Breakfast Blend Betrayal: A Teapot Tails Mystery

About Breakfast Blend Betrayal: A Teapot Tails Mystery

When Gus Bowen turns up dead in the walk-in cooler of The Morning Steep, the official verdict is swift: a faulty valve seal, an unlucky morning, a tragedy with a tidy mechanical explanation. Tearoom owner Phoebe Rowe accepts the condolences, keeps the counter running, and says nothing to anyone about the thermostat dial she photographed before anyone thought to look at it — a dial set hard to its coldest point, in a cooler whose last maintenance check was two days ago and perfectly fine. Gus had been on this route for fifteen years.

He knew every loading dock and delivery bay on Chandler Lane, and something he'd seen at the one next door had been sitting with him for three weeks. Phoebe intends to find out what it was. With her seal-point Birman Tansy keeping an unwavering watch over the cooler corridor and her dry, encyclopedic neighbor Kit supplying local knowledge and a willingness to reconnoitre a service road in November, Phoebe begins pulling threads that run from a delivery route note — five words in Gus's careful hand — to a fast-tracked licensing approval, a new refrigerated unit that has no business being in a wine merchant's back room, and a town councillor with a brother who owns three lorries and no documented reason to be anywhere near Chandler Lane.

Deputy Sheriff Ida Crane is methodical and fair, but some pieces only assemble themselves over a pot of tea and a great deal of unhurried attention.