A Killer Sundae Read online

  Praise for Abby Collette’s Ice Cream Parlor Mysteries

  “Delightful. . . . Bronwyn is ever more confident about rooting herself in her community. Chagrin Falls turns out to be an entrancing place to spend time.”

  —The New York Times

  “Fun! Fresh! Fabulous! Abby Collette has crafted a delicious addition to the cozy mystery world with her superbly written A Deadly Inside Scoop. Delightful characters and a puzzler of a plot kept me turning pages until the very end. I can’t wait for my next visit to the Crewse Creamery for another decadent taste.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Jenn McKinlay

  “A deliciously satisfying new cozy mystery series. It’s got humor, a quirky cast of characters, and ice cream. What more could you want?”

  —V. M. Burns, Agatha Award–nominated author of the Mystery Bookshop Mystery Series

  “With an endearing cast of characters ranging from [Bronwyn’s] close-knit, multigenerational family to her feisty best friends, this intricate mystery plays out with plenty of suspects, tons of motives, and an ending I didn’t see coming.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Bailey Cates

  “With a host of quirky friends and family members, Abby Collette’s new series is a welcome addition to the cozy mystery scene, and life at Crewse Creamery promises plenty of delectable adventures to come. Only one warning: A Deadly Inside Scoop causes a deep yearning for scoops of homemade ice cream, no matter the weather.”

  —Juliet Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author of the Haunted Home Renovation series and the Witchcraft Mystery series

  “What do you get when you put together a tight-knit, slightly quirky family, a delectable collection of ice cream flavors, and an original mystery? A tasty start to a new cozy series. A Deadly Inside Scoop is a cleverly crafted mystery with a relatable main character in Bronwyn Crewse.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Sofie Kelly

  “Cozy readers will look forward to the further adventures of Win and friends.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This cozy mystery will leave you with a pleasant feeling when you read it, as you cannot help but love the characters, [who] will steal your heart.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “This setting is extremely appealing and the characters introduced are entertaining and memorable. . . . A promising start to a new series that will appeal to fans of foodie fiction.”

  —Genre Minx Reviews

  Berkley Titles by Abby Collette

  THE BOOKS & BISCUITS MYSTERIES

  Body and Soul Food

  THE ICE CREAM PARLOR MYSTERIES

  A Deadly Inside Scoop

  A Game of Cones

  A Killer Sundae

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2022 by Shondra C. Longino

  Excerpt from Body and Soul Food by Abby Collette copyright © 2021 by Shondra C. Longino

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

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Collette, Abby, author.

  Title: A killer sundae / Abby Collette.

  Description: First Edition. | New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 2022. |

  Series: An ice cream parlor mystery; 3

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021035097 (print) | LCCN 2021035098 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9780593099704 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593099711 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3603.O4397 K55 2022 (print) |

  LCC PS3603.O4397 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021035097

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021035098

  First Edition: January 2022

  Cover design and illustration by Vi-An Nguyen

  Book design by Alison Cnockaert, adapted for ebook by Estelle Malmed

  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 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.

  pid_prh_6.0_138897311_c0_r0

  contents

  Cover

  Praise for Abby Collette’s Ice Cream Parlor Mysteries

  Berkley Titles by Abby Collette

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Acknowledgments

  Recipes

  Excerpt from Body and Soul Food

  About the Author

  To the Village of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, the Blossom Time Festival and Balloon Glow, thank you for your inspiration.

  chapter

  ONE

  It was going to be a killer weekend.

  The Harvest Time Festival in Chagrin Falls was a favorite event around Northeast Ohio. From the dusk Balloon Glow lighting to the crowning of the Harvest Time Festival Queen during the Labor Day Parade on Monday. Visitors from near and far crowded the streets, enjoying hayrides, the hot-dog-eating contest, and a score of food trucks parked around the center of downtown on the triangle and in Riverside Park. But this year was going to be extra special. It was going to mark the inaugural voyage of my ice cream shop’s newly minted food truck.

  I’d gotten up extra early to get to Crewse Creamery. I had dozens of frozen delights to make for the shop and now for the truck, too. I knew there were going to be busloads of people coming through.

  I made my usual morning meetup with my grandfather, who was already dressed and had a pot of coffee percolating.

  “I can’t stay long,” I said.

  “You need me to help?” he asked. “I’m ready if you need me.”

  I smiled. “I got this.”

  “Who would have ever thought Crewse Creamery would have a food truck?” He laughed and patted me on my back. “Leave it to you, Win. Carrying on the entrepreneurial spirit we started this business with. Your grandmother would be proud.”

  It was still dark as I came down Carriage Hill after leaving PopPop, and I saw the soft glow of the lanterns outside the door of my family’s shop. A staple on that corner next to the falls’ overlook since 1965, the baby blue and yellow awning flapped gently in the early September breeze. My Grandma Kay’s wrought iron and wood bench sitting stalwart, giving note that our business had been and would always be about family.

  Once inside, I turned the jukebox on even before I pulled one mixing bowl from the shelf. I closed my eyes, humming along to Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me,” and whirled around on the big checkerboard floor, dancing with my grandmother. Not literally. Grandma Kay had been dead since I was in high school, and no, she wasn’t a ghost. She’d always said she’d make sure those pearly gates closed tight behind her. Still, I could always feel her, standing with me, especially when I was surrounded by the walls of Crewse Creamery.

  My grandparents, Aloysius and Kaylene Crewse, had worked hard starting a business. The only black-owned one in Chagrin Falls, it had weathered the ups and downs of the twentieth century an
d with a new face, courtesy of moi, was going to make it through the twenty-first. I’d put in new pretty cobalt-blue-covered booths and stools, added a big menu chalkboard on the back wall, which I’d painted to match the seat covers, and put a huge wall of glass at the back that overlooked the falls our village was built around.

  Back in the kitchen, standing at the stainless-steel table, Sam Cooke’s “Frankie and Johnny” playing in the background, I cut open the dark-skinned purple fruit for the plum sorbet. The juice dripped from my hands as my knife sliced through. I plucked out the pits, exposing the tender yellowish-tinged fruit inside. I placed the halves on a baking sheet, then sprinkled them with light brown sugar. Wiping my hands on the tea towel I took from my shoulder, I slid them into the oven.

  It might have been out of place, but the liquor cabinet in the ice cream shop had all kinds of bottles inside, all opened, all tried. My Grandma Kay had been the originator of her own artisanal ice cream recipes, and the little tin box she stored them in was filled with her penciled-in additions of how to use the hard-to-freeze distilled spirits to make ice cream. I had carried on the tradition but only after paying and getting the required licensure. Ohio lawmakers, in 2017, decided ice cream with alcohol needed to be regulated. I could hear my grandmother fussing about the government wanting to put their noses in everything.

  I uprooted a bottle of vodka, poured it into a blender along with some lemon juice, water, sugar and the plums after they’d cooled from being in the oven. I hummed along as the commercial mixer pureed the ingredients, then I put them into the cooler to chill. I pulled out the basket of deep blue, plump blueberries and Greek yogurt I’d mix together until smooth and pour into Popsicle molds.

  I heard a knock on the side door, the one that led from the kitchen to the alley between our building and the Flower Pot. I glanced up at the clock on the wall. My help was starting to arrive. I usually scheduled my employees and my mother (not an official employee, just part of the “family” in our family business) to come in an hour or two after I’d gotten in. I liked spending time alone in the shop making ice cream, with the quiet of the morning and the memories of my grandmother.

  I wiped my hands on my apron and went to unlock the door.

  “Morning,” I said. It was Candy. Earbuds in ears, she had her phone in hand and pack on her back. One of my two latest hires. Young. Not as enthusiastic as Wilhelmina, my other new hire, but she was always willing to help.

  “Hi,” she said and let out a yawn.

  I closed the door behind her and she stood in the middle of the floor. She had never been in this early, and other than handing me needed ingredients out of the fridge or cooler when passing through the kitchen when I made batches in the evenings, she had never made ice cream.

  Wasn’t so sure about how excited she was to be doing it now, especially at six in the morning.

  “Thanks for helping me out,” I said. “With Maisie out, I needed the extra hand.”

  “Sure,” she said, pulling one earbud out. “I don’t mind.” She pulled her backpack off. “How’s Maisie doing?”

  “She’s good,” I said and smiled.

  Maisie Solomon, one of my two best friends and my first employee hired outside of family, was home dealing with the chicken pox. “The doctor said she’s not contagious anymore, but she’s covered in red spots,” I said. “She says her body aches and she’s itchy all over. Still best for her to stay at home for a few more days.”

  The last part of my comment seemed to make both of us scratch. My sudden itch was at the elbow and in the ear. Candy’s was on her cheek.

  “How did she get the chicken pox anyway?” She shook her head. “Even being in foster care, I got all my shots.”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. Until Maisie came to Chagrin Falls to live with her grandmother, her childhood hadn’t been smooth sailing.

  “Morning! Morning!” My mother swept through the door with all of her usual chipperness. She had a cloth bag in one hand and held the side door open with the other.

  “I present to you all of my hard work!” she said, and in came Denise Swanson, rolling a metal grocery cart.

  “Hey, Soror!” she said. A big grin on her face. Soror, a colloquialism for sorority sister, was her usual greeting when she saw me. “We brought cookies.”

  “Twelve dozen,” my mother said.

  Denise Swanson, like my mother and me, was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first black sorority, usually shortened to AKA. Like my mother, she’d been an education major, too, and had pledged with my mother at Howard University in DC some thirty-something years ago. They’d been friends ever since.

  An Ohio native, she served as an executive on the Cleveland Municipal School Board. Always dressed classy, she had an excitement about her when dealing with other people no matter what the conversation was about, and loved lending a helping hand.

  Today, even though she’d been baking with my mother, she looked like she was on her way to a luncheon at a board of directors meeting. She had on a charm bracelet that dangled, clanked, and probably would have gotten in the way of making up cookie batter. She had on salmon pink trousers and a matching blouse (she loved our sorority’s colors—salmon pink and apple green—and wore them often). Her shoes were low-heeled and sensible, but shiny. She kept her hair short, almost in the same style as mine.

  I chuckled. “You helped?” I asked Denise.

  “Of course she did,” my mother said. “I told you, I’ve been working on them for two days.”

  “I know you did,” I said. “I just didn’t know Mrs. Swanson had helped.”

  “I mostly kept her company,” Denise said.

  “She did not,” my mother said. “The peanut butter ones are all her.”

  “Now what are you going to do with so many cookies, Bronwyn?” Denise asked. Always the teacher, she didn’t do nicknames even though she’d heard my family call me Win my whole life.

  “Ice cream cookies,” my mother said before I could answer. “Win’s going to sell them on the new ice cream truck.”

  “I heard about that. It’s not like the usual ‘Turkey in the Straw’–playing ice cream truck, is it?”

  “It’s a food truck that sells ice cream,” I corrected proudly. I didn’t want anyone thinking we’d be driving up and down city streets with kids chasing after us. I wanted it to be trendier. “And no.” I chuckled. “We don’t play ‘Turkey in the Straw.’ It’s like the food trucks that are on Walnut Street on Wednesdays.”

  “I love Walnut Wednesdays. I go all the time,” Mrs. Swanson said. “Happy then to be taking part in this.” She snapped off her bracelet and started rolling up her sleeves. “Okay, Ailbhe. Show me what to do.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Candy asked. She’d been standing there idle. She’d put her earbuds back in. She’d been in her own world and I’d nearly forgotten she was there.

  “Mrs. Swanson,” I said, forgoing giving Candy directions to introduce her. “This is Candy Cook. She’s working here while she finishes high school.”

  “What grade are you in?” Mrs. Swanson asked.

  “I’m in the twelfth grade now,” she said. “Finally. I’d been trying to get here for a long time.”

  “Well, you made it, which is an accomplishment,” Mrs. Swanson said, even though I wasn’t sure if she knew Candy’s story.

  “We’d better get cooking,” my mother said. She grabbed two aprons off the rack. “Here, Denise.” She handed one to her. “Put this on. You’re the only person I know who dresses up to come and cook.”

  She laughed. “I didn’t know you were going to rope me into working this early in the morning. I thought we were going to drop off the cookies and go to breakfast.”

  “Mom,” I said, thinking I’d give her and Mrs. Swanson light duty. “You can make the ice cream sandwiches. Use the chocolate and vanilla. Two scoops between the cookies. Roll the outside in nuts, but only on half of them. You know, because some people have nut allergies.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Denise and I will do those first. C’mon.” Mom waved her over. “We have a special area for non-nut products so they don’t get mixed up.”