(A Cruising Through Midlife CROSSOVER!!!!)
Chapter 1
Lottie
My name is Lottie Lemon, and I see dead people. Okay, so rarely do I see dead people. Mostly I see furry creatures of the dearly departed variety who have come back from the other side to warn me of their previous owner’s impending doom. But the only thing I’m seeing now is a face that spells out trouble.
“Carlotta”—I frown at the woman who bore me as she picks at a cinnamon roll while seated at the counter in my bakery—“why do you look as if someone put OJ in your cereal?”
She rolls her eyes in response. “You mean, why do I look as if someone peed in my cereal? Just say it, Lottie. I’m sick and tired of your whitewashed goody two-shoes analogies that end up sounding pretty ridiculous to the rest of us.”
“Well, I think it’s pretty ridiculous to even suggest someone peed in your cereal, but that’s just me.”
Three customers spontaneously scoot away from the register and suddenly look as if they’re about to make a break for it.
“Wonderful,” I mutter. “Leave it to you, Carlotta, to cost me a sale, or three.”
“Aren’t families fun?” Lily says as she walks past me carrying a tray full of fresh deep-fried beignets.
Carlotta snarls my way. “Whose big idea was it to stick us together, anyway?”
“The Big Guy Upstairs,” I tell her.
“And they say He loves us,” she sniffs.
“Well, He loves me,” I say with a sigh. “He’s blessed me with family, friends, and a thriving business.”
“And the ability to stumble upon a dead body at regular intervals,” she points out.
Okay, so it’s true. I may have an unnatural knack for tripping over a homicide victim or two, but that’s beside the point.
“Maybe so,” I say. “But tonight there will be a body in a casket long before we ever get there. So in effect, I’ve met my quota of dead bodies for the night.” And lifetime if I’m lucky.
“You hope.” She squints over at me and I squint right back.
I hope indeed.
It’s late Sunday afternoon, bordering on evening, and there’s only a scant number of customers here in the Cutie Pie Bakery and Cakery. I’ve been frying up a storm all day, getting ready for tonight’s big catering event, a funeral right here in Honey Hollow. And that’s not the only thing keeping me busy. Mother’s Day is right around the corner, and the orders are already rolling in for cookie platters, cakes, and pies. Mother’s Day is one of my new favorite holidays now that I’m a mother. I get to take the whole day off and not lift a finger. I can’t wait to curl up with my girls, eat great food, and read a boatload of luscious books. In fact, I vote we make every Sunday Mother’s Day from here on out.
I glance around at my sweet bakery and smile. This place never feels like work. The Cutie Pie has been my baby for a number of years, and not only has it blossomed with traditional sales ever since I’ve opened my doors, but the catering arm of the business has taken off as well. Speaking of which…
I turn toward the kitchen a moment in search of two of my best employees.
“Suze? Lily? I think it’s time we get going. Let’s start boxing up those beignets so we can get a move on. Oh, and Lily? Make sure to bring two extra bags of powdered sugar. We’ll be serving up a truckload of beignets, and we need to make sure we have enough powdered sugar to go along with them.”
“I’m on it, Lottie,” Lily says as she pulls out an armful of bright pink boxes that still need to be folded into shape. Lily Swanson is a pretty brunette who was once my high school tormenter. But now that I pad her savings account with cash on the regular, we get along well enough. “I’ll make sure we have enough powdered sugar to cover all of Honey Hollow—and make it look like the dead of winter.”
I chuckle at the thought. But it’s not the dead of winter, it’s early May. Every last drop of snow has long since melted and the weather is heating up nicely.
“Beignets at a funeral?” Suze rolls her eyes, only to outdo Carlotta in the ocular dissatisfaction department. “Who ever heard of such an oddity?”
Suze Fox just so happens to be my mother-in-law in a roundabout way. I’m sort of married to her son, Noah, and we happen to share a fourteen-month-old daughter, Lyla Nell.
I’m sort of married to Noah’s old stepbrother, Everett Baxter, too. And we happen to share a seventeen-year-old daughter, Everly, Evie, Baxter. Albeit I adopted Evie, and she’s just as much mine as Lyla Nell is. Yes, I just so happen to have one husband too many, if you happen to be keeping score.
It’s a long story.
Suze, the woman currently glaring at me, has short blonde hair that swoops over her eyes in the front. She’s tall, stocky, and has very little tolerance for me in general—sans the part about me lining her savings account with cash as well. It seems to be a running theme.
“This is not just any funeral,” I tell her. “Ninetta Rizzo is having the it funeral of the century.” Ninetta was an older woman of Italian decent that was well-known in Honey Hollow. I think she was in her early sixties and died of a heart attack.
Lily nods as she works at lightning speed to put the boxes together. “I heard it’s a Mardi Gras theme, hence the beignets they’ve requested. But why no king cake? Everyone knows a king cake is the dessert of the hour when it comes to Mardi Gras.”
“I’ll tell you why,” Carlotta growls. “It’s because Ninetta Rizzo can’t stand the thought of being usurped at her own funeral. Ninetta thought she was a queen when she was alive. There’s no way she’d be willing to share the crown on her big day.”
Lily ticks her head to the side. “But apparently, she was a foodie, so there’s going to be a ton of yummy treats there.”
“Correct,” I tell her while snapping up a couple of flattened boxes to work on myself. “In fact, Charlie is catering as well,” I say, nodding to the left where an opening in the east wall leads to my sister’s place, the Honey Pot Diner.
Technically, the Honey Pot was my grandmother Nell’s baby. But when Nell died, she gave me the Honey Pot Diner, the bakery, and just about the rest of Honey Hollow. I went from a pauper to land baron in one fell swoop.
But when Charlie came into my life recently, I wanted to give her something from our grandma Nell, too. And seeing that Charlie is a wizard in the kitchen, I gave her the Honey Pot—with myself as a silent partner.
“She’s making shrimp po boys, jambalaya, and crawfish etouffee,” I tell them. “I heard Mangias will be catering as well, and a few more local restaurants that Ninetta liked to frequent, but she’s given the day off to the staff of her own restaurant, Rizzo’s Trattoria.”
“Pfft,” Carlotta snits. “That’s because everything at Rizzo’s Trattoria tastes as if someone peed in it.”
And just like that, the last remaining customers in my shop scurry out the door.
“Carlotta.” I swat her with a dishtowel. “I’ve told you a thousand times to stop with the less than savory conversation. Your mouth is bad for business. Now what’s got you in such an ornery mood?”
“Ninetta Rizzo, that’s what,” she growls. Carlotta is my biological mother who was kind and smart enough to abandon me at the local fire department when I was just a few hours old. Unfortunately, Charlie wasn’t as lucky. Instead, Carlotta opted to raise poor Charlie on her own—or more to the point, Charlie had to raise Carlotta on her own.
“Aww,” I coo. “You’re sad that Ninetta has passed away.”
“I’m not sad. I’m mad that I’m not allowed at the funeral. In case you’re unaware, this is an invite-only affair, and my invite seems to have gotten lost in the mail.”
“No way did it get lost,” Lily says. “Everyone knows Ninetta Rizzo was meticulous to a fault. I heard she worked tirelessly with an event planner to nail down all of the details of her going away party. Of course, it was forward-thinking on her part for when she eventually passed away. She was a notorious control freak.”
“I got an invitation,” I say.
“Me, too,” Lily says.
“Me three,” Suze chimes in.
I narrow my eyes over at my scheming, dreaming, shenanigan-prone bio mama.
“All right.” I sigh. “What gives? Why didn’t you score an invite?”
She slumps in her seat.
Carlotta and I share the same caramel-colored hair and hazel eyes, but she’s up on me in both wrinkles and felony charges. Or at least I’m assuming that last tidbit.
“Ninetta Rizzo accused me of trying to steal her husband.”
I hike a brow her way. “Did you?”
“Just the last two.”
“Carlotta,” I balk. “Were they faithful to her?”
“Yes,” she grouses. “But only because they were afraid of her.”
Suze snorts. “Well, I’m glad Wiley wasn’t faithful to me. I’ve never been a fan of being leashed to someone for life.”
Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes—for two reasons. One, Wiley is the biggest cad in the world, so Suze lucked out in that department if she was looking for a man who had a tendency to stray. And two, Wiley just so happens to be leashed to my mother—the saint who raised me—at the moment. No, they’re not officially married, but they’re a couple nonetheless, and how I wish he were with anyone but her.
“I wish you kept Wiley all to yourself,” I tell her as I put the last box together. “He’ll be at the funeral home with my mother, along with everyone else in Honey Hollow, Hollyhock, and Leeds. Speaking of which, we’d better start loading up these beignets, because as it stands, we’re going to be late.”
“What about me?” Carlotta cries just as I’m about to make a mad dash for the kitchen. “How about I help you girls deliver the fried goods to the dead? Come on, Lot. I can’t be the only one left out of the event of the season. I’ll be a social pariah down at the bingo hall. I’ll do anything if you let me tag along. And I swear on all ten of Little Yippy’s crooked toes that I’ll be on my best behavior.”
Little Yippy is the less than savory nickname Carlotta has gifted Lyla Nell, and my sweet baby girl does not have crooked toes. But bringing that up to Carlotta is a moot point.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “I’ll let you tag along, but under one circumstance.”
“Anything, Lot.” Carlotta jumps from her stool and grabs the nearest apron. “Name it—it’s yours.”
“You wear a disguise. The last thing I want is for my bakery to bear the consequences of harboring a stowaway. And everyone who’s everyone knows that Ninetta Rizzo was a powerful woman with powerful friends. Face it, Carlotta. You’re persona non grata at this funeral. The last thing I need is starting a war with the senior community.”
She scowls my way. “A disguise it is. And don’t worry, Lot. I’ll make it a good one. The living nor the deceased will be able to recognize me.”
“Here’s hoping,” I say.
Speaking of the deceased, here’s hoping we can keep the tally to one this evening.
The shadow of an enormous bird crosses the front window, and an icy shiver runs up my spine as the bakery darkens in its wake.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think that was the shadow of the Grim Reaper himself.
* * *