Death by Chocolate Snickerdoodle, page 1
Books by Sarah Graves
Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake
Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake
Death by Chocolate Frosted Doughnut
Death by Chocolate Snickerdoodle
Death by Chocolate Snickerdoodle
Sarah Graves
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Recipe
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2021 by Sarah Graves
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2020945443
The K logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2919-4
First Kensington Hardcover Edition: April 2021
ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2921-7 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-4967-2921-8 (ebook)
One
It was a warm golden morning in late September in the remote island village of Eastport, Maine, and the air smelled like sea salt, pine needles, and smoke from the grass fires burning in fields all around the edges of town.
“If only it had snowed more last winter,” said my friend Ellie White as we hurried down Water Street together.
Tourist season had nearly ended, and the shop windows in the two-story brick or wood-framed downtown storefronts held postcards, T-shirts, coffee mugs, and ball caps with lobsters, lighthouses, and eye-patched pirates embroidered on them, all on sale at a big, winter-anticipating 50 percent off !
“Or if summer hadn’t been so dry,” I added.
To our right, past the fish pier, the boat basin, and the massive concrete-and-steel breakwater, which stuck out over the waves, Passamaquoddy Bay spread wide and blue.
On it, small fishing boats motored slowly, their crews hauling up rectangular wire lobster traps and stacking them on deck, later to be brought to shore.
Because it was nearing the end of lobster season, too.
“Or if,” said Ellie, “we could just get a little rain right now.”
But that seemed unlikely; the sky was the same relentless clear blue as it had been for weeks, and we were all beginning to feel a little anxious about it.
“One spark down here is all it would take,” said Ellie, and she was right. The nineteenth-century structures weren’t built to modern fire codes, and while our local volunteer firefighters were well trained and dedicated, they weren’t miracle workers.
Ahead, our store’s sign—a wooden cutout of a moose head, his big, googly eyes and goofy grin suggesting he’d just eaten something tasty—hung out over the sidewalk.
“Well, at least that hasn’t burned down yet,” said Ellie with a wan smile. The night before, several acres of dry grass had been charred black before the fire trucks could get there.
THE CHOCOLATE MOOSE said the ornate stenciled lettering on our front door. Ellie turned the key, and the little silver bell over the door jingled prettily as we went in.
Sunshine slanted in through the shop’s front bay windows, lighting up the half dozen cast-iron café tables and chairs placed against the room’s exposed-brick interior walls.
The air in here smelled like warm chocolate, butter, and sugar. Owned and run by Ellie and me, the Chocolate Moose made and sold cakes, cookies, brownies, éclairs, scones—just about anything you could bake with chocolate.
I glanced back out the window and noticed wisps of smoke drifting across the water; something was burning, again, somewhere nearby, and a trickle of unease about it went through me. The fires hadn’t approached the town yet, but . . .
Fortunately, I had plenty to distract me.
“Once all those fishing boats get in with those traps, their crews are going to be hungry,” said Ellie, straightening the chairs and spiffing up the napkin holders on the tables.
I flipped a bunch of wall switches, then lugged trays of cookies from the cooler as overhead the big old paddle-bladed ceiling fans began turning and the radio began playing WSHD, the local high school’s student-run station.
The Bee Gees burst bouncily from the speakers my son, Sam, had set up for us here, as I began filling our glass-fronted display case with the variety of treats we’d made for today: chocolate pinwheels, ginger-chocolate biscotti, and the ever popular chocolate-chip lace cookies, which are like regular ones, but so delicate, they might float right away from you.
“Good thing we’ve still got the lobster fleet coming in,” I said.
Did the cooler sound a little different this morning? I wondered. Inside its motor, had its sound changed from a gentle mutter to something more resembling a high, unhappy . . . ? I thought it had, but then it settled itself and ran normally again.
“Although not for much longer,” I added, meaning the lobster fleet.
Summer business had been good. Ellie’s treasured old family baking recipes, plus the top-quality ingredients we used, drew tourists in droves. Only her genius-level organizational skills and my dismal but slowly improving ability to just shut up and do whatever she said had kept us sane, even when we were baking practically twenty-four-seven.
Once the summer people had gone home, though, sales had dropped off sharply. We were, after all, a community of only twelve hundred year-round residents, and money was tight around here at the best of times.
Ellie started the coffeemaker, then booted up the cash register and the credit-card reader on the counter. Finally, she opened our laptop computer.
“You’ve got that right,” she said. “From now until next summer,” she went on, scanning the incoming email, “I’ll be glad for any customers we can get. I don’t care who they are. Speaking of which . . .” She read the screen. “Huh. We just got a special order.”
“And?”
The kitchen timer buzzed; somehow when I wasn’t looking, she’d gotten a tray of snickerdoodles—the batter made the night before and left in the cooler—into the oven.
“You won’t like it,” she said as she hurried back to the kitchen to slide snickerdoodles from the tray onto a wire rack.
“Why won’t I?” I asked, following her and watching the just-baked treats. Each one wrinkled delectably as it cooled, a kind of magic I never got tired of. “I mean, it’s for cookies, right?”
Wielding the spatula, she didn’t look up, which right there was a bad sign. “Yes,” she said slowly.
“So?”
Strawberry-blond and blue eyed, with small, finely carved features and a lot of gold-dust freckles sprinkled across her nose, Ellie was ordinarily a wide-open book expression-wise. But she still didn’t answer. So this was going to be a thing, and possibly not a good thing, though I didn’t see how a cookie order could be bad. After taking a warm snickerdoodle, I poured coffee from the fresh pot and sat at one of the café tables.
“Lay it on me,” I invited.
“Twelve dozen,” said Ellie, and I didn’t quite choke on my bite of cookie. “The triple chocolate ones,” she added, moving the final snickerdoodle to the rack. “There is one problem, though . . .”
“Ellie!” I swallowed coffee to wash down the swear words I wanted to say. Triple chocolate cookies were delicious, but they were also complicated and labor intensive. “Ellie, have you forgotten that the annual Eastport Cookie-Baking Contest is this weekend? How can we possibly also make twelve dozen—”
“By Saturday,” Ellie called out from the kitchen, where she was already scrubbing the baking tray. The smell of hot soapsuds mingled pleasantly with the aroma of snickerdoodles.
“For the Elks,” she added as I got up and carried my cup into the kitchen. “Or is it Elk?” She shook her head impatiently, a blond curl bouncing out of the hairnet she wore in the shop. “They’re having a regional meeting.”
“Fine,” I said. “Good for them. But how many cookies can an elk eat, anyway? Besides, don’t they usually just browse in forests? Chomp on leaves and berries and so on?” I held my cup out to her. “I mean, when you stop to think about it, are chocolate cookies even good for . . .”
She gave me a look of long-suffering amusement. “Very funny. But I don’t think whether it’s good for them is exactly the point here.” She took the cup and dunked it into the soapy water. Then her tone changed. “I mean, we talked about this, remember?”
I did. We had. “But—”
Right. Just one big expense—such as, for instance, if an entire brick wall should happen to collapse without warning off the rear of our building and land in the alley out back, the way it had the previous January . . .
Well, let’s just say that a nice, soft cushion made of cash would’ve softened the blow considerably.
“I know,” I replied unhappily. “Building up the bank account before winter really sets in would be great. But still, the contest . . .”
Eastport’s annual cookie-baking contest was a local tradition. Anyone could enter, and there were no rules; if you turned your boxed mix into something better tasting than my from-scratch creation, you won.
But that didn’t often happen. Eastport people had their own treasured old family recipes and wouldn’t dream of foisting any packaged concoction on the judges. It was what made the contest so exciting—and competitive.
“What if we made the same cookies for both?” she asked as she wiped the cup dry. “For the contest and the special order?”
She slipped out of the bibbed apron she’d tied around her slender middle. Beneath it she had on a white cotton tunic with rolled sleeves, blue denim clamdiggers, and Keds, and despite the perspiration glistening on her brow, as usual, she looked like a million bucks.
“Brilliant,” I said. “Chocolate batter, chocolate chips, chocolate frosting . . . How could they possibly lose?”
“Plus,” she agreed, smiling wisely, “a secret ingredient.”
I nodded. It was a dagger of white chocolate stuck into each cookie’s top that made them so good that they could imperil your very soul. We’d even nicknamed them mortal-sin cookies.
“There is still one problem, though—” she began, but just then the little silver bell over the shop door rang again and I went to see why.
“Hi, Jake!” a pair of lively young voices rang out.
That’s me. It’s short for Jacobia—accent on the second syllable—and I’m Jake to my friends.
“Hi to you, too,” I greeted the ruddy-cheeked young women who’d just entered the Chocolate Moose.
After dropping their backpacks full of schoolbooks by a table, they hurried to the display case and peered in.
“Oh, there’s dream bars!” said Anna. She was the tall, blue-eyed one, her flaxen hair braided into a thick plait that ended halfway down her back.
“And éclairs,” Helen sighed happily. She was a dark-eyed, curly-haired brunette with red lips and a dimpled chin.
“One of each, please,” said Anna, opening her purse.
They both wore overalls, red ribbed-cotton river driver’s shirts with men’s plaid work shirts over them, and faded ball caps: red for Helen, blue for Anna. I took the money, gave back change, and poured two coffees over ice, light and sweet.
“On the house,” I said of the drinks, and after a bit of polite struggle, during which I pointed out that they were already poured and would be wasted if the girls didn’t drink them, the two stubbornly self-sufficient young ladies gave in gratefully at last.
“Studying for a test?” Ellie emerged from the kitchen with a towel in her hands as the girls pulled textbooks from their bags.
“Yes!” groaned Helen, rolling her eyes. “Algebra.”
“Not me,” said Anna, shaking her head indulgently at her sister. “I’m just her study coach.”
“Good for you both,” Ellie said approvingly. After they’d lost both their parents suddenly in a domestic incident two years earlier, Ellie had become a sort of adopted aunt to them.
Domestic incident . . . That was putting it mildly. But I had no time to think about it, as now more customers began coming in. One after the other, they got and paid for their coffee and breakfast pastries—today’s was chocolate prune, and don’t knock it till you’ve tried it—and went out again, keeping me busy for nearly an hour.
But when the mini-rush was over, I looked at the girls again. Surrogate aunthood had not been extended to me as it had been to Ellie—for one thing, Ellie had a daughter nearly the girls’ age—but they liked me well enough.
“You two aren’t dressed for school,” I observed. “And aren’t you hot in those outfits you’ve got on?”
Canvas pants, those red long-sleeved undershirts poking out from flannel cuffs . . . I spied sweaters stuffed into their packs, too, and yellow windbreakers tied around their waists.
“Teachers conferences,” Anna explained. At fifteen, she was a sophomore; Helen was sixteen and a junior.
“We don’t have school today. So we thought we’d go out on the boat and get our traps, and that’s what we dressed for,” Helen added.
Which made sense; a seventy-five-degree morning might make the day feel like midsummer, but on the water it was more like fifty, and if you didn’t get drenched by icy spray at least once out there, you weren’t doing it right.
“But now it turns out Helen’s got this big make-up test,” Anna said, sounding put upon. “We thought she’d gotten out of it, but then the teacher set it up for the school secretary to supervise.”
“Which was a dirty trick,” Helen added indignantly. “But I’ve still got to be ready for it, unfortunately.”
Both girls worked part-time on the lobster boat they were talking about going out on, and they had been allowed to drop a few traps of their own, besides, for extra money.
A plan formed in my head. “When’s the test?” I asked.
“Two o’clock,” said Anna. “But if you don’t want us to be studying in here,” she added hastily, “we can go—”
“Oh, no. You two are always welcome,” I told her. These cheerful, energetic young women were a pleasure to have around. “But if you leave here now,” I said, “can you still make it to the boat on time and get your traps hauled?”
“Yes,” said Helen, looking puzzled. “They’ll be going out soon, and the boat’s due back in right after lunch. But . . .”
“Then why don’t you go down to the dock, come back right afterward, and I’ll help Helen with her algebra,” I said.
Back in the old days, when I lived in the big city, I’d made a good living on my math skills, plus some other, less socially acceptable talents, which we’ll talk about later.
“Great! Thank you!” the girls enthused, and after stowing their books behind our counter, they scrambled out the door.
But... “Do you think that was a good idea?” Ellie asked when they had gone.
Getting involved, she meant. The sisters were adorable, but their home life was complicated. A hands-off policy had always seemed best, meddling-in-their-affairs–wise.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “But math is one of the few things I’m good at.”
And being motherless was a subject I knew plenty about, too.
“At least we’ll get a chance to feed them again,” I said. “Why don’t I run home and get some of those good baked beans you made and the garlic mashed potatoes we have left over?”
Because I happened to know that when you’ve been out fishing, hot baked beans over buttered mashed potatoes, with a salad and a rosemary biscuit on the side, is just what the doctor ordered.
“Good idea.” Ellie got a coffee for herself and sat down to do our shopping list for the special order of cookies.
Which reminded me. “What did you mean, there’s a problem about the contest?” I asked.
She began to reply, then stopped herself. “Never mind. If you don’t notice it when you get home, then maybe I’m wrong and there isn’t one.”
“Okay,” I said slowly and decided to take her at her word. We’d been friends for a long time.
The little bell jingled as I went out.
* * *
On Water Street, autumn chrysanthemums had replaced the geraniums in the planters outside the shops. Flags snapped briskly outside the Coast Guard station overlooking the harbor, and the breeze had shifted, so the air was damp from the spray blowing in off the whitecaps on the bay.
