Wedding Cake Carnage, page 1
part #11 of Murder in the Mix Series
Wedding Cake Carnage
MURDER IN THE MIX 11
Addison Moore
Contents
Books by Addison Moore
Book Description
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
Donut Disaster Preview
22. Chapter 1
Books by Addison Moore
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright © 2019 by Addison Moore
Edited by Paige Maroney Smith
Cover by Lou Harper of Cover Affairs
Hollis Thatcher Press, LTD.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.
All Rights Reserved.
This eBook is for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase any additional copies for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright © 2019 by Addison Moore
Created with Vellum
Books by Addison Moore
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Mystery
Little Girl Lost
A Sublime Casualty
The First Wife’s Secret
Cutie Pies and Deadly Lies (Murder in the Mix 1)
Bobbing for Bodies (Murder in the Mix 2)
Pumpkin Spice Sacrifice (Murder in the Mix 3)
Gingerbread & Deadly Dread (Murder in the Mix 4)
Seven-Layer Slayer (Murder in the Mix 5)
Red Velvet Vengeance (Murder in the Mix 6)
Bloodbaths and Banana Cake (Murder in the Mix 7)
New York Cheesecake Chaos (Murder in the Mix 8)
Lethal Lemon Bars (Murder in the Mix 9)
Macaron Massacre (Murder in the Mix 10)
Wedding Cake Carnage (Murder in the Mix 11)
Donut Disaster (Murder in the Mix 12)
Toxic Apple Turnovers (Murder in the Mix 13)
Killer Cupcakes (Murder in the Mix 14)
Romance
Just Add Mistletoe
3:AM Kisses (3:AM Kisses 1)
Winter Kisses (3:AM Kisses 2)
Sugar Kisses (3:AM Kisses 3)
Whiskey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 4)
Rock Candy Kisses (3:AM Kisses 5)
Velvet Kisses (3:AM Kisses 6)
Wild Kisses (3:AM Kisses 7)
Country Kisses (3:AM Kisses 8)
Forbidden Kisses (3:AM Kisses 9)
Dirty Kisses (3:AM Kisses 10)
Stolen Kisses (3:AM Kisses 11)
Lucky Kisses (3:AM Kisses 12)
Tender Kisses (3:AM Kisses 13)
Revenge Kisses (3:AM Kisses 14)
Red Hot Kisses (3:AM Kisses 15)
Reckless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 16)
Hot Honey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 17)
Shameless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 18)
Value 3:AM Kisses Boxed Sets
3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 1-3
3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 4-6
3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 7-9
3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 10-12
3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 13-15
3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 16-17 (+Bonus)
The Social Experiment (The Social Experiment 1)
Bitter Exes (The Social Experiment 2)
Chemical Attraction (The Social Experiment 3)
Low Down & Dirty (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook1)
Dirty Disaster (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 2)
Dirty Deeds (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 3)
Naughty By Nature
Heartless (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 1)
Wicked Heart (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 2)
Stone Cold Heart (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 3)
Beautiful Oblivion (Lake Loveless 1)
Beautiful Illusions (Lake Loveless 2)
Beautiful Elixir (Lake Loveless 3)
Beautiful Deception (Lake Loveless 4)
The Solitude of Passion
Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)
Someone Like You (Someone to Love 2)
Someone For Me (Someone to Love 3)
BOXED SETS
Spitfire Kisses Boxed Set
Breakers Canyon Boxed Set (Books 1-3)
Lake Loveless Boxed Set (Books 1-3)
A Totally ‘80s Romance (Books 1-3)
3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook (Books 1-3)
3:AM KISSES (Books 1-3)
Young Adult Romance
Melt With You (A Totally ’80s Romance 1)
Tainted Love (A Totally ’80s Romance 2)
Hold Me Now (A Totally ’80s Romance 3)
Paranormal Romance
(Celestra Book World in Order)
Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1)
Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2)
Burn (Celestra Series Book 3)
Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4)
Vex (Celestra Series Book 5)
Expel (Celestra Series Book 6)
Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7)
Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 8)
Elysian (Celestra Series Book 9)
Perfect Love (A Celestra Novella)
Ephemeral (The Countenance Trilogy 1)
Evanescent (The Countenance Trilogy 2)
Entropy (The Countenance Trilogy 3)
Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)
Season of the Witch (A Celestra Companion)
Celestra Forever After (Celestra Forever After 1)
The Dragon and the Rose (Celestra Forever After 2)
The Serpentine Butterfly (Celestra Forever After 3)
Crown of Ashes (Celestra Forever After 4)
Throne of Fire (Celestra Forever After 5)
All Hail the King (Celestra Forever After 6)
Book Description
My name is Lottie Lemon, and I see dead pets. On occasion I see a once upon a human, too, but mostly it’s just cute little furry beasts who have come back from the other side to warn me of their previous owner’s impending doom.
Everett is missing—and it’s been a nightmare ever since he’s disappeared. To top it all off, I stumbled upon a body at the bridal expo. My sister’s wedding is just weeks away, and I volunteered to take over a to-do list at least a mile long. Add an ornery talking tiger, an unruly child poltergeist, and a fireworks spectacular, and you’ll have the most explosive July Honey Hollow has ever seen.
Lottie Lemon has a brand new bakery to tend to, a budding romance with perhaps one too many suitors, and she has the supernatural ability to see dead pets—which are always harbingers for ominous things to come. Throw in the occasional ghost of the human variety, a string of murders, and her insatiable thirst for justice, and you’ll have more chaos than you know what to do with.
Living in the small town of Honey Hollow can be murder.
Chapter 1
Missing: Judge Essex Everett Baxter
Black hair, blue eyes, mid-thirties
If you have any information, contact the Ashford Sheriff’s Department.
$100,000 Reward
I see dead people. Mostly I see dead pets, but on the rare occasion I do see a dearly departed of the human variety. However, right now, my mind is drifting to terrifying places, and I can’t see a thing.
“Have you seen this man?” My voice is hoarse, raw from crying, lack of sleep, and a growing desperation.
The young man before me grabs a protective hold on his fiancée as he leads her away from the table.
“Lottie Lemon,” Lily Swanson is quick to scold me. “Would you stop that? It’s bad enough you brought his picture. And a sixteen-by-twenty? It looks like you’re about to eulogize the poor guy.”
“Eulogize?”
My thoughts grow dark, and suddenly the din of voices, the elegant jazz music playing on blast, and the sporadic explosions of laughter all around me disappear as that fog I’ve been stuck in for the last nine days slowly pulls me back into its cryptic arms.
“Would you stop?” Keelie swats Lily with a stack of pamphlets she printed up that advertise the Cutie Pie Cakery and Bakery. “You’re sending her over the edge again.”
“Oh, I am over the edge,” I assure them both as I step back
The Ashford Convention Center is filled to the brim with future brides, bridesmaids, mothers of the bride, single women with a dream in their heart—and every now and again, I spot the ever so reluctant soon-to-be groom.
It’s wall-to-wall merchants in this cavernous space, offering a rainbow of services—photographers, videographers, vendors who specialize in booking live bands and DJs, stores that specialize in invitations and top-of-the-line stationary, and jewelers showing off their finest baubles—apparently, diamond encrusted tiaras are on order if you’re to keep up with the latest bridal trends. There’s a booth offering limos and other forms of snazzy transportation, three or four booths for honeymoon and travel, and a dozen beauty vendors and makeup artists—God forbid the bride apply her own lip-gloss. There are even a few vendors just like myself who made the trek here from Honey Hollow—just a short thirty-minute drive down the highway.
The Honey Pot Diner is here offering their catering services, and the Scarlet Sage Boutique is also present with Scarlet herself on hand offering huge savings for any gowns purchased at the expo today—and she’s hauled down enough to outfit every bride this side of the continental divide.
My friend, Felicity Gilbert, has one of the most popular booths at the expo with the business she took over once her mother died, The Enchanted Flower Shop. She’s created a monstrous floral arch comprised of peach and cream-colored roses, and it looks straight out of a fairytale. Even Cascade Montgomery from the Busy Bee Crafts Shop showed up for the event, offering custom made reception memorabilia such as tiny Mason jars filled with twinkle lights and other adorable trinkets.
But I can’t focus on how spectacular everything looks or how pristine and perfect it all feels in this plastic wedding bubble. My mind keeps flitting back to Everett and that horrible day I found out he was missing.
I was visiting my mother’s bed and breakfast not too long ago. She was throwing a relatively small victory party for Mayor Nash. Carlotta Sawyer, my biological mother who abandoned me at birth on the floor of a fire station twenty-seven years ago, was there and she was visibly shaken and angry.
Carlotta came back into my life about six months ago, and up until then I was quite content not knowing anything about her. Miranda and Joseph Lemon raised me, along with my sisters Lainey and Meg, and I couldn’t have asked for a better family. I knew I was adopted, but I never felt the need to pry much deeper. The only things Carlotta left me with at the time of her departure were a blanket and a note that requested I be named Carlotta. Of course, my mother—Miranda Lemon—complied and quickly nicknamed me Lottie. Years later, Joseph Lemon died, and my mother became both mother and father to her three daughters. She made sure each of us girls stayed on the straight and narrow and even went off to college when the time came. To keep herself occupied, she purchased a run-down B&B and turned it into the gem it is today. It’s haunted, of course, but that’s a long story and sort of my fault.
Anyway, that fateful day at the B&B, Carlotta just finished up an argument with Mayor Nash before dragging him my way and announcing he was my father—biologically speaking. Let’s just say a Mack truck could have run me over, and I wouldn’t have felt a thing.
Not once have I ever been curious about who my biological father might be. Carlotta knew that. She simply blurted it out to get even with Mayor Nash for the things he said to her, which apparently were not very nice. And before I could say a single word, utter a single sound, Noah—my ex-boyfriend who works for the Ashford Sheriff’s Department as the lead homicide investigator—walked right over and told me the horrible news. My boyfriend, Judge Essex Everett Baxter, was missing. They found his car door ajar, his briefcase and phone thrown into nearby bushes—and that was it.
Gone.
Without a trace.
We haven’t heard one peep. No one has seen him. There isn’t any video footage in the parking lot of the courthouse, so unless we find Everett, it will forever remain a mystery what’s happened to him.
Forever a mystery? I shake my head at my own thought.
Not on my watch.
I take another step back, and my tiny purse thumps over my spine. It’s actually a small leather backpack I’ve been using in lieu of a traditional purse. I’d much prefer having a handbag, but since I promised Everett I’d have the gun he and Noah gifted me with me at all times, here I am, packing heat in a room filled with tulle and lace. The gun is small, no longer than six inches with the words Glock 26 Gen4 printed on the side.
“Lottie,” a male voice calls from my right, and I startle back to life in hopes it’s Everett himself. But it’s not Everett.
“Noah.” My heart thumps erratically as I try to stifle the spike of adrenaline from taking off full force. “For a second there I thought you were—” I stop myself just before I say his name. As painful as it is to look at his picture, saying his name is ten times harder.
Noah comes around the table covered in a frilly pink cloth and offers me a firm embrace. And just like that, I spot a half dozen women glancing our way.
Noah is a looker, tall, built like a linebacker, black hair that turns fire red in the sun, emerald green eyes, and dimples for days. He and Everett were actually stepbrothers for a brief period of time back in high school. Noah’s father swindled Everett’s mother out of quite a bit of money. But perhaps even more damaging to their relationship was the fact Noah saw fit to steal Everett’s girlfriend at the time, Cormack Featherby. And ironically, Cormack Featherby is now in hot pursuit of Noah after all these years, even though he’s tried everything to shake her.
Noah and Everett are a little less than five years older than me, both in their thirties.
Noah and I dated for a time. We were hot and heavy and I even hoped we would get engaged, but his wife came back into the picture and ruined that good time. You see, Noah never really got around to that tiny matrimonial detail, and I dropped him like a hot potato once I realized he was not only married, but his wife wanted to reconcile. However, Noah is still very much in love with me. His divorce is pending, and I’m now seeing Everett—that is, if I ever really do see him again.
Noah pulls back and offers a mournful smile, one he’s been giving me ever since Everett disappeared. Even though Everett and Noah have been warring over me—ridiculous, I realize this—Noah has put aside his differences with Everett and is doing everything he can to help find him. And, considering we’ve gotten absolutely nowhere, that doesn’t amount to much.
The photographer’s booth down the way ignites in a spray of blinding flashes of light. A white beast of a dog strides by and I try to get a better look at it, but the crowd edges in and—oh my word, that’s no dog. That’s a white exotic tiger. My mouth falls open as I crane my neck, but I lose sight of the magnificent beast.
