Chewy Chocolate Chip Murder: A Cookie Lane Cozy Mystery - Book 1 by Karen Sullivan Page B

hardwood tables, chomping
down cookies, dipping them in cups of tea or sipping store bought bottled soda.
    Smiles everywhere. Except for the guy
at the front of the line. His smile had vanished at the sight of Lacy’s ongoing
coffee war.
    “I’m sorry,” Cat said, “our coffee
machine is currently out of order. But how about a Cheeky Choc Chip cookie?
It’ll quench your thirst for sugar, if not for caffeine.”
    The young man in a suit and tie nodded
once. “Fine,” he said, then smoothed his burgundy tie. “I’ll just go down to
Starbucks for the coffee.” He paid, then swept his brown paper bag out the
door.
    Catherine beckoned to Lacy. “Just put
the out of order sign up, Lace. There’s no point. We’ll have to get it fixed,
soon.”
    “You can say that again, murderer,” a
man said, from the other side of the counter.
    Catherine’s expression solidified. She
kept that customer-friendly smile in place and turned on the spot. “Well, hello
there, Kevin. How may I help you today?”
    Rachel appeared beside her brother,
and shot Cat a quick smile, then swapped it out for a sullen pout.
    “My sister insisted we come taste your
cookies. She says they’re the best,” Kevin replied, then eyed the array of
treats beneath the glass. “I don’t trust you haven’t put arsenic in them.”
    “Has anyone ever told you,” Lacy said,
“that you talk like Gomez Addams from the Addams family?”
    Rachel sniggered behind her hand.
Kevin gave his sister a look that could’ve withered a full pot of flowers in
bloom.
    Catherine struggled to keep a grin
from her lips. “What would you like?”
    The line in the store had extended.
People queued outside, now, and tapped away on their phones, hands up to shield
their eyes from the sun’s sharp, morning rays.
    “May we have a box of Cheeky Choc
Chips, please?” Rach asked. Black makeup smeared at the corner of her lips.
    “Of course,” Cat replied, then took
out one of the foldable cardboard boxes. She constructed it, then took the
tongs and delivered the delicious treats into their new home.
    Kevin looked around the store’s
interior, his lips turned downward. “So, this is what a murderer does when
they’re not murdering.”
    Events triggered in Cat’s mind. Chess
pieces on a board moved and placed. “It was you. It wasn’t your father on the
pier last night,” Cat said, “It was you.”
    “What did you say?” Kevin asked, then
cleared his throat. He tried to back off, but it was too late. He’d already
gone pale as vanilla frosting on a choc nut cookie.
    “You murdered Beth,” Catherine said.
He’d tried to accuse her to cover his tracks. He’d been absent at the memorial
service. Had met with a strange person on the pier. He’d probably heard that
his family had money issues, and he’d wanted to help.
    It had to be him.
    Catherine’s stomach turned. “I’m going
to call the cops.”
    “Cat, wait,” Rachel said and darted
around the counter. She clamped her hand on Cat’s arm, then squeezed. “Wait a
second.”
    “No, he did it. I’m sure.” Or was she?
Had the pressure to figure it out finally bubbled over, and this was the
result? Catherine placed the box of cookies on top of the counter.
    “It wasn’t my brother,” Rachel said.
    “How do you know? How can you possibly
be so sure?” Cat asked. He could’ve done it. He might’ve thought that Beth
hadn’t changed the will and that killing her would allow him to head off to
college again.
    “Because he was at home that morning,”
Rachel replied. “We all were.”
    Lacy stepped in front of the register
and took charge. Rachel led Catherine back toward the stairs in the corner.
    “What? How?” Cat asked, then blinked
at the young woman. “How do you know that?”
    “Mom makes us wake up at 5 AM each
morning because it’s good for us, or whatever. We were all eating breakfast,
together at 5 AM. We have surveillance cameras in the kitchen, too. The cops
know we were all