Murder Has a Sweet Tooth - By Miranda Bliss Page 0,1

don’t always believe in myself.

That afternoon as I stood on Jim’s front porch, I wondered what they’d say if they knew that my detective skills had failed me completely.

The thought sat in my stomach like the remains of the BLT I’d tried to make for lunch that afternoon. I’d burned some of the bacon to a crisp. Some of it, I hadn’t cooked enough; it was floppy and greasy. When I tried to slice the sandwich into perfect pieces the way Jim always does, the tomato squished.

I pushed off from the window where I had my nose pressed against the glass and grumbled. Just like my stomach did.

In fact, I was so busy feeling inadequate and incapable of looking into even this, what should have been the simplest and the easiest-to-investigate mystery, I didn’t hear Jim’s car pull into the driveway.

Which explains why I jumped a mile when I heard him behind me.

“You’re not trying to do something you shouldn’t be doing, are ye, Annie?”

I pressed a hand to the front of my navy spring-weight jacket, the better to keep my heart from bursting through my ribs. When it comes to my investigations, I can tell a lie with the best of them. After all, a detective has to be good at that sort of thing. When it comes to Jim, though, there’s no way I could even try to prevaricate. There was no way I’d ever want to. That’s the wonderful thing about our relationship: Jim and I are completely honest with each other.

Most of the time.

I smiled in the way I knew from experience made a tingle shoot up his spine, and just to make sure I kept him off guard, I gave him a hello kiss. “I just wondered if you were home, that’s all. Nothing wrong with the bride checking on the groom, is there? I wanted to talk to you. About the menu for the reception.”

“Uh-huh.” It was three weeks before our wedding and Jim was waiting until the exact right moment to get his hair cut so that it would be perfect for our big day. When he nodded, a curl of mahogany-colored hair flopped into his eyes. He pushed it back with one hand, then looped an arm around my waist. “If ye were interested in talking about food, you could have done that at Bellywasher’s,” he said. “You knew I’d be there all day.”

“But . . .” I put my arms around his waist and hooked my fingers behind his back. “You’re not at Bellywasher’s. You’re here, at home. Which means if I wanted to talk to you, I knew I’d have to do it here.”

“Aye, but you didn’t know I would be here, did you?” Did I say I was the detective? It looks like Jim is pretty good when it comes to noticing details, too. He tugged the cuff of his shirt over his hand, reached around me, and wiped my nose print off the front window. “You’re trying to get a look inside the house.”

Of course I was.

Oh, how I hated to admit it!

“It’s not fair,” I wailed, stepping back and out of the circle of Jim’s arms. “It’s going to be my house, too. I should at least have the right to see what’s happening inside.” Just in case anything had changed in the time since I last made an attempt to check on the renovations going on inside the house, I stood on tiptoe and tried for another look. Call me paranoid, but I was sure that was why Jim had tacked a bedsheet inside the living room window. The only thing I saw was the pattern of blue and white flowers. My shoulders slumped, and I didn’t have to try to sound disappointed. “I should have some say-so when it comes to the renovation.”

“You’re in charge of the wedding.” Jim had said these words to me dozens of times since he’d announced that he was redoing his house in honor of the wedding, and believe me when I say I was not complaining. Not about the renovations, anyway. Jim lives in a wonderful ramshackle house in Arlington’s Clarendon neighborhood. He’d bought the house for a song from the elderly woman who’d lived there previously, and since he’d sunk all his money into buying it—not to mention into keeping Bellywasher’s open and thriving—there was little he could do in terms of updates. Last I’d seen it, the living room was papered in cabbage roses and violets. The