Bunny moves across the stage. “Cookies, cakes, pastries, bagels, crackers, pasta, bread—these aren’t foods, they’re drug delivery devices. They’re engineered to hit your pleasure centers and leave you craving more. The food industry has spent billions of dollars figuring out the exact combination of sugar, salt, and fat that will override your brain’s satiety signals.” She gestures toward the audience with compassion. “I watch people grab a croissant and coffee for breakfast, crash by ten A.M., reach for a granola bar, crash again by lunch, grab a sandwich and chips, need a three P.M. cookie pick-me-up, then wonder why they’re exhausted, moody, and gaining weight. You’re on a blood sugar roller coaster that’s destroying your metabolism.”
Lyla Nell growls at the woman as if she, too, sensed our family baking empire crumbling like a sugar cookie right before our very eyes.
She pauses, scanning the crowd. “I’m not saying this to shameanyone. I’m saying it because once you break free from this cycle, food becomes medicine again. Your energy stabilizes, your skin glows, your mind clears, and yes—real food starts tasting incredible again. That’s not deprivation. That’s liberation.”
People murmur in agreement, several women nodding as they probably mentally inventory their pantries and consider dramatic kitchen cleanouts, not to mention the fact that these women will soon be turning their noses up at my innocent blueberry muffins.
This granola-crunching hippie is about to single-handedly put me out of business!
Bunny continues to elaborate on the dangers of a life with sugar, painting a picture of doom that would make a horror movie proud of her terror-infused speech. I shrink in my seat, feeling like a drug dealer who’s just been confronted by a room full of recovering addicts. Satan’s drug dealer, no less.
I want the best for my children and my customers, but hearing how everything I bake is basically poison in pretty packaging, it’s bringing tears to my eyes. Maybe I should switch to selling whatever those mysterious healthy desserts are on the refreshment table. By the time this seminar is through, I’m pretty sure that’s all the women of Honey Hollow will eat.
“Let’s take a short break,” Bunny announces with a serene smile. “Please feel free to try our dandelion teas and desserts made with dates, honey, and nuts. Everything is sugar-free, gluten-free, and guilt-free!”
“Good,” I tell Carlotta quietly. “Your conscience has enough on its plate already without adding carbs to the list.”
Carlotta grins wickedly. “My conscience stopped showing up to meetings years ago, so it can handle whatever I throw at it. Besides, carbs are the least of my sins.”
Isn’t that the truth.
Bodies start swirling around the room, heading toward the refreshment table with the enthusiasm of people who’ve been given permission to eat dessert that won’t send them straight to nutritional hell.
I watch as Bunny goes back to writing something on her chalkboard, probably preparing to deliver more devastating news about how everything delicious is trying to kill us. But this is my chance—my window of opportunity to get some answers about Duncan’s murder.
Mom appears at my elbow as if on cue.
“Mom, would you mind watching Lyla Nell?” I ask, already planning my attack. “I’ll be right back.”
She says yes, and I waddle toward the front of the tent, still nursing both babies with my boobs on full display for the entire wellness community to witness. My boobs have reached the size of overfed bowling balls—much to Everett’s and, let’s be honest, Noah’s complete delight—but modesty takes a backseat when you’re conducting a murder investigation while simultaneously feeding twin boys who think my chest is their personal all-you-can-eat buffet. And it sort of is. Any modesty I may have had disappeared the day I pushed out twins, because here I am conducting a murder investigation while basically topless. At least the twins are blocking the good parts. Sort of.
Suddenly, I’m getting more stares than someone who showed up to a funeral in a clown suit. Several women actually stop mid-sip of their dandelion tea to gape, probably wondering if I’m about to topple over while juggling babies and boobs or if there’s a specific meditation to unsee this.
But nothing—not the stares, not the whispers, not the fact that I’m basically conducting a mobile dairy operation while trying to solve a homicide—is going to stop me from talking to Bunny Whitmore about her brother’s death.
There’s a killer out there who thought it best to steal Nell’s knife and plunge it into another human being, and I’m going to track them down and teach them a lesson they won’t forget.
Lenny the lion slinks up beside me as I step onto the stage, his ghostly presence adding a surreal element to what’s already shaping up to be one of the strangest suspects I’ve ever had to deal with.
Heregoes nothing.
Time to find out if the woman preaching peace, love, and herbal tea is secretly the type who’d stick a knife in her brother’s chest—organically and sustainably, of course.
LOTTIE
The giant circus tent we’re in carries a mix of dandelion tea and misplaced good intentions, with the faint scent of Easter lilies drifting in from the abandoned fairgrounds outside.
The afternoon sun filters through the striped canvas, casting everything in a warm glow that makes even the most questionable health food look almost appetizing. Almost.
Bunny Whitmore just wrapped up part one of her seminar on the evils of the pastries in my bakery—okay, so it wasn’t specifically about my pastries, but we all know my baked goods were just placed on the chopping block.
According to her, my entire career is basically legalized drug dealing, with sprinkles and a side of diabetes. If she’s right about sugar being toxic, I should be dead seventeen times over—which, come to think of it, might explain my talent for seeing the dead.
The sound of women chattering around the refreshment table provides a steady hum of background noise, punctuated by the occasional clink of teacups and the rustle of someone biting into what I can only assume is a dessert made from compressed hope and organic suffering.
I tiptoe over to Bunny at her chalkboard—my version of tiptoeingis something akin to the way Godzilla struts through Tokyo—still nursing both twins with the grace of someone who’s learned to multitask at a professional dairy cow level. She’s writing something about mineral absorption rates in neat, precise handwriting that suggests she actually believes people will implement her suggestions. And knowing the women I’m with, they so will. And so will I.
Lenny materializes beside me, and his ghostly mane catches the light. “She was always the sweetest of Richard’s children,” he rumbles and his voice carries the warm affection of someone remembering better times. “She defended me when others said I was too dangerous to keep around children.”
