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

but that hadn’t stopped us from flirting, and he’d been an expert at using those big brown eyes for that.
    I didn’t know how long we sat there. After my mother died, I’d felt as though I’d barely sat down on the train in New York when we arrived in Boston, so we could have been on that couch for five minutes or two hours. Time passed differently when your life was falling apart. There was a quiet knock on the door before it opened. I popped up off the couch, ready to fend off any prying neighbors, but it was just Mike. I sat back down next to Matty, who was staring off into space.
    “Just going to take a few pictures,” Mike said, nodding at us.
    I nodded back as Matty continued staring.
    Mike stepped into the master bedroom, and I saw the flash from his camera as he moved around the room, taking pictures. He went up the stairs next, and I heard his heavy shoes moving around the floor above us. Matty glanced at the ceiling then looked back at the spot on the carpet he seemed focused on. I leaned back on the couch and crossed then uncrossed my legs.
    Mike came down the stairs a few minutes later and nodded at us as he passed through the living room to the back rooms of the house. I heard the click of the camera and saw the flash as he took more pictures. He seemed to be spending more time in the kitchen than he had in the other rooms. Finally, he came back into the living room and took a couple of pictures before sitting on a chair across from us. Matty didn’t look at him until Mike cleared his throat.
    “Did you find anything?” Matty asked, his voice hoarse.
    “There were no visible marks on the body,” Mike said professionally.
    I cringed at his reference to “the body.” That body had been Matty’s dad just hours earlier. At least I hoped it had only been hours.
    “They’ll want to do an autopsy. Standard procedure to determine cause of death.”
    Matty nodded.
    “Nothing appears disturbed in the house,” Mike said.
    “Can you tell me if your dad drank coffee throughout the day or just in the morning?”
    “He makes a pot in the morning,” Matty said, forgetting to use the past tense. “He drinks most of it before he goes into the shop then takes a travel cup with the last of it.” Matty wrinkled his forehead, looking more alert. “Did Dad make it into the shop this morning?”
    Mike shook his head. “I don’t know. We’ll check on it. Would you normally hear if he didn’t go in?”
    Matty sank back on the couch, shrugging. “Who knows? Dad would get in a mood sometimes and just decide he wasn’t opening the shop that day. I’d drive by and see it closed and freak out, but when I’d call to check on him, he’d say he just didn’t feel like cutting hair that day.” He shrugged again. “Who knows? You know how Dad could be.”
    Mike nodded as he scribbled in his notebook. I wasn’t sure what recent events Matty was referring to, but I remembered that Mr. Cardosi could fly off the handle at perceived slights. I remembered one time when the paper boy had delivered the Boston paper but not the local one and Mr. Cardosi went on a tirade. He had been certain the paper boy had done it deliberately, that the editor of the local paper had told him not to deliver it, and that there must be something negative about Mr. Cardosi in that day’s paper. My grandfather had taken him our copy of the paper to show him that there was nothing about Mr. Cardosi in it at all, but Mr. Cardosi just accused him of being a part of the plot against him. He’d looked suspiciously at my grandfather and the paper boy for months after that.
    “Do you know if there was anyone who had a grudge against your dad? Who might want to hurt him?” Mike asked.
    Matty scoffed. “My dad’s enemies are more in his imagination than in real life.”
    “Any close friends? Girlfriends? Anyone your dad might have been close to? We probably won’t need to talk to them, but it’s good to go ahead and get it in the