Read Brownies & Betrayal (Sweet Bites Mysteries, Book 1) for Free Online Page B

was late when I headed to bed, still smelling the sweet sachets Grandma always stuck in with her linens. It permeated the clean sheets I’d pulled out of the cupboard earlier. It was almost as good as having her arms wrapped around me.
     

 
    I kept a close eye on everyone as I stood at the table with my cake the next evening. The police had cleared the room for use again only two hours before the wedding ceremony was scheduled to start, which meant the hotel staff and I had scrambled to set up everything.
    The ceremony was over and Honey mingled through the crowd, making a point of tracking down all the people who’d been in the hotel the night of the wedding rehearsal—which, according to reports, had been the entire wedding party.
    Because I was the hired help, it was my job to stand behind the cake table or in the corner out of the way, rather than chatting with guests—a rule I mostly intended to follow. It gave me a chance to watch everyone and see how they interacted. It was a smaller group than originally planned, but that was okay by me. One hundred people instead of a hundred and sixty meant I could see all the possible suspects.
    The tone of the event was far more subdued than it would have been a couple days earlier. Even from my corner, I could see the tears, comforting touches and delicate sniffles against lacey handkerchiefs. Was this a wedding celebration or a wake? It was hard to tell, and the answer was, of course, that it might have been a bit of each.
    After everyone had eaten their dinners, the bride and groom went through the ritual cake cutting and serving. They were totally circumspect about it—no frosting on the face for this couple. Then they moved away for the next set of pictures and I took off the top layer for the bride and groom to freeze for their first anniversary and sliced the next tier to be served to guests.
    There’s a science to slicing wedding cakes so all the pieces are the same size and no one feels picked on if they get a smaller piece than their neighbor. I seldom had the opportunity to do the cutting when I worked at the DeMille Hotel—I’d trained several of the wait staff there to do the job properly. Despite people’s regrets that the masterpiece had to be destroyed, no matter how gorgeous, how elaborate the confection, it was, at heart, still just cake—fabulous and delicious, but cake all the same. I never felt bad about seeing one massacred for the guests to enjoy. It was meant to be eaten. If I wanted my art to last forever, I’d have taken up painting instead.
    Jeff, best man, and the guy I nearly plowed into Friday evening, was the first of the wedding party to amble my direction.
    “Chocolate almond, or vanilla with raspberry filling?” I asked when he stopped at the table.
    “Vanilla, thanks. Is this going to taste as good as it looks?” His smile was flirtatious.
    “Better. I guarantee it.” I flirted right back, leaning in and allowing my lips to curve. So I wasn’t looking for love—did that mean I couldn’t enjoy myself? My pride was wounded, my heart broken, but a good flirtation always helped me feel better after a breakup.
    His eyebrows lifted. “That certain, are you?” He forked up a bite, smiled, chewed for a moment and muttered from the corner of his mouth, “Holy cow, you weren’t exaggerating.”
     I grinned, always happy to see people enjoy themselves. “Never doubt that my food is as good as my reputation.”
    “Reputations are delicate things,” he said.
    “They can be, yes.” I’d heard from Honey that Jeff and Valerie were attorneys for competing firms. “But you would know all about reputations. Lawyers have to protect their names as carefully as pastry chefs, don’t they? Too many losses and you become persona non grata.”
    His eyes flashed back to mine. “Who told you?”
    I blinked, surprised by his defensive question. “About what?”
    He paused, took another bite of his cake and chewed for a moment. The move