Muffin Murder (Lexy Baker Cozy Mystery Short Story #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Yard sale weekend in Brooke Ridge Falls meant two things: the display case would be empty by nine, and somebody was going to cause a scene before noon.

Of course, the Cup and Cake bakery was busy every weekend, but this particular weekend was known for chaos.

Main Street filled up with pickers in canvas jackets, tourists who found Brooke Ridge Falls charming and had absolutely no concept of sidewalk traffic flow, and the locals, who showed up the same time they always did because a town-wide yard sale was not, in their view, a good enough reason to change one’s coffee routine.

And of course, Lexy’s grandmother, Nans, and her partners in crime, Ruth, Ida and Helen, would show up no matter what was going on. Nans walked straight to the display case, studied it with the focused attention she normally reserved for crime scenes, and selected a raspberry danish.

Helen took a lemon poppy and asked Cassie nicely if there was any of the cardamom shortbread left. There wasn’t. Helen took a second lemon poppy.

Ruth got a plain scone, barely glancing at the case because she was already reading something on her iPad that had given her a frown.

Ida got one of everything in the bottom row, then reconsidered and added something from the top row, then carried the whole plate to their usual table by the window like she’d made a series of completely reasonable decisions.

Nans claimed her usual chair with the view of Main Street and the waterfall with the calm certainty of someone who had never once found it taken.

“There’s a neighborhood yard sale app,” Ruth announced to the table, not looking up. “Someone put a chinoiserie lamp at the Parker sale and people have been talking about it for forty minutes. I’ve been watching the thread.”

Helen blinked. “There’s a thread?”

“Yeah, someone took a picture and there are seventeen replies. One argument about provenance. One person just typed the word gorgeous fourteen times in a row.”

“That was probably Janet Fillmore,” Ida said. “She does that with everything. I once saw her leave fourteen heart emojis on a photo of a leaf blower someone was selling on marketplace.”

“To be fair,” Helen said, “it was a very nice leaf blower.”

Lexy kept moving — refills, change, a to-go box, two more coffees, back to the counter before the next wave pushed through the door.

The morning had the particular energy she both loved and mildly feared: fast and warm, the display case emptying in satisfying chunks, everything running just slightly ahead of her.

“Muffins!” Cassie announced, coming through the swinging door with a fresh tray and loading then in the glass case.

Everett Pike strolled in with a duffel bag holding something wrapped in newspaper. Everett was local picker and today he had the look of a man sitting on a secret, which with Everett usually meant he'd found something at a yard sale and wanted everyone to ask about it.

He set the bundle on the counter.

“Morning, Everett.” Lexy reached for the coffee pot. “The usual?”

“Blueberry today.” He was already unwrapping the newspaper. “Special occasion.”

Cassie leaned out of the kitchen doorway. She had excellent instincts for when something was about to be revealed. “Ooh. What is it?”

He peeled back the last fold of newspaper like he was unveiling something at a ribbon-cutting.

The cat was about ten inches tall — porcelain, painted in creamy whites and blues, seated upright with one paw raised. It sat on a bronze base that was doing a lot: swirling flourishes, decorative scrollwork.

Cassie studied it. “That is the fanciest little cat I have ever seen in my entire life.”

“Picked it up at the Mercer place.” Everett wrapped both hands around his mug with the satisfaction of a man settling in to enjoy the next part. “Had a whole table of old stuff. This was between a broken clock radio and a stack of VHS tapes.”

“How much did you pay?” Cassie asked.

Everett smiled. Said nothing. This was, apparently, the whole point.

From the window table, Beatrice Sloan had been watching over the rim of her coffee cup. She was Brooke Ridge Falls’ foremost antiques authority, credentials legitimate enough that even the people who found her exhausting admitted she knew her stuff.

“Pretty little thing,” she said, in a tone that made pretty little thing sound like a diagnosis.

“But that bronze base is ridiculously overdone. Far too grand for the porcelain — the whole piece is decorative, not serious.” She set down her cup.

“You can find cats like that on any vintage resale site. It’s not worth as much as you think. Maybe twenty-five dollars.”

Everett nodded pleasantly. “Good to know.”

Margo Haskell came through the door sideways, wrestling a tote bag that suggested she’d already done serious damage on Main Street.

Margo was a fixture — the kind of person who made a town function through sheer civic willpower.

She volunteered for everything, remembered everyone’s grandmother’s name, and collected the church bake sale pastries with the brisk efficiency of someone running a small logistics operation.

She came in like she was on a mission—which she probably was because she had called in an order for a dozen cinnamon roles earlier.

Everett accepted his blueberry muffin, dropped some money on the counter, and headed for the door.

“I have your order ready, Margo,” Lexy called as she finished boxing up someone else’s order. When she was done she turned to ring up Margo who hadn’t quite made it to the counter.

“Margo?”

Margo blinked, smiled, and headed to the counter. “Sorry — yes. Good morning. Thank you, Lexy.”She was out the door in under a minute, cinnamon buns tucked securely under her arm.

“Oh.” Helen sat up straighter, nose practically to the glass of the window. “The hat menagerie is setting up a table outside. Look at that green one.” She turned back to the table. “Come on, ladies. I need a new hat.”

“You have fourteen hats,” Ruth said.

“I need a fifteenth.”

Ida was already reaching for her purse. Nans was already standing. Ruth closed her iPad with the sigh of a woman who knew exactly how this was going to go and had accepted it.

Lexy watched them go, smiled, and went back to her muffins.

The next twenty minutes were the most peaceful of the morning. The yard sale crowd thinned to a steady trickle, Cassie found her rhythm in the kitchen, and Main Street settled into the comfortable hum of a town happily picking through each other’s discarded belongings.

Then the front door flew open so violently the bell didn’t chime so much as crash, and a delivery driver in a red polo shirt stood in the doorway, white as chalk, chest heaving like he’d run the whole length of the alley to get there.