Homicide and Halo-Halo

Things for Lila Macapagal are becoming hotter. Not in her romantic life, which she refuses to acknowledge even though two very suitable men have shown interest in her. or her career, as she finds it difficult to start her own café in the wake of the horrible incident that happened at her aunt Tita Rosie's Kitchen, a Filipino restaurant, a few months earlier. No, because summer, her least favorite season, has just begun, things are really becoming hotter.

Lila's little community of Shady Palms has revived the Miss Teen Shady Palms Beauty Pageant, which she won many years ago. This fact creates a rift between Lila and her opponent and cousin, Bernadette, adding to her sense of cloying discomfort. But when the head judge of the pageant is murdered and Bernadette becomes the main suspect, the two must put aside their differences and solve the case--because it looks like one of them might be next.