Two Scoops of Murder (Felicity Bell Book 2)

“
O
nce upon a time
there was a baker named Fe…”

Felicity looked up from the recipe book she’d been perusing. “What are you reading?”

Alice sighed. “Just thinking out loud…”

The two friends were sitting in the cozy living room of the house they shared on Stanwyck Street 41, enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon. The week had been particularly hectic, as Felicity had written not one but two feature articles for the Happy Bays Gazette and Alice had had to work overtime at the funeral parlor.

The reason was the sudden deaths of two Happy Baysians in the space of a single week, unprecedented in that cozy Long Island hamlet.

“Spit it out, Alice,” said Felicity. “What is it?”

The petite woman sighed once again. “I’m suffering from writer’s block. I want to write about Reece Hudson’s upcoming nuptials and I’m stuck.” She directed a pleading look at her redheaded friend. “Help me?”

Felicity snorted. “You’re asking the wrong person, hon. The top reporter has left the building and all that remains is this poor excuse for a journalist.”

Rick Dawson, Felicity’s new boyfriend, had found employ with Time Magazine and had flown to Europe to cover some political conference or other. And without his expert help Felicity found it increasingly difficult to put pen to paper and produce something that was fit to print. “Why do you want to write about him anyway? Aren’t there enough reporters covering that story?”

The fact that Reece Hudson, Hollywood action star par excellence and one of Tinseltown’s most eligible bachelors, was getting hitched was big news but it left Felicity cold. She’d never been into celebrity gossip. Alice, on the other hand, read all the magazines cover to cover, followed the websites with a religious fervor and seemed to possess a near encyclopedic knowledge of everything that went on in Celebrityland.

“I’m doing this strictly for myself,” her friend said with a pout. She threw her scrapbook in Felicity’s direction. “You know it’s been a pet project of mine for years, right?”

Felicity picked up the book and leafed through it. It was now all coming back to her. Of course. Alice had always had a crush on Reece. Even as a precocious fourteen-year-old she’d clipped out all the articles and pasted them into an album. And since she considered herself something of an
artiste
, she wrote stories to go with the pictures.

It was of course impressive that a local boy—Reece was born and raised in Happy Bays—had reached the pinnacle of Hollywood fame.

“All I need is a nice caption. I want to add it to the wedding pictures.”

“But why? I mean, it’s not as if anyone is paying you to do this.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “Does everything always have to be about money? I like Reece Hudson.”

“You
adore
Reece Hudson,” Felicity corrected.

“Okay, I adore him. And now I want to end this silly infatuation and put the book to rest inside a time capsule in the garden. Be done with the whole thing.”

“Why be done with it? The guy’s not dead. I’m sure he’ll make more movies.”

“I told you. He’s getting married,” she muttered morosely.

Felicity got it now. “You’re jealous!” she cried in surprise. She never thought she’d see the day Alice was actually jealous of anyone. A perky blonde, Alice was the epitome of sass and smarts. And unlike Felicity she actually had a waistline.

Her friend merely shrugged and Felicity studied the pictures of the happy couple as they were announcing their engagement. At a major press conference, of course, with the future Mrs. Hudson showing off a ginormous rock. “She’s pretty,” Felicity had to admit. Usually these celebrity types all looked alike, with their forced smiles, their perfect bodies and their designer clothes. Dorothy Valour, even though her smile was forced, her body perfect, and she never left home without her Louboutins, Vera Wang and Louis Vuitton, looked gorgeous.

“Yeah, she’s not so bad,” Alice admitted grudgingly. “He could probably have done a lot worse than Frank Valour’s daughter.”

Felicity started. “Wait. Dorothy Valour is Frank Valour’s daughter?”

“Where have you been? Mars? Of course she is. Don’t you read the papers?”

“The papers, yes. Not the entertainment section.”

“What? But that’s the best part!”

Felicity thought about the coincidence. Frank Valour was a resident of Happy Bays and even a customer at Bell’s, the bakery Felicity’s family ran. She frowned at the pictures, looking at Dorothy Valour with different eyes. The name rang a bell now. “Wasn’t she in school with us?”

“One grade up,” Alice mumbled while flicking a speck of dust from her pink bathrobe. “It could have been me.”

“As if,” Felicity snorted. The words had left her mouth before she realized how they sounded. She instantly backpedaled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

Alice narrowed her eyes. “So what you’re saying is that I can’t snatch a guy like Reece Hudson, huh? You do know I used to go over to his house all the time to buy milk and eggs, right?”

Reece’s father Jack Hudson was a small-time farmer slash gun range owner, though to Felicity’s recollection Reece had already been in college by the time she and Alice were old enough to be aware of boys.

“That’s not what I’m saying and you know it. All I’m saying is that we don’t move in the same circles as these people.” She gestured to the news clippings. “Look at them. Rich, beautiful…skinny.”

“I’m skinny. And Dorothy and Reece did move in our circles.”

“When they were ten. Now? I don’t think so.”

“If I wanted to I could snag a Reece Hudson.”

“Of course you can.” She didn’t want to get into an argument over some stupid society wedding.

“You don’t believe me?” Alice asked. “Wanna bet I can get him to ask me out on a date?”

“Alice, the man is engaged. His dating days are over.” Especially with girls from Happy Bays who work at the local funeral parlor and hold a side job at the gun store, she wanted to add, but bit her tongue before the words slipped out.

Alice’s green eyes flashed. “Free donuts for life if I pull this off.”

“You already have free donuts for life,” Felicity pointed out. Since donuts were Alice’s favorite, Felicity made sure the cupboard was always stocked with Bell’s crispiest and creamiest.

“Don’t change the subject. Do you accept the challenge or not?”

“What if you lose? What do I get?”

“Anything you want.”

Felicity mused. They’d been putting off spring cleaning for weeks, and judging by the dust settling in every nook and cranny, they could put it off no longer. “Okay. I’ll bite. If you lose, it’s spring cleaning time. Top to bottom. No excuses.”

Alice’s face creased into a wide smile. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Fe.”

A
listair Long stared gloomily
out across the vast expanse of land bordering his one-acre domain. The land had been in the Long family for generations and was now so valuable, real estate developers were straining at the leash to take it off his hands for bags of gold. Not that Alistair would ever sell.

Each time one of those money-grubbing sharks was on the phone he simply hung up on them, shaking his head at the folly that avarice inspired in some people. And this included his own flesh and blood. His son and daughter had been pushing him to sell for years.

And it wasn’t just the land. Rob and Ruth wanted him to sell the Happy Bays Inn, too. Wanted him to sell and hand the money to them.

Over his dead body.

He spat on the ground, as if to emphasize this thought, then resumed his gazing into the middle distance, thinking hard thoughts about his scrounging offspring.

His long, flowing white beard wiggled in the breeze. Since he’d cultivated the hirsute appendage in the seventies beards had gone out of style, but now they were back with a vengeance. Beards were hip. Beards were cool. Some kids called him Hipster Grandpa, and some even thought he looked like Gandalf the Grey, some dude from some movie. He didn’t think so. For one thing, this Gandalf guy wasn’t bald, and he didn’t wear a Knicks cap like Alistair did.

At the end of the day he didn’t care what they called him. He had other fish to fry. And as his weary old eyes traveled along the contours of his plot of land, he envisioned the house he would build here. Finally. Mary would love it. It had been a dream of theirs for years. And now he’d finally put the wheels in motion.

It was time. They couldn’t wait any longer.

He turned when a car approached and parked along the edge of the forest. A man stepped out and sauntered up. He was tall, and looked like a city type to him. Alistair steeled his resolve. Another shark, he reckoned. Another who wanted a piece of him. Oh, he would give him a piece of his mind all right.

“Hey, old-timer!” the man called out.

“Hey, yourself,” he said, none too friendly.

The stranger’s overcoat flapped in the breeze, and he could clearly detect the charcoal suit. His lips tightened, and the words ‘I ain’t selling’ were trembling on his lips as the man stepped up to him, deftly avoiding the puddles last night’s downpour had left on the soggy soil.

He was surprised at the darkness of the man’s eyes. Almost black. And cold. A sudden apprehension ran through him, and he suddenly wished he’d brought his rifle. Some people need more than words to scare them off.

“Nice piece of land you got here,” said the man, a smile on his narrow face.

“That’s right.”

“I hear you’re having trouble selling?”

“I ain’t selling,” he grumbled.

The man shook his head. “See, that’s where you’re wrong, bub.”

Alistair narrowed his eyes. “And I think you’re trespassing…bub.”

The man grinned, a horrible sight. “Sometimes you just have to let go, old man. Move on, if you catch my drift.” Alistair’s eyes widened as the other reached into his overcoat and came out with a gun. “And I’m here to help you do just that.”

Alistair held up his hands. “Hey, what do you think—”

But then the man simply shot him straight through the heart.

The last thought that went through Alistair’s head as he fell to the sodden earth was, ‘What’s going to become of Mary?’

Then he slipped into a darkness deeper than any he’d ever known.