Chocolate Chip Murder: Mountain Ridge Mysteries, #1

By Sasha Mckenzie

When Christy opened up Christy's Cookies bakery in the small town of Mountain Ridge, Virginia, she was ready for many new challenges in her life. What she wasn't ready for was to be forced to solve a mysterious murder of one of the town's most prominent citizens.

Now Christy must band together with her friends and fellow sleuths to uncover the small town's secrets. But what will she do when one of her closest friends becomes a prime suspect?

Chocolate Chip Murder is chock full of mystery, humor, romance, and tasty treats.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sasha McKenzie
• Release date: Aug 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533730442

Book preview

Chapter 1: Cookies and a College Boy

I heard the clattering rattle of the cowbells as someone entered my cookie shop, and broke into a grin as I set the pan of Jam Thumbprint cookies I had just taken out of the oven on the counter top. The scent of sugar, apricot, raspberry, and blueberry baked goodness filled the shop, and I realized I was the happiest I had ever been. I had only opened my little bakery a few months ago, but business was picking up, getting busier every day. Word of mouth was making my little cookie venture the place to go. But who can blame them—who can resist a hot, fresh-out-of-the-oven, soft and moist disc of cookie-goodness on a cold January day in Virginia? Not me, sister. I snatched up one of my creations and took a bite; the Apricot preserves flooded my mouth with delicious sweetness. I hummed in delight.

Half a year before, I had been working at a job as a retail associate for a monstrously huge chain that sold everything from croutons to crayons; lettuce to lawnmowers. My position was a brain-deadening, tedious bundle of frustration and disappointment. Every day I could feel a few more brain cells jumping ship as they realized they were never going to be put to use. As I straightened merchandise on shelves for the thousandth time per day, I would dream of being an independent, self-employed woman; I dreamed of steering my own life, not have it be predetermined by some corporate stooge in an office a thousand miles away. A stooge half my age, fresh out of Harvard, who probably had never waited on a customer in his life.

But what could I do? I was in my mid-forties, (sshhh, keep that a secret, okay?) divorced over two decades before, no previous business experience, and six credits from the local community college. I was trapped, until one day when I was accused of doing something that my supervisor was guilty of doing, and the rat blamed it on me to avoid punishment. I had had enough; I quit on the spot. It was an insane move that should have ended in disaster.

But it didn’t. I scraped up every penny I could find, emptying savings and checking accounts, piggy banks, even scrounging through the sofa for lost change. I sold my car, moved out of my apartment, and had a yard sale that offered everything but the clothes on my back. I took the little bundle of money that this generated and opened my own bakery, specializing in cookies and other sweet treats.

My shop, and the small apartment on the second floor that became my new home, was located in the middle of the downtown shopping area, and Christy’s Creative Cookies had rapidly become the gathering place for half the rumor-hens in the small town. That was another great thing about my new career: I had been well-endowed with the curiosity gene, and I loved to get the scoop on the goings-on of my neighbors—and pretty much any other human being. To me, the gossip that filled my shop was almost as sweet as the aroma of sugar cookies dipped in fudge.

I had a friend that helped me out in the shop. Sandy—cute, plump, sassy, and my best friend since middle school—helped with customers in the afternoon, as well with the evening cleanup. She had a talented ear that picked up all the juiciest gossip, as well as a tendency to cause trouble now and then. She also worked part-time as a real estate agent, which allowed her to get to the best gossip about new arrivals in our town before anyone else.

I wiped the sweat from my brow, took off my oven mitts, slid the cookies onto a glass platter, and left the kitchen to greet my customer. I pushed open the swinging door, and almost sang, Good Morning. Welcome to Christy’s Creative Cookies. You’re just in time. I just took some Jam Thumbprints out of the oven. I could—

No. Thank you. We’re not interested. It was Carol Gannett, a woman as wide as a refrigerator and with the personality of one as well. Everyone in town agreed—well, everyone in my gossip circle—that the 60-something woman was a loud, pompous, arrogant, spiteful witch of a woman. She had made enemies of just about everyone that had ever met her, with a few exceptions. In fact, one of the exceptions was rumored to be a man that wasn’t considered to be that bad of a catch—for the older ladies, anyway.

Carol Gannett considered herself a few steps above every other woman in town. More than a few steps; after you talked to the woman for more than thirty seconds, you realized that she felt she was in an entirely different league than you, and you had absolutely no hope of attaining equality with her lordship.

Some of her attitude might have been based on her dominance at the annual Heritage Days festival, where she routinely took home the blue ribbons for her fudge, quilts, knit work, and oil paintings, not to mention the rave reviews the judges gave her preserves each year, just before bestowing yet another blue ribbon on her. That was part of the reason that many disliked her. Not for the winning, but for her attitude after her triumph. She would strut around like a conquering Caesar, loudly proclaiming her awesomeness, and making disparaging remarks about her competitor’s entries. In other words, she acted like a spoiled child that had never been taught the social graces, at all.

She was accompanied by one of the few friends she had—maybe her only friend, now that I think of it. Dorothy ‘Dotty’ Simpson was everything that Mrs. Gannett was not; Where Carol was wide, Dotty was slender; where Carol was rough, her friend was refined; where Carol was frumpy and unkempt, Dotty was elegant and tidy; and where Carl Gannett dyed her hair a brilliant blonde swept up in a complex hairstyle, Dotty wore her hair in a simple short style, without any coloring to conceal the gray. 

Hello, Carol. Dotty. The smile that I had worn upon entering the room threatened to slip when I saw it was Carol, but seeing Dotty with her helped me to keep it plastered on my face. What can I do ya fer?

What you can do for me, Carol said, emphasizing the correct way to say the sentence—as if I didn’t know. "Is provide me with a fresh two-dozen of your chocolate chip cookies. Wrapped nicely. She tilted her head forward, looking at me over her stylish—in the 1950s—eyeglasses. Fresh. Not some week-old leftovers that you are trying to get rid of."

I felt the blood rush to my face, and I now know what people meant when they use