Scones, Skulls & Scams by Leighann Dobbs Page A

don’t think we have the whole town here.”
    Lexy frowned down at the papers. “It sure looks like it.”
    “No,” Nans insisted. “Look. Here is Adams Street, then Berkley, then Maple, but it ends at Cedar. This section of town here is missing.”
    “Hmmm … You’re right,” Ida said.
    “Wait. Let’s lay them out end to end.” Lexy grabbed the papers to do just that when the bell over the door jingled and Lexy turned to see a middle-aged man enter the bakery.  
    A customer!
    She dropped the papers, a smile springing to her lips as she made her way behind the bakery case from which, hopefully, the customer would be making some purchases.  
    “Can I help you?” she asked.
    “Why yes, I’d like one of these scones, if I may.” The man pointed to the glass pedestal and Lexy grabbed a square of waxed paper and selected the largest scone.
    “Is that to eat here?” Lexy asked.
    “Yes.”
    “We have coffee and tea over at the self-serve station if you’d like,” she offered.
    The man looked over as he pulled out his wallet. “I’ll take a large coffee too.”
    Lexy rang up the purchase and the man ambled over to pour himself a coffee while Nans, Ruth, Ida, and Helen moved the papers that were spilling over onto the other tables.
    The man took a seat and the ladies bent back over the blueprints talking in hushed tones. Lexy busied herself cleaning off the self-serve station.
    “Aghh … pfft.”  
    Lexy whirled around to see the man grabbing at his tongue while making choking and gurgling noises.
    “Are you okay? What happened?” Lexy rushed to his side.
    “Okay? Pfftt …” The man glared at Lexy as he continued to grab at his tongue. “I should say not!”
    Nans, Ruth, Ida and Helen had stopped talking and were staring at the man.  
    Lexy raised her brows at him. “I don’t understand, what’s the matter?”
    “I’ll tell you what the matter is,” he said stabbing his finger at the half-eaten pastry. “There’s a big clump of hair in my scone!”

Chapter Nine

    “What?” Lexy stared at the scone. “I can assure you there are no hairs in my pastries!”
    “You can see it right there,” the man sputtered as he slammed closed the notebook he had open on the table beside him.
    Lexy bent down to look closer at the scone and gasped. There was some hair there … a small clump of short light-colored hairs.
    “What’s this? These weren’t here before,” Lexy said.
    Nans, Ruth, Ida and Helen craned their necks to see the hairs.  
    “Oh dear, that does look like hair,” Ida said.
    “But how would it get there?” Lexy asked. “I have a very clean kitchen.”
    “That’s right, she’s never had any kind of problem with contamination before,” Nans added.
    Lexy narrowed her eyes at the man who hastily jammed his arms in the sleeves of his coat. “Wait a minute, how do I know you didn’t plant that in there?”
    The man’s faced turned red. “Plant it? Madam, don’t you know who I am?”
    Lexy glanced at Nans and the ladies who all shook their heads. “No.”
    “I’m Edgar Royce,” the man stated.
    Nans gasped.
    “The food critic?” Lexy’s brows shot upwards. That would be terribly bad luck to have one of the most influential food critics find a hair in her scone—the very recipe she was planning to enter in the bicentennial contest.
    The man nodded. “And you can rest assured I will not be giving you a favorable review. In fact, I should probably call the health inspector on you.”
    Lexy’s stomach twisted. That was the last thing she needed on top of everything else. The timing of this was unfortunate … too unfortunate not to be suspicious.
    “Wait a minute,” she said as the man brushed past her on his way to the door. “What made you decide to come here today?”
    “I got a call. Someone raving about your pastries and saying I should try the scones since it was some famous family recipe or something,” he said. “I thought it would make an appealing