A Half-Baked Murder


 
 
 
 
 
 A HALF-BAKED MURDER 
 EMILY GEORGE 
 
 Kensington Publishing Corp. www.kensingtonbooks.com 
 
 
 
 Table of Contents
 
 Title Page
 
 Copyright Page
 Dedication
 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
 RECIPES
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 
 
 
 
 
 KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018 
 
 Copyright © 2023 by Stefanie Little and Kensington Publishing Corp. 
 
 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews. 
 
 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 
 
 To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book. 
 
 The K and Teapot logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp. 
 
 ISBN: 978-1-4967-4049-6 (ebook) 
 ISBN: 978-1-4967-4048-9 
 
 
 
 
 
 To Nan, for supplying me with “book funds” every school holidays. I miss you. 
 
 And to Mum, for being a fighter. 
 
 
 CHAPTER 1 
 There’s something you should know about me before we get into this. I grew up on a steady diet of romantic ideals—both of the Prince Charming and “you can achieve anything” variety. 
 It started with Disney, which not only gave me false expectations about how amazing my hair should look when wet (thanks, Ariel) but of how my “true love” would stumble across me when I least expected it. As I got older, cartoon fairy tales morphed into 2000s romantic comedies. I worshiped at the altars of Drew Barrymore and Reese Witherspoon and Cameron Diaz. I thought my life would be a fabulous montage of amazing outfits and adventure and charming men. But as I grew up, I came to a few unwelcome conclusions. 
 One, no woman should ever own a pair of pants with the word “juicy” written across the butt. 
 Two, my hair never looked good wet. 
 Three, dreams were fragile things easily shattered by the gritty truth of the real world. 
 Sometimes, when you kiss a prince they turn back into a toad. Sometimes, when you shoot for the moon in becoming a classically trained pastry chef in Paris, you do not land among the Michelin stars. Sometimes, instead of making a perfect choux pastry you end up making pot brownies. 
 And sometimes, when you think you have everything worked out, a dead body ruins it all. 
 But let’s rewind a bit. 
 * * * 
 I was strolling along my hometown’s main strip. Like a lot of coastal towns, Azalea Bay was designed to echo the landscape. Sun-bleached wood, blue and yellow paint, images of starfish and seashells and dolphins. There were pretty scalloped awnings and eye-catching window displays with puntastic signs. 
 I could name the people who owned almost every single business along the strip, although some had changed hands in the five years I’d been away. My favorite café, Bean and Gone, had gotten a facelift and looked delightfully funky with Edison bulbs strung along the back wall and a new sign that mimicked vintage Las Vegas billboards. Thankfully, their coffee was just as good as I remembered. 
 A few doors down was one of two bakeries in town—Loafing Around, which was a more traditional bakery focused on fresh breads and rolls. Sweet Tooth was further up the strip and satisfied the town’s dessert needs with cookies, pastries, and doughnuts. Plus it was the hot spot for special-occasion cakes. The surf shop, Offshore, brought color and vibrancy to the strip, with its rainbow racks of surfboards and swimsuits strung like a garland over the large front entrance. There was the ice cream parlor, Dripping Cones, which had a pink and yellow striped awning and a permanent line out the front, even when the weather wasn’t that great. 
 Music always played in Azalea Bay—in this case a Beach Boys track, which floated on the air from the open doors of the surf shop and made me smile—and the slapping sound of flip-flops as people came and went from the sandy shoreline. No matter where you went, there were grains of sand tracked from the beach, and the balsamic scent of cypress trees mingled with sweet vanilla ice cream and coconut sunscreen, lightly salted by the ocean air, even when it wasn’t hot outside. 
 I’d missed the laidback charm of this place when I was in Paris. Sure, seeing the Eiffel Tower from my bedroom—even if it was so far away I had to squint to bring it into focus—was pretty darn amazing. But I’d always felt out of place there. Not quite fashionable or cool enough. Even when I thought I’d started building a life with the man of my dreams, it turned out I was dead wrong. 
 You see, I had taken that “you can achieve anything” message to mean that any dream could be turned into a reality if a person was willing to work hard enough. I learned that from my grandparents. They were the best influences I could have asked for. Sadly, Gramps was no longer with us, but his impact—along with my grandmother’s—was lasting. When I was eleven years old, my mother