Pumpkin roll reckoning m.., p.1
Pumpkin Roll Reckoning: MURDER IN THE MIX 39, page 1
Pumpkin Roll Reckoning
MURDER IN THE MIX 39
Addison Moore
Contents
Connect with Addison Moore
Book Description
1. Lottie
2. Lottie
3. Lottie
4. Noah
5. Everett
6. Lottie
7. Lottie
8. Noah
9. Everett
10. Lottie
11. Noah
12. Everett
13. Lottie
14. Lottie
15. Noah
16. Everett
17. Lottie
18. Lottie
19. Noah
20. Everett
21. Lottie
Recipe
Books by Addison Moore
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright © 2021 by Addison Moore
Edited by Paige Maroney Smith
Cover by Lou Harper, Cover Affairs
This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.
All Rights Reserved.
This eBook is for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase any additional copies for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright © 2021 by Addison Moore
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Book Description
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, aka dead pets, who have come back from the other side to warn me of their previous owner’s impending doom.
It’s Thanksgiving in Honey Hollow, and Lottie is busy trying to keep up with all of the holiday pie orders down at the bakery. A mystery woman barrels into town and dishes out a few threats to Noah and Everett that can put Lottie’s reputation and career on the line. Meanwhile, Noah and Cormack’s housewarming party ends in tragedy when a killer lands themselves on the guest list and decides to cook up a little murder for the night. Turkeys, threats, and killers abound, and if the residents of Honey Hollow can make it out of November alive, they’ll have plenty to be thankful for.
Lottie Lemon has a brand new bakery to tend to, a budding romance with perhaps one too many suitors, and she has the supernatural ability to see the dead—which are always harbingers for ominous things to come. Throw in the occasional ghost of the human variety, a string of murders, and her insatiable thirst for justice, and you’ll have more chaos than you know what to do with.
Living in the small town of Honey Hollow can be murder.
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 right now, the only thing I’m seeing is a room full of polished-looking people with champagne glasses held high.
“To Noah and Cormack Featherby!” Everett calls out and the crowd cheers. All of Honey Hollow, if not all of Vermont, have shown up to witness this grievance. “Congratulations on the new house. May you live a long and happy life together.” His lips flicker with more than a hint of a devious smile.
And both Noah and I take a moment to frown at him for doing so.
Judge Essex Everett Baxter never smiles. I should know. I’m his wife. Yes, our marriage may have started as a technicality because he needed a legal plus one to cash in on his trust fund, but we’re together now and living as man and wife in every capacity.
Everett is a god among men, with black hair, blue eyes, and a body chiseled out of steel. It’s not unusual for the women in a ten-mile radius to sense his presence and crane their necks to get a better look at him. It’s not unusual for women to drop to their knees before him in an ardent show of worship either. I’ve been subject to both of those actions at one time or another.
The room explodes with another round of cheers as people take careful sips of the pricey French bubbly goodness filling those glasses. It’s nothing but the best of the best for Cormack Featherby, the blonde bimbo socialite who keeps doing her best to take down my world. And with this latest takedown of Noah, I’d say she’s succeeding.
Yes, Cormack has managed the coup of the century, even if it was by trickery and deceit. She’s actually married to Noah Featherby—nee Fox. I’m not entirely sure if Noah has gone off the deep end and legally changed his last name to suit hers—upon Cormack’s insistence—but seeing how willing he is to play along with this farce, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised.
And it is a farce. You see, a few months ago Noah and I had a fake wedding of our own to get the mob off his back. Long story short, it worked. And since Cormack owned half of my mother’s haunted B&B at the time, and she saw how desperate I was to get it back, she asked to have her own fake wedding with her obsession—my longtime boyfriend Noah.
Yes, I know, husband and a boyfriend? It’s so not kosher. It’s complicated.
Anyway, Noah would do anything for me, and apparently, he has. He agreed to a simple fake wedding, and did just that. My mother got the keys back to her haunted hovel, and all was well—right up until we found out that both my wedding to Noah and Cormack’s wedding to Noah were the real deal. And we’ve been in a legal bigamist pickle ever since.
Noah was just about to get the divorce ball rolling in Cormack’s direction—he made it clear he’s hanging onto the nuptials between us—when he discovered Cormack’s father is involved in some very nefarious dealings.
“Come on, Cormack! It’s time to mark your man! Kiss! Kiss!” some airheaded woman shouts from the bowels of the cavernous living room we’re standing in, and before we know it, the delicate chime of knives tapping over champagne flutes fills the air as the crowd encourages a lip-lock between the newlyweds.
Cormack goes in for the kill, grabbing Noah by the neck and devouring his mouth. Poor Noah’s arms flail for a moment as if he were about to be knocked off the edge of a ship—the Titanic to be exact—while Cormack goes on with her ruthless lingual attack.
Another round of cheers breaks out before moody instrumental music filters through the speakers once again.
Cormack Featherby has blonde hair, celadon green eyes, and a one-track mind that involves Noah Fox. She’s been living off her father’s billions for as long as I’ve known her; although, as of about six months ago, she garnered the top spot in a morning show named Getting Candid with Cormack as the lead.
It used to be called Getting Candid with Candice, but Candice was murdered the day we set foot on the set to do one of those cheesy who’s your daddy paternity reveals with my baby girl Lyla Nell.
Sigh.
And that’s how I got the other half of my mother’s B&B back—via public humiliation.
I haven’t had an easy year, but it’s still one of the best because I happened to give birth about eight months ago.
I smile dreamily at my baby girl from across the room as my mother bounces her on her hip.
Lyla Nell is Noah’s daughter. They share the same dark hair that turns red at the tips in the sun, same lawn green eyes, and same dimples that dig down for miles. And even though Noah is her biological father, Everett is raising her as his daughter, too, along with the seventeen-year-old daughter that we share, Evie.
Noah strides this way, that frown he’s been wearing all night plastered firmly to his face. He’s donned a dark fitted suit that was made just for him by one of the most sought-after tailors in the world. Nothing but the best now that he’s a Featherby.
“You’re to blame for this,” Noah growls over at Everett.
“For what?” Everett balks. “If you feel the need to point the finger at someone, point it at your father. Had he never married my mother, you and Cormack would have never met.”
It’s true. Wiley Fox—the exact wily conman who caused my mother to sell her B&B in the first place so he could pay off some gambling debts and gamble some more—had once been married to Everett’s poor billionaire mother. Wiley made off with a few of Eliza Baxter’s millions after about five hot minutes of unholy matrimony. But while Noah and Everett were stepbrothers, Noah thought it was a good idea to steal Everett’s then high school girlfriend, Cormack Featherby. As it turns out, that was to become the curse of a lifetime. Noah and Cormack never worked out, but her obsession for him still burns bright, as evidenced by the festival of horrors taking place before us.
Everett lifts his glass
I glance past Noah and look over at Cormack standing with a few of her friends near the fireplace. Her gold gown glitters under the duress of the sparkling chandelier up above. The chandelier in question is large enough to light up a ballroom, and oddly enough, the interior of this home looks like just that—a ballroom, with its marble flooring, glass tables with clean lines, and pristine white furniture.
Cormack purchased this house with her daddy’s money right on Country Cottage Road just down the street from where Everett and I live—and where Noah lives across the street from us. She bought the house for her and Noah, of course. And even though she doesn’t think much of Lyla Nell, she said she bought the house on our humble street so that Noah could still be near his baby girl.
She had the house gutted and renovated inside and out in about five seconds—which burned me because Everett and I have been building our dream home just down the street for months. Anyway, the inside of Cormack and Noah’s castle is as opulent and gorgeous as can be.
I’ve heard rumors that Beautiful House magazine is already in line to do a complete exposé on it. I can’t blame them. But the one thing that makes me giddy is that I’ll be using the exact same interior designer to finish off my new home. A sassy determined-to-steal-your-man redhead named Amber Woolsworth. She just so happens to be one of the women huddling next to Cormack at the moment, along with a blonde and a chestnut brunette who I can’t quite identify.
“Woo wee!” Carlotta Sawyer comes this way, dancing from leg to leg as she hoists up her champagne flute filled to the brim. “Good show, Foxy. You pulled out the best of the best. I always knew you’d make a decent hubby.” She looks my way. “See what you’re missing out on, Lot? Fine champagne, a house that looks as snazzy as a mausoleum, and a herd of snooty friends who looks down on the rest of us commoners while their frozen faces struggle to smile.”
“You’re not entirely wrong,” I tell her. “Although none of this is Noah’s doing. It’s all courtesy of Cormack’s father.” I glance to the left, where Manchester Featherby stands tall and proud with his shock of gray hair and a nefarious twinkle in his eyes. He’s chatting it up with Mayor Harry Nash, my biological father, at the moment. And trying desperately to get in on the conversation is Noah’s aforementioned conman of a father, Wiley.
Manchester comes from old money, has made new money, and has money on top of the old and the new. I’m pretty sure he has his own federal reserve. He’s that wealthy.
“Don’t worry, Lot.” Noah leans in with a mean look in his eyes. “This won’t last long. I’ll figure out who killed that juror last month and why. This is one undercover investigation I plan on escalating to hyperspeed. And after that”—he glowers over at Everett—“I’ll deal with other things.”
Carlotta whoops and hollers and she laughs herself silly.
“Watch out, Sexy. Foxy here is turning into a lean, mean, fighting machine. He’s out for vengeance and blood. And he’s looking to drag Lot Lot back to his cave by her hair. By the sound of it, you’ll be the one to pay the price.”
Foxy and Sexy are the nicknames Carlotta has gifted to Noah and Everett. Carlotta has a habit of gifting just about everyone she meets with a special moniker that she thinks up on the fly. Carlotta might be my biological mother, but she didn’t raise me—thankfully. As soon as she dropped me off at the Honey Hollow Fire Department, way back when I was just an infant, she hightailed it to Higgins Bottom, Arizona.
She came back to Honey Hollow a few months later to make sure things turned out okay for me and ended up getting knocked up again by Mayor Nash. Once she had my sister Charlie, she tried to dump her at the fire department, too, but when she realized that the kind firefighter who adopted me also just had an infant of his own, she decided to raise my poor sister herself—and Charlie Sawyer has been paying for it ever since.
Both Carlotta and Charlie came into my life not too long ago. Carlotta first, then Charlie a couple of years later. Carlotta never mentioned anything about Charlie in the beginning, so when my sister came into town, it was more or less a shock to say the least.
The three of us share the same caramel-colored waves, hazel eyes, and supernatural ability to see right through to the other side—a quirk passed down from my grandmother Nell. And how I wish Nell were still around.
I sigh as I look around the room. I’m going to need therapy once this evening is through—and when it came to lending an ear and doling out advice, Nell was simply the best therapist there was.
“I mean it, Everett.” Noah glares out at the crowd. “You’re going to pay for this.”
Everett’s chest rumbles with a dry laugh, no smile. “I’ll excuse your threats just this once. I get it. Tonight is proving to be a challenge for you. But if you keep up this trajectory come morning, I’ll make sure you have a fat lip to contend with for the entire month of November.”
Carlotta snickers. “I’d watch it, Foxy. November is the most delicious month of the year. You wouldn’t want anything to go wrong with your pie hole. If your kisser is incapacitated, Sexy might just eat your fair share of pie, too.”
“He’s eating my pie, all right. It’s been his life goal ever since—”
“Ever since you stole a slice of his Featherby pie.” Carlotta gives Noah a consolatory slap on the back.
“Not true,” Everett says. “I’m long over any past grievances Noah and I’ve had. We’re a united front as fathers to Lyla Nell. And seeing that it’s November, I choose to focus on gratitude. We’re grown men now, with wives.” The devilish smile tickles Everett’s lips again. “How about we take the girls on a double date sometime?” he teases, and you can practically see the steam coming from Noah’s ears as he does it.
It’s clear this undercover assignment isn’t going to be easy on Noah—on any of us.
Speaking of the featherheaded devil incarnate, Cormack strides up with a couple of women flanking her on either side, the same blonde and redhead that have clung to her all night.
“Amber.” I choose to eschew Cormack’s presence and smile brightly at the redhead to her left. “You’ve done a wonderful number on this house. I can’t believe how beautiful it is.”
Amber Woolsworth chortles and waves it off as she takes a quick nip of her champagne. “Don’t you worry, Lottie. I’ll have your home looking twice as opulent. Cormack will be green with envy.” She laughs, but she laughs alone.
Cormack looks as if she’s about to take off her Manolo Blahniks and shank the woman with her heel.
Amber has her red locks pulled back, and she’s wearing a pale green silk jacket with a matching skirt and has a red and green floral scarf around her neck that I’m guessing cost more than some of the equipment in my bakery.
Amber cocks her head my way. “How is your new home coming along, anyway?” She licks her lips as she looks to Everett, then does it again as she looks at Noah.
Come to find out, Amber enjoys stealing husbands and boyfriends as much as she does decorating houses. She’s already made a play for both of these men just last month.
I glance to Everett. As it turns out, my ex-boyfriend Bear has his own construction company, so we hired him to build our new home. Bear happens to be married to my best friend Keelie, and that was the swaying factor in why we pushed a pile of money in his direction. They’re both here somewhere wafting in the flotilla of who’s who of all of Vermont.
