When the Grits Hit the Fan (A Country Store Mystery, Band 3) - Softcover

Day, Maddie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1617739294 ISBN 13: 9781617739293

Verlag: Kensington, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Despite the bitter winter in South Lick, Indiana, business is still hot at Robbie Jordan’s restaurant. But when another murder rattles the small town, can Robbie defrost the motives of a cold-blooded killer?
 
Before she started hosting dinners for Indiana University’s Sociology Department at Pans ‘N Pancakes, Robbie never imagined scholarly meetings could be so hostile. It’s all due to Professor Charles Stilton, who seems to thrive on heated exchanges with his peers and underlings, and tensions flare one night after he disrespects Robbie’s friend, graduate student Lou. So when Robbie and Lou go snowshoeing the next morning and find the contentious academic frozen under ice, police suspect Lou might have killed him after their public tiff. To prove her friend’s innocence, Robbie is absorbing local gossip about Professor Stilton’s past and developing her own thesis on the homicide—even if that means stirring up terrible danger for herself along the way . . .

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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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When the Grits Hit the Fan

By Maddie Day

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

Copyright © 2017 Edith Maxwell
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-61773-929-3

CHAPTER 1

Who knew people could be so nasty to each other?

I'm Robbie Jordan. While I cleared dinner plates, I watched and listened as a mix of grad students and professors from Indiana University discussed medical sociology during their bimonthly dinner meeting at my restaurant, Pans 'N Pancakes. It wasn't pretty. I'd served fifteen of them Chicken Ezekiel on rotini, with garlic bread and winter greens from a local farmer harvesting even in February. The air still smelled deliciously of Kalamata olives, garlic, and roasted tomatoes, and from the empty plates, it sure looked like the meal had been a success.

The conversation? Not so much. Half the terminology went right over my head. But when Charles Stilton glared at my friend Lou Perlman, the meaning was unmistakable.

"It was unethical of you to take the ideas in my paper and present them as your own," Lou went on, the silver rings on her fingers flashing as much as her eyes as she pointed at him across the wide table. "You agreed to sponsor me, but I sure didn't agree to give up my original research."

"You're a doctoral student," the diminutive professor said, his bright green shirt a spot of color among the more muted shades worn by his colleagues. He picked up his glass of red wine and sipped. "I'm a tenured professor in the same field. I can't help it if our research is pursuing parallel ideas. I didn't steal a thing." He studied my shelves of vintage cookware and blinked as if the conversation was over.

I'd met Professor Stilton in the preceding weeks. He'd been polite and friendly to me but had gotten into tiffs with the others at a few of the gatherings. I'd have to ask Lou what was up between them.

A woman I hadn't seen before pushed back her chair. She stood and set her hands on the table. "That's enough, you two. These meetings were supposed to be congenial intellectual gatherings, not some mudslinging sessions."

Charles stroked his tidy black goatee. Ignoring the woman, he turned to the man on his right. "How about them Pacers?" I watched Lou fume, nostrils flared, lips pressed together. She pushed her chair back and stalked to the restroom. We had met in the fall when she'd come in for breakfast with a group of cyclist friends. She'd helped me find my father and we'd become good friends. I'd never seen her so mad.

The woman who'd admonished them had come in late and I hadn't been introduced to her. Shaking her head, she picked up her plate and brought it to where I stood at the sink in the kitchen area that adjoined the rest of the space.

"Thanks." I wiped my hand on my apron before extending it. "Robbie Jordan, proprietor here."

She set down the plate and silverware and shook hands with a firm, vigorous touch. "I'm Professor Zenobia Brown. But just call me Zen." A wiry woman, she stood a couple of inches shorter than my five-foot-three, and was at least two or three decades older than my twenty-seven years. Her salt-and-pepper hair was cut in a no-nonsense short do with the top a little bit spiked. She smiled, her skin crinkling around blue eyes. "My mom thought with a last name like Brown I needed a unique first name. Anyway, I'm a new professor in the department. The chair, actually. I live halfway between South Lick and Bloomington and I've been meaning to get over here for one of your famous breakfasts. Still want to."

"Not so sure they're famous, but you're welcome to come and sample what we serve."

"Whole wheat banana walnut flapjacks? That's my kind of breakfast." She glanced back at the group. "Sorry about the commotion. It's like wrangling cats sometimes to get these people to act civilly."

"It's okay. As long as I get paid and people don't start a food fight, I don't really care how they get along." I'd happily agreed to Lou's idea of the dinner meetings. I'd only opened my country store breakfast-and-lunch place in October and hadn't realized how slow business would be during the winter. It was cold and often snowy in the hills of southern Indiana, but most years not snowy enough to bring a winter tourist trade. Even the locals seemed to be staying home instead of eating out. I'd reduced the days I stayed open to Wednesday through Sunday to save money on my assistant Danna's pay. It also kept me from ordering food that spoiled because it didn't get used. The boost of a nice flat sum from this group every other Friday night was definitely helping the bottom line. I served the same menu to everybody, changing it up each time, and so far no one had complained.

I loaded up two platters of brownies and took them to the table, which I'd created by shoving together smaller tables into a conference-table-sized surface they could all sit around. "Coffee or tea, anyone? Or decaf?"

"I'm sticking with wine," Charles said, pouring the last of his bottle of Merlot into his glass. "I can because I'm walking home," he added in a defensive tone.

I knew he lived half a mile away right here in South Lick. I thought most of the other faculty and students, like Lou, resided nearer the sprawling flagship Indiana University campus fifteen miles away in Bloomington.

"It's so great you got permission for us to do the BYOB thing, Robbie," Lou said, back in her chair, pouring a half glass for herself from a bottle of white. "Dinner's not really civilized unless you can drink wine with it. And I'm having more because I caught a ride with teetotaler Tom here."

Tom, Lou's fellow grad student, grinned and waved.

"As long as I'm not a licensed alcohol establishment, which I'm not, it's apparently legal. And as long you pour your own." I'd purchased a supply of stemless wine glasses and a few corkscrews when I'd learned I could allow customers to bring bottles of wine. Nobody had asked yet if they could carry in beer or hard alcohol, which was good, because my research hadn't extended that far. I didn't advertise the BYOB option, and I wasn't usually open for dinner, anyway, but several times a group of ladies had brought their own wine for a special luncheon, as had an elderly local couple celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary with lunch out instead of dinner.

Lou had been talking with Tom and Zen. She tilted the bottle at Zen's glass. "More?"

I noticed Lou was carefully avoiding any interaction with Charles, wisely so. He was still deep in conversation with the man next to him.

Zen covered the glass with her hand. "Not for me, thanks. One glass is my limit. I'm training for a marathon. But I'd love a cup of decaf, Robbie."

So running was why she was that wiry. I was a serious cyclist, myself. It was how I'd met Lou and Tom, who also loved riding for miles up and down the scenic hills of Brown County. But my cycling habit was offset by my love of eating. Nobody would ever call me wiry and I didn't care. I was healthy, and I did have a nicely defined waist to offset my generous hips.

I took the rest of the hot drink orders. After I delivered the mugs, I busied myself cleaning up. It was already eight-thirty and I still needed to prep for tomorrow. We'd agreed on a finish time of nine o'clock for these gatherings. I was up every morning by five-thirty to open the doors by seven, so I didn't want Friday nights to turn into an open-ended session of wine sippers sitting around talking abstractions.

The discussion had turned to the topic of public health, which apparently wasn't as controversial as the conversation between Lou and Charles had been, and didn't seem abstract at all. Snippets...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Kensington
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1617739294
• ISBN 13: 9781617739293
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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