Free The Mud Pie Murderess: A Bakery Detectives Cozy Mystery by Stacey Alabaster Page A

"Who are you there with? Are you there alone?"
    I wasn't sure how to answer. Again, I just had to go with the truth. "Pippa is helping me out."
    "I see," she said. Her tone was short and clipped, and I could tell she wanted to say a lot more than that.
    "Chloe, it's just... Pippa has been feeling really unwell, and she's finally better, so I thought it would be a treat for her." I felt like a dirty politician trying to juggle a wife and a mistress, desperate to keep them both happy so that my affair wouldn't blow up in my face.
    "I totally get it," Chloe said, in a way that suggested that she didn't get it at all. "Enjoy yourself then."
    She hung up without even telling me what she had called me for. Well, goodbye to you as well then, I thought. It was proving impossible to keep everyone happy. How did cheating politicians do it?
    Still a little shaken up from the phone call, I went back to find Pippa, hoping that she wasn't going to give me the cold shoulder as well. I was grateful to find her waiting by the spiral staircase with a friendly grin on her face. "How'd it go?" she asked, referring to the phone call I'd just suffered through.
    "I think she's a little offended that she wasn't invited," I said.
    "Oh well, let her be offended," Pippa said, without the slightest sympathy towards Chloe. "We shouldn't let that stop us from enjoying ourselves."
    "We're enjoying ourselves?" I asked.
    "Well, I am," Pippa said, still grinning. "I had a quick chat with Braxton while I was serving him hor d’oeuvres," she said. "And he mentioned that soon the party will be moving outside so us catering girls should get prepared."
    "Oh," I said, looking down at my uniform. "Well then, what are you doing standing at the staircase? We should be moving outside."
    She just stared at me like I was an idiot. "We're not actually caterers, Rachael."
    "Right," I said, shaking my head. "Whoops."
    "But," she said, lowering her voice, "the party moving outside will give us the perfect opportunity." She tapped her hand on the staircase. "The perfect opportunity to snoop around." She nodded upstairs. "See what he's hiding up there. All we’ve got to do is wait until they all spill outside, then take our chance."
    We both kept our heads down and tried to remain inconspicuous while the partygoers gradually drifted outside. We didn't follow them though, even though someone called out at Pippa asking her to grab another tray of champagne. "I'll be right on it!" she lied. I laughed a little at the thought of Pippa carrying a tray of flutes. They'd be smashed on the floor before she even left the kitchen.
    Finally, they were gone.
    We waited a few minutes, just to make sure that the coast really was clear. I was more cautious than Pippa was. After all, she wasn't the one currently up on trespassing charges.
    "So we need evidence that he killed Olive, right?" Pippa asked as she looked up the staircase.
    I checked around to make sure that no one was watching us. "Well, yes and no. We already know he's guilty. We need evidence that proves he was at the scene of the crime..."
    "And how are we going to find that then?" Pippa asked. "You think he's keeping surveillance camera footage of the day stashed in his bedroom?"
    She had a good point. "No," I had to concede. "But we've got to try and look for SOMETHING. We're here for a reason, Pippa, and it's not just the free food, I'm afraid."
    There was a rope at the bottom of the staircase, cordoning it off from the rest of the house with a sign asking guests and staff to please not go upstairs.
    Well, we weren't guests. And we certainly weren't staff, in spite of our tight black uniforms.
    We waited until the last guest had gone out to the back garden before we each stepped over the rope and dashed upstairs. I heard footsteps coming back into the house and ran so fast I almost tripped, almost taking down Pippa as I grabbed her for support.
    By the time we got to the top, my heart was beating out of my chest.
    "I thought