Pepper Reece never expected to find solace in bay leaves.
But when her life fell apart at forty and she bought the venerable-but-rundown Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, her days took a tasty turn. Now she’s savoring the prospect of a flavorful fall and a busy holiday cooking season, until danger bubbles to the surface . . .
Between managing her shop, worrying about her staff, and navigating a delicious new relationship, Pepper’s firing on all burners. But when her childhood friend Maddie is shot and gravely wounded, the incident is quickly tied to an unsolved murder that left another close friend a widow.
Convinced that the secret to both crimes lies in the history of a once-beloved building, Pepper uses her local-girl contacts and her talent for asking questions to unearth startling links between the past and present—links that suggest her childhood friend may not have been the Golden Girl she appeared to be. Pepper is forced to face her own regrets and unsavory emotions, if she wants to save Maddie’s life—and her own.
We open with Pepper and her oldest friend Kristen out with their other halves, when they get contacted by a good friend Laurel, the Police are with her and she needs help! It turns out that another mutual friend has been shot and the gun used seems to be the same gun that killed Laurel's husband, so the police (and FBI) are going back over Pat's killing, meanwhile Maddie is lying close to death in the ICU.
Pepper starts to use her connections around the market area to see what she can dig up to help the local police, the only hope is that she won't dig so deep that she ends up digging her own grave - there is a killer out there and the last thing Pepper needs is for them to focus on her.
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