Cupcakes and Killing: A Cozy Mystery (Sweet Shoppe Mysteries - Book 2) by Cora Wilkins Read Free Book Online Page B

Do you know who she was seeing recently?”
    “Not really, aside from that one fling with Amy’s boyfriend. It was weird, she was usually pretty open with that kind of stuff…but there was this one guy she talked about sometimes, and she never told me his name. They were on and off for ages.”
    I exchanged a glance with Kaye. Why would Zara have been keeping a man she was dating a secret? Like Mia had just said, she was usually quite open about that subject.
    Mia suddenly perked up. “Oh my God. I just remembered something. I’ll be back in a sec.”
    She returned a moment later with a small leather-bound journal in her hand.
    “My Mom always kept a diary in her desk drawer,” she explained. “I totally forgot about it till just now. She didn’t write much in it, but she kept all her appointments and dates recorded in it. Maybe it’ll help?”
    She passed it to Kaye, and I leaned over and had a look as she opened it and leafed through it. “Hmm…it says she was having dinner with someone called ‘DT’ four days before the wedding. Any idea who that might be?”
    “No. She often wrote people’s initials in there to save time.”
    We had a flick through the rest of the diary, but nothing else stood out.
    “All right. Mia, thank you so much,” I said. “I really think you should hand that diary in to the police now that you’ve remembered it. It could help them.”
    She nodded and gave us a watery smile before walking us to the door, and Kaye and I sat in silence on the drive back to the cupcake shop. Up until now, we’d barely even considered the possibility that the killer was anyone other than Mia or Amy, but now we weren’t sure it was either one of them. Mia had seemed too genuinely upset and willing to help, and from what she’d said, Amy just wasn’t capable of killing. Of course it was still possible that she was wrong about Amy, but I had a strong instinctual feeling that we were barking up the wrong tree after seeing the diary.
    Something told me that this ‘DT’ person she was having dinner with a few nights before Mrs. Barnaby’s wedding had something to do with her death. Perhaps it was a man she had been seeing; maybe even the mysterious on and off lover Mia had mentioned.
    When we were back in the store, we filled Tori in on what we knew.
    “Didn’t the police say the killer was probably female?” she asked. “I still think Amy is the most likely suspect, honestly.”
    “Yes, but think about it,” I said. “What’s the best way to cover up a murder?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    “You make it look like someone else did it. If you’re a man and you want to kill someone, the best way to avoid suspicion would be to make it look like a woman did it. Hence the poison; a very female manner of murder, like Officer Bobby said. I think Zara might have been seeing a man who ended up killing her.”
    “Not only that,” Kaye said, nodding in agreement. “In something like ninety percent of cases of violence against a woman, it turns out to be the man she’s involved with who did it. It’s an age-old cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason.”
    “Hmm. I guess you guys have a point,” Tori replied. “So who’s this DT person?”
    “That’s the million dollar question,” Kaye replied. “What about David Tanner from the post office?”
    “He’s seventy-one,” I said. “I highly doubt she was seeing him! Besides, he broke his hip a couple of weeks ago. As far as I know he’s still laid up in bed. There’s no way he made it to the wedding reception and poisoned her drink.”
    “What about her ex-husband? She said he used to hurt her. Maybe he came back and asked to meet with her for dinner, and then sneaked into the wedding reception a few days later to kill her.”
    I shook my head. “No, his initials are T.K.”
    “Your last name is Thurston, right Kaye?” Tori interjected. “And your husband’s name is Daniel.”
    My eyes widened, and I half expected