Death of a Gingerbread Man

Book 17: Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery

by Lee Hollis

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Culinary Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

It’s a killer Christmas in more ways than one in the latest Hayley Powell Food & Cocktails mystery set in Bar Harbor, Maine.

With the holiday season in full swing, food and cocktails columnist and restauranteur Hayley Powell has lots to check off her last-minute to-do list. Not included is the sudden arrival of her father, who hasn’t been in the picture since she believed in Santa Claus. Dwight Jordan’s presence in Bar Harbor might just be the unwanted gift that keeps on giving—especially after he becomes the top suspect in a case of yuletide murder . . .

As Hayley plans a New Year’s Eve bash while handling a hefty helping of family drama, she must lean into her closest friends to unravel a twisted mystery. Because the countdown is on to find out who killed the sore loser at the gingerbread house contest before Dwight disappears again—this time behind bars. And the more Hayley learns about the possible culprits, the more she knows it’s either crack the case ASAP or watch everything crumble like a stale cookie . . .

Release date: September 24, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

“Mona, for the love of God, could you please slow down?” Hayley begged as they shot down the rural US-1 road in Mona’s white pickup truck toward Salmon Cove in Downeast Maine.

Mona, with one hand on the wheel, fiddled with the radio tuner knob on her console with the other. “I’m sick and tired of listening to this yacht rock station. It’s going to put me to sleep. I need something peppier.” She settled on a hard rock station playing a Led Zeppelin classic.

Hayley’s head pounded from the relentless thumping beat as she shouted over the wailing voice of Robert Plant. “Mona, are you even listening to me?”

Mona was tapping her hands on the steering wheel to the music as Hayley’s eyes settled on a porcupine waddling across the ragged paved road. “Mona, watch out!”

Mona suddenly gripped the wheel with both hands and veered sharply to the right, tires squealing, to avoid a roadkill situation. Oblivious to his near-death experience, the docile porcupine continued on his way to the other side.

“I saw him,” Mona said defensively.

Hayley reached over and lowered the volume on the radio and shot Mona a disapproving look. “The roads are still icy from the last winter storm and I really would love to survive long enough to see the New Year.”

Mona let up on the gas and the speedometer ticked back down from seventy-five to fifty-two. “Happy?”

“Look, you’re the one who desperately wanted me to come with you on this last-minute road trip. I still have a ton of Christmas shopping I need to get done and you-know-who arrives on Monday.”

Hayley was referring to her mother, Sheila, who was flying up from Florida for the holidays with her boyfriend, Carl. Hayley had been disappointed that her now two grown children, Gemma and Dustin, were not going to make it home for Christmas this year. Gemma was swamped producing a Christmas special for her Food Network show in New York while her boyfriend, Conner, was in London wrapping up a six-week run in a West End play and would not be back in the States until Christmas Eve, while Hayley’s son, Dustin; his girlfriend, MacKenzie; and their son, Eli were planning to spend the holidays with MacKenzie’s parents in Baton Rouge. So when Sheila had broached the topic with Hayley about traveling to Maine and visiting until just after the new year, Hayley could not very well use the excuse of having a full house. In addition, she had made the decision to close her restaurant, Hayley’s Kitchen, for the rest of December with plans to open it back up in early January after hosting a private New Year’s party there. Her husband, Bruce, who was a big fan of Sheila’s longtime beau and fellow sports fan, Carl, encouraged her to bite the bullet and extend an invitation, which Sheila eagerly accepted.

“I’m doing you a favor getting you out of town for some rest and relaxation before Hurricane Sheila blows into town!” Mona exclaimed.

Hayley noticed the speedometer creeping back up past sixty miles an hour. “You call this Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride rest and relaxation? My heart’s racing like it’s competing in the Indy five hundred!”

“I wanna get to Salmon Cove before dinnertime,” Mona insisted. “And in case you’ve forgotten, we are dealing with a serious medical emergency!”

“Your dad just left this morning. I’m sure he’ll be fine without his blood pressure meds until we get there.”

Mona’s father, Bubba, had set out at the crack of dawn that day for an ice fishing weekend at the Butler family cabin in Salmon Cove, which was about a three-hour drive from Bar Harbor. When Mona’s mother, Jane, realized her husband had left his bottle of high dosage lisinopril pills behind, she had tried calling him to turn around and come back. But like Mona, Bubba usually turned his phone off whenever he embarked on a road trip in order to shut out the outside world and focus on his time alone and quiet peace of mind. Jane slipped into a panic, with visions of poor Bubba clutching his chest out on the ice and dropping dead from a massive coronary. Mona tried calming her mother down, explaining he would most likely be fine for a couple of days, but Jane was not having it. She had demanded Mona immediately get in her truck and personally hand deliver her father’s lifesaving medicine to him. Mona at first tried calling the local pharmacy in Salmon Cove to see if they could help, but given the town’s tiny population, especially during the cold winter months, it turned out to be already closed for the whole weekend. Mona had finally relented and agreed to drive down to Salmon Cove, but managed to strong-arm Hayley into accompanying her.

The plan was to arrive around six with Bubba’s meds, spend the night, then set out in the early hours back to Bar Harbor, allowing Bubba his much-cherished solitude until his return home Sunday night.

Mona had not been back to Salmon Cove in years. She had spent many summers at the family cabin and even had a childhood romance with a local boy, Corey Guildford, which had been rekindled when she, Hayley, and Liddy had traveled there for a girls’ weekend away and had gotten mixed up in the suspicious death of a visiting travel writer. Corey tragically perished in a lobster boat accident and Mona had returned for the memorial service and adopted Corey’s golden retriever, Sadie, who was still alive and well. Mona was so grief-stricken by the loss of Corey she could not bring herself to return to Salmon Cove.

Until today.

Hayley suspected Mona pressuring her to tag along on this quick there-and-back trip was for some much-needed emotional support. Although Mona rarely displayed feelings other than what could best be categorized as annoyed or really annoyed, Hayley instinctively knew that she had never fully gotten over Corey. Especially now that she had divorced her deadbeat couch potato husband, Dennis, after over twenty-five years of marriage and was free to explore a new relationship. It was so sad to think of the lost opportunity with Corey. Hayley had been a firsthand witness to the close bond that had formed between the two when they reunited six years ago.

Hayley glanced over at Mona, who was no longer tapping along to the Van Halen song that was now playing on the radio. She was staring straight ahead at the empty road, her eyes glistening, no doubt thinking about the late Corey Guildford the closer they got to Salmon Cove.

Shivering, Hayley asked, “Mind if I turn up the heat a little bit? I’m freezing!”

“Suit yourself,” Mona grumbled, her lead foot pressing down on the accelerator some more.

Hayley glanced at the speedometer. It was back to hovering near seventy miles an hour. “Mona, I don’t mean to be a pest, but if you’re not careful, we’re going to be pulled over for speeding.”

Mona sighed. “Would you stop worrying so much, Hayley? We’re not going to get pulled over! There’s no one else on the road for miles! You’re always worst-case scenario!”

Just then, through the rearview mirror, both of them could plainly see a flashing blue light closing in on them from behind.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Mona cried. “What’s the speed limit?”

“Fifty-five. You’re going seventy.”

“The cops never pull you over for going a mere ten miles over the speed limit! What kind of speed trap is this?”

“You’re going fifteen miles over the speed limit and that whole ‘cops never pull you over for going only ten miles over the speed limit’ is just a myth!”

“It’s true! It’s a thing!”

“It’s not a thing, Mona. Sergio told me so.”

“What does he know?”

Hayley bit her tongue. Her brother-in-law had been the police chief of Bar Harbor going on twenty years now. She was reasonably confident he knew a thing or two about the habits of law enforcement.

The light-blue squad car was right on their tail now.

“Mona, I really think you should pull over.”

“I think I can outrun ‘em!”

“Mona, don’t!”

“I’m just joshing you, Hayley. Jeez, when did you lose your sense of humor?”

“About five miles back when you nearly squashed a poor unsuspecting porcupine!”

Mona flipped the blinker switch and pulled over to the side of the road, rolling to a stop in a patch of gravel. The police car followed and parked directly behind the flatbed of Mona’s pickup truck. Hayley stared out the passenger-side mirror to see a tall, imposing female officer get out. She wore a blue fur-lined parka over her police uniform. Her dirty blond hair was pulled back in a bun and she wore sunglasses even though the weather was gray and gloomy.

Hayley immediately recognized her.

It was Sheriff Daphne Wilkes.

Hayley, Liddy, and Mona had clashed with the very stern and strict Salmon Cove sheriff on their last trip to the area. Wilkes had even arrested them for breaking and entering: A long story from a lifetime ago. She did not suffer fools lightly and had at one time given them a police escort to the edge of town to insure they left after several warnings to stop sticking their noses in official police business. Hayley was under the impression that Sheriff Wilkes would not exactly be thrilled to see them and held her breath as she approached the driver’s-side window.

Mona rolled down the window and muttered in as friendly a tone as she could muster, “Afternoon, Sheriff.”

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” Wilkes barked.

Mona nodded. “I may have been going a few miles over the speed limit.”

Mona was smart enough not to trot out her “ten miles over the speed limit” theory. She also had recognized Wilkes and was presently trying to avoid eye contact.

“Eighteen miles over, to be exact. May I see your license and registration, please?”

Mona signaled Hayley to pop open the glove compartment and fish out her registration as Mona searched her bag for her driver’s license. Wilkes’s eyes narrowed as she seemed to recognize the two women, but remained mum until Mona handed her the Maine state license and she read the name.

Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Mona Barnes?”

Mona turned to face her, offering her a weak smile. “Nice to see you again, Daphne.”

“Sheriff Wilkes,” she corrected her gruffly before leaning down to peer over at Hayley sinking down in the passenger’s seat. She moaned. “And you too?”

“Hi, Sheriff! It’s been a while! You look great! Have you done something with your hair?” Hayley blathered on, desperate to keep things light.

“No. I always keep it pulled back in a bun. Just like I did six years ago. Only difference is a few more gray hairs, which I got the last time I saw you two.”

Mona chuckled.

Wilkes gave her a bemused look.

Mona’s smile quickly disappeared. She rummaged in the cup holder and raised the bottle of lisinopril. “We’re not planning to stay long, Sheriff. My father’s at the cabin this weekend and he forgot to pack his blood pressure meds, and so Hayley and I are just dropping them off, and then we’re heading straight back to Bar Harbor, no hanging around, no dillydallying. Quick in and out. Very stealth.”

Wilkes nodded. “I see. So you promise you’re not going to keep popping up around town, making my life miserable. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Mona nodded vigorously. “Yes! Absolutely! You let us go with a warning, and I will give you my personal guarantee that you will not lay eyes on us again. Right, Hayley?”

“That’s right!” Hayley piped up.

“I also promise to adhere to the ‘no more than ten miles over the speed limit’ rule so you won’t have to worry about pulling us over for speeding again,” Mona added.

Wilkes frowned. “You know that’s not a real rule, right? That’s not a thing!”

“Yes, sorry,” Mona mumbled, chastised. She refused to look over in Hayley’s direction because she didn’t want to have to endure her “I told you so” smirk.

“Okay, then,” Wilkes said. “Consider this your final warning.”

As Wilkes strolled back to her squad car, Mona carefully and slowly shifted the gear to drive and pulled back onto the road for the last seven miles to the Butler family cabin in the isolated woods just outside Salmon Cove.

As they barreled down the dirt road toward the Butler cabin that was set back in the woods a few hundred yards from the frozen lake, Hayley immediately noticed Bubba’s battered Ford Maverick parked in an open area next to a thicket of trees alongside two vehicles Hayley didn’t recognize.

“Looks like your father has company,” Hayley said as Mona strained to get a look at the other two cars parked next to her dad’s truck: a black Mercedes-Benz covered in mud and a shabby two-door jalopy with visible rust, scratches, dents, and faded paint belonging to someone who obviously did not invest a lot of time in its care and maintenance.

Mona screeched to a halt in front of the cabin and hopped out of the truck, trudging through the snow over to the parked cars to get a look at the license plates. “The Mercedes is from New York. The trash heap is from New Mexico.”

“So they obviously don’t belong to locals,” Hayley concluded. “Did Bubba mention having visitors this weekend?”

Mona shook her head. “Nope. He didn’t say much of anything, except that he’d be home Sunday night.”

They hustled back to the cabin. When Mona reached for the door handle, Hayley stopped her. “Maybe you should knock first.”

“What the hell for?” Mona sniffed. “This place belongs to me just as much as it does to Dad!” She shoved the door open and marched inside with Hayley close behind her. There was no one in the cabin, but there was evidence that more than one person was currently staying here. Besides the unmade bed in the main bedroom, there were two cots set up, one in front of the fireplace, the other over near the recent bathroom addition. Mona’s mother, Jane, insisted the long-standing outhouse behind the cabin be burned down in favor of a septic tank and running water from a nearby well. Both cots had two pillows and wadded-up sheets and thick gray blankets tossed across them, suggesting they had recently been slept in. Hayley wandered over to the kitchen area to see three plates on the table, scraped clean but with tiny remnants of bacon, egg, and breadcrumbs. In the sink on top of a pile of dirty dishes were three coffee cups and three shot glasses. A virtual liquor store’s worth of booze was on the counter, as well as giant bags of potato chips, snack nuts, and Chex Mix.

“Okay, right now I’m feeling an awful lot like Goldilocks, who has come home to find three bears living in her friggin’ house!” Mona exclaimed.

“Who else do you think is staying here?”

Mona shrugged. “Beats me. Every December it’s the same. Dad comes here to get away from my mother for a few days and do some ice fishing in peace. He’s never said one word about anyone else joining him.”

“So what do you think? Is he having some kind of secret affair?”

“With more than one woman? Dad doesn’t strike me as a guy who would date Kendall and Kylie Jenner at the same time! He’s a little more conservative than that!”

Hayley noticed three overnight bags stuffed in the corner of the cabin. She walked over and bent down to inspect them.

“Dad’s is the scuffed-up gray gym bag. I’ve never seen the other two before,” Mona said.

Hayley unzipped the Travelpro Platinum Elite Carry-On Spinner and opened it up. It was filled with expensive men’s sweaters and slacks and designer shirts. The other duffel bag was stuffed with cheap pullovers and fraying jeans and a couple of moth-eaten sweaters. “Okay, this is definitely some kind of boys’ weekend, with one rich dude and the other barely getting by.”

Mona scratched her chin, dumbfounded. “What is he up to? Who are these guys?”

As if on cue, the door to the cabin was suddenly flung open and Bubba stood in the threshold, red-faced. “Mona, what the hell are you doing here?”

Mona reached into her coat pocket and yanked out the bottle of pills she had been dispatched to deliver. “You forgot your friggin’ blood pressure meds! I came all the way down here to save you from a possible coronary and that’s how you talk to me?”

Bubba snorted and shook his head. “Well, you could’ve called and given me a heads-up that you were coming!”

“I did call you, doofus! Check your phone. Mom left three messages and I left two. But let me guess. You didn’t want to be disturbed, so you turned off your phone!”

Bubba mumbled something inaudible.

Mona leaned forward, turning her left ear toward him. “What was that, Dad? I didn’t hear you!”

Bubba cleared his throat. “I said you may be right about that! But come on, I wasn’t going to keel over just because I don’t pop my meds for a measly couple of days!”

Mona marched over and grabbed a breakfast plate, raising it in the air. “Eggs? Bacon?” She plucked a shot glass from the kitchen sink. “Whiskey? You’re a heart attack waiting to happen, Dad! I probably just saved your life!”

“You sound just like your mother,” Bubba muttered.

Mona’s nostrils flared.

She never liked being compared to her mother.

Hayley never thought Mona took after Jane.

But she was the spitting image in both looks and personality as her father.

A man in a black Moncler puffer jacket and carrying some firewood appeared just over Bubba’s right shoulder. Hayley recognized him instantly. “Mr. Crawford!”

The man peered over Bubba’s shoulder. “Hayley, is that you?”

It was Liddy Crawford’s father, Elmer. After divorcing Liddy’s mother, Celeste, when Liddy was in college, he had moved to New York, which would explain the license plate on the Mercedes and the expensive luggage. Like his daughter, Elmer Crawford was a very successful real estate agent, handling high-end properties in Manhattan. He had also come out as gay later in life and was now living with his husband, Rocco, an interior decorator, on Park Avenue.

“Does Liddy know you’re here?”

Elmer’s face went white. “Uh, not exactly. Hayley, there is something you should probably know—”

Before he could finish his thought, the other mystery guest pushed his way through, also carrying an armful of firewood. “Coming through—I gotta put this wood down, my arm’s cramping up!” The man stopped in his tracks at the sight of Hayley and dropped the wood, one piece nailing the edge of Bubba’s right boot.

Bubba’s whole face scrunched up as he yelled, “Watch it, Dwight, you nearly took out my big toe!”

Dwight.

Hayley could hardly believe it.

The man standing before them had shaggy gray hair and a scraggly beard. The lines on his aging face each had a story to tell. His body was hardly robust, but not slight either. The loose-fitting forest green sweater he was wearing made it hard to tell.

But it was the eyes.

The eyes gave him away.

They were the same as Hayley’s.

Hazel.

With a hint of mischief.

And they l. . .