Chapter 1
Unable to ignore the relentless ticking from the kitchen, Emily shoved the week’s neglected mail aside and headed in. Her gaze went straight to the culprit. Not the broken built-in timer on the stove, frozen at 3:59 for decades, but the five-dollar wind-up model with crooked dots that never lined up and left her guessing how much time was actually left.
She bent to peer through the oven window. The cloudy, brownish glass—fogged since grade school—revealed nothing, and she felt foolish for trying. Against all the rules, she cracked the door open for a peek.
“Not again!” she groaned, yanking the door wide—hopeful anticipation collapsing into disappointment.
Despite tiptoeing around the house for the last twenty-eight minutes, and being careful to limit vibrations and loud noises, her efforts were in vain. Instead of the two tall, golden layers she needed to pass next week’s exam, twin cratered flops stared back at her.
Emily twisted her hair into a rope and slung it over one shoulder before pulling on the oven mitts. With the practiced motion of someone who had failed this more than once, she hauled the pans out, dropped them on the cooktop with a clatter, then kicked the door shut with her foot.
For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out where she’d gone wrong. In six tries, she’d had six disasters, and the final exam was only a few days away. If she couldn’t bake a simple layer cake, how was she supposed to graduate, let alone land a job?
“Maybe I’ll just wash dishes,” she grumbled, stripping off the mitts. “What five-star restaurant is going to hire a chef who can’t bake a cake?”
Her phone lay open on the counter, the article she’d been consulting still glowing, “The Most Common Mistakes in Sunken Cakes.” She skimmed the bulleted points for the hundredth time.
Use fresh ingredients, especially baking powder.
“I did that.”
Measure carefully.
“What was I going to do, guess?” she muttered with dripping sarcasm.
She rolled her eyes at the next bullet.
Mix the ingredients in the specified order. Remember, baking is essentially a chemistry experiment.
“Really? Tell me something I don’t know!”
She slammed her phone onto the countertop then dropped forward onto her elbows with her head in her hands. “I did everything the freaking article said to do, and it still caved in.”
The only item on the list she had no control over was the oven itself.
Lifting her head, she glared at the thirty-year-old oven. It had baked its share of cakes for her mother, all of them works of art. Her dad had replaced the element at least twice. Ages ago, she recalled him saying the thing was on its last legs and her mother deserved to have a new one, but he never got around to it.
Now, with both her parents gone and bills piled high, replacing it wasn’t an option. On a student budget, a new oven was impossible, and she wouldn’t ask Ethan to help. He’d just made detective; for the first time in years, he could save a few bucks from his paycheck. He didn’t need to spend them on a new oven when the old one still served its purpose—though not well.
She stood, eyes closed, breath trembling. “Oh, Mama,” she whispered. “I wish I had just a hint of your magic.”
Although she had no formal training, her mother had a knack for baking. Once Emily, her youngest of two, started school, she’d gone to work part time at The Sweet Spot, the bakery on the corner. A few years after that, when the owner retired, she’d bought him out. Her father teasingly rued the day and blamed his twenty-pound weight gain on it. That, and the triple-chocolate layer cake she’d perfected.
Emily had inherited her mama’s hair, eyes, and youthful appearance, often mistaken for being a decade younger than she was. They were good things, but not what she needed now—her golden baking touch.
As she was reaching for the oven mitts once again, intending to dump the double disasters in the trash, the doorbell rang.
Em leaned forward and looked right. From this angle, she could see her front door. Through the diamond-shaped window, she could make out two heads, but the plexiglass had yellowed almost as much as the oven window, and, with the porch light off, she couldn’t tell anything more than one of her visitors was wearing a hat.
She glanced at the clock—the one on the wall that actually worked. Ten thirty. Who came calling at this hour?
Curiosity and a prickle of dread propelled her forward. She slid the chain into place and cracked the door. Instantly, a knot formed in the pit of her stomach seeing two uniformed policemen standing on the small porch.
“Emily Peterson?” the taller man asked.
“Yes,” she croaked, her mouth and throat gone dry.
“I’m sorry to disturb you this late, Miss Peterson, but might we have a word?”
