Read Cupcakes and Killing: A Cozy Mystery (Sweet Shoppe Mysteries - Book 2) for Free Online Page A

but I knew my amateur sleuth’s mind would always win out, driving me nuts until I tried to fit the puzzle pieces together. We had to at least try, for Zara’s sake.
    Daniel smiled and patted Kaye’s shoulder. “I’m not sure it is a good idea, sweetie…but I know what you’re like when you get an idea in your head. Chris, why don’t you come back to our house for a beer, and we’ll leave these lovely detectives to it?”
    Chris nodded. “Sounds good. Call me if you need anything,” he said, kissing me on the cheek before heading off with Daniel.
    Kaye turned to Tori. “Do you want to help us?”
    “Sure,” Tori said before holding her hands up. “But before we start, I’d like to say that it wasn’t me! I know what happened with Rosie, but I promise your favorite employee is not the killer this time.”
    “Oh, of course it wasn’t you,” Kaye said. “You were with us the whole time at the reception. Someone else obviously saw Zara put her drink down and then slipped the poison into it when no one was looking.”
    “There were so many people there,” I remarked. “It could have been anyone. Where do we even begin?”
    Kaye and Tori shrugged, and we drove back to my house in silence, trying to think of something.
    “Oh!” I said as I unlocked the door. “Tori, do you have that camera in your bag? The one you were using at the reception, that is.”
    “Uh-huh,” she said, pulling the little pink digital camera out of her handbag. “Why?”
    “Well, you were taking pictures all day. If you managed to take some photos of the area of the marquee where Zara left her drink, then you may have captured the killer.”
    “Good idea,” Kaye said.
    “I’ll need a computer,” Tori said. “You have one, right?”
    I nodded and led her into my study and then watched as she uploaded the pictures from the camera onto the computer.
    “There’s a lot of pictures, but they’re all ordered depending on what time I took them,” she said, glancing up at me and Kaye. “Do you remember what time it was when Zara came over to talk to us?”
    “Hmm…it was about a quarter to two,” Kaye said. “So she must have put her drink down around that time. She came and spoke to us for about ten minutes or so, and then went back to get her drink before joining us again.”
    “Okay, I’ll get all the pictures from between around 2:40 and 3:00 just to be sure,” Tori said.
    A minute later, we were slowly scrolling through a slideshow of photos from the reception, and Kaye wrinkled her nose. “Do either of you remember exactly where it was that she left her drink?”
    I racked my brains for a moment, trying to recall it. “Um…I think it was on a little table on one side of the marquee. She went behind me to go back and get it, so it must have been on the right side, because I was definitely facing the left.”
    Tori peered at the pictures as she went through them, and she made a triumphant sound and pointed at the background of one. “Aha! Right there. That’s Zara walking away from a table near the edge and heading towards where we were standing. She must have just put the drink down.”
    She checked the timestamp. “Yep, 2:47. Okay, let’s have a look at the rest.”
    After figuring out which photos had the table in question in them, we made a list of everyone who happened to be caught on camera standing near it at any point within the short timeframe.
    “Okay, there’s the reverend near the table in this one, talking to Mr. Armstrong…then we have Linda Davis in this one… and in this one it looks like Deputy Ted and Officer Bobby are close by,” I said.
    “Who’s the brunette woman standing near Ted?” Tori asked. “She’s half out of the frame.”
    “It looks like his sister Evie,” I said, squinting at it. “She’s visiting Ted right now, along with their mother. He must have brought them along to the wedding.”
    “Okay. Oh, here we go… Amy McNamara is in this picture, right next to the