Murder By Muffin (Lucy McGuffin, Psychic Amateur Detective 3)

“You didn’t feel that way the other day when Will and I went to have breakfast at your bakery. As a matter of fact, you told us you thought you’d win the show hands down. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Well—”

“Ha!” cries Wendy. “Everyone knows you’re nothing but a big show-off.”

Heidi begins wringing her hands. Am I a bad person because a tiny part of me is enjoying watching Heidi squirm? “Okay, I admit it,” she says. “I did go see Tara that night.”

“Because you wanted to quit the show?” Juanita gazes up to the heavens. “Dios mio, it was an epidemic!”

Heidi nods demurely. “Yes, I wanted to quit the show too.”

Mark Dalton crosses his arms over his chest like he’s posing. He’d make a great TV prosecutor. “If you were so confident you’d win, why did you want to quit?”

I pick up the notebook and raise a brow at Heidi. Either she tells them or I will, and she knows it.

“Tara was going to make this big deal about the fact that I don’t have nutritional values on my menu.”

“What’s so damaging about that?” asks Juanita.

“Do you know how many calories and fat grams are in one of Heidi’s doughnuts?” I skim through the notebook to find the information. “Her chocolate Bavarian crème doughnut has five hundred calories and over twenty-five grams of fat. Almost twice the amount found in a similar doughnut from a national chain.”

Wendy gasps. “No wonder they taste so good!”

Heidi’s eyes fill with tears. “That kind of information could kill my business.”

“That kind of doughnut could kill your customers,” mutters Carlos.

My thoughts exactly. Muffins are so much healthier for you than doughnuts, but this probably isn’t the best time to bring that up. It would feel too much like gloating.

“I’m working on reducing the fat content on my doughnuts,” she says. “I really am. But Tara was going to be so horrible about the whole thing! She said my bakery was like from another century! I inherited that bakery from my mother. I wasn’t about to let Tara trash my business.”

Juanita looks shocked. “So you killed her?”

“No. Although I sure wish I could have shoved a few doughnuts down that skinny throat of hers.”

I try to hide my smile. “Heidi isn’t the killer. So far we’ve eliminated Juanita, Carlos and Heidi.”

“Well, I can tell you right now I didn’t go see Tara,” says Wendy. “So you can cross me off your list.”

“True, you didn’t see Tara that night, but there’s more to the story, isn’t there?”

“How do you … you can’t prove anything,” she finishes stubbornly.

“You might not have gone to see Tara, but you wanted to quit the show as well, didn’t you?”

“I … ” She glances around the table to gauge our reactions. I don’t think I’m the only one who wants an answer here. “My lawyer was looking into the best way to get out of the contract,” she admits.

“Why?” asks Mark. “Tiny’s has the best pizza in town. Probably even in the whole Florida panhandle.”

I hold up the notebook as a reminder. “Either you tell them, or I will.”

“You have to promise to keep this confidential,” she says.

We all give her our word.

“It’s the sauce that makes Tiny’s pizza so special. My father created the recipe thirty years ago. Only Tara claimed that he stole it from a former partner of his who still lives in Brooklyn. She was even going to fly this man down and have him confront me on camera. Can you imagine? My father would roll in his grave.”

“So there’s no truth to it?” asks Heidi.