Silence of the Flans Read online

  Praise for

  Éclair and Present Danger

  “Laura Bradford has done it again. Éclair and Present Danger is filled with interesting, realistic characters and a plot that will keep you turning pages all the way to the sweet reveal at the end. This scrumptious new series is not to be missed.”

  —Paige Shelton, New York Times bestselling author

  “A tasty, twisty tale full of felonies and flavor! Laura Bradford cooks up a delightful cast of characters led by clever amateur sleuth and dessert rescuer Winnie Johnson. The plot is delicious and moves at a swift pace, keeping the reader guessing while frantically turning the pages as Winnie tries to solve the murder of an old friend and make sure that his killer gets his just desserts.”

  —Jenn McKinlay, New York Times bestselling author

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Laura Bradford

  Emergency Dessert Squad Mysteries

  ÉCLAIR AND PRESENT DANGER

  THE SILENCE OF THE FLANS

  Amish Mysteries

  HEARSE AND BUGGY

  ASSAULTED PRETZEL

  SHUNNED AND DANGEROUS

  SUSPENDERED SENTENCE

  A CHURN FOR THE WORSE

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Laura Bradford

  Excerpt from Dial M for Mousse copyright © 2017 by Laura Bradford

  Penguin Random House 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 Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark and BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the B colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780698193840

  First Edition: March 2017

  Cover illustration by Brandon Dorman

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman

  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.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book have been created for the ingredients and techniques indicated. The Publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require supervision. Nor is the Publisher responsible for any adverse reactions you may have to the recipes contained in the book, whether you follow them as written or modify them to suit your personal dietary needs or tastes.

  Version_1

  In memory of my great uncle Ray. Spending time with him was an honor and a joy.

  Contents

  Praise for Éclair And Present Danger

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Laura Bradford

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Recipes

  Excerpt from Dial M for Mousse

  Acknowledgments

  To say I’m enjoying Winnie and the gang in these Emergency Dessert Squad Mysteries would be an understatement. They make the time I spend at the keyboard, bringing them to life on the page, an absolute joy from start to finish.

  A huge thank-you goes out to Lisa Kelley, Lynn Deardorff, and Eileen Pearce for helping me brainstorm some of the same dessert names Winnie brainstorms with her friends. These ladies listened to my crazy ideas and played along like champs.

  I’d also like to thank my editor, Michelle Vega, and my agent, Jessica Faust. This book marks the publication of my twenty-fifth book, a milestone I’m proud of for many reasons.

  And, last but not least, I’d like to thank you—my readers. Whether you’re just now finding me through the Emergency Dessert Squad Mysteries, or you’ve been reading my work (such as my Amish Mysteries) for a while, the fact that you’re here—with this book in your hand—matters to me.

  I love to chat with my readers. I can be reached via my website: laurabradford.com.

  Chapter 1

  Winnie Johnson capped her pen and tossed it onto the wicker table, narrowly missing the black rook poised to capture the white queen.

  “Whoa, I’m sorry, Mr. Nelson. I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Winking? You want to learn how to do some winking?” The seventy-five-year-old former sailor extracted the pen from the middle of the chessboard and set it on the edge of the table closest to Winnie. “I can teach you how to do some winking.”

  She tapped her finger to her ear and waited for her housemate to turn his hearing aid up a notch. When he did, she set the record straight. “I said thinking, Mr. Nelson. I wasn’t thinking when I tossed my pen onto the table just now.”

  “Seems to me you’ve been thinking too hard, Winnie Girl.” Hunching forward, he slid the black castle-like piece four spots to the left and then collapsed back against his chair with exhausted elation. “Now that was a move.”

  “You’re playing yourself, you old fool.” Bridget O’Keefe, their next-door neighbor, paused her hand midway down the spine of the brown and white tabby cat on her lap and shook her head. “Winnie asked for your help today, Parker. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  Elation turned to consternation as the elderly man took in, first, Winnie and, then, Bridget. “I came up with Baked Alaska-Bound!”

  Bridget’s snort of disgust was so sudden and so loud that Lovey woke from her sound slumber and narrowed her eyes on Winnie.

  Hissss . . .

  Raising the cat’s narrowed eyes with a glare, Winnie hissed back, earning herself a second and louder hiss from Lovey and a soft tsking sound from Bridget.

  “What? She hissed first,” Winnie argued. “I’m not even the one who disturbed her just now! That was you, Bridget, with your reaction to what Mr. Nelson said!”

  Mr. Nelson patted the top of his thigh and smiled triumphantly at Bridget as the cat abandoned the eighty-something’s lap in favor of his. Once Lovey was settled, tummy side up, he brought his attention back to Winnie. “Now I realize this is something I’ve never said before, but . . . well . . . Bridget is right.” The second the sentence was out, the man scrunched his nose and made a face befitting someone who’d tasted something utterly awful.

  Winnie laughed. “About . . .”

  Shaking his head in one last burst of theatrics, Mr. Ne
lson pointed at the purring animal gently rolling around on his lap. “Lovey is never going to accept you if you keep hissing at her like you just did.”

  “I only started hissing back when it became apparent she has no gratitude for the fact that I’m the one who feeds her, and waters her, and sleeps on the couch just so she can have my bed!”

  “Give it time, Winnie Girl.”

  “It’s been well over a month now, Mr. Nelson. How much more time does she need? She’s a cat.”

  “She’ll come around. You wait and see.” Glancing back at the chessboard and the answering move he was surely itching to make, Mr. Nelson mumbled something under his breath and then focused again on Winnie. “Now, about this brainstorming you wanted to do today . . . You did write down Baked Alaska-Bound, didn’t you?”

  She opened her mouth to answer but closed it as Bridget took center stage. “Just how many people in Silver Lake do you really think are going to Alaska, Parker? One? Maybe two? Do you really think that’s worthy of a spot on Winnie’s menu?” With a dismissive flick of her hand (and the dramatic wince that invariably followed), the woman uncrossed her swollen ankles and readied her stout frame to stand. “Fortunately, for Winnie, one of us brought along our creativity this afternoon. As a result, I predict my Couch Potato Candy will be a crowd favorite in no time.”

  “No one likes potato candy, Bridget.” Mr. Nelson rubbed Lovey behind the ears and then scrunched up his nose again. “Have you ever had potato candy, Winnie Girl?”

  “I can’t say that I have.”

  “Do yourself a favor and keep it that way.” This time, when he gestured toward Winnie’s notebook, he used his non-cat-rubbing finger. “How ’bout something for a flu? Or when you’re feeling all hot and achy—”

  Hot?

  From a flu—

  “That’s it! Mr. Nelson, you’re a genius!”

  Mr. Nelson puffed out his chest with pride. “Ah, Winnie, you shouldn’t.”

  “You’re right, she shouldn’t.” Bridget yanked the hem of her housecoat across the top of her vein-ridden upper shin and then pinned Winnie with an indignant stare. “You’re calling Parker a genius?”

  “Yes! A rescue squad surely needs something for someone with the flu!” Winnie recovered her pen from its resting spot beside one of Mr. Nelson’s captured pawns, slipped off the cap, and began to write. “Lava-Hot Fever Cupcakes or—no! I’ll make it Lava-Hot Fever Mini Bundt Cakes and they can come in all sorts of varieties—dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate . . . Whatever the customer wants.”

  A quick flash of his tongue in Bridget’s direction was followed by yet another puff of Mr. Nelson’s chest and a slow nod at Winnie. “Unlike potato candy, that’s somethin’ folks would actually want to eat, isn’t it, Winnie Girl?”

  Bridget scooted forward on the rocker, rose to her feet with nary a grunt or groan, and turned, hands on hips. “I declare you insufferable, Parker Nelson!”

  Declare?

  “You sit there, playing chess with yourself for hours on end and—”

  “Wait,” Winnie said, waving her hands between the pair. “Say that again. Please.”

  Bridget removed her left hand from her hip and used it to point at the man seated in front of her. “Gladly. You are insufferable, Parker Nelson!”

  “Did we really need to hear that again?” Mr. Nelson asked, peering around Bridget to afford a better view of Winnie. “My hearing aid is on full volume.”

  Again, Winnie waved her hands. “No. No. Not that part. The other part. About declaring . . .”

  “Oh. Right.” Bridget narrowed her eyes on the cat-stealing elderly man. “I declare you insufferable, Parker Nelson.”

  “I declare,” Winnie repeated. “Yes! I—I D’éclairs!”

  Bridget slid her irritation onto Winnie. “What do you declare?”

  “I don’t know. Anything!” Powered by another burst of enthusiasm, Winnie turned the page of her notebook and began to write. “A pregnancy, an engagement, a promotion—anything!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She looked up from her latest menu addition and gave in to the smile she felt building inside her chest. “Éclairs. Only I’ll call them I D’éclairs. The customer can decide what they’re declaring.”

  Mr. Nelson hooked his index finger underneath Lovey’s chin and gently guided the cat’s sleepy eyes up and onto his own. “How can you hiss at someone who smiles like that, you silly girl?”

  “Because Winnie hasn’t been smiling like that these last few days,” Bridget said. “She’s been quiet—too quiet, if you ask me. Maybe her sciatic nerve is acting up. I get quiet when mine is acting up.”

  “Can you let me know when that’s happening? Because I’ll need to hit the store for some blankets before all them folks in hell snatch ’em all up.” Mr. Nelson slapped the side of his leg and laughed—a big hearty sound that only deepened the reddish hue now branching out across Bridget’s otherwise pale complexion. “Get it, Winnie Girl? The day Bridget is quiet is the day hell will have officially frozen over!”

  Winnie stopped writing. “Sure, sure, I get it. But I have been smiling . . .” When Bridget shook her head, Winnie maneuvered her own around Bridget’s midsection to get a better view of a still-chuckling Mr. Nelson. “Haven’t I?”

  Bridget reached down, plucked Lovey off the elderly man’s lap, wrapped her arms around the cat, and proceeded to whisper something in its ear. The fact that Winnie was able to pick out Parker, deaf, and senile among the whispered words was a pretty good indication Bridget hadn’t found the whole hell-freezing-over thing nearly as amusing as Mr. Nelson had.

  Eventually, though, Bridget returned her focus to Winnie. “Now, don’t worry, dear. Parker and I know what’s wrong. And we’re here for you. Just like always.”

  Tightening her hold on her now-capped pen, Winnie ping-ponged her attention between her aging friends. Sure enough, their faces both sported the same concern.

  For her.

  “Nothing is wrong. I swear.” Winnie stood, crossed to the porch railing, and then turned and leaned against it so she could see both of her friends at the same time. Only now, their concern had morphed into something that looked a lot like skepticism. “What? I mean it! Nothing is wrong. Sure, getting the Emergency Dessert Squad off the ground is exhausting in some ways, but it’s proving to be a whole lot of fun, too. I mean, think about it. I’m still baking just like I’ve always wanted to do, and now, because of the whole ambulance theme, I’m getting to come up with all these crazy names and new recipes. I’m living my dream. Truly.”

  The skepticism moved to Bridget’s eyebrow as she exchanged a knowing glance with Mr. Nelson.

  “What?” Winnie heard the exasperation on the edges of her voice and did her best to rein it in. “What am I not doing? What am I not saying?”

  Bridget lowered herself and Lovey into Winnie’s chair and began to rock ever so gently. “We may be old, and Parker, here, might be nearly deaf, but we’re not blind, Winnie. Not yet anyway.”

  “I don’t understand.” And it was true. She didn’t. Mr. Nelson and Bridget might as well have been speaking in tongues . . .

  “That young man of yours hasn’t been coming around the last week or so,” Bridget said.

  Mr. Nelson nodded. “I could talk to her if you want. See if something I say might make a difference.”

  “Her?” Winnie echoed in confusion. “Who’s—”

  “The daughter,” Mr. Nelson clarified. “Your young man’s daughter.”

  Bridget’s dramatic exhale had Lovey on her feet and off the elderly woman’s lap in less than a second. “What do you think you can say or do that is going to get through to a sixteen-year-old girl, Parker? Sit on a whoopee cushion and hope the sound of a seventy-five-year-old man pretending to pass gas makes her grow up and start thinking of someone other than h
erself? Please. Let’s pose solutions that actually have merit.”

  “And you think setting Winnie up on a blind date with the nephew of someone in your crocheting group has merit?”

  Winnie parted company with the railing, her hands splayed outward in front of her chest. “Hold on a minute. Jay not coming around the last few days isn’t because of any problem.”

  “Does that mean the girl is thawing to you?” Mr. Nelson asked.

  She stopped herself, midsnort, as Lovey looked up at her from the porch floor and hissed.

  Blinking through the threatening tears, Winnie looked over her shoulder at the ambulance parked in her driveway and willed its Emergency Dessert Squad logo to help steady her breath. At thirty-four years of age, Winnie was blessed with a whole posse of good friends. Granted, the majority of them were over the age of seventy (if they were even still living), but still, they’d brought her a good deal of happiness. Her relationships with men, however, had been a different story.

  That had all changed, however, when she met her first Emergency Dessert Squad customer, Jay Morgan, six weeks earlier. The business professor at Silver Lake College had placed an order as a way to check out Winnie’s one-of-a-kind business idea. And from that first moment, they’d clicked. The only snafu in the mix? Jay’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Caroline.

  “Winnie?” Bridget prodded.

  Inhaling the courage she needed, she returned her focus to Mr. Nelson and his lingering question. “No. There’s no thawing.” She swallowed back the lump now threatening her ability to keep speaking and forced herself to continue, her voice vacillating between raspy and downright difficult to hear even by her own ears. “But that’s not why Jay hasn’t been coming around.”

  She closed her eyes in the wake of her own words—words she wanted to believe more than anything else. Yet try as she did to buy what she was selling, there was no ignoring the voice in her head that kept posing the same two questions over and over again . . .

  Why hadn’t Jay come around?