“You mean the kind in that box?” A guy in the front of the line pointed.
There were gasps of shock from the crowd and then from Brooks.
“Poison! They’re poison!” Brooks grasped the box of cupcakes, then his knees collapsed. One hand clutched his throat. The other held the box of cupcakes emblazoned with my café name.
He fell to the ground, the cupcakes tumbling out of the box onto him as he convulsed and frothed on the black-and-white-checkered-tile floor.
Blood poured out of his mouth while Oakley wailed and patrons screamed.
“Poison!”
“The food is poisoned!”
“Save the cats!” Alice cried.
“Save my baby!” Oakley wailed as the EMTs rushed in to help.
But it was too late.
I watched them work on Brooks as, around me, my livelihood went down in flames. People were throwing away their cupcakes and dumping out their coffee.
Winston called for backup on his cop radio. Outside, sirens wailed.
The senior EMT, grim faced, finally sat back on his heels, glanced up at the cop, and shook his head.
Oakley’s hand fluttered to her mouth. The other flew to her huge pregnant belly. “Dead? He can’t be dead.”
“I think,” the EMT said, looking up at me, down at the cupcakes, then back up, “he may have been poisoned.”
Before I could stop myself, I shouted, “I didn’t do it!”
2
MARIUS
“Lucky duck! You only just got into town this morning, and already, Edna’s granddaughter murdered her husband.” Aunt Frances cackled. “This is shaping up to be a humdinger of a December.”
“Indeed.”
In a moment of guilt after Thanksgiving, I’d agreed to work remotely from my elderly great-aunt’s guest room in the senior living complex I paid a lot of money for her to live at. Because—as Aunt Frances had tearfully declared over the Thanksgiving sandwiches she was prepping for me at my parents’ house—this could be her last holiday season on earth. She had never been blessed with any children, and I was like a son to her. All she wanted for Christmas was to spend just a little more time with me before she passed.
As if.
The small older woman was spry and energetic, waving to her friend and loudly talking about the corpse on the floor like they were discussing what to bring to the holiday party.
After I’d graduated from law school, my parents had retired and started spending the majority of their time on cruise ships. Itried my best to forget about my small hometown of Harrogate. I was a big-shot corporate lawyer in New York City. I didn’t need the small kooky town.
I should never have come back. My parents had the right idea—get out of Dodge for Christmas.
Now an innocent man had been murdered right in front of me.
“I can’t believe Emmie would poison her husband,” Aunt Frances was saying loudly.
“My baby daddy!” Oakley was screaming from the floor of the café.
The police were trying to get things under control. Good luck in the small town of Harrogate. Someone yelled out on the street that there’d been a murder at the Santa Claws Café, and townspeople came running. Several were trying to buy cupcakes because they wanted to resell them. Others wanted to know about the cupcake advent calendar.
“Do we still get our daily cupcake?” a young woman asked Emmie anxiously as the heavyset police officer tried to untangle his handcuffs from his belt.
