Evil Under the Tuscan Sun (A Tuscan Cooking School Mystery, Band 3) - Softcover

Cole, Stephanie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593097831 ISBN 13: 9780593097830

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

Nell Valenti is at ease when managing a farm to table cooking school in sun-dappled Tuscany, but begins to feel the heat when tasked with catching a killer, in this engaging Italian-set cozy mystery series.

When a wealthy New York philanthropist pays top dollar for a private, four-day ziti workshop, Nell Valenti wants everyone at the Orlandini cooking school focused on the task at hand. But complications abound when Nell’s boyfriend Pete Orlandini rushes to Rome for an unexpected business trip, Chef Orlandini is more preoccupied with a potential spot on an American cooking show than preparing for the workshop, and an uninvited woman sneaks into the villa to inspect Pete’s olive grove. The last disturbance proves deadly, and when the woman’s body is found in the grove, Nell must investigate before her hopes for the workshop, like the olives, are crushed.
 
Nell now has another item on her checklist--keep the Orlandinis out of trouble and the wealthy ziti-lovers happy while she looks into the stranger’s past. When Nell discovers that for one of the Orlandinis, at least, the murder victim was not such a stranger after all, she’ll learn that when a detective goes digging in Italy, she’d better be ready for truffle.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephanie Cole is an active member of the mystery-writing community. Writing as Shelley Costa, she was nominated for both an Edgar and Agatha Award, and she cofounded the Northeast Ohio chapter of Sisters in Crime. She teaches creative writing workshops and lectures on American literature in the greater Cleveland area. For fun she takes violin lessons, studies art history—and eyes them both for murder plots.

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1

By the middle of November at the Villa Orlandini, I couldn't remember what seventy degrees and sunny looked like. Anywhere. It was as if there were some meteorological dial that fluctuated between Mist and Drizzle and back again. Since Mist became my preferred setting, I started fine-tuning it. There was blanket mist that seemed to hang, pinging mist that had an edge, spritzer mist that was kind of a refreshing aerosol.

I found myself longing for late autumn back in what I increasingly began to refer to as my native land-even though I knew full well that Weehawken, New Jersey, was completely capable of leaving Cortona, Italy, in the mud when it came to the soul-sucking weather of November. At least Cortona, where I had been working for two months designing a cooking school, had inhabitants who either commented cheerfully on the daily drenching or acted like it didn't even register in what was a fatalistic worldview in the first place.

In the last month, certain things had happened at the Villa Orlandini. The final build-out of the commercial kitchen. The decamping of Annamaria Bari, the sous chef and very former love of Chef Orlandini. Annamaria was the sixty-year-old stalwart who kept the villa running both in and out of the kitchen, which was her throne room, until two months ago. Her throwing in the cheesecloth after four decades of assistance would have left a big enough hole even in what had been the old villa kitchen, let alone the new, expanded, fully outfitted, and glorious kitchen I had designed and finally brought to completion. Now it echoed. Every footfall clattered in the sheer absence of Annamaria. Can a thing of beauty be an empty joy forever? What if Michelangelo had painted a chapel ceiling, and nobody came?

Although her absence was keenly felt, nobody mentioned her. Not, at least, in front of Chef. He was pained, he was betrayed, he was off his game on the bocce court. He appeared close to committing the Italian version of hara-kiri, namely, drinking box wine. Personally, I didn't waste any sympathy on him since he had pretty much brought on the decamping of Annamaria Bari himself, what with casting her aside in the kitchen to ingratiate himself with one of our students, who was busy ingratiating herself with him. With all that reckless ingratiating going on, something was about to blow.

It did.

It was Annamaria.

Bad enough she had been charged with murder-somehow, the victim hadn't even been her kitchen rival-that, she could stand. But after forty years as Chef Claudio Orlandini's sous chef, she had some reason to expect it was turning out to be a life appointment. So, when it was all cleared up, she was released from a murder charge, and the clearing up included her own vision on the matter of Chef. Annamaria Bari wasted no time taking herself off to New York to visit her aged mother for an unspecified amount of time.

If Chef had simply broken some pots to vent his simmering feelings of betrayal, I wouldn't have minded. I had a job to do. But what I didn't see coming was just how the absence of Annamaria was bound to come down on my own unsuspecting head. The final stages of the kitchen build-out meant I, Nell Valenti, was on hand a lot. In the kitchen. Riding shotgun on the contractor, making last minute changes, solving a whole crop of unforeseen problems, stepping up my meal prep game for the villa "staff," just to exercise the kind of control I like during that process when things are disturbingly disorganized.

In the four weeks since Annamaria had left, what Chef discovered-and truly, I didn't see it coming, but then I found the man unpredictable-was that he liked having me around. I became his surrogate Annamaria. When I found new ways to hang cookware, he made the kinds of jokes he always made with Annamaria. When I jazzed up leftover dinners, he nearly genuflected the way he did with Annamaria. When I spied this particular train, finally, roaring toward me where I stood quaking on the track, Pete dismissed my concern.

"He'll get over it. He's just enjoying the return of his routine, that's all."

This attitude goes to show you just how dangerously ignorant a child can be about his parent. But Pete had received a boost in the ignorance department: toward the end of October, Pete's picture had made the November cover of the slick bimonthly magazine Bellissimo!, whose target readership is "For Those Who Celebrate Life Arts." By "Life Arts," they mean food, drink, adornment, travel, and transportation. In the three weeks since the magazine hit high-end hair salons the world over, Pierfranco Orlandini had become a celebrity.

He hit every demographic in Bellissimo!'s readership. The cover photo showed him standing just inside the olive grove, leaning against the little Ape, his arms crossed, one hand holding a glass of red wine tantalizingly askew, and travel (not to mention female fantasies) was hinted at in the title of the cover article inside: "Under the Tuscan Son." As for adornment, look no further than the man himself in his tight-fitting jeans and work shirt, squinting sexily into the bright daylight. Behind Pete, the villa property laid out the rest of this Bellissimo! environment, what with the charming tumble-down fountain sporting the seventeenth-century Veronica of the Veil statue, plus the stonework of the looming villa buildings. Lesser and greater splashes of sunlight made what could be viewed by any rational human as shameful decrepitude into, instead, an invitation into a mysterious Tuscan past.

Pete was so busy being Pete in the weeks leading up to Ziti Variations that I was a bit relieved when he announced his manager Vivi had set up business meetings in Rome. This was the first I had heard of his manager Vivi.

"Why do you need a manager, Pete?" I asked him as I towel-dried my hair. "You're an olive grower." I managed a smile all on my own, with no help from a Vivi. "You're not a performer."

Nodding absently, he said with a faraway voice, "You never know."

As I sat down next to him on the bed, I heard the mattress creak. I realized it might have been creaking for days or weeks, maybe even longer, but at that moment, I was hearing it for the very first time. I searched Pete's face, and he slipped an arm over my shoulder.

"Look at your father."

"My father?" Dr. Val Valenti, half shrinkster, half huckster, with a cable TV show for what he himself called "the worried well."

Pete made his case. "He's a psychologist, like I'm an olive grower"-as I listened, I was thinking of how it happens that the term "significant other" can suddenly feel like it's shifting away from the "significant" zone and landing more in the "other" territory. Pete had dreams, it turns out, that had nothing to do with expanding his olive oil production-"first and foremost," he asserted.

"I see." If you're saying the same thing twice, like "first and foremost," then you're really not saying anything at all.

"But look how television has acted like a handmaiden to him, to getting his message across."

"My father has no message"-as he started to interrupt, I lifted my hand-"although his show has plenty." I gave a halfhearted little laugh, and Pete drew me in, but not before I saw on his face a look that made me think-unbelievably-he felt a little sorry for me. My heart flopped. The mattress creaked. In that moment, I decided to stay cheerful and to trust that he'd see through all the nonsense. After all, he had seen through Chef Claudio Orlandini's nonsense years ago.

A dazzling momentary light will find other patsies who celebrate "life arts," and Pete would be back designing the expansion of his olive oil production space. I would ignore my concerns that the article "Under the Tuscan Son" barely mentioned the Villa Orlandini Cooking School, and no mention...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593097831
• ISBN 13: 9780593097830
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland