Free Brownies & Betrayal (Sweet Bites Mysteries, Book 1) by Heather Justesen

seconds?”
    “Maybe seventeen,” I corrected. He flashed a grin at me. “Point taken, though. To be fair, as much as I’d have liked to knock her on the head with one of Roscoe’s dinner rolls, that might have been painful, but would hardly have been fatal. Someone else had a little more serious damage on their mind.”
    “Depressing topic, if you ask me,” Shawn said. “I’d way rather talk about the Suns’ chances of making it to the finals.”
    When Jeff took to the conversation change with alacrity, I figured they’d rather leave the not-so-pretty past where it was. That was fine; I had another angle to follow now. I wondered why Millie pretended she and Valerie were best buds.
     

 
    After that, I decided some baking was in order. Baking had become a form of stress relief for me over the years—yet one more reason I should bake for others, since I could only eat so many pastries before I started to look like a whale. While I had a few extra pounds on my hips, I loathed working out, so it was imperative that someone else eat most of my creations.
    I decided to work on the adjustments to the chocolate cheesecake recipe I’d been tweaking and made a run to the store for ingredients.
    Humming, I started with my favorite shortbread crust, mixing, then spreading it in the pan to bake while I beat the filling.
    The temperature needed to be nice and steady, so I checked the preheating oven, then whipped the cream cheese and sugar.
    It had been a full two days since I found the body, and I didn’t feel like Honey and I had made much headway. Apparently, neither had the police, and I was certain they were devoting a great deal of time to the problem.
    I finished mixing in the softened cream cheese and slowly stirred in the sugar, vanilla and eggs, one at a time. I took a break to make notes and conjectures about each of the players in this little drama, letting the KitchenAid do its job. I melted the bittersweet chocolate, cooled it and whipped it in with the cream. I added the two mixtures, and beat the whole thing until it was light and fluffy.
    After I’d poured it all into my grandma’s old spring-form pan, I put the pan in a water bath in the oven and set the timer. I had more than an hour before the cheesecake would be done. Time for a ramble.
    I decided to take a closer look at downtown Silver Springs and headed out. In the past couple of years, I hadn’t made it back to town as much as I did prior to Grandma’s death. A clothing boutique had closed, a pet store opened and the craft store had gotten a face lift—which was well overdue. Half a block down the road, I turned to my own storefront and considered it.
    The building was on a corner lot, all brick and two stories. The large window beside the glass front door had a circular top—perfect for my planned vinyl-lettering sign. The upstairs windows were tall and let in a lot of evening sunlight during the summer.
    The back side of the building had a quaint little courtyard, and the kitchen stuck out next to it. It had a flat roof and shingles down the sides that curved up at the bottom—very charming and European. A set of stairs led up onto the roof above this portion of the apartment, and I remember many July Fourths sitting up there to watch city fireworks. Thankfully, all the businesses shared a large parking lot out back, where we stashed the Dumpsters out of sight and where I entered the upstairs apartment.
    Despite the quaint European feel to the exterior, the interior was more like an old mom-and-pop restaurant. After continuing down the road for a few blocks to see what else was new, I headed back to my place. When I drew close, I saw a woman and child approaching and realized it was Valerie’s sister and daughter. Though they’d come to my table for cake Sunday night, there had been no chance for me to ask her any questions. I crossed the street and headed for Lidia.
    “Hi, Lidia, isn’t it?” I asked when I got close. I looked at