Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2) by Livia Day Read Free Book Online Page B

add a touch of cinnamon or chilli chocolate and before I knew what I was doing, it wasn’t vanilla any more. Or at all.
    Lemon meringue on the other hand … now that was a flavour I could get behind. Tangy sour scoops of dark lemon sorbet, surrounded by a creamy concoction of broken meringue pieces and something vaguely vanilla-ish as garnish. But only vaguely.
    A cop out, maybe. But it was a delicious cop out.
    ‘Much response to the French Vanilla story on the blog?’ I asked him.
    ‘Aye,’ said Stewart, binning several requests for banana-related ice creams (he had a moral objection to them — I’d always suspected he had depth) and pushing the pile of Stewart-approved slips in my general direction. ‘Turns out The Gingerbread House has a massive local following. Girls, mostly.’
    ‘Girls?’ I said in surprise. ‘I thought it would be more…’
    ‘Dirty old men? And fourteen-year-old boys? Aye, I thought so too. Turns out that — Ginger taking her top off nae withstanding — most of the appeal isnae the sex. People watch them for entertainment. Listen to their conversations. The whole storyline where Melinda got knocked up by her ex and decided to have the baby on her own practically melted their server. It’s like a cut price Big Brother . And…’ he hesitated.
    ‘Spit it out, Stewart,’ I told him. Before the Bishop thing reared its head, we were excellent at being honest around each other.
    ‘They earn their money wi’ subscriptions. Highlights of the week are available on the site tae all viewers, but only subscribers get access via the live feed. D’ye remember they said they might lose subscribers without French Vanilla? Because she had her own fan following? Well, since the investigation intae her disappearance began, their subscriber numbers are up 20 percent.’
    ‘Wow,’ I said. I took a mouthful of sour lemon and puckered my mouth. Possibly too sour. ‘Wow,’ I said again. ‘So they benefited financially from their housemate going missing?’
    ‘Aye, tha’s my thinking. ’Course, I have a nasty suspicious mind.’
    ‘Yes you do,’ I told him, and made him taste the lemon. ‘But that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.’
    ‘Wrong about what?’ Xanthippe asked, strolling into the kitchen just as Stewart made a horrible face about my lemon sorbet. ‘I love how you’re too original to make ice cream flavours that people actually like, Tish.’
    ‘Hush, vanilla-lover,’ I said to her. She looked nice. Suspiciously unlike a hired assassin, which is to say she was actually wearing a plum-coloured top instead of something black or so-navy-blue-that-it-might-as-well-be-black. ‘Going somewhere special?’
    ‘Just dropping over to Ginger’s,’ she said casually.
    Stewart and I looked at each other.
    ‘By Ginger’s you mean the house that is wired for image and sound, where every move you make is documented and broadcast to nearly four hundred paying customers, with edited highlights available to the entire web and averaging about 10,000 unique visitors per day?’ I asked, to clarify.
    Xanthippe gave me a look. ‘That’s the one.’
    ‘Ye wouldnae be planning tae discuss the missing person case tha’s provided them with a substantial increase in their hits and paid subscription o’er the last week?’ Stewart asked, stealing some of my cracked meringue cream to take the taste of lemon away.
    ‘The subject might come up. While we’re hanging out socially. But I don’t work to a script.’ Xanthippe folded her arms. ‘If you have something to say, just say it.’
    I didn’t say it. I thought really loudly about how it seemed convenient that she and ‘Ginger’ were getting along so well, and how regular visits from Xanthippe to The Gingerbread House couldn’t help but keep the online viewers thinking about the missing person case. But Xanthippe was too smart to be used like that, wasn’t she? Maybe she was playing them. Maybe there was a plan.
    And it was