Free Sweet Taffy and Murder: Sweet Taffy Cozy Mysteries Book #1 by Dana Moss

him.
    “Let’s get you home, shall we?”
    “Where’s Maria?” Taffy slurred slightly.
    “She left before you finished. She said she has an early day tomorrow. I think you do, too.”
    Taffy had nearly forgotten about work. She let Ethan lead her back to his truck.
    “Never again,” she said. “Don’t let me do that ever again. Good friends don’t let other friends drink and kary-cokey.”
    “Come on, Lightweight, time for bed.”
    Back in New York, Ethan’s last line would have been an invitation, not a simple statement of fact, so Taffy half expected him to follow her up to bed and do much more than tuck her in, but instead he just dropped her off in the driveway, said ‘good night,’ and waited until she’d found her wobbly way to the front door.
    Once inside, feeling equal parts disappointment and defiance (thanks to the booze), Taffy stood in the spot where the body outline had been and stared at the closed door of the hall closet.
    She decided to interpret Ethan’s stop-and-drop not as disinterest or rejection but rather as gentlemanliness. Of course, he was too nice a guy to make a move on a first date, and not even a real date—he’d said as much—so his strategy must be to be friends first. Taffy respected that. She hadn’t come across many gentleman-friends back in New York.
    She hoped Maria wouldn’t turn out to be a nuisance. Whatever had once gone on between her and Ethan, they both claimed to only be friends now. Something about Maria set Taffy on edge. She was overly confident and self-assured. Not to mention she’d totally blown off Taffy’s suggestion that Janet’s death was suspicious, which was embarrassing. Taffy had only been trying to help.
    She looked down at her feet. A woman—a ‘good woman,’ according to Ethan—had taken her last breath here on this floor.
    Taffy took a deep breath, opened the closet door, and tugged on a chain to activate the inside lightbulb. She blinked against the glare.
    Inside was a closet rod full of coats for various seasons. Below their varied hem lengths sat a dozen pairs of shoes and boots. Tucked under a pair of shoes was a wooden stepping stool, which Janet must have used to reach the top shelf.
    Leaning back, Taffy saw a bowling-ball bag on one side of the shelf. The empty side must have originally housed the fatal bowling ball.
    She pulled out the stool and positioned it so she could stand on it and reach the bag on the shelf. She probably shouldn’t be doing this drunk, but she had a bone to pick with Maria. Something about Janet’s death by bowling ball didn’t ring true.
    Awkwardly, she pulled down the nearly empty bag. A pair of bowling shoes rattled around inside, plus a package of gum, a small hand towel, a box of chalk, a lone red mitten, and a small black book at the bottom. It had the letters MBC on the cover, like the composition book in the piano bench.
    Keeping the book, Taffy shoved the bag back onto the shelf and nearly missed. The line of the shelf looked a little out of whack. Or maybe it was Taffy’s beery state of mind. As she got down off the stool, she nearly toppled over. After regaining her balance, she took a few steps away from the closet to assess the shelf. It didn’t look level.
    She went to the parlor and fished out a marble from the jar. Back up on the stool, Taffy set the marble on the shelf. It rolled away from her. She stretched forward to get the marble back and positioned it at the front edge of the shelf again. It quickly rolled to the back left corner again. Not only was the shelf not level side to side, it was also tipped backward. She rolled the marble one more time to be sure. She didn’t have to be sober to come to the obvious conclusion: There’s no way anything could roll forward and off this shelf. Not even a bowling ball.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    When Taffy’s alarm buzzed the next morning, she was still hanging on to a fragment of a dream, which was more like a forgotten memory. In the dream,