Murder Has a Sweet Tooth - By Miranda Bliss Page 0,12
consider the idea anyway. Just so I didn’t hurt Eve’s feelings. “I’m going to look online,” I told her. “I’m thinking it should be something I can make at home. Then I’ll smuggle it into the restaurant the day before the wedding, and have Marc and Damien serve it. It will knock Jim’s socks off.”
I knew better than to respond to the slow upward slide of Eve’s eyebrows. She was thinking that if it was anything like my usual cooking, it might knock Jim’s socks off, all right. Literally.
“I’m going to try really hard this time,” I said, defending myself, though I knew I didn’t have to. Eve understood. That’s what best friends are for. “I’m going to practice until I can make whatever it is I’m going to make absolutely perfectly. You’ll see. It’s going to be fabulous.”
It was another reason Eve is my best friend. She actually believes me when I say things like that. She propped an elbow on the table and cradled her head in one hand. “You think there might be a traditional Scottish recipe for chocolate cheesecake?” she asked. “That would be fun.”
“There’s more to fun than cheesecake,” I told her. I actually might have believed it if Stacie didn’t walk out of the kitchen at that moment. She headed back our way—two pieces of delectable cheesecake poised on the tray in her hands—and I realized there were pluses even to murder investigations. I was at Swallows without Jim for the first time ever. I didn’t have to share my cheesecake.
I actually might have enjoyed pigging out if I didn’t keep thinking about Alex and how miserable he looked when we said our good-byes at the jail.
When Stacie set our pieces of cheesecake in front of us, I signaled to Eve to keep the oohing and aahing to a minimum so I could do what we’d come to Swallows to do in the first place. (Which was not—just in case I need to point it out—to eat Baileys chocolate cheesecake.)
“So . . .” My fork poised above the drizzle of dark chocolate that made a fancy, curlicue B on top of the cake, I looked up at the college-age girl with pitch-dark pigtails. “Is this where the murder happened?”
Stacie closed her eyes for a moment. No doubt she was praying for patience. “That’s all anybody can talk about today,” she said, and I bet her bosses were as tired of hearing about it as Stacie was, because she kept her voice down and looked toward the woman standing behind the hostess station before she said anything else. I didn’t need to work in a restaurant to know that Stacie had been instructed to keep talk of what had happened there the night before to a minimum. After all, murder is bad for business. She sighed. “Everybody who comes in here today is asking about the murder.”
“Well, you have to admit, it is pretty interesting,” Eve blurted out, and I blanched because, let’s face it, when most people think of murder, they think of words like disgusting or frightening or horrifi c. But then, most people haven’t been embroiled in as many investigations as we have. The next second, I thought about Alex, about how pale and anxious he was when last I saw him. I’d bet my piece of cheesecake he didn’t think Vickie’s murder was interesting.
“What Eve meant,” I said, giving her a long look so she could pretend to be repentant, “is that it’s such a shame. We’ve been here a few times before and we never thought . . .” As if I hadn’t taken a long, hard look around when I walked in—and believe me, I had—I took a long, hard look around. Swallows wasn’t nearly as quaint or as cozy as Bellywasher’s, and I didn’t like it nearly as much, but then, when it comes to Bellywasher’s, I’m more than a bit prejudiced. Still, Swallows is a pleasant enough place. Its walls are painted a minty green that’s perfect with the oak floors. It has a wide front window that looks out over the street, clean, modern lines, and a sleek bar that takes up all of the wall opposite from where we sat. There’s a tiny stage just inside and to the left of the front door and a dance floor in front of that.
“Never in a million years would I think this was the kind of place where a murder would happen,” I said.