Punch, Pastries, and Poison by Harper Lin (ebook reader for pc and android .txt) 📕

Punch, Pastries, and Poison

A Cape Bay Cafe Mystery Book 10

Harper Lin

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Punch, Pastries, and Poison

Copyright © 2021 by Harper Lin.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

www.harperlin.com

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Recipe 1: Cream Horns

Recipe 2: Shortbread Cookies

Recipe 3: Raspberry Punch

Chapter 1

Late spring is my favorite time of year in Cape Bay. The icy chill of Massachusetts winter is finally out of the air, the trees are back in full leaf, and the humidity and tourist throngs haven’t yet descended on the coast. The feeling is glorious, and I want to spend every second of every day outdoors, soaking it up.

So, naturally, instead of doing that, I was holed up in the back room of Antonia’s, sorting through invoices and poring over resumes.

After nearly a year as sole proprietor of the coffee shop my grandparents had opened sixty-some-odd years ago when they’d first arrived here from Italy, I was ready to make some changes. Okay, maybe I wasn’t actually ready to make them, but I’d found myself increasingly feeling like it was time to change, particularly to bring on new staff.

Antonia’s had been running on a staff of five for a year, since my late mother—the café’s previous owner—had hired two high school students on shortly before her death. That had been enough to get by, but I didn’t want to just get by. I wanted to flourish. And with tourist season coming, flourishing meant I needed some more help.

I looked down again at the resume in front of me. Persephone Phillips. She didn’t have much experience, but I doubted that Becky and Amanda—my high school girls—had much before starting, either, and in any case, I mostly wanted the new person to help with taking orders, running them out to tables, and keeping the place clean. Not exactly rocket science.

I glanced up at the clock on the wall. Persephone should have been here by now. Running late was not exactly the kind of first impression I’d been hoping she’d make.

With a sigh, I picked up the stack of new resumes and applications from the corner of the little table that passed as a desk in the café's back room. I looked down at the first one. Bradford Bradenton Bradshaw IV. He had a master’s degree in finance and a few years of experience working on Wall Street. Why on earth was he applying at my little coffee shop? Did he think I was hiring for a finance manager instead of a cashier? If I was, it would be for probably the least interesting finance job ever, since I had no problem keeping up with our books even though I was a communications major in school.

The next applicant was a girl who had just turned fourteen the week before—she had it written on her application and mentioned it to me when she dropped it off—whose parents had no doubt urged her to go ahead and find a summer job before they were all taken.

I wasn’t completely opposed to hiring a fourteen-year-old. If she was a good fit, I could hope to have her for four good years before she graduated high school. Fourteen—barely fourteen—just seemed so young. I looked back down at the application she’d turned in and gasped when I realized that she hadn’t even started high school yet. She was still in middle school! I reminded myself that her education level had no bearing on her ability to take an order, and I flipped her application over on top of Bradford Bradenton Bradshaw IV’s in the Maybe pile. Middle school!

I was still shaking my head when Sammy—my café manager and general right-hand woman—poked her head through the doorway.

“Sammy, you need to look at the applications I got yesterday.” I grabbed Bradford Bradenton Bradshaw IV and the middle-schooler’s papers from the pile and held them out to her.

“I’d love to”—she held out a single finger—“but your interview is here.”

I glanced up at the clock. She was almost ten minutes late. That irked me, but I didn’t think it was reason enough to dismiss her without even speaking to her. Maybe she’d gotten stuck in traffic or been getting in her car when she realized her blouse had a big grease stain from the pizza she’d dropped on it last time she wore it. Sometimes those didn’t come out in the wash. It happened. I knew from experience.

“What do you think of her?” I asked. “Does she seem like she’d be a good fit?”

Sammy shrugged. “She just came in and said she was here for her interview. I didn’t really talk to her.”

“Did she apologize for being late?”

Sammy gave me a sympathetic smile. “Nobody’s perfect, Fran. No matter how much you’d like them to be.”

I resisted the urge to point out that I couldn’t imagine having a more perfect employee than her and stood up from my chair. “Well, hopefully she’s a good fit, because I’m tired of looking at resumes.”

I followed Sammy out in the café and looked across the counter at the girl she pointed out.

My heart sank.

I was pretty sure a pizza stain on her blouse wasn’t the cause of her lateness. A cat attack seemed more likely. Or a vigorous sword fight.

Under certain circumstances, I could have forgiven her for wearing a T-shirt and jeans to an interview—some people just didn’t know better, and this place was just a coffee shop, after all. The holes were what really got me. I could see at least five