Strawberry Murder: A Frosted Love Cozy Mystery - Book 13 (Frosted Love Cozy Mysteries) (2 page)

Missy
surveyed the hive of activity buzzing about in her Dellville shop.
Crème de
la Cupcake
had been overrun by a production crew, her entire staff, and a
huge influx of customers. The quaint little store had already been running well
above capacity, trying to keep up with the additional demand created by the
temporary closure of the LaChance store after the explosion. Now that word had
gotten out about
Bayou Baker
being filmed there on Tuesdays, the crowds had
swelled almost to a degree that was unmanageable. Last week, Missy had hired a
driver, Frank Stiles, to do the deliveries that she no longer had the time to
do, and she was considering hiring another baking assistant if demand continued
to increase.

“Goodness
gracious it’s busy around here!” Sally Higgins remarked, when the book club
ladies had to wait nearly half an hour for their usual table.

“Oh
Sally, it’s just crazy,” Missy exclaimed, ringing up her items. Frank came out
from the back to ask her a question about a delivery, distracting her for a
moment.

“Well,
my, my, my…and just who is that handsome fella?” Sally drawled, raising an
eyebrow and watching his departing form with great interest.

“That’s
Frank, he’s my new driver,” she explained. “He writes textbooks from home and
wanted something part-time just to get himself out of the house, so this seems
to be a perfect fit for him.”

“Hmm…I’m
wondering if our little Sam might be a perfect fit for him,” Sally mused,
glancing over at the table where Sam sat, laughing and talking with the other
ladies.

“Matchmaking,
Sally?” Missy teased.

“Oh
you know me, honey, I’m always looking out for my friends,” she winked.

Robin
Campbell breezed in from the kitchen to let Missy know that filming would be
starting in just a few minutes, and that everyone should just behave as they
normally would. Having seen all of the activity from her vegan ice cream shop
across the street, Echo came in the front door, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

“Okay,
girlfriend, you’ve been holding out on me,” the Californian accused.

“Huh?”
Missy asked, confused and more than a bit distracted.

“Who
is the insanely hot guy that I saw loading cupcakes into your new delivery
van?” she demanded, hands on hips.

“Oh,
you must be talking about Frank. He’s new. You think he’s hot?” she asked,
grinning. To Missy, Frank had seemed attractive enough, in a professorial kind
of way, but she was beginning to realize that the lack of interest in other men
caused by exposure to the ridiculously handsome Chas Beckett, may have been
skewing her perspective a bit.

“Seriously?”
Echo was astonished. “Okay, you have to figure out some way to make a
double-date happen. Throw a dinner party or something…Oh, wait…is he even
single?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“As
far as I know,” Missy shrugged. “These are not things that are discussed in a
job interview,” she laughed.

“Okay,
we’ll have to find out,” her friend schemed. “When does he get back from this
delivery?”

“Probably
around noon, why?”

“So
I can meet him, silly. But don’t tell him that I want to…I don’t want to seem
forward or anything,” she worried.

“I
won’t have to tell him,” Missy giggled. “By this time tomorrow, all of America
will know,” she pointed to the camera that had been recording their entire
exchange. Echo looked over in horror, realizing what had happened, and the
cameraman grinned wickedly at her reaction. Throwing him a dirty look, she
turned back to her friend.

“No
more Vanilla Bean Rice Dream for you,” she threatened good-naturedly, heading
for the door.

“See
you at noon,” Missy waved, laughing.

After
Echo left, it was all hands on deck as wave after wave of customers came
through the doors, some just making their daily stop on the way to work, others
curious because of the new television show. Missy was taking a batch of Lemon
Dream cupcakes out of the oven when there was a bit of a stir in the employee
break room. Setting the pan of cupcakes on a cooling rack and turning off the
oven, Missy tossed her potholder aside and sped toward the room to see what was
wrong. Ben came out of the room and stood in front of her, ashen but smiling.

“Ms.
G., it’s time…we’re going to have a baby,” he said in a daze as Missy heard
Cheryl cry out in the break room.

“Oh
my goodness, Ben, that’s amazing,” Missy hugged him hard, tears in her eyes.
“Now go! Go get the car, I’m going to go help Cheryl,” she ordered, pushing him
toward the back door and heading down the hall. A cameraman followed her and
she whirled on him.

“Absolutely
not, young man. This is family time, you go film the book club out in the
eating area for a bit,” she directed, hands on hips. The cameraman looked to Robin
for guidance and she nodded.

Cheryl
was sitting in a chair looking very uncomfortable, but happy, breathing
rhythmically through a contraction. Missy sprang into action.

“Oh
honey, I’m so proud of you,” she exclaimed, giving her manager a kiss on the
forehead. “Once you get through this contraction, we’re going to help you to
the car, okay?”

Cheryl
nodded, puffing out her cheeks and breathing out slowly.

“Grayson,
you get on the other side of her over there,” Missy directed Cheryl’s assistant,
reaching for the laboring woman’s hand, and slowly helping her to her feet. The
two of them propped her up and helped her shuffle toward the back door, where
Ben, her scared and excited husband, waited with the car.

“Let
us know when you need us,” Missy instructed, as they gingerly placed Cheryl in
the car.

“Will
do,” Ben nodded, putting a seat belt on his wife.

“I
have a date tonight,” Echo grinned at Missy over a bowl of her favorite Vanilla
Bean Rice Dream.

“Wow,
you and Frank have been spending a lot of time together,” her friend observed
with a pleased smile.

“I
know, he’s just the greatest,” Echo gushed. “Just when I had given up, this amazing
man starts driving your cupcakes around and ends up being everything I was ever
looking for,” she stared into space dreamily.

“Don’t
fall too far too fast, honey,” Missy cautioned. She’d seen her friend get
overly involved early on in relationships and end up getting hurt.

“It’s
different this time. We’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks and I
feel like I’ve known him forever.”

Missy
gazed at her dreamy-eyed friend, keeping her reservations to herself for the
moment, and allowing Echo to bask in the glow of new love…for now.

“I’ll
be fine, really,” Echo assured her obviously concerned friend. “Besides, having
a boyfriend may help me finally get rid of “Lounge Lizard Leonard,” she joked. Leonard
had been a daily customer of hers since she’d opened the vegan ice cream shop,
and he made no secret of the fact that his interest wasn’t solely in her
delicious frozen treats. He seemed harmless enough, but both women found his
tenacity a bit disturbing.

The
show had been aired with amazingly positive results, and Missy had actually
begun receiving fan mail in only a few short weeks. She had hired two of Ben’s
friends from grad school to pick up the slack while Ben and Cheryl were on
maternity leave, and business was booming. Work was progressing well on the
LaChance shop, and Missy was facing the prospect of potentially needing to
expand yet again, based upon recent sales. Life was good, and Missy was glad
that the show only aired once a week.

The
producers had selected Tuesday as their filming day because they thought the
addition of the book club ladies would be a good draw for their audience, and
they were correct. Some of the book club gals had received marriage proposals
via email, and unexpected floral deliveries. All the locals seemed thrilled to
have the production crew in town, and Missy had become a bit of a celebrity,
much to her consternation. She even got stopped by local fans when walking
Toffee and Bitsy in the morning, and found the lack of privacy involved in
being on national television to be more than a little bit inconvenient. So far,
though, the positives of relative stardom overwhelmingly outweighed the
negatives.

“Who’s
the stunning redhead that comes over every day?” an attractive cameraman named
Brad asked Missy one morning, as he sat around munching on a cupcake during a
break in filming. Neither of them saw Frank glance up from packing cupcakes for
delivery to listen to the ensuing conversation.

“That’s
my best friend, Echo,” Missy replied. “She was originally from California, but
she moved here a little over a year ago and bought the vegan ice cream shop
across the street.”

“Wow,
I’d love to meet her sometime. She just has this…presence about her…a sort of
grace and beauty,” he smiled, clearly interested.

“I
wouldn’t go barking up that tree,” Frank interjected, startling them both with
the vehemence of his statement.

“Why
do you care, man?” Brad asked, puzzled.

“Because
she happens to belong to me,” Frank stepped toward him, menacingly.

“Belong
to you?” the cameraman scoffed. “What century are you living in, dude?”

“Just
stay away, for your own good. Got it?”

Missy
had seen enough. “Frank, aren’t you going to be late for the Women’s Auxiliary
delivery?” she stood, daring him to continue.

“No,
I’m never late. Never,” he muttered, turning to pick up a stack of boxes that
he’d made.

“Sorry,”
she said to Brad when Frank left to load the van. “He’s been seeing Echo for a
few weeks now. I’ve never seen him act like that.”

Brad
looked thoughtfully at the door through which Frank had just exited. “If my
best friend was dating someone who had a reaction like that, I’d want to tell
her about it,” he remarked. “No sweat, when she breaks up with him for being
obsessive, I’ll be around,” he grinned, balling up his empty cupcake paper and
tossing it in the trash across the room.

Frank
delivered the Women’s Auxiliary order on time, but didn’t return to the shop
afterward, and still hadn’t returned by the close of business, causing Missy to
worry. She texted to let him know that he could drop the van off in the parking
lot and just hang on to the keys, since he didn’t have a passcode to get into
the shop after hours, and she received only a “K” in reply.

“Melissa,
it’s Robin Campbell,” the Production Assistant said shakily on the other end of
the phone. “Something’s happened…I don’t know how to tell you this, but Brad
Parker is…dead,” she choked back her tears.

Missy
was confused. “I’m so sorry, but, who is Brad Parker?” she asked, moved by
Robin’s tears.

“Your
cameraman.”

Missy’s
heart sunk when she realized that her favorite cameraman, someone whom she’d
grown to know and trust, had died. She’d never known his last name, everyone on
the set used first names, and the news hit her hard.

“Oh
no, Robin, that’s terrible,” she murmured, feeling tears sting her eyes. “What
happened?”

“He
was strangled in his hotel room, one of my assistants found him this morning.
The police are there now, trying to figure out who would do such a heinous
thing,” her voice broke and Missy heard her blow her nose.

“Oh
how awful,” Missy gasped, clutching the phone in a now-trembling hand, an empty
and scared feeling in the pit of her stomach. “What can I do?”

“I’m
sure the police will want to talk with you,” Robin replied. “They’re talking to
everyone who knew Brad.”

“Okay,”
Missy nodded numbly, although Robin couldn’t see her. “I’ll bring the crew some
cupcakes later this morning as soon as my delivery guy brings in the keys to
the van,” she promised, feeling that it was the least that she could do.

“I’m
sure they’ll appreciate it, Melissa, thanks,” she replied, hanging up shortly
thereafter.

Missy
was stunned. Who on earth would have strangled Brad, and why? He was well-liked
by everyone, always cracking jokes and easing the tension when things didn’t go
well during production. He would be sorely missed, and Missy hoped that whoever
had done this terrible thing to such a sweet human being would be severely
punished.

As
difficult as it was, she had to shake off the news of Brad’s death in order to
operate her hustle and bustle shop. There was already a line down the block and
the doors hadn’t even opened yet. Her crew was up front getting things ready,
but Frank still had yet to show up, frustrating her to no end. She had just
picked up her phone to call him when he came rushing in the back door.

“I
was beginning to worry about you,” Missy said, arms crossed, a tinge of reproof
in her tone, as he reached for the stacks of boxes that needed to be loaded
into the van for delivery.

“No
need for worry,” he said shortly, heading for the van.

“In
the future, if you’re not going to make it back to the shop before closing, I’d
appreciate a text to let me know,” Missy said when he came back in for more
boxes, sounding much more calm than she felt at the moment.

“Noted,”
he replied, picking up another stack and not looking at her.

Missy
frowned and left the kitchen, not wanting to unleash the anger that was
building in her in the face of Frank’s surly behavior. If he continued to act
this way, she’d have no choice but to hire a new delivery person. Echo might
get angry with her, but this was a business decision, and Missy refused to
allow her relationship with her best friend to negatively influence her
decision-making.