Biscuits and Slashed Browns (A Country Store Mystery, Band 4) - Softcover

Day, Maddie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1496711211 ISBN 13: 9781496711212

Verlag: Kensington, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

For country-store owner Robbie Jordan, the National Maple Syrup Festival is a sweet escape from late-winter in South Lick, Indiana—until murder saps the life out of the celebration . . .
 
As Robbie arranges a breakfast-themed cook-off at Pans ‘N Pancakes, visitors pour into Brown County for the annual maple extravaganza. Unfortunately, that includes Professor Connolly, a know-it-all academic from Boston who makes enemies everywhere he goes—and this time, bad manners prove deadly. Soon after clashing with several scientists at a maple tree panel, the professor is found dead outside a sugar shack, stabbed to death by a local restaurateur’s knife. When an innocent woman gets dragged into the investigation and a biologist mysteriously disappears, Robbie drops her winning maple biscuits to search for answers. But can she help police crack the case before another victim is caught in a sticky situation with a killer?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Maddie Day is a talented amateur chef and holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Indiana University. An Agatha-nominated and Amazon-bestselling author, she is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and also writes award-winning short crime fiction which has appeared in a number of juried anthologies. She lives with her beau and three cats in Massachusetts, where she's currently working on her next Country Store mystery when she isn't cooking up something delectable in the kitchen.

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Biscuits and Slashed Browns

By Maddie Day

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

Copyright © 2018 Edith Maxwell
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4967-1121-2

CHAPTER 1

The banner outside Pans 'N Pancakes proclaimed "JOIN MAPLE MANIA!" The Brown County Maple Festival's logo of a grinning bottle of syrup beamed its invitation. But the look on Professor Sonia Genest's face would have frozen butter on a tall stack of hot flapjacks.

I'd hung the banner for the fifth annual festival across the wide covered porch of my country store restaurant and had stepped into the road to check the level. Instead, I watched as the voluptuous thirty-something professor glued her fists to her hips. She glared from the bottom step at a portly man in a suit with sharply creased trousers. He'd just climbed out of a black Lexus parked in the last of the ten spots angling in to the store's wide covered porch. Incongruous with his attire was a Red Sox cap perched atop his head.

"How dare you?" she snarled, not trying to keep her voice down. Sonia, a lifelong resident of our little town of South Lick, Indiana, and a regular at Pans 'N Pancakes, had just finished a full breakfast inside. She was a woman who appreciated a good meal.

The man clasped his hands in front of him and sort of smiled, but his top lip curled, making him look like he'd tasted curdled milk. "My dear, can I help it if my grant proposal was funded and yours wasn't?"

"I'm not your dear, Warren." Strictly business, she spoke each scorn-laced word distinctly. Her outfit was all business, too, a black wool coat over a gray jacket and skirt with black tights and ankle boots. "And if it weren't for the conference, I'd never have to set eyes on you."

The academic conference on maple tree science was on a parallel track with the county's Maple Festival. The festival organizers aimed to bring tourists to town in March, a normally dead time of year for local businesses. On the festival schedule this afternoon was the breakfast cook-off, with area cooks competing to produce the winning maple-favored breakfast item. And it was slated to be held right here at my restaurant. I hoped I was ready.

I abandoned my banner examination and approached the pair. They must be continuing a prior disagreement. "Good morning, sir. I'm Robbie Jordan, owner and chef here." I extended my hand.

"Ah, Ms. Jordan." The man patted his expansive stomach and talked through his smile, his tiny eyes almost disappearing in the flesh of his cheeks. "I'm Warren Connolly." He offered a puffy padded palm. "I was just coming to sample your menu. Your restaurant is quite the talk of the conference."

I shook his extended hand. I'd never really trusted people who talked and smiled simultaneously. Sonia looked like she didn't, either.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Connolly," I said. "Are you at Indiana University or from out of town?" A truck rumbled by on the road and I had to strain to hear his response.

"It's Professor Connolly. I teach and do my research at Boston College."

"'Research.'" Sonia surrounded the word with finger quotes. "You call it research to accept money from climate-change deniers and then counter well-established facts with some environmental fantasy?" She shook her head, streaked dark blond hair flying, and turned away, her words sizzling the chilly early-March air. "Great breakfast, Robbie," she called as she headed for her car.

"Thanks," I answered, but I wasn't sure she heard me. I shivered and hugged myself. I wasn't exactly dressed for forty-degree weather in my jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt, and blue-and-white striped store apron. The sun promised to warm the day later, though. Cold nights and warm days created perfect conditions for inciting maple sap to run in the veins of trees all over Indiana's most heavily forested county. Since it was only eight o'clock, we were still in the chilly part of the cycle.

"How about that breakfast?" I said in a bright tone to the professor.

He laid a hand on the railing and nodded once up, once down. "Excellent idea," he said, but his now unsmiling gaze was on Sonia's silver sedan as it disappeared down the road toward the center of town.

* * *

Back in the store, Turner Rao gave me a frantic look as I inhaled the welcome scents of bacon and biscuits. Danna Beedle, my able assistant since I'd opened last fall, had traveled to San Diego for a volleyball tournament. Turner was the new part- time employee I'd hired and I'd apparently been outside a few minutes too long. He frantically flipped whole wheat banana walnut pancakes, turned sausages and strips of bacon, and rescued two almost-burnt slices of toast. Across the room a customer with an empty platter waved his hand in the air like he wanted his check, while another caught my eye and held up her coffee mug signaling for a refill. I pointed Professor Connolly to a table for two in the corner, mouthed, "Sorry" to Turner, and grabbed the coffeepot.

I'd restored order in a couple of minutes, grateful I'd found the slim twenty-two- year-old to help out. Danna and I had agreed we really needed a third worker. Turner was a good enough short-order cook to man the grill, and despite his recent college degree he didn't mind waiting and busing tables or doing cleanup. Danna and I also wore all hats around here, although I was the only one who did the books and paid the bills. It was my business, after all.

I'd purchased the run-down country store over a year ago, and had used the carpentry skills my late mother taught me back home in California to carry out the renovation work myself. Now I was the proud proprietor of a popular breakfast and lunch restaurant. I also sold antique cookware and a few other odds and ends in the store, including my aunt Adele's gorgeous yarn from her nearby sheep farm. I was almost finished renovating the second floor of the building into several rooms I planned to rent out as a bed and breakfast. The village of South Lick in scenic hilly Brown County had become my home — my apartment conveniently abutted the store at the back — and I couldn't be happier.

My new life would fall apart, however, if I didn't keep my customers as happy as I was. I delivered a menu to the professor and asked if he'd like coffee.

"Sure." He gave the menu a once-over glance and handed it back. "I'll have the Kitchen Sink omelet, with biscuits, plus bacon — crisp — and hash browns."

In the background buzz of diners chatting, silver clinking, sausages sizzling, I waited for the please. When it wasn't forthcoming, I said, "You got it."

"I don't suppose you serve Bloody Marys, do you?"

"Sorry, no liquor license." I decided not to mention I had an entirely legal BYOB policy in place. I didn't advertise it, but regulars knew they could bring a bottle of wine or a couple of beers to lunch to celebrate special occasions. The state restricted the practice to wine and beer only, and I wasn't allowed to pour it. Someone occasionally showed up with a bottle for Sunday brunch, but so far never for breakfast on a Friday.

"I didn't think so." Connolly's mouth pulled down in disappointment. "Where's the best bar in town?" He drummed his fingers on the table. A gold ring featuring an embedded diamond dented his right pinkie.

I glanced at the big old schoolroom clock on the wall — he wanted a bar before nine in the morning? "The Casino Tavern, on the other side of town. Actually it's the only bar in town." A casino in South Lick had flourished for a couple of decades over a hundred years ago, in the heyday of mineral springs spas. The present-day bar was a casino in name only....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Kensington
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1496711211
• ISBN 13: 9781496711212
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: eucomply OÜ; hello@eucompliancepartner.com; ; Pärnu mnt. 139b - 14; Tallinn; 11317; Estland