Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse (A Cape Bay Cafe Mystery Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

enough away that I wasn’t crowding them. It had been less than a month since I’d gotten the news about my mother that Matty was about to get about his dad, and I knew how much it hurt.
    Mike took a deep breath. “Matt, I’m really sorry to have to tell you this—”
    Matty stepped back, shaking his head rapidly. “No, no, no, no.”
    Mike stepped toward him and rested a hand on Matty’s shoulder. “Matt, your dad passed away.”
    “But—he can’t—” Matty glanced at me.
    My eyes filled with tears I struggled to keep from pouring down my face.
    “No, no, no,” he repeated and ran around Mike.
    Mike caught him as Matty got around the corner of the house to where he could see his dad slumped in his chair on the patio.
    “Dad,” Matty cried out as he collapsed to his knees.
    Mike grasped Matty’s shoulder. “You can’t go over there, Matt. We have to process the scene.”
    “‘Process the scene’?” Matty exclaimed. “What do you mean, ‘process the scene’? Did someone kill my dad?” He looked frantically toward his dad’s body as if he were searching for blood or bullet holes or some other sign of foul play.
    “We don’t know,” Mike said. “In cases of unexpected deaths, we need to make sure we document everything just in case.”
    Matty sat back on his heels. Mike looked at me and nodded toward Matty. I knelt beside Matty and took his hand.
    “They’re just covering their bases, Matty,” I said quietly.
    Matty looked at me as if he were just noticing that I was there. “Franny,” he said quietly.
    I smiled at him sadly. I hadn’t heard anybody call me “Franny” in years. We heard motion behind us and turned to see the paramedics we’d forgotten about wheeling a stretcher across the lawn.
    “Uh, Francesca, how about you take Matt inside?” Mike suggested.
    I looked at Matty, and he nodded. We both stood, our knees wet from the damp grass. Still holding hands, united in our orphan sorrow, we started toward the front of the house.
    “Try not to touch anything!” Mike called after us.
    I glanced back and nodded as Matty’s hand tightened on mine. The added reminder that someone may have killed his dad pained him.
    Mike said to the paramedics as we passed them, “Let me get my camera out of my car, then you can take him.”
    Matty and I walked to the front door. I reached for the knob, but Matty shook his head.
    “He always keeps it locked,” he said, reaching in his pocket for his keys.
    But my hand was already turning the knob. I looked at Matty and saw him crumple.
    “I’ll make sure to tell Mike,” I said. I knew we both hoped that his dad had just forgotten to lock it this once. As painful as my mother’s death was for me, I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would be if someone had taken her from me deliberately.
    I glanced around as we stepped inside the house. Nothing looked disturbed or out of place. Everything was as quiet and in its place as if Mr. Cardosi had just stepped out to run to the store. Matty and I sat on the sofa in the front room, where we’d sat many times to watch TV in the afternoons. His house was a mirror image of my own, with the master bedroom on the right of the entrance instead of the left. Unless they’d been remodeled, Capes were all pretty much the same.
    We were quiet, neither of us feeling the need to put our pain into words. That was all I had wanted in my first days back in town—to sit quietly and think about my mother. I stole a few glances at Matty. I’d only seen him briefly on the day I got back then again at my mother’s funeral. I wasn’t in much of a state of mind to pay attention to how he looked either time. I could see that, despite the tension and anguish in his face, he had been aging well. He had grown his thick, dark hair longer than he wore it in high school, but it was still a preppy, business-like length. He still had the same warm brown eyes. Back in school, those eyes could make me melt. We’d never dated,