Sneak Peek!
Circus Animal Cookie Catastrophe
Book Description:
A laugh out loud standalone cozy mystery by New York Times, USA TODAY, & Wall Street Journalbestseller Addison Moore.
Cosmopolitan Magazine calls Addison’s books, “…easy, frothy fun!” Humor with a side of homicide. All books in the series can be read individually, so dive on in! Includes RECIPES!
My name is Lottie Lemon, and I see dead people. Okay, so I rarely 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.
When Sterling and Sons Circus rolls into Honey Hollow for a week of performances and a charity benefit, I’m thrilled to showcase my animal cracker cookies at the fairgrounds. But the circus isn’t the only excitement in town, Everett’s thirteen-year-old twin daughters are staying with us for the week.Entertaining teenagers for seven whole days? I’ve got this. With twin babies in a stroller, a sugar-crazed two-year-old, and two eye-rolling teens in tow, what could possibly go wrong at a wholesome family circus?
Of course, when someone ends up dead backstage with a knife in their chest and one of my cookies in their hand, I realize the greatest show on earth just became the deadliest. Between jilted lovers, blackmail victims, and enough secrets to fill a circus tent, half the performers had motive to commit murder. And what in the world does Suze Fox have to do with this? Well, it turns out everything.
But when the investigation reveals this case has more twists than an acrobat’s routine, I know I’m dealing with a killer who’s been hiding behind sequins and spotlights. With my rolling pin in one hand and my detective skills in the other, plus a pint-sized pachyderm with a serious peanut addiction and enough suspects in spandex to staff a Vegas show, I’ll need to solve this case before the killer decides I’m the next act to disappear.
Living in Honey Hollow can be deadly.
Includes RECIPE!
The Victim
Two hours from now…
The big top glitters under the floodlights like a candy-striped dream, and from where I stand at the edge of the ring, the whole thing looks almost magical. Almost. But I know better. I know what lies beneath all this sawdust and sequins—the desperation, the debts, the dirty little secrets that keep this circus spinning.
The crowd roars as the acrobats take their bows, their sequined costumes catching the light like a thousand tiny mirrors.
Intermission.
Fifteen minutes for the audience to stretch their legs, buy overpriced popcorn, and speculate about the grand finale still to come. They have no idea. None of them do. They think they’ve witnessed magic tonight, but the real show? That happens behind the curtain, where I pull the strings and watch my little puppets dance.
The house lights come up halfway, and families start filing toward the concession stands, their faces still flushed with wonder.
Perfect.
Let them mill around in their temporary freedom while I attend to business. The performers are already scattering—some to adjust their costumes, some to grab water, all of them too tired or too broken to meet my eyes. Good. Let them scatter. Let them whisper in their corners about how unfair it all is, how I’m bleeding them dry, how they’d leave if they could.
But they won’t leave.
They never do.
Because I know things. About all of them. And knowledge, in the right hands, is worth more than any ticket sale.
I watch the clowns gulping water in the wings, their painted smiles cracking at the edges. I watch the aerialists checking their rigging for the finale, their bodies still trembling from the last act. I watch the animal handlers conferring in tight clusters, their shoulders hunched under the weight of something they’ll never be able to name.
They think I’m cruel.
They’re right.
But cruelty, when applied with precision, is just another form of control. And control is what keeps this circus alive. Without me, they’d all be scattered to the wind—washed-up performers with nowhere to go and no one to remember their names. I gave them a stage. I gave them a spotlight. If I take a little more than my fair share in return, well, that’s just the price of admission.
The midway is alive with chatter and laughter, the audience refueling for the finale. Children dart between their parents’ legs, hopped up on sugar and excitement. The band plays something off-key and forgettable. It’s all so wonderfully orchestrated, this illusion of joy.
But I have fifteen minutes, and there’s something that needs handling.
I turn away from the ring and head toward the back of the tent, my footsteps muffled by the sawdust. The canvas rustles in the breeze, and somewhere nearby, one of the animals lets out a low rumble.
The lights back here cast everything in harsh shadows—this is the part the audience never sees, the scaffolding that holds up the dream.
Someone is waiting for me in my office. I see the silhouette first, backlit by the dim work lights, and I smile.
Of course.
I knew this was coming. I could feel it building all week—the tension, the anger, the desperation. People are so predictable when you push them far enough. They always come crawling back, thinking they can negotiate, thinking they can fix things.
Thinking they can win.
I step closer, and the figure shifts, stepping into the light just enough for me to see their face. No words yet. Just that look—half pleading, half defiant. It’s almost touching, really. Almost.
“I see you’ve come to make things right with me,” I say, and my voice sounds smooth, confident, and dripping with the kind of charm that got me this far in the first place.
I let a smile spread across my face, slow and wicked, because I already know how this ends. They’ll offer me something—money, maybe, or a promise, or some pathetic plea for mercy. And I’ll take it. I’ll take everything they have, and when they’re wrung out and empty, I’ll still own them.
That’s how it works.
That’s how it always works.
But then I see it—the glint of metal, the blade catching the light, and my smile falters.
“No,” I say, and the word comes out sharper than I intended. “No, no—”
I step backward, my heel catching on a coil of rope, and for the first time in a good long while, I feel something I don’t recognize.
Fear.
The blade moves fast—faster than I thought possible—and then there’s a sharp, sudden pain in my chest, a pressure that steals my breath and pulls the world sideways.
I try to say something, try to shout, but my voice is gone, swallowed by the sawdust and the silence.
The lights blur. The tent spins.
And then the world goes black.
It turns out, even I can’t escape the final curtain call.
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 right now, the only thing I see is a magnificent circus tent glowing against the night sky.
The June air smells like popcorn, cotton candy, and deep-fried everything, which means we’re standing smack in the middle of the Sterling and Sons Circus fairgrounds, just steps away from the massive pink-and-white-striped tent. The sun set about twenty minutes ago, and the first stars are starting to peek out as if they want to see what all the fuss is about too.
The Honey Hollow fairgrounds sprawl across the field just past my mother’s B&B in a riot of lights and noise that could probably be seen from the North Pole. It’s all flashing bulbs, carnival music, and enough neon to make my retinas beg for mercy. Bodies are pouring in from every direction, and by the looks of it, all of Vermont has shown up this evening.
And for once, every last body in my vicinity is vertical. I consider that a personal victory.
A Ferris wheel spins lazy circles against the darkening sky, a handful of other rides whirl and clatter nearby, and the game booths promise prizes that weigh more than my toddler. Somewhere in the distance, an elephant bellows out a trumpet call.
At least I hope that’s an elephant.
“I can’t wait to feast my eyes on all those strong men,” Carlotta announces, loud enough that three families turn to stare. She’s walking beside me in skintight leopard print and hot pink heels, shocking absolutely no one. Her caramel-colored hair catches the carnival lights as if she’s auditioning for the ringmaster position herself. “You know what they say about circus performers, Lot Lot. They’re flexible in all the right ways!”
“No one says that, Carlotta.”
“Well, they should.”
I push the double stroller with my three-month-old twin boys inside, Ozzy and Corbin, over a patch of uneven grass and try not to think about what Carlotta considers the right ways. The boys are fraternal but look enough alike to be disorienting. Same dark hair, same cobalt blue eyes they got from their father, same tendency to spit up at the exact wrong moment.
And of course, we can’t forget their shared disdain for sleep. Here I thought Everett was being cute when he was getting frisky with me at all hours for all the years we’ve been married. Come to find out, the man may have had a sleep disorder all along. One that works to my benefit, but still. Regardless, I think he may have passed that aversion to snooze on to his sons.
Everett walks beside me, all six-foot-something of the legal system in gorgeous action. But since he’s nowhere near the courthouse, he’s donned jeans and a navy flannel that should be illegal in at least twelve states. His black hair is slightly mussed from the breeze, and his cobalt blue eyes scan the crowd with a casual vigilance. Years on the bench will do that to a man. So will being married to a baker who has stumbled over one too many corpses.
“Giddy up, Daddy! Faster!” Lyla Nell calls out from behind.
I shoot a look over my shoulder at Noah, who has our two-year-old daughter perched on his shoulders like a tiny tyrant. She bounces up and down, her curls fly in every direction, and Noah grins as if she just handed him the moon. His dimples are out in full force, and so are hers.
Lyla Nell bounces harder. “Lottie, make Daddy go faster!”
And there it is. My own daughter, calling Noah Daddy and calling me Lottie as if I’m the babysitter. She refuses to call me Mommy and has decided I’m just another member of her entourage.
I’m not bitter. Much.
All of this Lottie nonsense started a few weeks back, and it’s only picking up speed no matter how hard we try to talk her out of it.
Noah catches my eye and laughs. “Don’t worry, Lot, she’ll come around.”
“Easy for you to say.” I frown his way. “She still calls you Daddy. I’ve been demoted to friend of the family.”
“Nah.” Carlotta chuckles. “The Little Yippy sees you more as the staff.”
She’s probably not wrong.
Everett’s mouth twitches. “She’s not staff, Carlotta.”
“You’re right,” Carlotta agrees. “The staff gets a day off once in a while.”
And she’s not wrong, yet again.
Carlotta loops her arm through mine as we make our way toward the glossy pink and white striped monstrosity. “You know, I once had big dreams of running off with the circus. But then I got knocked up with you, Lot Lot, and that dream got flushed faster than my waistline.” She gives a dramatic sigh. “Turns out a baby bump and tightrope walking don’t mix.”
“Who would’ve thought,” I muse, doing my best to excise any visuals of Carlotta teetering above a crowd with a giant belly where I happened to reside.
Carlotta is my biological mother.
“But look on the bright side,” Carlotta continues with the monologue no one asked for. “I’m here now, aren’t I? With a snatched waist and excellent taste in muscular entertainment.”
“Carlotta,” Noah says with a chuckle, “need we remind you, you’re engaged to Mayor Nash?”
“Engaged is a strong word, Foxy.” Carlotta shoots him the stink eye. “More like encaged.” She swats her hand his way as if shooing a fly—the hand with a giant diamond adorning it. “Harry’s all right, but a woman can window-shop. Besides, he’s here somewhere, buying votes, kissing babies, smooching with their mothers, or whatever it is mayors do at the circus. Which means I’m free to conduct my own research on upper body strength and flexibility. A girl’s gotta have hobbies.”
“Your hobbies are concerning,” I mutter.
“And your hobbies are boring,” she fires back. “Now, where’s this cookie booth you keep yapping about?”
Right. The cookie booth.
I’d almost forgotten in the chaos of trying to wrangle three children, two husbands (one current, one accidental on more than one occasion), and one Carlotta, for whom appropriate behavior is strictly optional.
I steer the stroller toward my cookie booth on the midway, stocked with cute little animal crackers, each one iced to perfection.
The circus reached out to the bakery last month to see if we’d like to join their local vendors, and naturally I said yes.
My sister Charlie is handling the savory side with the Honey Pot Diner, which means she’ll be elbow-deep in corn dogs and turkey legs all week. Her booth is right next to mine and I fully plan on supporting her efforts personally.
We’ve already restocked my display three times tonight, and it’s only opening night.
“Looks like you’re a hit, Lemon,” Everett says, nodding at the line forming near my stand. The man is serious as a heart attack, rarely smiles, and can stop a woman cold with a single glance.
That would explain all women in a twenty-foot radius craning their necks in this direction.
I should be immune to this by now.
I’m not. And since we’re at the circus, I should probably sell tickets.
Noah groans. “I can’t wait to get my hands on your cookies, Lot.”
“I bet,” Everett growls his way.
Suffice it to say, Noah and Everett have a precarious relationship, and it’s mostly because of me.
The fairgrounds unfold around us in layers of chaos and sugar. There’s a petting zoo off to the left where a goat is currently eating someone’s hat, a ring toss game where a teenager just won a stuffed giraffe the size of a sedan, and a cotton candy stand doing brisk enough business to rival the GDP of a small country.
Everywhere I look, there are kids with sticky fingers, parents with frazzled expressions, and couples holding hands as if they’re not about to have a fight over whose turn it is to win the goldfish.
It’s perfect. And I hope this night stays perfect, but something in my creaky bones says it won’t.
I turn to Everett. “Can you believe you got an entire week away from the courthouse just as the circus came to town? That means you can spend the whole week here at the fairgrounds with me and the kids.”
Noah’s jaw tightens. “How convenient for you.” He shoots Everett a wry look. “I’ll see what I can swing with the station. I’d love to hang out at the fairgrounds with you and the kids, Lot.”
Lyla Nell claps and cheers and nearly topples right off Noah’s shoulders.
“Whoa,” Noah says, catching her wrists while Everett steadies her from the side.
Noah is the lead homicide detective down at the Ashford County Sheriff’s Department. And, oddly, my corpse-finding habit has kept him gainfully employed for the past few homicide-riddled years.
“I couldn’t be happier to have a week off, Lemon.” Everett slides an arm around my waist. “And I couldn’t have planned it better myself.”
I’m about to list all the things we can do in addition to the circus when something catches my eye.
“Hey,” I say, squinting through the crowd. “Isn’t that Eliza?”
I point toward a tall, dark-haired woman in what looks like a white mink stole and kitten heels (because apparently we’re time-traveling to 1952 again), and beside her stands a dark-haired woman with almond-shaped eyes and two teenage girls who look like they were styled for a prep-school brochure.
Everett blinks in that direction. “Mom?”
We make our way over, and Everett pulls his mother into a hug before his gaze snags on the two girls beside her. “And my girls.” He folds Ava and Olivia in next, one under each arm, and they let him, which at thirteen is its own small miracle.
Eliza Baxter smells like Chanel No. 5 and old money. She’s wearing the mink stole as if she were about to head to the opera, and her dark hair is swept into her signature elegant twist.
“Essex, honey! You should have told me you’d be here.”
And there it is. The Essex. Except in this case, it doesn’t mean what it usually does.
Only women who’ve tangoed with Everett under the sheets call him by his proper first name. It’s a naughty little door prize they all cling to. Everyone else calls him Everett, the name he actually prefers.
Well. Except for his mother.
And his sister. And Noah’s mother, Suze.
And okay, fine, there are a number of exceptions to this rule, but the point stands.
“Lottie!” Haley, the dark-haired woman, waves enthusiastically. She’s the mother of Everett’s thirteen-year-old twin daughters, Ava and Olivia, and also happens to be our pediatrician now. She’s the best of the best, and I genuinely love her. But every time she says Essex, something inside me twitches.
The twins flank their grandmother, both in jeans and matching blue tops. They share Everett’s dark hair and blue eyes, and they just turned thirteen a few weeks back. Just like my boys, they’re fraternal, but they look enough alike for me to get confused now and again, and again, and again.
We only just discovered them about a year ago through one of those DNA matching websites, and the whole thing couldn’t have worked out better. They’re smart, funny, and only occasionally roll their eyes at me, which I consider a win. And to be perfectly honest, I’m just glad Everett didn’t discover far more children than that. He was rather prolific in his one-night-stand romp across the Eastern Seaboard before he met me.
“Hey, Dad,” they say in unison, and Everett grins as they each offer him another quick embrace.
He’s been a lot of things in his life. Judge, playboy, husband. But Dad is his favorite role yet.
“How are you two doing?” I ask.
They shrug in perfect synchronization.
“We’re at the circus.” Ava grunts it out as if it were a punishment.
The enthusiasm is underwhelming.
“Your big sister Evie is in there somewhere too,” I tell them, motioning toward the big top. Everly Baxter, Evie, is Everett’s oldest daughter, the one he discovered a few years back after her mother abandoned her. I adopted Evie officially, and she’s home from college for the summer, probably eating her weight in popcorn as we speak. “I’m so glad you’re all here!”
“We are too.” Haley laughs. “We got free tickets from one of the hospital board members. A total stroke of luck.”
Ava and Olivia groan, letting their opinion be known on what qualifies as luck.
“I’m on the board as well,” Eliza adds. “So I received a ticket, too. And we thought it would be lovely to come together.”
“We love spending time with Mimi Lizzy,” Ava says, and Olivia nods.
The funny thing is, they were neighbors with Eliza for years and years, and they were calling her Mimi Lizzy long before they knew she was their grandmother.
“Mimi Lizzy!” Lyla Nell shrieks from Noah’s shoulders, and Eliza’s entire face brightens.
“There’s the little princess,” Eliza coos as she gives Lyla Nell’s foot a little pat.
She fawns over the boys as well, and within seconds, Lyla Nell is back on the ground, holding hands with Ava and Olivia as they wander toward a booth selling glow sticks.
“I’m actually leaving town for the week,” Haley says, turning back to me. “There’s a medical conference in Munich, and I’ve had it planned for months. I’m dropping the girls off with a sitter in the morning, so it’s our last night together for a bit.”
“Oh, I wish you’d asked us first!” I say. “Everett has this whole week off.”
Haley’s eyes widen. “Really? Oh wow, I wish I had known. But they love their sitter.” She leans my way. “I think she lets them get away with murder.”
We all share a laugh at that one.
“It’s probably for the best,” Carlotta says. “Lot Lot doesn’t let anyone get away with murder. But Foxy? He couldn’t catch a killer if they tied their own shoelaces together. Heck, if they tied their own shoelaces to his.”
“Carlotta?” Noah looks both perplexed and offended. But I don’t see why. Carlotta happens to speak the truth, but I wouldn’t dare say it out loud.
“Next time,” Everett says with a nod. “We’d love to have them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Haley says with a laugh.
Honestly, the sitter probably dodged nothing and we dodged everything. With my own twins waging war against sleep, and Lyla Nell faring no better in that department, we’re already outnumbered, outgunned, and operating on about three collective hours of sleep.
Haley looks from Noah to Everett. “I still find it so fascinating that the two of you were once sort of related, and now basically you’re sort of related again. Eliza told me all about it. Of course, we haven’t told the girls.”
Noah and Everett share a disgruntled look. It’s true. They were once related via marriage when Eliza married Noah’s con-artist father, Wiley. They’ve since divorced—or whatever it was legally referred to after Wiley faked his own death. And now they both share a family with me.
Noah shifts, and I catch him and Everett exchanging one of those looks, half sizing each other up, half reluctant respect. The two of them still circle each other like wolves that can’t decide if they’re allies or competitors.
Spoiler alert: it’s both.
“We’d better get inside,” Haley says, glancing at her watch. “The girls want to load up on cotton candy and corn dogs, and I told them it’s more than okay on a special occasion like this.”
Eliza gathers the girls, and they head toward the big top. Lyla Nell skips between Ava and Olivia as if she’s found her new best friends.
“We should get going too,” I say, and I’m about to suggest we load up on treats of our own when I spot the cutest little big thing I’ve ever laid eyes on, and it just so happens to be an elephant.
“Oh my word, look at that sweet baby elephant!”
Carlotta squints at the empty space beside the stroller. “Lottie, that’s not a baby. That thing is the size of a dumpster.”
She’s standing right next to the stroller, about the size of—okay, fine, Carlotta’s right, she’s about the size of a dumpster—but she’s got the most precious pink bow sitting on top of her tiny head, and she’s looking at me with big, soulful eyes that make my heart do a little hiccup.
“I’m pretty sure she’s on the small side, as far as elephants go.” I turn to Noah and Everett. “Please tell Carlotta that is definitely the size of a baby elephant.”
Noah and Everett exchange another look, this one far more worrisome.
“Lemon,” Everett says slowly, “we don’t see a pink elephant.”
I freeze. “What?”
“You haven’t been hitting the vanilla extract again, have you, Lottie?” Noah is only half teasing, and there’s a thread of concern in his voice that makes my stomach drop.
“Noah, you see the elephant. Right?” I tip my ear his way.
He shakes his head.
The baby elephant lets out the most adorable little trumpet sound, somewhere between a squeak and a roar, and then she explodes into a shower of tiny pink stars that rain down around us like supernatural confetti.
“Oh my stars!” I cry out. “You know what this means?”
Noah nods. “It means murder.”
The circus has come to town, and so has a killer.
***I hope you enjoyed this preview! Thank you for reading!****