Wedding Cake Killer by Livia J. Washburn Page A

I had just about made up my mind, since I knew it was what he wanted, but I had to see it, just to be sure.”
    “Which is certainly fair,” Roy put in. “I wouldn’t have expected otherwise. Nobody wants to buy a pig in a poke.”
    “You think kids still say that these days?” Sam asked. “They’d know what a pig is, but I’m not sure they’d know what a poke is.”
    “Never mind that,” Carolyn said. “Tell us about the bed-and-breakfast, Eve.”
    “Oh, it’s utterly charming! It’s in the hills southwest of town and has a beautiful view of the Brazos River.”
    “It was originally a farmhouse,” Roy added, “but it’s been remodeled and brought completely up to date. And it’s in the middle of twenty or thirty acres, so even though it’s only a few minutes from town, it’s so quiet and peaceful, you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere.”
    “It sounds lovely,” Phyllis said.
    “And you sound like a sales pitch, Roy,” Carolyn said.
    He laughed. “I don’t mean to. But as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to spend some time there with Eve while we look for a home of our own.”
    “I think that was a good idea,” Phyllis said. She was determined to be supportive of what Eve was doing.
    “After Roy had shown the place to me, I knew it would be all right, so we went ahead and left our bags there,” Eve said.
    “So you’re moving in there tonight?” Carolyn asked.
    “I didn’t see any reason to wait.”
    “What about all the things in your room?”
    “Well, I was hoping that Phyllis would let me leave some of them here until we find a house,” Eve said. “Is that all right, Phyllis?”
    “Why wouldn’t it be?” Phyllis asked.
    “Well . . . I assume that eventually you’ll want to rent that room to someone else.”
    Phyllis, Sam, and Carolyn looked at each other in surprise. At first when Eve had told them that she and Roy were getting married, Phyllis had hoped that Roy would just move into their home and things would go on roughly as they had before. Then, when it was established that Eve would be moving out, at least eventually, the question of what to do with the room had crossed Phyllis’s mind, but only briefly. She’d been much too busy, what with the holidays, the bridal shower, the wedding—and the murder—to even think about it all that much. And since she’d believed that Eve and Roy were coming back here to stay temporarily, it had been easier to just put the whole thing out of her mind. She suspected that Sam and Carolyn felt the same way.
    It had been several years since Sam had moved in, and during that time they had all settled into a comfortable routine. If someone new came into the house, it would be more than just a change. It would be an upheaval. Phyllis wasn’t sure she wanted that. Financially, she didn’t
need
another boarder, although the extra money certainly came in handy. She just wasn’t sure it was worth getting used to all the changes that might come about.
    For now, though, she was noncommittal as she said to Eve, “We’ll worry about that later. Of course you can leave some of your things in the room, for as long as you need to.”
    “Thank you, dear. You’re always so sweet.”
    After dinner, they took coffee and dessert—slices of s’more pie, which was a cross between a pie and a brownie, that Phyllis had made earlier that day—into the living room.
    “How’d you happen to find that place, Roy?” Sam asked when they had all settled down on the sofa and in armchairs.
    “I was out just driving around one day when I saw it and decided to investigate,” Roy said. “You know, I’ve never spent much time in this area, so I like to explore and find my way around. When I saw this house sitting on top of a hill, something about it just drew me. I felt like that was where I wanted to spend some time with Eve.”
    “He has such good instincts,” Eve said with a smile.
    “Ever given any thought to owning a place like