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  A Friend in Need

  “You’re going to have to find out who killed Roy, you know,” Carolyn said.

  “Absolutely not,” Phyllis said. “You heard what Mike said. I think I’d be risking his career if I were to get mixed up in this investigation.”

  “But you know good and well they think Eve did it, and once they get an idea like that in their heads, they stop looking for anybody else! You saw what happened in those other cases. If you hadn’t stepped in and uncovered the real killers, innocent people would have gone to jail … probably including me!”

  “Those were isolated cases,” Phyllis insisted. “Most of the time, the police and the sheriff’s department are very good about finding out what really happened—”

  “Are you prepared to risk Eve’s life on that?” Carolyn broke in. “Because that’s what you’ll be doing if you turn your back on this, you know. Do you honestly believe she could survive being sent to prison? Do you want to have to go to Huntsville to visit her and see her wasting away to nothing in there behind those iron bars?”

  “I think they send most of the female convicts to Gatesville instead of Huntsville,” Sam said, then when Carolyn gave him an angry look hurried on, “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because Eve’s not gonna be convicted of anything, and she’s not gonna be convicted of anything because she’s innocent. We all saw her with Roy the past couple of months. There’s no way she would ever hurt him, let alone kill him.”

  Phyllis knew that was true. The conventional wisdom was that anybody was capable of anything under the right circumstances, but she didn’t believe that. Maybe it was true in most cases, but some things were so far beyond the pale that they simply were impossible.

  She turned toward the phone, and Carolyn asked, “What are you going to do?”

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  MORE PRAISE FOR

  THE FRESH-BAKED MYSTERIES

  “Washburn has a refreshing way with words and knows how to tell an exciting story.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Delightful, [with a] realistic small-town vibe [and a] vibrant narrative … A Peach of a Murder runs the full range of emotions, so be prepared to laugh and cry with this one!”

  —Romance Readers Connection

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  Other Fresh-Baked Mysteries by Livia J. Washburn

  The Pumpkin Muffin Murder

  Killer Crab Cakes

  The Christmas Cookie Killer

  Murder by the Slice

  A Peach of a Murder

  The Gingerbread Bump-off

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  Wedding Cake Killer

  A Fresh-Baked Mystery

  LIVIA J. WASHBURN

  AN OBSIDIAN MYSTERY

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  OBSIDIAN

  Published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

  Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

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  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

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  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Livia Reasoner, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Washburn, L. J.

  Wedding cake killer: a fresh-baked mystery/Livia Washburn.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-60882-1

  1. Newson, Phyllis (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Baking—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Weatherford (Tex.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3573.A787W43 2012

  813’.54—dc23

  2012021416

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  This book is dedicated to my husband, James Reasoner, and my two daughters, Shayna and Joanna, who have to sample even when the recipe turns out to be a real loser.

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  Contents

  A Friend in Need

  Praise

  Also by Livia J. Washburn

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Recipes

  Sweet Bacon Crack

  Nutty Caramel Pretzels

  Cheddar Garlic Palmiers

  Stuffed Mushrooms

  Zesty Cheeseball

  Mini Curried Turkey Croissant Sandwiches

  Blue Punch

  Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

  Buttercream Frosting

  Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

  Fruit Dip

  Veggie Dip

  Coconut Wedding Cake

  White Coconut Buttercream Icing

  Alcohol-free Piña Colada Punch

  S’more Pie

  Grilled Ham and Pepper Sandwich

  Banana Oatmeal Crumb Muffins

  Tuna Salad Sandwich

  Hard-Boiled Eggs

  Cobb Wraps

  The Gingerbread Bump-off

  About the Author

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  It was the silliest thing. As she sat there on the metal bunk with its thin, hard mattress, her back against a cinder-block wall painted a hideous shade of institutional green, Phyllis Newsom
felt like she ought to be singing a song.

  “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” to be specific. As far as she could remember, although she had heard that song a number of times, usually in a movie or TV show, she had never actually sung it before.

  But that made sense, because she’d never been locked up in jail before, either.

  Phyllis sighed, closed her eyes, and lifted a hand to massage her temples. She wasn’t going to sing. The only reason such silly thoughts even occurred to her, she realized, was that she was trying to take her mind off the fact that she’d been arrested.

  A woman her age, who had never been in trouble with the law in her life—well, not real trouble, anyway, if you didn’t count annoying a police detective every now and then—and she’d been arrested, locked up, thrown in the hoosegow, checked in at the old gray-bar hotel …

  She was doing it again. Trying to distract herself. And it wasn’t working.

  “Shoot,” she whispered.

  She was in the county jail, just off Fort Worth Highway near the railroad tracks, not far from the eastern edge of downtown Weatherford, Texas. She’d been here before. Not in the jail itself, of course, but in the building, since it also housed the Parker County Sheriff’s Department, and her son, Mike, was a deputy.

  Thinking about Mike made Phyllis squeeze her eyes even more tightly closed. This was going to be so humiliating for him, having a mother who’d been arrested. She wondered if he had heard about it yet. If there was any way to keep him from ever finding out, it would be worth it.

  Of course, the best way would have been not to interfere in a murder investigation in the first place—District Attorney Timothy Sullivan had warned her that he wasn’t going to put up with it anymore—but if she had done that, it would have meant leaving one of her best friends at the mercy of a legal system that was already convinced she was guilty. Phyllis couldn’t do that.

  Anyway, what she had done wasn’t really that bad. Technically it might be considered obstruction of justice and interfering with a police investigation, but as far as Phyllis was concerned, she had just been trying to get to the truth.

  Life in the jail went on around her. Doors slammed. People, mostly men, talked to one another, but occasionally she heard a woman’s voice, too. Footsteps sounded on the tile and cement floors. A buzzer of some sort went off. A phone rang.

  Phyllis opened her eyes and studied the holding cell. The wall behind her was an exterior one; that was why it was made of cinder blocks. The interior walls were metal painted the same noxious shade of green. The steel door had a small window covered with metal mesh in it. That was the on dely window of any sort in the small room. The floor was cement and had a drain with a metal grate over it in the center of the cell. She didn’t want to think about why the cell had a drain in it. There was … something … built into one wall that she thought was a toilet, but she wasn’t sure. If it was, it was bound to be extremely uncomfortable. A built-in fluorescent light and a vent in the ceiling for the heating and air-conditioning system completed the room’s furnishings.

  Phyllis felt a scream trying to well up in her throat. She crossed her arms and stiffened her resolve. She was not going to give in to the emotions she felt right now. She was going to remain cool and collected. She really hadn’t been here that long, and surely she wouldn’t be here much longer. Her lawyer, Juliette Yorke, had promised to be here right away.

  In fact, footsteps were coming along the corridor outside the holding cells right now, she realized. When they stopped on the other side of the door, she heaved a sigh of relief. They would be taking her to a bail hearing now, and soon she could start trying to figure out what to do about this travesty of justice.

  But when the electronic lock buzzed and the door swung open, it wasn’t Juliette who stood there; it was Mike in his sheriff’s department uniform, and he looked angry, upset, and scared all at the same time.

  So much for the futile hope that he wouldn’t find out about it.

  “Mike … ,” Phyllis said.

  “Mom,” he said, “what the hell have you done?”

  Phyllis felt some anger of her own. “I don’t like you taking that tone with me, Mike, and as for what I’ve done, I didn’t have any choice. I have to prove that Eve isn’t a murderer. You know good and well that Eve Turner never killed anyone in her life!”

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  Chapter 1

  Christmas Eve, several weeks earlier

  “Oh, my, look at all the cars,” Phyllis said as Sam Fletcher drove his pickup along the block where they lived. “I didn’t think people would start showing up this early. They’ve blocked off the driveway, Sam.”

  “Yeah, I see that,” Sam said. “Tell you what. I’ll stop in front of the house and you can get out and go on in. I’ll find a place to park down the street and walk back.”

  “That’s not fair. You live here, and these people don’t.”

  “Yeah, but that means they won’t be stayin’. They’ll all leave when the shower’s over. I can bring the pickup back down then.”

  “Well, I suppose so,” Phyllis said. “I just hate to put you to any more trouble after everything that’s already happened today.”

  “You mean that killer we caught?” Sam asked with a smile. “Or that you caught, is more like it. Heck, I’m gettin’ used to that. How many times does this make?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Phyllis told him as a tiny shudder went through her. “I wantas to put all that behind us. This is Christmas Eve, after all, and it’s Eve’s bridal shower, too. I think that’s plenty to keep us busy the rest of the day, don’t you?”

  “If you say so.” Sam brought the pickup to a smooth stop in front of the big old two-story house he shared with Phyllis, Carolyn Wilbarger, and Eve Turner, two more retired teachers.

  They wouldn’t be sharing it with Eve for much longer, though. Another week and she and Roy Porter would be married. Eve and Roy planned to come back here to the house after their honeymoon and stay temporarily while they continued looking for a place of their own, but that wouldn’t be the same.

  But then, nothing ever stayed the same, Phyllis mused as she got out of the pickup. Like it or not, life-altering changes came along every few years. She had become a teacher, gotten married to Kenny, given birth to their son, Mike, continued teaching while they raised him into a fine young man, seen him marry and have a son of his own, retired …

  And then Kenny had died, leaving her to rattle around alone in that big old house. Dolly Williamson, the former superintendent and a longtime friend, had suggested that Phyllis rent out the extra bedrooms to other retired teachers who were on their own, and once Phyllis had done that, she’d believed that from then on, life would settle down into a serene existence without the upheavals of youth.

  Well, that hadn’t worked out, had it?

  People had come and gone in the house. Mattie Harris, one of Phyllis’s oldest friends, had passed away. Sam Fletcher had moved in. Now Eve was getting married and moving out. That was inevitable, Phyllis supposed. Although she didn’t know the details because Eve hadn’t lived in Weatherford at the time, she was aware that her friend had been married several times. Really, Eve had been without a man in her life for longer than Phyllis had expected.

  Then there were the murders …

  But as she’d told Sam, she didn’t want to think about that, so she didn’t. As she stepped up onto the porch, she didn’t allow herself to remember the body she had literally stumbled over there not that long ago. She didn’t glance at the house next door, where she had found another body a few years earlier. And as she stepped into the house and saw all the people crowding into the living room, she told herself sternly that nobody was going to try to poison her guests at this get-together.

  They’d better not, anyway.

  Carolyn Wilbarger spotted Phyllis and quickly came over to her, smiling and nodding to some of the ladies along the way. Still smiling as she reached Phyllis, she said in a
tight-lipped whisper, “Oh, my word. I didn’t expect this many people.”

  Smiling as well, Phyllis replied, “Neither did I.”

  “When you called from the police station and said you didn’t know how long you’d be, nobody had shown up yet. But then …” Carolyn shook her head. “That other business … ?”

  “All settled,” Phyllis told her. “I’ll fill you in on the details later. Right now … well, this is Eve’s day.”

  Eve certainly appeared to be enjoying it, too. She sat in the Che w big armchair, beaming at the guests and the pile of presents that surrounded her. There had been some talk about how she shouldn’t expect a bridal shower at her age and with numerous marriages in her past, but it was true that she had been living here with Phyllis for several years and didn’t really have all the things she would need to set up housekeeping again. From the looks of it, after today she would.

  The house was extravagantly decorated for Christmas because it had been part of the annual Jingle Bell Tour of Homes a couple of weeks earlier. Phyllis and Carolyn had added a few things to celebrate the upcoming wedding, including tables for the gifts covered in blue tablecloths with silver trim. They had decided to go with white roses since the cloths were blue and they looked great in the silver vases. Still, the theme remained overwhelmingly Christmasy. In a couple of days, when Christmas was over, they would take down all those decorations and start getting ready for the wedding, which would take place here on New Year’s Eve.

  Eve, Eve, Eve, Phyllis thought. There was no getting away from it.

  “Phyllis!” Eve said, seeming to notice her for the first time. “Come here, dear.”

  Phyllis kept the smile on her face as she made her way across the crowded room to Eve, who stood up and hugged her.