By Cook or by Crook (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) Read Online Free PDF

her car and called her cousin. No answer. Her stomach felt hollow. She would fortify herself with a good meal—crab cakes on potato rolls for her and Granddad. After lunch she’d drive to her cousin’s house if she hadn’t heard from her by then.
    On the way home she stopped in the town’s historic district to buy lunch ingredients. On either side of the main drag, frame houses built by original settlers had morphed into gift shops, antique stores, and B&Bs. Val found a parking space two blocks off Main Street. Now that school was out, day-trippers ambled through the town and lined up at the Bake Shoppe—tots in sneakers with flashing lights, teens in flip-flops, grown-ups in boat moccasins or all-terrain sandals. Would a murder hinder or boost tourism in the town?
    She bought a small container of crabmeat at the market and snagged the last rolls in the bakery. To avoid the crowd on Main Street, she took a different route back to the car, a side street with shops she rarely visited. The display window of Personali-Tees featured customized shirts, towels, and aprons. She detoured into the shop and ordered a bib apron personalized for her grandfather. If she chose a stock color, she could pick it up tomorrow. Perfect.
    Farther along the same street, she sniffed a fried food odor so strong it made her stomach turn. She passed the diner, spotted Luke through its storefront window, waved, and walked on.
    “Val, wait up,” he called out from the diner entrance.
    She retraced her steps. “Hey, Luke.”
    The last time she stood near him, by firelight on Nadia’s lawn, she didn’t get a good look at his face, but now she noticed how much he’d filled out since high school. Fleshy cheeks padded the bones that used to be prominent. The gaunt young man had turned solid, but he still used the same cologne. Canoe. It tickled her nose and her memory. For a moment she felt like a teen in love, more with the idea of love than with Luke.
    He searched her face as if waiting for her to say something. “Lot of action at Nadia’s place this morning. Cop cars from the town, the sheriff, state police. Her neighbor said you were there earlier. Is Nadia dead? That’s what we heard.”
    Despite the chief’s efforts, someone had noticed Val there. Probably Irene Pritchard.
    Val took a deep breath. “You heard right. The police should be making an announcement soon if they haven’t already. They’re treating it as a murder.”
    “Murder?” He ran a hand through his close-cropped brown hair. “Jeez. I was afraid something bad would happen to her. That fire the other night must have been a warning. I wonder if she knew it.”
    “If she saw it as a warning, she would have called the police.”
    Luke rubbed the back of his neck. “Or I could have called them instead of making racket jokes.”
    “Don’t blame yourself. It was her place and her decision whether to call the police.” Absolving Luke might help Val shake her own guilt.
    He tilted his head toward the diner. “How ’bout lunch? On the house.”
    “Not today, thanks.” She glanced through the diner’s storefront window. No customers inside, only a tall, broad young man setting a table. She recognized him from Nadia’s Memorial Day party. “That’s Irene Pritchard’s son, isn’t it? Nadia bragged about getting him his first job.”
    “Yeah, Jeremy. I hired him on her say-so. He grew up next door to her.” Luke lowered his voice. “The kid’s gonna be broken up when he hears about her.”
    The “kid,” though in his twenties, was awkward and shy like a teen. “It was nice of Nadia to help him out.”
    “She came across as a hardnose, but not with Jeremy. She even talked me into renting the room over my garage to him so he could cut the apron strings and learn to live on his own.”
    Some people might call that meddling, including the woman with the apron strings. Val held up her bakery bag. “I’d better head home with this. Granddad’s waiting for