Murder Gone A-Rye (A Baker's Treat Mystery)

Praise for

Gluten for Punishment

“Nancy J. Parra has whipped up a sweet treat that’s sure to delight!”

—Peg Cochran, national bestselling author of the Gourmet De-Lite Mysteries

“A delightful heroine, cherry-filled plot twists, and cream-filled pastries. Could murder be any sweeter?”

—Connie Archer, national bestselling author of the Soup Lover’s Mysteries

“A mouthwatering debut with a plucky protagonist. Clever, original, and appealing, with gluten-free recipes to die for.”

—Carolyn Hart, national bestselling author

“A lively, sassy heroine and a perceptive and humorous look at small-town Kansas (the Wheat State)!”

—JoAnna Carl, national bestselling author of the Chocoholic Mysteries

“This baker’s treat rises to the occasion. Whether you need to eat allergy-free or not, you’ll devour every morsel.”

—Avery Aames, Agatha Award–winning author of the Cheese Shop Mysteries

“Romance novelist Parra takes the cake with this cozy romantic suspense title . . . A very clever twist makes small-town Kansas positively sinister.”

—Library Journal

“Boasting a great cast of characters and engaging conversations, this is a fantastic read and I can’t wait for the next book in this delightfully charming series.”

—
Dru Ann Love

“A winning recipe for success! As a delicious cozy mystery, it is filled with quirky characters, handsome romantic interests, and at least a baker’s dozen of unusual happenings, capped with a twist at the end.
Gluten for Punishment
is a witty and wily read that will appeal to both gluten-intolerant and gluten-tolerant readers alike! Enjoy!”

—
Fresh Fiction

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Nancy J. Parra

GLUTEN FOR PUNISHMENT

MURDER GONE A-RYE

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

MURDER GONE A-RYE

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2014 by Nancy J. Parra.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

BERKLEY
®
PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14309-8

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / May 2014

Cover art by Patricia Castelao.

Cover design by Rita Frangie.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

This book is for my sister, Mary.
Thanks, Chief, for your twenty years of service in the navy and for going all the way to DC for a visit.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This year has been one filled with meeting and hanging out with the best readers, writers, bloggers, and reviewers. Without your support and care our books would be no more than black ink on paper. Your kind comments, loving praise, and requests for more are what pushes me to keep writing.

Thanks to Paige Wheeler and the great staff at Folio Literary for their help and guidance. Thanks to Faith Black whose insight makes the book better every time. Thanks to the support staff at Berkley Prime Crime. The work you do is so important to our process. Thanks to the people in the gluten-free world for helping with recipes and comments. Celiac disease is not easy, neither is gluten sensitivity. May this series bring you a little sunshine and a few smiles.

F
or most people Thanksgiving is synonymous with football and shopping. Let’s clarify. Most people, that is, who don’t live in Oiltop, Kansas. In Oiltop, Thanksgiving is Homer Everett Day. Who is Homer Everett? He was the only football player from Oiltop to ever make the pros, and to make matters worse, he was also a Congressional Medal of Honor winner. A war hero and a sports figure—what small town wouldn’t be happy with that? As for Homer, he was elected mayor in the 1950s and had a bronze statue replica of himself created and erected in the center of town square right in front of the gazebo. Someone polishes it twice a day. Even the pigeons won’t dare roost there. Even though he died in 1975, people still speak his name in hushed tones, with an awe usually reserved for Sunday mornings.

And so it was declared way back in 1977 that Thanksgiving was Homer Everett Day—complete with parade and carnival at the county fairgrounds.

This year I decided that I needed to enter a float in the Homer Everett Day parade. Not that I needed a float, but it would be good advertising for my gluten-free bakery, Baker’s Treat. It would also show the Chamber of Commerce that I was a team player. I hoped that it would make me more legitimate and somehow replace the image of the man who drowned in the horse trough outside the bakery last month.

The hot pink tissue paper flower in my hand was one of two hundred my best friend Tasha Wilkes and I’d made. We’d worked every minute of our spare time for the last month. Now it was Saturday. Only two weeks left to work on the float. I didn’t know anyone who waited until the day before Thanksgiving to work on their float unless they were hiding from their relatives. Hiding from my family was not even an option. I twirled the flower between my fingers and studied the float. It was one of several trailers lined up inside the 4-H building on the county fairgrounds.

It felt as if the entire town was crammed inside the aluminum building. In reality it was maybe fifty dedicated float builders all working feverishly to create a prizewinning display.

“Do you think the
Gluten-Freedom
sash across Homer’s chest is a bit much?” I asked over the noise of drills and forklifts.

Tasha stepped back from her life-sized, papier-mâché copy of Homer Everett’s statue. She tilted her blonde head, her always perfect curls bouncing in response to the movement. Her simple outfit of jeans and a pale blue tee shirt refused to wrinkle despite the heat of the building. “Actually, Toni, I think it’s wonderful.” She reached over and took the flower from my hand. “Better than the one Stuart’s Hardware had last year, and they won.”

“What did they have?” I drew my eyebrows together and chewed on the inside of my mouth, trying to remember.

Tasha smiled and showed off the dimples in her porcelain-skinned cheeks. “They portrayed Homer pardoning a turkey while holding a pig under his left arm.”

“Oh, now I remember the float. It seemed a little silly, but Aimee Everett loved it.” Aimee was Hutch Everett’s wife, and since Hutch was Homer’s only child, Aimee had married into Oiltop royalty and was proud to let everyone know it. It didn’t help that Hutch was the marshal of the parade every year and one of three judges for the floats. Aimee made it perfectly clear that her favorite usually won. “Okay, so I’ll bite, why did a hardware store do a float about pardoning a turkey?” I repinned a group of flowers that had slipped from their bonds at the corner of the float. Tasha was trying as hard as she could to make it perfect, but in the end the float, like me, was a little rough around the edges.

“That’s easy. Avery Stuart’s son lives in Iowa and owns a hog farm. So they wanted to remind us that pork is the other white meat.”

I wiped my hands on my sturdy black cotton pants. They were a staple in my closet and served me well as a baker. My long-sleeved shirt was white and smelled faintly of pumpkin. Not that anyone could tell in the dust that was kicked up around the floats. “Pork is the other white meat. That’s reaching, isn’t it?”

“Not really. Stuart’s Hardware had purchased fifty hams. They gave one away with every one hundred–dollar purchase.” She placed the flower in the colorful garden at Homer’s feet. “I heard they drew more shoppers than Kmart did with their twenty-dollar DVD players. Rumor has it Hutch got the biggest ham of all.”

I pursed my mouth in thought. “Who doesn’t have turkey on Thanksgiving? I mean, it’s called Turkey Day for a reason.”

“Lots of people don’t eat turkey. One year my parents served trout.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“How did Kip like that?” I put my hands on my hips. Kip was Tasha’s son. He had Asperger’s and hated changes in routine and ruined expectations.

Tasha blew at the hair that had fallen into her blue eyes. “He was fine with it.”

“Kip was fine with trout on Turkey Day?”

She shrugged. “He agreed that trout and turkey both start with
T
and could therefore be substituted.”

“Huh, really? Clever.”

“Besides, he knew I had a turkey cooking in the roaster at home.”

“Oh. What if your parents had served turkey?” I picked up the large bakery banner and handed Tasha one end while I unrolled the other.

“One thing I can always count on.” Tasha walked down the side of the float until the plastic was completely unfurled. “My parents never do anything in the realm of normal.”

I nailed the banner onto my side of the float. “That’s why we make such great friends.” I pounded the small nail into place with a couple of good strokes. “We both come from families who are a little . . . different.”

“I prefer
creative
. Oh, speaking of families.” Tasha nodded her head to the right.

I followed her line of sight. There was my Grandma Ruth driving her senior four-wheel scooter through the doorway of the county building. The red triangle flag my father had put on the back waved in the air current created by the automatic door.

Grandma was in her nineties and drove her scooter like it was a Formula One race car. Only she tended to drive it inside buildings as fast as she drove it outside on the road. Grandma had once told me she was an offensive driver.

“If everyone else is driving defensively then there’s room for an offensive person,” she’d reasoned as she sucked on the stub of a cigarette. “I go and everyone else gets out of the way.” She chuckled then, low and deep, ending in a cough that rattled her bones. “It works for me.”

Grandma drove down the aisle, her head moving side to side, looking for me, I assumed. She certainly wasn’t looking where she was going. People dove to get out of her way before she ran them over. Maybe I needed to get her a horn.

“Grandma, over here!” I stood on the float and waved my hands over my head to get her attention. She plowed on through the crowd, nearly taking out the Chamber of Commerce’s float. Red and blue streamers got caught in her wheels and trailed behind her like toilet paper on a shoe. “Grandma Ruth!” I jumped up and down and made a commotion.

Grandma was smart as a whip, but deaf in one ear. She hated her hearing aid, which meant she usually had it turned off. I watched in horror as she blew past Hank Blaylock. Hank was our local chief of police and not a big fan of mine.

I winced as she barely missed the far wall. Hank took off after Grandma. She didn’t hear him either, but she did finally see me. The scooter sped up as she headed straight for our float. I jumped off and took my life in my hands by putting myself between Grandma’s oncoming scooter and the float. I hadn’t spent the last week with little to no sleep only to have my crazy grandma run it over, or worse, leave scooter marks across it.

“Stop!” I held my hands in front of me and closed my eyes. I heard a screech and felt the wind rush up across my face. When I didn’t feel an impact, I opened one eye to discover Grandma Ruth climbing off her vehicle and taking off the crash helmet her new beau, Bill Aimes, insisted she wear.

My heart pounded in my ears as I took note of the half-inch space between me and the edge of her bumper. I knew her scooter weighed more than I ever wanted running over my toes.

Grandma shook out her carrot-orange hair and grinned at Hank, who was storming up in anger. “Good afternoon, Chief. How’s your float coming along?”

“Don’t give me small talk, Ruth Nathers. You’re dangerous on that scooter. I told you that the next time I saw you driving recklessly I was going to issue you a ticket.” Hank’s dark eyes flared. He looked like he wanted to reach for his gun. Instead he grabbed a ticket pad from his tool belt and proceeded to write on it.

“A ticket? For what? I have a right to drive my scooter in the building. It’s indoor/outdoor mobility. Besides, I’ve got a handicap sticker.” Grandma pulled the placard with the standard wheelchair symbol on it out of her red letter jacket. Grandma loved hand-me-downs. The red men’s letter jacket had belonged to my brother Richard when he was in high school. Which meant the coat was twenty-three years old and smelled of cigarette smoke and Grandma’s perfume.

The elbows had been patched several times. The current color of the patches was a lovely blue leather Grandma had cut off one of her old purses. “Reduce, reuse, and recycle” was Grandma Ruth’s motto.

She also never saw a bargain she didn’t have to have, and clothes from Goodwill were always a bargain. Today she wore a sparkly skirt that floated around her legs, black socks, Nike shoes, and a neon orange tee shirt that clashed with her hair. Grandma had told me once that the great thing about Goodwill clothes is that they were castoffs, which meant no one else would wear them. Therefore, she concluded, she had a 100 percent guarantee that her style remained forever on the “cutting edge” of fashion—a very difficult thing for a woman of Grandma’s size.

Grandma was as big around as she was tall and was always trying a new diet plan. It was why she smoked. When she was young, a doctor had told her that smoking would help her lose weight. Grandma took to smoking like a duck to water. She often lamented that it didn’t help her lose weight. It only helped her lose money.

But that didn’t make her stop smoking.

“I’m giving you a ticket for disturbing the peace.” Hank ripped a ticket out of the pad and handed it to Grandma. “You should be glad it isn’t worse.”

Grandma narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean worse?”

“You could have hurt someone. Then you’d be looking at jail time instead of a hundred-dollar fine.” He stuffed his ticket book back into his tool belt and looked at me. “I’m holding you responsible, Toni. See that she doesn’t hurt anyone on the way home.”

I flinched. “I’ll do my best.”

Hank’s right eye twitched. “You’d better.” He turned and huffed off. I knew it was after duty hours for Hank, but he still wore his uniform. Come to think of it I couldn’t remember ever seeing Hank wear anything else. The man was no-nonsense through and through.

Nothing like the members of my family—or Tasha’s, for that matter.

“I hope he feels better now.” Grandma tore the ticket into tiny pieces.

“What are you doing?” I winced at the horrified tone of my voice.

“Oh, please.” Grandma stuffed the torn pieces into her coat pocket. Bits of the pink paper fluttered down around her blue-and-white athletic shoes. “You don’t think that ticket was real, do you? He gives me those all the time.”

“What?” I think my voice rose two octaves. “Grandma, how many tickets have you ripped up?”

She shrugged. “What are they going to do? Toss an old lady in jail?

“Grandma!”

“Let’s take a look at your float.” Grandma Ruth ignored me and made a beeline for Tasha.

All the spit in my mouth dried up in horror. I made a mental note to find out from Chief Blaylock how many tickets Grandma had and pay them before he decided to throw her in jail.

“Gluten-Freedom.” Grandma laughed loud and husky. “That’s brilliant.”

“Thanks, Grandma.” Tasha colored prettily. Tasha, like all the family friends, called Grandma Ruth
Grandma
. It had become Grandma’s name more than a title. “It was my idea.”

“See, Toni?” Grandma waved toward Tasha. “I told you the girl was smart.”

“Yes, you did.” I walked over and took Grandma by the hand. “Climb aboard and take your seat. I want to get the full effect.”

“Here, put this on,” Tasha handed Grandma a thick white satin sash with the words
GLUTEN-FREE FUN ON HOMER EVERETT DAY
.

“Nice,” Grandma cooed as Tasha slung it over Grandma’s head. “What goodies am I giving out?”

“We have small baggies with gluten-free cookies inside.” I helped Grandma up on the float and steered her to the oversized chair we had installed for her. “Kip and Lucy’s Jeremy will give them away to people in the crowd.”

“What kind of cookies?” Grandma Ruth settled into her chair with a sigh.

“Chocolate chunk and oatmeal raisin,” Tasha answered. “We don’t want to give away peanut butter in case anyone has allergies.”

“That’s fine. More peanut butter cookies for me.” Grandma wiggled her orange eyebrows, then paused. “Unless you want me to ensure Hutch Everett gets the remainder. Or even better, give them to that oversized teenager of his. Get the kid to start eating at your bakery and you’ll always have a job.” Grandma cackled at the idea of Hutch’s son, Harold, eating anything remotely good for him. Her freckled skin jiggled as she laughed.