Today is my birthday, but I had to deal with an unstable employee who insists that I know something about a substantial amount of money hidden by his mother. She’s in the hospital and can’t talk after being pushed down the stairs by a crazy person, in my building. I’m upset and bewildered by the current state of events and can hardly sleep at night. If only I could just focus on my children and father being healthy or on the continued success of my business.

I’m always trying to focus on the positive, like the fact that I get to work with my best friend, who is also an amazing pastry chef. Ruthie and I both started working at the Whipped and Sipped Café on Sundays when we were undergrads at Northwestern. It’s located in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago where I grew up. Back then, Ruthie was already experimenting with recipes, trying to bake rich and decadent cakes without butter or eggs, even before she became a full-fledged vegan. We were both committed to creating healthful food that had less salt and refined sugar and more natural sugars, herbs and spices.

Ruthie and I used to dream of running a café together. After we graduated, Ruthie was hired as full-time pastry chef at the Whipped and Sipped, with the understanding that she would never have to touch an animal product and always had Saturdays off. I was promoted to manager. To this day, Ruthie bakes the most delectable cakes, muffins and breads without a single stick of butter or an egg. She doesn’t even use honey! My recipes at the end of the book include fish, chicken, dairy and eggs, but Ruthie’s recipes are all vegan.

Until the craziness started, my biggest problem was my ex-husband Neil not being attentive to our children’s safety, constantly arriving late to pick them up or drop them off, and subjecting me to some of his obnoxious, troglodyte friends. Neil runs a car dealership that he inherited from his father, who died before he could be indicted for embezzling money from the company he’d worked at (which is not-surprisingly the same company where the aforementioned employee’s mother worked). Not long after our wedding, Neil’s father fell off a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean, and his broken-hearted mother fought for years to improve safety rules until the United States Congress passed a law about it. To celebrate Mitzi’s victory, Ruthie and I hosted a day-long celebration during which Whipped and Sipped gave away free cookies in the shape of ships.

I’m broken-hearted about Gary Vanza. He’d lived across the hall from my parents for years and was a good friend to all of us. My sister and I used to babysit his daughter, Kacey, who started getting into drugs in high school, and hasn’t yet managed to get completely clean. I think Gary sold me the café for such a good price because I promised to keep Kacey on no matter what. I also promised to employ his very cranky, constantly complaining sister, Edith, as long as she was able to work.

After another neighbor and I discovered the dead body in her dining room (luckily, Brianne had always hated that rug and wanted to replace it anyway), I went a little crazy imagining everyone as a suspect. Was it one of his ex-wives or his current, nasty wife who once screamed at a developmentally challenged cashier at the grocery store for tilting a cake sideways? Was it my ex-husband or one of his low-life associates? Was it another neighbor? I’m having trouble sleeping at night, and it doesn’t help that I’ve started falling for the homicide detective assigned to the case.

On a happy note – Ruthie baked me a fabulous birthday cake!

You can read more about Alene in Battered, the first book in the NEW “Whipped and Sipped” cozy mystery series, released August 6, 2019.

Alene Baron is the proud owner of Whipped and Sipped, a café that offers healthful, delectable food and drinks. Her life consists of dreaming up new recipes, raising her three children, and arguing with her ex-husband–until her neighbor and close friend is murdered. She imagines nearly everyone she knows as a possible suspect. After a second attack, Alene is determined to find the true killer . . . before she, or her family, become targets.

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Meet the author
I’ve spent a lifetime writing stories, songs, and unwieldy book-length manuscripts, but it took recovering from an epic health battle to focus my energy on getting this novel published (a second Whipped and Sipped Mystery is underway). I’m grateful for my wonderful friends and family who are the first tasters of my baking and cooking experiments, for the pleasure of music and reading, for the ability to sing every week at St Joe’s Hospital, for living in the magnificent city of Chicago, and for being alive in this beautiful, though sometimes challenging world.

To learn more about G.P., visit her website at website, or on Facebook.

All comments are welcomed.