff a struggling weed peeking through a crack in the concrete.
Fudge didn’t bark a reply to my question for once—a good thing too, since the three of us were up before sunrise, the sky blushing with the impending dawn.
“Well? Do you want to hear my secret or not?” I stared at the back of my new dog’s fluffy brown head.
This time, he gave me a tail wag of encouragement.
“I’m planning on baking cookies at the café this morning,” I said. “Cookies! Me! Can you believe it?” A few months ago, speaking those words out loud would’ve elicited laughter from, well, from my ex-husband.
But who cared what he thought? He was probably vacationing on a paradise island with his mistress right now, happy as a pig in a puddle because he’d left me with his debt and criminal problems.
I shook my head to clear it of the negativity. “See,” I said, matching Fudge’s trot, “the Sunny Side Up is doing a fundraiser for the Parfait Animal Shelter. A bake sale on the boardwalk. I’m going to surprise everyone by turning up with home-baked chocolate chip cookies.”
My stomach twisted at the thought.
Since I’d come to Parfait, I’d helped solve two murder mysteries, taken charge of my aunt’s café, befriended her inhospitable cat—kind of, though I still wasn’t sleeping with my door unlocked at night—and adopted an adorable yet boisterous dog, Fudge.
But one of my primary goals was learning how to cook for myself. During my marriage, I’d done nothing except look pretty and live the high life, and I was determined to prove that I could be more than a kept woman.
So far, I’d conquered eggs over easy and burnt toast.
It was time for the next frontier: the ambitious chocolate chip cookie. And after that? Who knew? Maybe an omelet. Or soup. That was basically water and vegetables with protein, right?
Oh boy, I’m in way over my head.
Fudge, Bodger, and I reached the end of the seaside street and stopped outside Didi’s mother’s house to catch our breaths. I chewed on the inside of my cheek.
“I could probably buy the cookies,” I said. “But that wouldn’t be right. I’m going to do it, guys.”
Bodger flicked his black tail at me, but Fudge nuzzled against my side, and I tangled my fingers in his warm, curly fur. He had opened up to me a lot since I’d adopted him a couple weeks ago.
We headed back down the road toward my aunt’s cottage, the sea-scented air already warming in anticipation of the day.
I was nervous. The bake sale would serve as a proving ground. If I could sell a few cookies and they tasted OK—and, as a bonus, didn’t poison anyone—then I could take the next step and apply to one of the most exclusive clubs in Parfait.
The Parfait Baking Biddies allowed the finest bakers to join. And if you were a part of the group, you were a cut above the rest.
Being a part of the club would open great opportunities for my aunt’s café, and it would ingratiate me with the townsfolk. As nice as most people were in Parfait, they still considered me an outsider.
I wanted to be accepted. A part of the fold. A local.
We reached the cottage, and I opened the front gate and let Fudge inside. I removed the lead, and he bounded around the front yard, darting left and right, challenging Bodger to a game. The cat responded immediately, rushing toward Bodger’s legs and rubbing against them.
Bodger’s idiosyncrasies were a constant source of entertainment, but I didn’t stop and chuckle over them this morning. It was time to get out to the café and try my hand at baking.
I glanced at my neighbor’s cottage—Nick, the chef at the Sunny Side Up, lived next door—and dismissed the idea of asking him for help. He was a great baker, but I wanted to do this on my own. Otherwise, it wouldn’t taste as sweet.
Besides, if I wound up giving someone food poisoning, I’d rather take the fall for it by myself.
Don’t be silly. It’ll go great.
I grabbed my purse from inside the cottage, let Bodger inside, then hurried to my aunt’s sun-yellow VW Beetle.
In no time, I was puttering down the road that wound through town and back down to the seaside. I parked in front of the Sunny Side Up Café in the gloom, my heart racing.
“Stop being ridiculous. You’re baking cookies, for Pete’s sake.”
I got out of the car, steeling myself for my new endeavor, and fished the keys to the café out of my purse. I walked up to the café and…
“What on earth?”
The Sunny Side Up Café’s glass front doors stood wide open.
My mind struggled to catch up.
The lights were off inside, and I had definitely locked up after myself when I’d left the evening before. Besides, we had an alarm in the café. If anyone had opened the doors and triggered that alarm, the company would’ve called me.
And the only other person who had a
Had he come over here early? But why? And why were the doors open?
I entered the café and hit the light switch.
Shock spun through my chest, and I lost my breath.
A man lay face down on the floor between the coffee bar and the cake stand. He had been hit on the back of the head, and he wasn’t breathing. To one side of him was a bloodied cricket bat of all things, and on the other, a shattered plate and crumbled chocolate chip cookies.
The extraneous details invaded my headspace forcibly.
“Sir?” I choked it out. “Are you all right?”
Get it together, Sunny. Of course he’s not all right.
What would my aunt have done in this situation?
Check his pulse. Call 911.
I walked around the mess, careful not to touch anything, and bent to place my fingers against the man’s throat. There was no pulse. He was already gone.
“Oh no,” I whispered, studying the side profile of his face. “Oh—No! No!” I backpedaled quickly, bumping into one of the café’s tables.
This wasn’t a stranger. This was… but, no, it was impossible. He couldn’t be here. He simply couldn’t be!
But I’d recognize that sharp nose anywhere, the stubble along his jaw, the brown hair peppered with silver. He wore a suit I’d picked out for him years ago.
It was my ex-husband, Damon Stokes, dead on the floor of my aunt’s café.
I removed my phone from my handbag and held it tight.
They’re going to think it was me. They’ll think that I did this to him.
Quickly, I snapped a picture of the cricket bat, and then another of the cookies, wincing, my throat clogging with emotion. Once that was done, I called 911.
2
“We meet again, Miss Charles.” Detective Garcia sat at the circular table in the Parfait Police Station’s interrogation room, his back to the door and his deep brown eyes focused squarely on me.
I nodded, mute.
The shock of having discovered Damon’s body in the café hadn’t worn off. While he had treated me terribly during our marriage, more like a commodity than a person he cared for, residual emotion sat lodged in my chest.
A mixture of disappointment, anger, and grief.
Lowlife or not, Damon and I had shared a large portion of our lives for years.
“Can I get you anything?” Garcia asked, softly. “A Coke?”
“The water is fine,” I replied, unscrewing the cap of the bottle he’d placed in front of me when he entered the room. I drank some of it, hoping it would clear my mind for what would be an extended interrogation.
While I wasn’t an expert on this police investigation stuff—far from it—it was plain as day that I would be the main suspect in Damon’s murder.
I can’t believe he’s dead.
I’d recently come to terms with his abandoning me to deal with the Russian criminals he’d been indebted to.
Of course! The criminals. They must have caught up with him at last.
But that didn’t explain how he’d gotten into the café or switched off the alarm. Or why he’d brought a plate of cookies with him. Unless the murderer had brought a plate of cookies? Bizarre.
“Miss Charles,” Garcia said. “I understand this must be difficult for you, but I need to ask you a few questions regarding your ex-husband’s death.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I figured as much. And I’ll answer any questions you have, Detective. You’ll have to bear with me. I’m a little shaken up.”
Garcia nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Miss Charles, did you know your husband would be in Parfait this morning?”
“Ex-husband,” I replied, though Garcia knew that already, “and no, I didn’t. I was stunned when I found him in the café.”
“Stunned.”
“Yes.”
Garcia maintained eye contact. “So, he didn’t call you to tell you he was coming?”
“Of course not,” I said, spluttering it out. “Damon hasn’t spoken to me since before the divorce. He ran off with his mistress, for heaven’s sake. And he left me to deal with everything. You know that, Detective.” We’d spoken about this when a young woman had died in the Sunny Side Up shortly after I’d arrived in town.
Boy, I’d sure had a rollercoaster of a ride since I’d come to Parfait.
What about the café? Damon’s death would negatively affect the Sunny Side Up for sure. The café had already had to deal with the negative publicity from one dead body, and now this?
The townsfolk and local gossips—many of whom didn’t like me—would have a field day.
Anxiety pinged inside me.
“Right.” Detective Garcia leaned in, his presence pressuring me to talk—the subtle shift of his body language elevating my stress levels. “So, you didn’t discuss getting back together with him at any point?”
“No way. Not if you paid me.” I capped the water bottle again. “Look, Detective, what’s this about? Where did you get the idea that—”
Garcia flipped open the manila folder on the table in front of him and slipped out a plastic sleeve. A handwritten letter was pressed flat within it. “We found this in Damon’s pocket.” He slid it across the table.
Dear Sunny,
I hope you’ll take the time to read this letter.
I came all the way out here for this, and I’m not going to take no for an answer. You know me, baby. I always get what I want.
As you must know by now, I’ve been missing you and wanting to come see you.
I paused reading, blinking on repeat. How on earth would I have known that? Damon had effectively disappeared. It had taken a private investigator to track him down and get him to sign our divorce papers.
And here I am.
I’m not great with apologies, so I thought I’d write this one down. Make it easier on myself, ha-ha.
Here goes nothing.
I’m sorry about leaving you for Vanessa. It was a mistake. I guess it was because the pressure of having to earn all the money that got to me.
OK, so that was the mistress’s name. Not that I’d needed to know.
I want to work on the relationship we had together. I believe that we can achieve new heights. Please consider this my second marriage proposal.
Your pudding pie,
Damon
My ex-husband had managed to attain stunning new levels of arrogance in this letter. He’d used it to apologize, propose, and excuse himself from his mistakes. And he’d wanted to give it to me so he didn’t have to say any of this out loud.
Detective Garcia waited patiently for me to process the letter.
Finally, he took the sleeve of plastic back and placed it in the folder. “See why I asked now?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I haven’t spoken to Damon since he left me. That letter is… Damon being Damon.”
“Meaning what, exactly, Miss Charles?”
“That he thought he could write me a letter and everything would return to normal between us, even though I haven’t spoken to him in months. Years, if you count the terrible state of our marriage.”
Garcia stared me down, and it took all my willpower not to flinch.
“Do you know how Mr. Stokes got into the café?”
“No,” I said. “I have a set of keys and so does Nick. Other than that, nobody else could’ve had access. And the alarm should’ve gone off. Someone must’ve typed in the code when they entered the place.” I rolled the water bottle between my palms. “Maybe Nick went back to the café to prep food for the service the next day and forgot to lock up? But that’s not like him. Ugh, I don’t know, Detective, I’m sorry.”
