Free Murder in the Cake: Cozy Murder Mystery (Harley Hill Mysteries Book 4) by Kennedy Chase Page A

barking his baritone woofs as he made his way to the front door. I went to answer it.  
    When I opened the door, I was confronted by a huge bunch of roses. The delivery guy appeared from behind them like an explorer making his way through a forest of beautiful red blooms.
    “Miss Harley Hill?” he asked with a big smile on his face.  
    “That’s me,” I said, somewhat surprised.
    “Sign here, please, Miss.” He handed me an electronic pad and I made a squiggle on it with the stylus. He took the pad back and handed me the flowers. “There you go, Miss. Someone wants to get in your good books, eh?” He grinned knowingly.
    “So it would seem.”
    Cordi carried the massive arrangement into the kitchen. Her eyes grew as wide as Monty’s did whenever we got the tuna from the fridge.  
    “My word!” Cordi said. “I’ll get a vase. Who are they from?”
    I shrugged. “I haven’t read the card yet.”
    Cordi got a vase from the cupboard under the sink. “What? You’re going to have to hand in your sleuth card, Harley! Hurry up.”
    I dug the card out of the bunch of flowers. ‘To my darling Harley. I love you. Cole.’  
    “Short but sweet,” I said, trying to be cool while little butterflies were flitting around in my tummy, trying to dodge the sparkly fireworks. “They’re from Cole.”
    Cordi came over, gave me a hug, and then put the flowers in the vase and filled it with water. “He’s such a sweetie. It’s a shame his job takes him away so much.”
    “Yeah. Isn’t it?”
    Cordi put the vase of roses in the middle of the kitchen table. Monty jumped up and had an experimental swipe at one of the blooms, but as it didn’t try to retaliate, he lost interest and jumped back down to wait for breakfast titbits.  
    Cordi poured me a hot cup of freshly ground coffee. Its wonderful aroma combined with the flowers from Cole perked me right up. Then my phone started beeping. I fished it out of my dressing gown pocket to see that I’d got a text from Alex.
    “What is it, dear?” Cordi asked. I didn’t want to ruin her morning by telling her it was from Alex.
    “It’s the police.” I said, reading the text. “It says that the preliminary toxicology report on Henry Renholm has come back, and as well as having a trace of marijuana and alcohol in his system, he died of cyanide poisoning from a cake he ate.”
    “What? You mean…”
    “Yes. It is officially death by cake.”
    While I let that sink in, I read more of the report Alex had sent. It went into considerable scientific detail, but thankfully Alex had included some notes of what it all actually meant. “It was the cassava leaves that did it,” I said. “Bad preparation.”  
    I read out the official wording and Cordi shook her head slowly in disbelief.  
    “So, if you fail to prepare cassava properly, it’s full of cyanide?” Cordi said, putting the last of the dishes in the sink. “Wow, I never knew that. I heard something about apple pips, but not cassava leaves.”
    I closed the lid on my laptop. “Apparently. It’s used to make tapioca, which can be turned into all kinds of things, including being made into a cake.”
    “Which is what Henry Renholm did.”
    “Well, that remains to be seen. Somebody made the tapioca cake full of cyanide, that’s for sure.” I sat back. After three cups of coffee I was wide awake and on the mystery trail like a caffeine-fuelled bloodhound.
    “Read the suicide note again, would you, Harley?” Cordi put another pot of coffee on and joined me at the table.
    I took the copy of the suicide note from the file Alex had given me. “It reads: ‘To whoever finds me, I can no longer live with myself. I’m a terrible, dissolute man and do not deserve to live a moment longer. May god forgive me. Goodbye cruel world.’ Signed: Henry Renholm.”
    “It’s printed,” Cordi said. Winning today’s prize for stating the blindingly obvious. “And dare I say it, a little on the melodramatic