BOOK 1: A DEADLY INSIDE SCOOP
Stephen Bayard was a charming con man. He tried to take over Chagrin Falls’s successful ice cream shop (Crewse Creamery) by convincing its owner (Bronwyn’s Grandma Kay) to sign over rights to him “to take it off the hands for the Crewse family”. Grandma Kay had dementia and therefore couldn’t think straight, but even in her illness, she knew the priority of family, so she caved in. As a result, the Crewse family had to undergo a legal battle to get the shop’s rights back. As part of this process, PopPop had to declare his wife “incompetent”, which added more emotional stress to the already painful situation.
Through other shady dealings, Stephen acquired a Chagrin Falls restaurant (which he later gave to one of his partners, Ari), and Stephen and his partners paid Dan Clawson to store their cash and drugs inside a safe that was part of a fake wall in his bike shop. Some of these drugs were from a warehouse heist that they were selling in the black market. Dan Clawson gave them keys to access the safe through the back so that they didn’t have to keep coming through his bike shop. Dan’s wife left Dan partly because she saw him as cowardly and spineless for giving no-good-doers full access to a safe in their shop. Later, Dan sold his shop to Mrs. Cro, who used the building for her florist business.
When most of the town was on to Stephen’s cunning ways, he left for a different town. Stephen married Althea, and they had a kid who they named Jasper. Then Stephen went to jail for a theft that he got caught for, and Althea’s friend Glynis adopted Jasper since Althea wasn’t a very good role model. Althea also gave them her puppy (Blake) to serve as emotional therapy for Jasper during the transition. Althea then started dating Ari and working as a waitress in his restaurant.
When Stephen got out of jail, he came up with a grand plan for another “job” that he wanted Ari’s help with. So he traveled back to Chagrin Falls to talk with Ari about it. However, Ari told him that he doesn’t want to be part of the criminal lifestyle anymore and that he wanted to continue the fresh start he’s had ever since he took over the restaurant. This is why the last phone number Stephen dialed was to Ari (using the restaurant phone number).
When Althea found out that Stephen was back in town and had a grand plan that could quickly get a lot of money, she wanted in. However, Stephen didn’t trust her after she used up a lot of their savings while he was in jail and left him, so he laughed at her offer to join him. His exclusivity, plus the fact that he somehow took back Blake from Glynis/Jasper (telling Bronwyn/ “Win” that it was a “lost puppy” he “found” when confronted) was enough to tick off Althea. So she broke into Mrs. Cro’s shop, opened the safe, and stole all its contents (including the stolen drug named succinylcholine). Until then, Mrs. Cro didn’t even realize that there was a hidden safe inside a fake wall. Althea lured Stephen to the falls and injected him with the succinylcholine for payback. During this chaos, Jasper caught sight of Althea and tried to run after her since he wanted to see his actual mother again.
Bronwyn also happened to be at the falls right after the murder (collecting fresh, fluffy snow to make ice cream out of). She saw Jasper by the body before he ran back to his adopted mother. Glynis lied about her or Jasper seeing anything about the murder since she didn’t want to open up any wounds for Jasper. Somewhere along the line, Glynis and Jasper got Blake back.
Win’s best friend, Maisie, also worked at Ari’s restaurant, and she never trusted Althea because she always wore expensive things that were too luxurious for someone who was supposed to be living on a waitress’s salary. Maisie was the one who answered the restaurant’s phone in Ari’s office when the police dialed the last number that Stephen called. For a while, this caused Win and Maisie to suspect Ari (not Althea).
The head detective thinks Win’s dad is the top suspect since he had a clear motive, didn’t have an alibi (since he was visiting his mother’s grave at the time of the murder), and had easy access to succinylcholine (since he’s a surgeon and that drug is mainly used for two things: putting people to sleep for surgery, or in a higher dose, putting people to death for the death penalty).
Win knows that her dad didn't do it, so she uncovers the true killer (Althea) before the case gets unjustly pinned on him.
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BOOK 1 QUOTES
Win’s first job post-college was a marketing gig in New York, but a health issue (that ended up requiring her to simply get her parathyroid gland removed) caused her to move back to Chagrin Falls (as she got care and support from her family). Once back, Win realized how much she missed her family and hometown, so she was thrilled with the opportunity to take over her grandparents’ ice cream shop (after her Aunt Jack, who ran it for a few years, turning it more towards hot dogs and lottery games and lemonade and such “since that’s where the money was” and away from what made the shop special, met a man online and moved away to be with him).
“I didn’t know if I’d ever felt ‘homesick’ while I was away, but it took my being sick to realize I needed to be home” (Book1, 69).
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Ice cream can cheer up even grumpy grumps.
“Our ice cream could warm even the coldest soul” (Book1, 231).
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If Zoup can sell soup all year (even having a line out the door during summer), then you should be able to sell ice cream all year long too, despite Cleveland’s unpredictable weather.
“Cleveland’s the only place where people think forty degrees is good weather” (Book1, 261).
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As was discovered with Stephen, don’t let charm fool you.
“He was a sweet talker. Had an angel’s smile and a devil’s tail” (Book1, 224)
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One of Win’s older brothers, Lew, is a dentist. Win was resourceful and asked him for information about what he might know about Stephen (and the court case he had with the family when Win was little).
“Getting info from Lew Crewse, DDS, was as hard as pulling teeth” (Book1, 218).
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Morrison Kaye (“O”), is a law professor/ former police officer who gives Win advice about how to snoop/ conduct investigations.
“‘I teach my class about circumstantial evidence… If there is no snow on the ground when you go to sleep, but there’s snow there when you wake up, what do you think happened over night?’ // ‘That it snowed.’ // ‘Right. You wouldn’t know that for a fact… But the circumstances -- the now on the ground -- would tend to prove your point. It would be evidence… Sometimes the police don’t have anything but circumstantial evidence. Can’t prove a person committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt… The prosecutor has to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s not the police officers’ job. They collect the evidence. So sometimes, they get all they can and then give what they have to the prosecutors. Leaving them, and the jurors, to figure out what they can’” (Book1, 277).
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BOOK 2: A GAME OF CONES
At a shop owners’ meeting, Zeke Reynolds (who works for a company named Rhys Enterprises) and his assistant/ alleged girlfriend (Veronica) announce their plans of buying the mom-and-pop shops that run along one of the town triangle’s legs so that they can build a vertical mall. People get upset at this announcement (since it would change up the suburb’s unique, quaint atmosphere), but Zeke tells them to not shoot the messenger. A few hours later, he is found shot dead in an alleyway.
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Two suspects are the Dixby sisters (since their coffee/tea shop was the one holdout that Rhys Enterprises still needed to acquire). They are twin elderly sisters who own their own guns, but it doesn’t make sense for them to have initiated a fight with Zeke (since they should have known that Rhys Enterprises would be bound to send another representative, and they can’t kill off the entire corporation to stop any harassment they might be getting to sell their property). But maybe Zeke approached them and tried to threaten them, and they pulled out a gun on him in self-defense?
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Another suspect is Veronica. After the meeting, she was seen having an argument with him in a restaurant since Zeke had told her that he wanted to quit his job and move to Florida (and presumably wanted her to come with him), but Veronica didn’t want him to leave. Maybe this lover’s quarrel caused her to lose her temper in a dangerous way?
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Another suspect is Rory, Win’s friend from New York who came to Chagrin Falls to convince Win to come back to work at their marketing company (since she and the company miss her). The night Rory arrived, she got hungry from the long drive, so she looked for a restaurant. However, after eating, she got lost on her way to the bed-and-breakfast and ended up in an alleyway. When she turned her bright lights on to see her surroundings better, she noticed Zeke’s body lying on the ground. She wanted to make sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her, so she got out of her car and walked up to the corpse. But she got too close to the body, so she got blood on her $2,000 Louboutin shoes. She didn’t want to get the blood in her car, so she reluctantly took them off and threw them in the dumpster. She immediately left without reporting the body to anyone (because when she was 16, she found another body, and even though she wasn’t accused of that crime, being interrogated in a room for hours left her traumatized). But when the police found the shoes during the investigation, Win instantly knew those were Rory’s favorite pair. Win asked Rory about what happened, and she convinced Rory to go to the police station to give her account of what happened before the police ran the fingerprints on the shoes through their system and hunted Rory down with the wrong idea in mind. Win and her friends knew that Rory was innocent, so they all worked together to find out who the real killer was before the police ended up pinning the crime on Rory anyways.
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REAL KILLER: Barniece (owner of the art gallery store that was located in the strip where the wall was supposed to get built). Even though they had already sold their property to Zeke, Zeke stopped by their store a few extra times since he loved art and was interested in buying a couple of their pieces. However, he noticed that their expensive paintings were fakes and threatened to expose them so that they wouldn’t keep ripping people off. Barniece tried to assure Zeke that they were already planning to leave (due to plans of the mall being built), but Zeke was insistent on doing the right thing. Barniece chased after him and shot him before he could turn her in, but Rory (being a graphic designer and art aficionado) also found out that the paintings were fakes.
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BOOK 2 QUOTES
Maisie is known for changing jobs a lot, but when she really puts her mind to something (like managing the community garden), she sticks with it.
“That was Maisie. She was a lot like a banana split, not knowing exactly what to be so she tried a little bit of a lot of things. But when she did set her mind to something, it was next to impossible to get her to change it. She turned into a DQ blizzard -- even if you turned her upside down and gave her a good shake, you couldn’t get her to move. And proving Ari Terrain was a cold-blooded killer just seemed to be one of those things that she was stuck on” (Book2, 48).
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Win’s Aunt Jaqueline (“Aunt Jack”) comes back after she and her boyfriend broke up. She tries to get Win to turn the ice cream shop back into a novelty shop (with lottery tickets, candy, soda, etc.).
She can’t believe it when she sees how much demand there is for quality ice cream. But she is very out-spoken about all her criticisms (about how WIn offers too many ice cream flavors since she must not have decided which one she wanted to serve, and how the installation of the double-pane window that gives a view of the falls will make them double-liable if someone falls through it, and how Maises’s grandma’s cat named Felice who sits by the window all day not bothering anyone must go).
Luckily, in the end, Aunt Jack’s boyfriend begs for her to take him back, so she moves away to move in with him again.
“She’s as intrusive as a hurricane” (Book2, 86).
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After Win and her friends questioned Veronica (without much luck in getting their questions answered, aside from when Veronica sympathizes with Rory’s love of designer-wear and her loss of Louboutins), they also don’t have much luck in interrogating the mayor.
“It was the second time in the course of an hour that we had been thrown out of somewhere without finding out one single thing about Zeke Reynold’s murder. I’d say our investigation was going downhill quicker than hot fudge could melt soft-serve ice cream” (Book2, 221).
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In the beginning of the first book, Win’s dad makes a “Riya omelet” (named after one of Win’s best friends) that represents her half-Italian/ half-Indian ethnicities and her temper/ black-belt skills. In this book, Riya makes this omelet herself, having gotten the recipe from Win’s dad.
“‘How about a Riya omelet? // …I was honored for him to name a dish after me.’
‘What is it?’ Maisie asked.
‘My father named it after Riya because it has, like, a little basil, some sweet Italian sausage…’
‘Tumeric’ -- Riya took over naming the ingredients -- ‘garam masala and red chili pepper.’
‘Oh,’ Maisie said. ‘I see. A little Italian. A little Indian.’
‘And a little hot, just like me,’ Riya said, putting her hand on her hip and a grin on her face.
…’My father didn’t add that hot chili pepper to his recipe because she’s good-looking,’ I said.
‘We met in kindergarten when she was beating up a little boy for being on the swing she wanted,’ Maise added” (Book2, 246-247).
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Win signs a deal to buy a custom food truck to expand her business.
“This truck is really gonna be the icing on the cake for you… Or should I say, the sprinkles on the ice cream” (Book2, 269).
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BOOK 3: A KILLER SUNDAE
Decades ago, Madeline Markham compiled a recipe book that included Grandma Kay’s ice cream sundae and George Draper’s lasagna. Once the book got published, Madeline wanted to send an inscribed copy to each person who submitted a recipe. Her granddaughter (Thomasina Bowers) accidentally mixed up Grandma Kay’s copy with George Draper’s copy when she mailed them.
George Draper’s wife later died of cancer, and out of loneliness, he became a hoarder until he remarried to Daisy (a former member of Win’s old African-American-based AKA sorority). Daisy is the grandmother of Cameron, the only African American person in Chagrin Falls who is Win’s age.
Back in high school. Win and Cameron were acquaintances but not really “friends”. Cameron dated Kaitlyn, a beautiful snob who later became a lead news reporter.
“Kaitlyn Irene Toles and Cameron Aaron Toffey had been the 2000s version of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West” (Book3, 16).
In the present day, Kaitlyn visits Crewse Creamery to cover a story for the upcoming “ice cream crawl” fundraiser (similar to a bar crawl). Kaitlyn orders an ice cream sundae for the promo and trustingly asks Win to watch her coffee cup during filming. A few hours later, Kaitlyn is found dead due to antifreeze being in her system (likely from someone spiking her coffee). Antifreeze can be easy to disguise into food and drinks, and it takes time for the body to try to break down before it fails.
“Ethylene glycol, the poisonous compound in antifreeze, is sweet and odorless… Now manufacturers of it are being asked to include additives to make it taste bad. Bitter” (Book3, 113).
Who was the killer?
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Was it Gary (“the Grey Wolf”), who was Kaitlyn’s cameraman? He was the one who always ordered Kaitlyn her coffee fix, so he had easy access. As for a motive, he had a crush on her, but maybe he felt overly jealous about her being taken by Cameron?
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Was it Avery, who was a fellow news reporter? She wanted Kaitlyn’s lead position, but since Kaitlyn had already accepted a job in New York City and would be leaving soon, Avery was next-in-line anyways.
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Was it Shannon, who had bore Cameron’s son (Ronnie) when Cameron and Kaitlyn were on a break? Maybe she felt overly jealous about Cameron being taken by Kaityn?
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Was it Win (or anyone else who Kaitlyn asked to watch her coffee while she filmed promos)?
The killer was… Cameron! For the whole story, Cameron seems like a “safe” guy who is heartbroken from the death of his long-time girlfriend (who he said he was planning on proposing to). He insists on having Win help him investigate (since she solved the past two murders) so that he can “get closure”. In reality, he wants to keep tabs on how close she’s getting and look for ways to pin the murder on her.
It turns out that Cameron actually already proposed to Kaitlyn over a bottle of wine and homemade lasagna (from his step-grandfather’s recipe book, inscribed to Win’s grandma). However, she rejected him. Out of anger, Cameron added annotations on how to make every other recipe lethal. For example, on the page with the ice cream sundae recipe, he added the note to add antifreeze. Cameron then threw the book away, but he wasn’t counting on Geroge Draper rescuing the book from the trash and donating it to the local bookshop (where Win then got it).
O saves Win’s life when Cameron realizes that Win figured out the mystery, but the book ends on a cliffhanger if Win will end up with him or Dr. Evan Hayes (who is one of the organizers of the ice cream crawl fundraiser).