The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse: Books 1-3 (The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse Box Sets) Read online

  The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse Box Set 1

  Books 1-3

  Nic Saint

  Puss in Print Publications

  Contents

  The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse Box Set

  One Spoonful of Trouble

  Foreword

  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

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Epilogue

  Two Scoops of Murder

  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

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Epilogue

  Three Shots of Disaster

  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

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from A Twist of Wraith

  About Nic

  Also by Nic Saint

  Copyright

  The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse Box Set

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  One Spoonful of Trouble

  When Felicity Bell expresses the wish there were more to life than working in the family bakery, she didn’t know her wish would come true so soon. Suddenly the small town of Happy Bays is confronted with a crime wave the likes of which she’s never seen. The main culprit seems to be big shot reporter Rick Dawson, and soon the two are at daggers drawn.

  Rick actually came down to Happy Bays to work on a tell-all article exposing villainous billionaire Chazz Falcone. Rick just lost his job because of the exposé, and he’s determined to nail the real estate tycoon to the wall. He soon discovers that trouble has followed him from New York City. Though she pretends to be a baker, he has a sneaking suspicion Felicity Bell is really working for Falcone, trying to get her hands on his article.

  Before long, Felicity and Rick find themselves in a reluctant partnership fighting the crime wave that has hit Happy Bays, and the shady billionaire who seems to be behind all the trouble.

  Two Scoops of Murder

  Happy Bays, that peaceful little town nestled on Long Island’s south shore, is suddenly the scene of a brutal murder. Felicity Bell, baker and sometime crime reporter, decides to get involved when the police appear stumped. Very soon, however, more murders startle the small community, and Felicity enlists the help of the ‘holy trinity’, three nosy and gossipy members of the Happy Bays Neighborhood Watch Committee (HBNWC).

  Meanwhile Alice Whitehouse, Felicity’s best friend and chairwoman of the HBNWC, has other fish to fry in the form of Reece Hudson, Hollywood hunk. Alice has been Reece’s number one fan since he first rose to fame, and the fact that the handsome movie star is in town to introduce his fiancée to his father doesn’t stop her from accidentally falling into the man’s arms, and promptly signing him up for the HBNWC.

  Now Felicity, with the help of Alice, the Holy Trinity, and action hero Reece Hudson, has to find a way to stop the killer before he strikes again. And as the body count rises, Felicity finds herself running out of time, out of options, and out of customers.

  Three Shots of Disaster

  Just when Felicity Bell, well-renowned baker and somet
ime crime reporter, thought that the streets of Happy Bays were safe once again, tragedy strikes. First there’s the nuclear power plant, where a terrorist is plotting revenge on the small Long Island town.

  Then there’s Mayor MacDonald’s pet parrot Moe who is suddenly kidnapped, and finally Felicity’s best friend Alice’s love life suffers a crushing blow when Hollywood hunk Reece Hudson decides to return to his ex-girlfriend, the socialite Dorothy Valour.

  Felicity, Alice, and their band of friends and family are faced with three shots of disaster. And this may well be the end, for even Felicity’s baking skills seem to have deserted her when her muffins turn out inedible, due to a mistake in Granny Bell’s recipe.

  Will Alice be reunited with Reece? Will Moe the Parrot escape his captors? Will Happy Bays survive nuclear disaster? And, most importantly, will Felicity’s baking prowess return? In this, Felicity and Alice’s third mystery, things suddenly look very grim indeed…

  One Spoonful of Trouble

  The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse 1

  Foreword

  Dear reader,

  Thank you for purchasing this book. ONE SPOONFUL OF TROUBLE is the first in the Bell & Whitehouse series of cozy humorous mysteries. I want to warn you beforehand, however, that you won’t find a great deal of mystery in this book. In fact not a single murder takes place (there is, however, a great deal of mayhem).

  That’s because this book serves as an introduction into the world of Bell & Whitehouse and Happy Bays, the small bucolic town they inhabit. You will meet Felicity and Alice and Rick (Reece pops up in book two) and a lot of the other colorful characters. From the second book onward (TWO SCOOPS OF MURDER) there will be more mystery, and from the fourth one on (A TWIST OF WRAITH) there’re even ghosts involved.

  There is still plenty of fun (not to mention twists and turns) to be had, though, and I wish you a wonderful time in the company of Felicity Bell and Alice Whitehouse!

  Nic Saint

  Chapter 1

  “A storm is brewing off the East Coast. It is predicted to hit land within the next forty-eight hours…”

  Felicity was barely paying attention to the news broadcast, her mind occupied with other, more important matters such as the right consistency of Bundt cake batter, when the next topic came on.

  “And in other news, the snow monkey that was caught roaming Central Park late last night is now safely back where it belongs: in the Central Park Zoo. The Japanese macaque, affectionately called Zebra by its keepers because of its distinctive stripes, managed to escape the confines of the so-called Temperate Zone and was found crashing a wedding party at The Loeb Boathouse. Unlike Zebra, who devoured the entire wedding cake, the newlyweds were not amused. Representatives of the Central Park Zoo promised this would never happen again.”

  She chuckled quietly as she returned her attention to the menus she was writing for next week. Even though she’d lived all her life in New York, or rather on Long Island, she could safely say she’d never heard of a monkey feasting on wedding cake in Central Park.

  “Perhaps he was hungry, the poor dear,” her mother remarked as she dumped a box with pristine menu cards on the kitchen table.

  “I should think they feed the ‘poor dear’ well enough,” Felicity said as she expertly glued another sheet of paper inside a menu. “Absolutely no need to binge on cake of all things.”

  Mom shook her head sadly. It was obvious her heart bled for the poor little creature. “How would you feel if you had to spend all your life cooped up in a tiny cage?”

  “Well, I do know what it feels like to spend all my life cooped up in a tiny cage. I’ve been a fixture at Bell’s Bakery & Tea Room since the day I was born, remember?” When no answer came, she immediately regretted her glib response. “Just kidding, Mom.” She winked. “At least Bell’s has plenty of cake. No need for me to escape, huh?”

  This time Mom’s lip curled up into the tiniest of smiles. “Don’t tell me you finished those already,” she said, before clasping a hand to her mouth. “Oh, dear Lord! What have you done?” With trembling hand she lifted a menu card from the stack and stared at her daughter’s handiwork, visibly aghast.

  Felicity gave her a winning smile. “The power of the personal computer, Mom. Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

  “But—but…you—you printed them!”

  “Of course I did. Can you imagine writing that whole litany by hand? One hundred times? My school days are over, you know.” She grinned, recollecting that one time Miss Ellis had her scribble ‘I will not bring stink bombs to school’ five hundred times. In all fairness, it hadn’t been a stink bomb, exactly. Merely a baking experiment gone wrong, but she’d rather the teacher think it was a stink bomb than spread the word that Felicity Bell, daughter of Happy Bays’s most celebrated baker Peter Bell, couldn’t bake.

  Mom’s eyes were wide with shock. “But we always write them by hand. It’s part of the charm of Bell’s.”

  She seemed genuinely perturbed but Felicity merely shrugged. She really didn’t feel like writing the same menu a hundred times just because of that nasty beast called inflation, or because Dad liked to change the menu on a whim.

  “Mom, Marcel prints its menus. They’ve been doing it for ages.” Like Bell’s, Marcel offered all manner of delicious pastry in its bakery slash tea room.

  “Oh, you can’t possibly be serious,” Mom snapped. “Just because Marcel prints their menus doesn’t mean we should. They’re a horrible little place. Tacky and selling the worst junk you can possibly imagine.”

  That was perhaps a slight exaggeration. After all, Marcel had opened shop on Lake Street around the same time Felicity’s great-grandpapa had, in 1938 to be exact. That Felicity’s forefather and Marcel Le Corbusier hadn’t been the greatest of friends was inconsequential, as was the fact that Dad and the current owner of Marcel, Lucien Le Corbusier, weren’t the best of pals either. These family feuds were pretty silly, Felicity felt, and if she ever took over the business she would have none of this nonsense.

  “I think we need to maintain our competitive edge,” she said with a tentative eye on her mother. From experience she knew that when all else failed, referring to buzzwords usually did the trick. She’d taken a course in marketing, and for some reason Mom and Dad had a layman’s reverence to the stuff, though she could have told them most of it was pure rubbish.

  “You think so?” Mom asked uncertainly.

  “It’s good for the bottom line.”

  “Mh…” She wavered, and Felicity could sense she had her right where she wanted her.

  “Millennials like print,” she continued airily. “All the thought leaders indicate this. It’s all about localization and a responsive menu design. It’s called native advertising and viewability, Mom.” She tapped the table sharply. “Customer-centricity is key. As is omnichannel retailing and immersive design.”

  “Really?” Mom was staring at her, confusion clear in her powder blue eyes. “Well, then.” She managed a brave smile. “I guess that settles it.” She picked up one of the old menus, written in Felicity’s slanting hand. “Pity, though. You write so beautifully.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I’ll write you a birthday card.”

  Mom sighed. Like her daughter, she was a big and busty woman with a mass of red curls that consistently escaped the scrunchie to which she tried to confine them.

  “All right then. If you say so, dear. After all, you are the marketing expert.” She sighed once more. “Besides, it’s not as if we’ll be changing the menus any time soon.”

  Felicity raised an eyebrow. “I thought Dad liked to experiment now and again?”

  Mom eyed her sadly. “Your father seems to have run out of ideas. He used to put new items on the menu every season. Now he says he’s tired of trying to come up with different ways to do the same thing. Any way you slice it, a waffle is a waffle, he says.” She shook her head. “How we will keep our…competitive edge, I don’t know.”

  “I think it’s a
wonderful idea. Dad is right. A waffle is a waffle. And a crepe is a crepe and a scone is a scone and a muffin is a muffin. Slathered in butter, served with sugar, maple syrup, whipped cream, Marshmallow Fluff, strawberries, banana or Nutella…it’s still the same dish.”

  Though she had to admit Mom’s concern for Dad’s reluctance to keep innovating struck a chord. It was clear that after spending thirty years at the helm of Bell’s, Dad was yearning for new horizons, preferably far from Happy Bays and the bakery that carried his name. Dad had been dreaming of retiring to Florida for years now, wistfully thumbing brochures of idyllic retirement communities where the sun always shone, sandy beaches were golden, the water cerulean and he and Mom could spend their twilight years undisturbed by the demands of customers, relatives or the taxman.

  In fact what Dad—and perhaps even Mom—was secretly hoping for was that Felicity would finally settle down ‘with a nice boy’ and take over the bakery. The pressure was mounting, and even though her parents had yet to say the first thing about this, they’d made plenty of veiled suggestions over the years.

  Refusing to allow herself to be drawn into a discussion of Dad’s faults as an innovative baker, Felicity leaned back in her chair. “So! Then I guess we’re done.”

  “I guess so,” Mom said dubiously, settling down on the chair opposite from her daughter. She eyed her narrowly. “Don’t you ever get tired of working in this place, Fee?”

  Felicity looked up. Her mother was surprisingly maudlin today. Whether it was the snow monkey that had affected her or the incoming storm she didn’t know, but she still felt compelled to answer a question with a question. “Why would I ever get tired? I work with the people I love doing what I love.”

  “Which is?”

  “Well…you know…baking stuff,” she replied a little lamely.

  “I don’t know. I just thought perhaps you wanted to pursue your second career.”

  This ‘second career’ Mom was referring to was the baking column Felicity had started to write for the Happy Bays Gazette not so long ago. Called Flour Girl, it didn’t amount to much, but apparently for Mom it was enough to suspect her daughter of wanting to jump ship. In her mind she already saw Felicity traveling the globe writing Pulitzer Prize-winning articles about warlords, deforestation and other calamities.