Baking is Murder (A Bee's Bakehouse Cozy Mystery) (Bee's Bakehouse Mysteries Book 1) by Kathy Cranston

blocks from Lydia Mackenzie’s kennels. She’d borrowed Aunt Bee’s old Camry. Now she wished her aunt had invested in a hybrid or at least something with a quieter engine. She felt very conspicuous on the quiet street. She turned off the lights and killed the engine.
    “This is it,” she whispered, getting out of the car.
    She clenched and unclenched her fists as she walked up the well-maintained driveway. Part of her hoped her hunch was wrong; the other part hoped it was right. In reality, though, there was no happy ending. A woman had been murdered. And another woman had been framed.
    Jessie tried to focus on the café as she reached the front porch and stood outside. There was a light on somewhere in the back of the home. Jessie prayed that it was only a security light and that the house was vacant. She turned and looked behind her. To her dismay, she couldn’t even see the street in the darkness.
    Taking a deep breath and saying a silent prayer, Jessie raised her hand and knocked sharply on the door.
    At first there was no response, but then a light came on in the hallway. Jessie’s heart began to race out of control. Was she making the biggest mistake of her life here?
    “Can I help you?”
    A slim man stared down at her from the top step. He wasn’t how she’d pictured him. The photographs of Lydia Mackenzie had shown a woman with a wide smile who had clearly loved life. Her husband seemed the opposite to that description—pinched and resentful.
    “Can I come in?” she whispered.
    He rolled his eyes. “You a reporter?”
    She shook her head. “No. I was a friend of Lydia’s.”
    His features pinched together even more, it seemed to Jessie. “What is it you want? I’ve been through all this with the police.”
    She took a deep breath and stared up at him, trying to gauge his state of mind. All of a sudden she was overcome with doubt. What had she been thinking? And what on earth was she going to do now? What if he saw through her ruse?
    “I’ve got a memory book here that a few of us girls were putting together,” she said, her voice shaky.
    He stared at the notebook she pulled from her pocketbook. “It looks like a kid’s journal to me.”
    She forced a smile. “It doesn’t look like much. But we’ll pretty it up. We just wanted her to know how much she meant to us. Will you sign it? I know you’ve probably got your own memorial in mind, but it would be nice to have everyone’s kind messages together.”
    Jessie felt frozen to the spot as she replayed her own words in her mind. She had never been a good actor. She hoped—no, prayed—that her words were convincing.
    He glared at her, muscle twitching in his jaw. “We were divorcing.”
    Jessie shrugged. “I’m divorced from my ex-husband. But we’re still on good terms.” Good, non-speaking terms, she could have added.
    He took the book from her and flicked through the pages. “You’ve only got a handful of notes in here.”
    She nodded, relieved that she’d had the foresight to fill in some messages from imaginary acquaintances. “It’s my first night off since… since it happened. I’ve only been to three houses so far. One of those had no one home. That’s another thing—I don’t know all of her friends so I was hoping you might be able to complete my list.”
    Without another word he turned and walked back into the house. “Come in then. What’s your name?”
    “Jessie,” she said, following him into the house. She looked around. “You have a lovely home.”
    He grunted in response. Jessie was heartened to see him rummaging in a drawer and pulling out a pen. She looked around the lounge. It struck her as odd that there were no photos or other mementoes—she knew from the police file that they’d been living in that house for over a decade.
    She stared down at her feet. Now that he’d taken the book, she had nothing to do but wait. And that made her nervous. She didn’t know whether to sit or stand. What would a