A Half-Baked Murder

Book 1: Cannabis Café Mystery

by Emily George

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Female Sleuths; Mystery; Animal Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

In this irresistible debut mystery from Emily George, aspiring pastry chef Chloe Barnes is ready to take her career higher . . . while bringing down a killer!



Formally trained pastry chef Chloe Barnes is opening a cannabis bakery. That's not at all what the twenty-eight-year-old envisioned while living the dream in Paris with a hot fiancé and a Michelin star restaurant gig around the corner. But the rising "it girl" of choux puffs rethinks everything after a scathing food review and humiliating breakup make her long for home in sunny California. When her beloved grandmother falls ill, Chloe returns to quaint Azalea Bay, to start over in the most satisfying way possible—concocting delicious edibles with her quirky Aunt Dawn.



Combining French luxury and THC, Baked by Chloe will take pot brownies to another level. That is, until a creepy past acquaintance rehashes old drama and shockingly turns up dead—landing Aunt Dawn as the number one murder suspect. Now, alongside her closest confidants, a stunned Chloe must alternate between budding entrepreneur and amateur sleuth to clear her aunt's name, open the best bakery in town, and weed out the real culprit from a list of unsettling suspects!

Release date: February 21, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

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 had announced that motherhood “didn’t suit her” and that she was moving away with her new boyfriend. Since I’d been born out of an anonymous one-night stand, I’d never known my father. I didn’t even have a name. And Mom had only ever seen me as a burden on her social life.

Anything I needed to know about the world, I learned from my grandparents. Grandma Rose, in particular, had peppered the years with glittering gems of wisdom.

Nobody is going to gift you the future you want, Chloe. It’s a house you must build yourself. Your grandfather and I will teach you how to mix cement and lay a strong foundation, but you’re responsible for turning a pile of bricks into a life.

Ambition became my cement, the pastry skills I’d honed in my grandmother’s kitchen with her hand on my shoulder became my bricks, and I designed a dream that involved me leaving small-town life to study at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris in my early twenties. After receiving high praise from my instructors, I entered the workforce.

In a few years I was no longer dwelling in the bottom ranks of the kitchen hierarchy. I made suggestions for the menu, provided input into the flavor profiles of desserts, and worked in test kitchens to come up with innovative and unique dishes. I set my sights on a Head Pastry Chef position at a Michelin-star restaurant and one day penning a cookbook. The life my grandparents had taught me to build was coming together.

But I’d been too distracted to spot a crack in the foundation. Too laser-focused to even consider that what I had built wasn’t strong enough to withstand a storm.

And I was so very wrong.

Shaking my head, I tried to dislodge the thought. There was no sense worrying about things that didn’t affect me anymore. The second I’d found out my beloved Grandma Rose had been diagnosed with breast cancer, I booked a flight home and fled the smoldering ruins of my life and career in Paris. Which meant for now, I was planting my feet in Azalea Bay, and Paris would eventually become a distant memory.

After picking up some ingredients from the supermarket to make a shrimp scampi over the weekend, I headed back to my car. One good thing about being home was getting to cook for my grandmother. It was rewarding to return the favor for all the meals she’d cooked for me over the years. But just as I was heading back to my car, my phone buzzed with a message from my aunt, Dawn.

I laughed. She was always doing stuff like this, spontaneously making plans and expecting people to roll with it. Well, today I was happy to roll with it . . . but only for a short while, because I needed to get home and pop my groceries in the fridge. I texted her back as I walked, saying I could meet for a few minutes. Despite the stress of the last month, I felt a spring in my step again.

It was good to be home and I was going to make the most of it.

As I slowed to a stop where my aunt had asked to meet, I suddenly understood why she wanted me to come here. A corner shop stood empty. It was painted a soft, sunset pink with white window frames. Big panes of glass revealed the inside, which was a blank canvas with the bones of a serving counter and little else. The front door was also white and had a vintage knob shaped like a flower, which was probably gold at one point, but it had developed a beautiful patina over time. A piece of paper that was taped to the inside of the window said FOR LEASE in bold letters.

I pressed a hand to the glass and peered in for a better look. The counter was built and there was sawdust on the ground. If I were to guess, it looked halfway through a renovation, like someone had abandoned their plans before the fit-out could be completed. What was here before? A smoothie bar, perhaps? Or maybe it was one of those custom salad places.

“Chloe!” Aunt Dawn rushed over and gave me a big hug. She smelled like rose and patchouli, and wore approximately six-hundred pieces of jewelry.

Okay, maybe not that many. But still, it was a lot.

She jingled like an army of house cats and the sound never failed to bring a smile to my lips. My aunt bucked almost all societal expectations—she was fifty-three, unmarried, and had zero interest in children. Over the course of my life she’d changed jobs like the wind, had her hair be every color in the rainbow (it was currently a rich, dark purple), and had dabbled in everything from tarot to tree-shaping to competitive duck herding.

Yes, competitive duck herding was a real thing.

“Every time I see you, I get a hug like I’ve just stepped off the plane,” I said with a laugh. “You know how to make a gal feel special.”

“It’s hard to believe you’re really back.” She squeezed me and then cupped her hands around my face, like she was trying to make sure I wasn’t a figment of her imagination.

“Believe it, I’m back.”

“It seems like yesterday that I was listening to your grandmother yell at you for stealing the bike lock out of the shed to wrap around your diary.” She chuckled. “How did you grow up so fast?”

“That was probably a bit excessive.” I cringed. “Especially since every single entry was about Frankie Stewart.”

My crush on him had been Azalea Bay’s worst-kept secret for a time.

“He’s married, you know,” Aunt Dawn said. “Two kids.”

“Don’t rub it in,” I grumbled. “His wife looks like a supermodel, too.”

“So do you, dear.” She patted my arm and I snorted.

A supermodel I was not. I didn’t have any issues with how I looked, because I genuinely believed people had more to offer the world than their appearance. Besides, it was an impossible task to work as a pastry chef while retaining anything close to a model’s physique. Or maybe that was simply my weakness for butter and sugar. Frankly, a life without pain au chocolat was not something I wanted to imagine.

“I’d need to have one hell of a growth spurt,” I joked. “And at twenty-eight, I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed.”

“Good things come in small packages.”

“True.” I grinned. “And what do you think you’re doing showing me an empty shop like this?”

It was a rhetorical question. I knew exactly what she was doing.

“I had a brilliant idea.” My aunt waved her hands energetically in the air, apparently to emphasize the “brilliant” part of her statement.

I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. Aunt Dawn had a thing for brilliant ideas. She collected them like treasures and had started more businesses than I thought was possible for a single human being. Therefore, I knew to approach the conversation with more than a pinch of reservation.

“You always wanted to open a bakery, right?” she asked.

When I was a kid, sure. But now I’d set my sights on working in fine dining, not on running a small-town bakery. Unfortunately, my current situation was in direct opposition to that dream, because exactly how many fine dining restaurants were there in Azalea Bay?

That would be zero. A big fat zip.

Not to mention the fact that there were already two specialty places in town to acquire baked goods—plus the small selection at the local supermarket—and while I knew the locals here were always up for a tasty treat, we didn’t have enough people to warrant any more than that.

My aunt didn’t wait for an answer, however.

Instead she barreled on, “And you made those ‘special’ brownies the other night for your grandma, which I still claim were the most incredible thing I’ve ever eaten.”

Talk about two things I never thought I would hear in the same breath—Grandma Rose and pot brownies.

Weed had been made legal for medicinal purposes over twenty years ago in California, so I hadn’t been surprised to hear that Grandma’s oncologist had suggested it might help with her chemo side effects. The nausea from the chemo treatments had hit her almost immediately and I could tell she’d been more anxious about it all than she was letting on. Frankly, I was glad she’d gotten past the stigma, to put her health first and accept the relief that cannabis offered. Relief that she desperately needed.

But pot brownies? My grandmother had made the request almost without being able to meet my eye. For my entire life, she’d been a straight arrow. She was the person who’d go back to a shop if they accidentally gave her an extra dime, and she’d grounded me once for making fake cigarettes to go with my Pink Ladies Rizzo costume on Halloween. So, when she’d turned to me in her kitchen and asked me to make “special” brownies, I thought she wanted me to make them with Valrhona chocolate.

Nope. Wrong again.

“Where exactly are you going with this?” I frowned at my aunt.

“You could sell them in a bakery.” My aunt’s eyes—which were rimmed with her usual smudgy and dramatic kohl—grew wide. “In your bakery. Well, I was thinking more café, because this would be a lovely spot to have people sit and enjoy a coffee with their weed brownies. But you know what I mean.”

I shook my head. She couldn’t be serious. I was a classically trained pastry chef bound for creating desserts that required tweezers and edible flowers and temperamental doughs. I was supposed to be wearing chef whites and working toward having my creations featured in The Observer and The New York Times.

Not making cannabis-laced baked goods.

“Get real,” I scoffed.

“I’m not joking. Look, I might be an old lady to you, but I’ve tried my share of edibles. Most of them taste average at best. But yours were . . .” She mimicked the chef’s kiss. “You have a gift.”

“Some gift,” I grumbled. “Didn’t stop me getting butchered in Le Figaro.”

My aunt shot me a look. Okay, message received. The pity party was coming to an end.

“I know I make great desserts,” I said. “But starting a business? I just got back.”

“How else would you use your gift here in Azalea Bay, huh? Rolling cinnamon scrolls for the bakery counter at the supermarket?” She shook her head. “Or making wedding cakes at Sweet Tooth?”

I shuddered. As much as I appreciated the skill required to create towering cakes that fed hundreds, the idea of working on anything in the bridal industry made me want to puke. An image of my glittering diamond engagement ring popped into my mind. I’d left it on Jules’s pillow as I’d walked out of his apartment while he was in the middle of a shift.

Jules had been . . . everything. Yes, he had the cliché chef’s temper and sky-high standards. And yes, he had a capital R reputation. But we’d flirted during family meal—which was the meal that all the restaurant staff shared before service began—and he’d praised my humble American-style pies. He’d made me feel special. The first time he’d taken me out for a drink I’d kissed him in the foyer of my apartment building, hair damp from the spring rain. When he proposed, I was so happy I thought I would die.

Then it all came apart at the seams. I found out he’d gotten drunk and slept with one of the juniors. A one-time deal, apparently. A momentary lapse in judgment. Nerves about the wedding we were planning.

But she’d gotten pregnant.

“I am not making wedding cakes.” I shook my head. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do. All I know is that I need to be here with Grandma Rose. My career . . .”

Was in the toilet.

After finding out Jules had knocked someone up, I’d made a critical error: I’d stayed at work even though my head wasn’t in the game.

Of course, it was that night a famous food critic showed up. When his review came out a week later, he’d called my raspberry and chocolate mousse cake amateurish and a bitter disappointment better suited to a supermarket bakery than a five-star restaurant. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get over the shame. And like a healthy pinch of sea salt in the wound . . . that was the day I got the call about Grandma Rose’s diagnosis.

Which is how I ended up back in Azalea Bay, sleeping in my old bedroom, with no plans for the future and my dreams lying like a pile of bricks around me. Coming home instead of staying to fix the damage I’d done to my reputation was as good as admitting I was a talentless hack.

I knew I wasn’t a hack. But I did have bad taste in men and a tendency to bury my head in the sand, which made Aunt Dawn’s prodding all the more painful—because I needed it.

“I thought I’d ask Sabrina for a job.” My best friend ran her family’s bed-and-breakfast on the outskirts of town, and she’d said they were always looking for good kitchen staff. “I could bake for them. Fresh bread and simple pastries for breakfast and fancy little cakes for high tea events.”

For a moment I felt like my comments had disappointed my aunt. She shook her head. “And you’re going to work at the bed-and-breakfast forever?”

“Not forever. Just while Grandma is . . .” I couldn’t even think about the fact that there might be a time limit to consider. “I don’t want to waste the time I have left with her by being somewhere else.”

“I’m proud that you’re such a family-oriented young woman. But if you put your life on hold for so long, you may find there aren’t any opportunities waiting on the other side.”

The comment struck ice-cold fear in my heart, because I knew it was true.

“A weed café, really?”

“Your brownies were amazing. I mean, we all know you’re a talented baker.” She grabbed my arm to emphasize her point. “But cannabis is a tricky flavor to work with and plenty of people get it wrong. I’ve never tasted anything as good as yours.”

“You’re trying to butter me up,” I said, frowning.

“Is it working?” She offered me a charming, hopeful smile and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Maybe,” I mumbled.

“Perhaps this might sway you.” She stuck her hand into her pocket and pulled out a set of keys, jingling them like I was a kitten she was trying to distract. “Want a peek inside?”

I gasped. “How on earth did you get those?”

“Friends in high places.” She winked. “I’ve been doing some work with the real estate office and I called in a favor. I have to drop them off first thing tomorrow, but if you want to take a look . . .”

I bit down on my lip and glanced at the adorable pink shop. It was really cute. Totally what I had envisaged at one point in my younger years as the ultimate life goal—a business selling my own baked goods. Something special and unique that would draw people from all over. But I thought I’d moved on from those dreams.

“Fine,” I said, shaking my head. “Let me have a look.”

I couldn’t quite believe I was agreeing to hear her out. I’d only been home for two days and in that time I’d barely left Grandma Rose’s side. But Dawn had a point. If I was going to stay here—which I was—then I needed a plan. My savings would only last so long and I refused to mooch off my grandmother.

There were two options: A, the safe route where I worked some okay job for okay money and counted down the hours each day. Or B, pivot.

Dawn looked almost giddy as she unlocked the shop and let me inside. “The people who leased the building unfortunately had to back out of their business plans due to a family crisis. The property agent wants to get someone in ASAP, because the owner is spitting mad about the broken contract.”

I walked into the shop and pressed a hand to my chest. It was even more beautiful on the inside. I saw potential in the elegant molding on the walls and the space that was big enough to house a generous velvet-lined banquette. The counter was long and had plenty of space for a big display cabinet as well as an espresso machine.

Baking had always been a creative outlet for me, and now my head was spinning with ideas. I loved the challenge of trying something new, and when Grandma Rose had requested the “special” brownies, it sent me down a rabbit hole of research. For the first time since my life had fallen apart, I’d spent a few blissful hours in the kitchen completely free of my troubles. And Dawn’s comments about how good my pot brownies were had got me thinking about all the baked goods I could infuse.

I could make different types of brownies, like salted caramel or chocolate cherry or peanut butter. My signature “everything but the kitchen sink” cookies would work perfectly as well, with bitter dark chocolate, salty pretzels and honeycomb pieces hiding the herbal nature of the cannabis. I could also do buttery herb scones, delectable praline dark chocolate spheres dusted with edible gold, or flaky savory pastries.

This is crazy. You can’t open a cannabis café.

Why not? It was legal. And while it wasn’t something I’d ever specifically considered, there was nothing else like it in Azalea Bay. I was sure it would make a splash. The only question was, how thin was the line between a splash and a belly flop?

What would people say? Maybe it would be safer to stick to your comfort zone and open a regular old bakery or café.

Instinctively, I knew Dawn’s idea to use cannabis in my baking was the way I could differentiate myself. After all, Sweet Tooth had the market cornered for regular cakes and pastries and everybody knew Bean and Gone was the best place in town for coffee. They were both well established and had won a ton of local business awards. How could I compete with that?

What was the question my old boss had posed one time? Why compete in the part of the ocean where all the sharks were already feeding? You had to find the blue ocean—the untapped potential—with something fresh and new. Instead of poorly flavored gummies and dry chocolate squares, I could make the food as good as the high. Everything could have a touch of luxury—from gold detailing on the hardware to glamorous interior design to a unique menu. Parisian glamour meets West Coast chill.

I would be different than both regular bakeries and cannabis dispensaries—something that took elements of both those things, but was neither. I’d be in a class of my own.

“I can hear your brain working from here,” Dawn said cheekily. “It’s great, isn’t it?”

I looked around. There was no denying the place had incredible bones or that my brain was running a million miles a minute. “I don’t know if I can afford something like this.”

“The lease has good terms and the price is fair. I’ve been looking for something to invest in, too.” She came up beside me. “And I will always bet on you, Chloe.”

I didn’t want to be so tempted by her offer . . . but I was. If I built something incredible here, it could solve all my problems. I could be home permanently to take care of Grandma Rose and have a project to throw my career ambitions into.

My gut was telling me it was a good idea. The right idea.

But little did I know that by this time tomorrow, being cheated on and losing all my career dreams in one fell swoop would be the least of my problems. That dead body I mentioned earlier? Yeah, trouble was headed right for me and I didn’t even see it coming.

I was about to open my mouth and respond when I saw a familiar face peer into the front window. Sabrina! I waved and rushed over to the door to yank it open.

“I thought that was you.” She threw her arms around my neck and squeezed. Her curly hair rubbed against my cheek. We might look like polar opposites—with her dark brown hair, green eyes and tanned skin versus my pin-straight blond hair, blue eyes and vampire complexion—but we were as close as sisters. “I can’t believe you’re back. I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to catch you, but work has been—”

She broke off in an agitated huff.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Just busy getting everything prepared for the summer rush.” She squeezed me again and then pulled back to give me the once-over. “Paris has been good to you, girl. You look amazing.”

“I look like I gained ten pounds from eating my emotions,” I quipped drily. “But I appreciate the kind words.”

Sabrina knew all about the perfect storm of events that resulted in my coming home. We’d video-called each other every single week for the past five years, . . .