Honey Hollow Mysteries · Book 3 Cozy mystery
Crème Brûlée and Cold Cases
A Small Town Vermont Bakery Cozy Mystery
When a stranger who came to clear her father’s name turns up dead at the bottom of the coffee shop’s cellar stairs the week of Christmas, a Vermont pastry chef has to prove it was no accident before her town buries the truth for another sixty years.
Catherine Farrow tasted Clem Ainsworth’s maple crème brûlée three days before Christmas and promised to come back at dawn with a secret about Clem’s grandfather. By morning, she was dead at the bottom of the Hollow Bean’s cellar stairs.
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Catherine came to Honey Hollow to clear her father’s name. He was the contractor blamed for the cheap timber in the 1962 bridge repair. She left Clem a single ledger page of hush money paid to valley families for fifteen years, every line initialed by the same mystery hand.
The county calls it a fall. An older woman, steep stone stairs, an icy night. But Catherine died with her reading glasses on and a pen in her hand, and the leather satchel she never let out of her sight is gone.
Deputy Jonah Barker can’t work a case the county has already closed. He also never tells Clem not to.
Between Christmas orders and a custard that refuses to set, Clem works her way down Catherine’s list of names. Margaux, who shut her door and lied about it. Hector, the rival baker who closed early the night Catherine died and won’t say where he went. Niles, the new selectperson whose father took the money. And Lyle Ainsworth, Clem’s own grandfather, whose initials sit boxed in pencil beside the year 1970.
Somebody in Honey Hollow poured Catherine Farrow one last cup of tea, and they will do anything to keep the town’s sweetest secret buried.
The third Honey Hollow Mystery, a Christmas culinary cozy with a slow-burn romance, a one-eared cat, and five recipes in the back of the book.
For fans of Ellie Alexander and Joanne Fluke.
