Criminally Cocoa

By Amanda Flower

Simple treats turn dangerously tricky on the set of an Amish cooking show in this mystery by the Agatha Award-winning author of Assaulted Caramel.

For Easter this year, Charlotte Weaver is leaving Amish country with her cousin Bailey on her first trip to New York City. She’s thrilled to see the skyscrapers and Times Square, and even more excited to help Bailey on the set of her new cable TV show, Bailey’s Amish Sweets. For the first episode, Bailey is making her famous hand-woven chocolate Easter baskets. But what ought to be a seamless shoot keeps hitting snags, and Charlotte begins to wonder if someone is out to make her sweet cousin look bad.
 
With Bailey feeling nervous about being on camera, Charlotte decides to keep her suspicion of sabotage to herself. But she knows that Bailey has a dangerously jealous rival hiding among her fans at the Gourmet Television network. As the mishaps get increasingly dangerous, Charlotte will have to sift out the saboteur before her trip to the Big Apple turns fatally bitter.
 
Recipe Included!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kensington Books
• Release date: Feb 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781496726711

Amanda Flower

Amanda Flower is an Agatha Award-nominated mystery author (Maid of Murder), who first caught the writing bug in elementary school. She is also the author of Andi Unexpected, the Andi Boggs series, Appleseed Creek and the India Hayes series. When she’s not writing, she works as a librarian at Ursuline College near her hometown of Tallmadge, Ohio. Visit her online at www.amandaflower.com and www.isabellaalan.com.

Book preview

A taste for trouble . . .

As if being in New York City for Easter isn’t exciting enough, Charlotte Weaver has another reason to be thrilled. She’s helping her cousin, Bailey, on the set of her first cable TV show, Bailey’s Amish Sweets. Bailey will even be re-creating the delectable hand-woven chocolate Easter baskets she once crafted for the city’s world-famous JP Chocolates. But once things start rolling, Charlotte starts to notice odd things happening—things that seem intended to make Bailey look bad . . .

With Bailey feeling extra nervous about being on camera, Charlotte decides to keep her suspicion of sabotage to herself. But she knows that among Bailey’s fans at the Gourmet Television network lurks a dangerously jealous rival. Now Charlotte will have to find out who that person is—before sour grapes turns one of the sweetest times of the year fatally bitter . . .

Visit us at www.kensingtonbooks.com

Also by Amanda Flower

Amish Candy Shop Mysteries

Assaulted Caramel

Lethal Licorice

Premeditated Peppermint

Toxic Toffee

Amish Candy Shop Mystery Novella

Criminally Cocoa

Criminally Cocoa

An Amish Candy Shop Mystery

Amanda Flower

Kensington Publishing Corp.

www.kensingtonbooks.com

Copyright

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.

LYRICAL PRESS BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.

119 West 40th Street

New York, NY 10018

Copyright © 2019 by Amanda Flower

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.

All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, educational, or institutional use.

Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018. Attn. Sales Department. Phone: [phone].

Lyrical Press and Lyrical Press logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

First Electronic Edition: March 2019

eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2671-1

eISBN-10: 1-4967-2671-5

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

For Alicia Condon

Acknowledgments

Thanks always to my readers. Without you the Amish Candy Shop Mysteries wouldn’t be going strong. I’m grateful for the opportunity to write this series and its future spin-off, the Amish Matchmaker Mysteries.

Thanks, too, to my editor Alicia Condon and everyone at Kensington. You all are the best. And to my agent Nicole Resciniti, whom I could never thank enough for everything she’s done for me. And to friend David Seymour who helped me plot this novella.

Finally, always thanks to my heavenly Father.

Chapter One

Cut! Cut! the director Raymond Reynolds yelled. He was a tall, loose-jointed man, who braided his hair into a ponytail at the back of his head. Before meeting him, I didn’t think I had ever seen a man with a braid before, and I couldn’t stop staring at it. In my community only little girls braided their hair, never grown women and certainly never menfolk.

Bailey King froze in place. She was halfway through giving instructions on how to weave a chocolate basket for a candy display. Bailey made tempering the chocolate and weaving it over the bottom of a bowl look easy. She held a strip of chocolate in her hand, and it fell on the top of the almost complete basket.

She was frozen like a doe I had seen once paralyzed by the headlights of my father’s buggy back in Holmes County. Not that we were anywhere close to the rural Ohio village at the moment. We were inside a New York City skyscraper standing on a television soundstage. It was a new world for me, being on a soundstage, also known as a set. I had heard it called both. I have learned so many new words since coming to the Big Apple, which is what Bailey’s friend Cass called the city when we first arrived at the airport. She said to me, Charlotte Weaver, welcome to the Big Apple! and I had no idea what she meant. My ears were still ringing and my legs were still be wobbling from being on my first airplane flight, and I thought she’d misspoken until I saw the same phrase all over the souvenirs in the airport gift shop.

Cass had made a big deal out of my coming to New York City because it was my very first time. Bailey lived here before moving to our little Amish village of Harvest. In Harvest, she was an outsider, or at least she was at first—now she fits into the village just fine. I don’t think I would ever fit into the big city, not in my plain dress, with my bright red hair wrapped up into a bun at the nape of my neck and covered with a white prayer cap, sensible black sneakers, and apron. Everywhere we went those first few days, I thought people stopped and stared, but after a week I stopped noticing. There were too many other wonderful things to see in the city, and I wanted to see all of it.

It was this want to know that was the reason I wasn’t baptized into the Amish church yet. Now, during Rumspringa, I could try new things and ask questions. When I was baptized all those questions would have to stop and I would have to live my life by the edicts of the district bishop whether I agreed with him or not. I’d already left my family’s Amish district months ago, so that I could play the organ, an instrument I dearly love. Cousin Clara’s district lets me play music, but they won’t let me avoid making a choice about my faith forever.

Bailey scooped up the piece of chocolate and placed it on a piece of parchment paper. Her long dark hair, which was curled and styled for the camera, fell into her eyes.

The set was almost identical to Swissmen Sweets’ kitchen back in Harvest, except for a few additional things to make it seem more Amish—or at least what the Englischers from the network considered Amish. For one, there was a blank-faced doll on the shelf next to the spices. Clara King, Bailey’s grandmother, would never keep such an item in her working kitchen, and Bailey told the producer so. My maam would never have done such a thing either. The kitchen wasn’t the place for dolls. Dolls were for little girls to play with quietly out of the sight of their mother, who would be busily preparing supper to feed ten people. Feeding everyone every night after a long day working on the farm was a production, and my mother didn’t like the children under her feet.

None of this mattered to Linc Baggins, the show’s executive producer. He wanted things called props to give the set an Amish feel. I was learning that how the set felt was very important to everyone who worked on the show. Before this, I had never thought about what a room felt like at all.

We have to do something to indicate this is an Amish show, Linc had argued with Bailey. It was all quite fascinating, really, learning so much about the Englisch world. What’s more, I was gaining insight into what the Englischers thought of us. For one, they all believe that every Amish person lives on a farm. A lot of them do, but certainly not all. I grew up on a farm, but many Amish live in town and run shops, like Cousin Clara, or work in a factory. With land scarce, owning a farm in Holmes County was quite a feat for an Amish or Englisch family.

As strange as my ways were to the New Yorkers, their ways were even stranger to me. For a girl who