Death With All the Trimmings: A Key West Food Critic Mystery

Murder with Ganache

“Gourmets who enjoy a little mayhem with their munchies will welcome Burdette’s fourth Key West mystery.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“One crazy adventure ride. This page-turner kept me up half the night—I had to finish reading this book. Lucy Burdette does not disappoint. . . . So, if you like your mystery with a little Key West style, then you should be reading
Murder with Ganache.
”

—MyShelf.com

“Sprightly and suspenseful,
Murder with Ganache
has a unique piquancy. Like a gourmet meal, it will leave you wanting more.”

—
Fort Myers Florida Weekly

“[Lucy Burdette] once again crafts a complicated mystery that incorporates delectable descriptions of Key West cuisine.”

—Kings River Life Magazine

Topped Chef

“Burdette fills
Topped Chef
with a fine plot, a delightful heroine, a wealth of food—and all the charm and craziness of Key West. You’ll wish you could read it while sipping a mojito on the porch of a Conch cottage in mainland America’s southernmost community.”

—
Richmond Times-Dispatch

“In addition to a compelling murder mystery, readers are treated to a dose of spirited competition, a pinch of romantic intrigue, and a hearty portion of local flavor. It’s enough to satisfy both casual readers and cozy fans alike, though be forewarned: You’ll be left craving more.”

—Examiner.com

“The characters remain as fresh as the breeze off the ocean, as does the plot.”

—The Mystery Reader

“This third mystery in the series . . . again delights. . . . The descriptions of the coastal cuisine, snappish and temperamental cheftestants, and drag queens all combine to make this a very well-written and tasty mystery, sure to please fans of food, reality shows, and mysteries.”

—Kings River Life Magazine

Death in Four Courses

“[A] yummy sequel to
An Appetite for Murder. . . .
Anyone who’s ever overpaid for a pretentious restaurant meal will relish this witty cozy.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Breezy as a warm Florida Keys day,
Death in Four Courses
is a fast-paced mystery that easily combines food and writing with an intricate plot to create an engaging mystery. Lucy Burdette is skilled at creating interesting characters who are very real and familiar. . . . Lots of food talk, a tropical setting, and a hunky detective provide the perfect backdrop for the second Hayley Snow mystery.”

—The Mystery Reader

“This book was a quick, fun read that held my attention from the beginning. . . . I will eagerly await other releases in the Key West Food Critic series!”

—Fresh Fiction

An Appetite for Murder

“What fun! Lucy Burdette writes evocatively about Key West and food—a winning combination. I can’t wait for the next entry in this charming series.”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Diane Mott Davidson

“For a true taste of paradise, don’t miss
An Appetite for Murder
. Lucy Burdette’s first Key West Food Critic mystery combines a lush, tropical setting, a mysterious murder, and plenty of quirky characters. The victim may not be coming back for seconds, but readers certainly will!”

—Julie Hyzy, national bestselling author of the White House Chef mysteries and Manor House mysteries

“When her ex-boyfriend’s new lover, the co-owner of
Key Zest
magazine, is found dead, Hayley Snow, wannabe food critic, is the first in line on the list of suspects. Food, fun, and felonies. What more could a reader ask for?”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Lorna Barrett

“Burdette laces
An Appetite for Murder
with a clever plot, a determined if occasionally ditzy heroine, and a wealth of local color about Key West and its inhabitants. You’ll eat it up.”

—
Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Florida has long been one of the best backdrops for crime novels—from John MacDonald to Carl Hiaasen—and Burdette’s sense of place and her ability to empathize with a wide strata of Key West locals and visitors bodes well for this new series.”

—
Connecticut Post

“An excellent sense of place and the occasional humorous outburst aren’t the only things
An Appetite for Murder
has going for it, though: There is a solid mystery within its pages. . . . Not only does Burdette capture the physical and pastoral essence of Key West—she celebrates the food. . . . Although you might want to skip the key lime pie, don’t skip
An Appetite for Murder
. Let’s hope it is just an appetizer and there will be a feast of Food Critic mysteries to follow.”

—The Florida Book Review

“Burdette cleverly combines the insuperable Key West location with the always-irresistible hook, food. . . . Hayley is a vibrant young character to watch, and she writes scrumptious food reviews as well.”

—
Mystery Scene

“Hayley herself is delightful. Exuberant and naive, rocking back and forth between bravado and insecurity, excitable and given to motormouth nervousness, she’s a quick study who has a lot to learn. I’m sure that many readers will be happy to make her acquaintance and follow her through future adventures.”

—Florida Weekly

Book 1: An Appetite for Murder

Book 2: Death in Four Courses

Book 3: Topped Chef

Book 4: Murder with Ganache

Book 5: Death with All the Trimmings

Published by the Penguin Group

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A Penguin Random House Company

First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

Copyright © Roberta Isleib, 2014

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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ISBN 978-1-101-63604-6

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

     The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

To Paige and Sandy this time,

with gratitude.

I owe many thanks to the folks who stood by me as I wrote this book. Angelo Pompano and Chris Falcone are so generous with their time, reading and brainstorming every step of the way. My fellow writers in the mystery business, including Hallie Ephron, Susan Hubbard, and my wonderful blogger friends at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen and Jungle Red Writers, are always there with a word of encouragement and a good idea. Thanks to Paige Wheeler for her friendship and dedicated work as my agent, and to Sandy Harding, my talented editor. Whew, you can’t imagine how much better a draft is after she’s made her editorial suggestions. Thanks to all the folks at New American Library, from fabulous cover designers to copy editors to the marketing department, to everyone who has a hand in bringing the books to print.

Thanks to Steve Torrence for help with police procedure. As always, mistakes are mine, not his. And while we’re on the subject of Steve, thanks to all the folks who allowed me to use their names in the book—the names are real but the characters are definitely fictional. And, oh, how lucky was I to meet Chef Norman Van Aken just as I was desperate for details about a real chef’s life? Thanks, Chef!

I’m grateful for every reader and librarian and bookstore owner—without you, there would be no point.
Thank you for reading and thank you for spreading the word—take Charles Pigaty in Milford, CT, for example, who decided he could hand-sell one hundred copies of
An Appetite for Murder
. And he did!

And to my family, especially John, the biggest thanks of all.

In theory, we’ve come a long way from the notion that a woman’s place is in the domestic kitchen, and that the only kitchen appropriate for a man is the professional one. But in practice, things can be pared down to the following equation: woman : man as cook : chef.

—Charlotte Druckman,
Gastronomica

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon
.

—Jackson Brown and H. Jackson Brown Jr.,
Life’s Little Instruction Book

My cell phone bleated from the deck outside, where I’d left it to avoid procrastinating via text messages, Facebook updates, or simply lounging in the glorious December sunshine with our resident cats, watching the world go by. The biggest interview of my career as a food critic was scheduled for this afternoon and I wanted—no, needed—to be ready.

Miss Gloria, my senior citizen houseboat mate, hollered from her rocking chair overlooking the water. “It’s your mother. Shall I answer?”

“Mind telling her I’ll call back in an hour?”

Miss Gloria would relish the opportunity to chat with her anyway, and maybe her intercession would slash my time on the phone with Mom in half when I returned the call. I am crazy about my mother, honest. But it had still been a shock when she announced she’d rented a place in Key West for the winter season.
Wouldn’t it be so much fun to spend Christmas in paradise together? And New Year’s . . . and Martin Luther King Day . . . and Valentine’s Day? You get the picture. Mom had followed Diana Nyad’s attempts to swim from Cuba to Key West with rapt attention. When Diana overcame sharks, jellyfish, rough water, and advancing age to complete her 110-mile swim on her fifth try, at age sixty-four, Mom took it personally.

“Diana says we should never give up,” she announced on the phone a couple of months ago. “
Why not ‘be bold, be fiercely bold and go out and chase your dreams’?
”

My mother had been a little down since the summer because her fledgling catering company had not taken off the way she’d hoped. Although she’s an amazing and inventive cook, the business part of owning a business eluded her. For her first five catering events, cooking with only the highest-quality ingredients, she’d lost money rather than made it. A lot of money. Even her newish boyfriend, Sam, who was supportive beyond any reasonable expectation and categorically opposed to meddling, had suggested she take a few steps back and reconsider her plan.

“Why not? You should go for your dream, too,” I remember saying. “That’s exactly what you told me when I lost my bearings: Keep putting yourself out in the universe, and eventually the wind will fill your sails.” I stopped myself from trotting out more metaphysical tropes. I hadn’t wanted to hear too much advice when I was feeling down; Mom probably didn’t want mine, either. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’m thinking of coming to Key West for the winter!”

Whoa. If that was her dream, who was I to stop her? But my big solo adventure on this island was about to turn into
How I Met Your Mother
.

Half an hour after the phone call, Miss Gloria came inside to report on her conversation with Mom, our two cats padding behind. I stroked my striped gray boy, Evinrude, from ears to tail, his fur warm from basking in the sun. His purr box caught and sputtered to life.

“She’s hoping we can swing by in half an hour to look at her condo and have a little lunch,” Miss Gloria said. “Sam is flying in later tonight, so this may be her best shot at girls-only time for a while. And then she starts her job with Small Chef at Large on Monday. Jennifer’s already assigned her to head up a couple of the Christmas parties they’re catering.”

Exhibit two: my mother’s new job with Small Chef. You had to give her credit for sheer brass guts. How long had it taken me to land my position as food critic at
Key Zest
? A couple of months at least. And lots of groveling and dozens of sample restaurant reviews. Key West is chockablock with talented, overqualified folks who swarm every decent job opening like roaches to crumbs. And yet my mother had landed a position with the premier caterer in town after meeting her once, at my best friend Connie’s wedding reception last spring. She’d been here only a week, but I suspected
she
was already best friends with half the natives on the island. She’d probably be designated an Honorary Conch at the next city commission meeting.

“Give me fifteen minutes to finish this up and we’ll go,” I told Miss Gloria.

Today I was interviewing Edel Waugh, chef-owner of the new Key West restaurant Bistro on the Bight. I skimmed the review her New York restaurant, Arnica, had scored in the
New York Times
last spring. Overall, the review glowed with praise, but Paul Woolston, the critic, had ended with this punch to the gut: “With bad
blood between the ex-husband and -wife co-owners of Arnica, one wonders when—not if—their personal poison will seep into their food.”

I tweaked the list of questions to ask Edel when we met later, then changed out of my sweats and into a pair of slim-fitting black jeans and a red swing shirt that drew the eye away from the waistline and matched my sneakers. Christmas, just two weeks away, was the one time of year that I broke my own rule about not wearing red because it clashed with my auburn hair. Miss Gloria was waiting for me on the deck, dressed in the first of a deep rotation of Christmas sweatshirts, this one spangled with sequins and glitter-dusted reindeer.

“You look so cute!” we said at the same time.

We locked the cats up in the houseboat—things get a little dicier on the island during the high season, with an uptick in partying visitors and in the homeless population—and headed down the dock to the parking lot, where I keep my scooter. Miss Gloria began to sing “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” as she fastened her pink helmet and swung her leg over the bike. As we puttered down Southard Street to the end of the island, Miss G pointed out which Conch houses had been newly decorated for the season. The specialty here, of course, being white lights wound around the trunks of the palm trees. Who could be grumpy on a day like this?

Ten minutes later, we rolled past the wrought-iron gates and the guardhouse that mark the entrance to the Truman Annex complex, and took a right onto Noah Lane, the last developed street before the Navy’s harbor, aka the mole. My mother could not have afforded a seasonal rental in this neighborhood, except that her boyfriend, Sam, had gotten excited about a winter getaway and bankrolled a nice house just blocks from my
ex Chad Lutz’s condo. When the gates closed at six p.m., there was only one way out of the neighborhood; it would be hard to avoid him. If I wasn’t already inured to running into Lutz the Putz, I would be by Easter, when Mom headed north.

Mom came bursting out of the front door onto her new home’s wide wooden porch and hugged us both. “My two favorite ladies,” she yelped. “I’ve made chicken salad and cupcakes. Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour and we can eat out by the pool.”

“I can’t stay long,” I told her. “I have an interview set up with the chef at Bistro on the Bight.”

“The restaurant opening on the harbor!” Mom said. “I read about it in the
Citizen
. I can’t believe my favorite chef in the world will be right here in Key West. I’m dying to eat her food again. Any chance—”

“Sorry, Mom.” I cut her off and grinned. “I’m happy to share a lot of things with you, but not my job.”

I’m the food critic for the Key West style magazine
Key Zest
. It’s complicated because we have only four people on staff. One of them, the co-owner Ava Faulkner, despises me and would happily slash me from the masthead at the first opportunity. Next is Danielle, our administrative assistant, who manages all the online intricacies of the magazine and scrambles to keep the whole project from sinking under the weight of Ava’s negativity. And last but not least is my editor Wally Beile, who makes my heartstrings and other body parts twang in a most unprofessional way. Though with his own mother dying of cancer, I hadn’t seen much of him lately.

Afraid I’d hurt my mother’s feelings, I sputtered a little more explanation. “I don’t think bringing my mother along on the interview would give the appearance that I know what I’m doing.”

“That’s okay, honey,” she said, “I don’t have time,
anyway. I’ll catch up with her another time.” Then she gripped my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “I swear, Hayley Catherine Snow, I will not cramp your style while I’m here.”

“Thanks, Mom. I’m sure there’s room for two Snow women on this island.” I wasn’t sure, really, but I was going to try hard to make it work. Because the truth was, she had always been my biggest fan, and she was a lot of fun besides. And, let’s face it, utterly out of my control.

She spun away, leading us into a spacious living room furnished with expensive rattan furniture, cushioned with pillows covered in pale linen fabric patterned with palm fronds. The kitchen was even more magnificent—a bright yellow-and-white-tiled space that included a six-burner gas range, two dishwashers, two ovens, a wine chiller, a bread warmer, and a center island topped in green granite that made me vibrate with envy.

“You could throw one heck of a party here,” I said, as we followed my mother onto the back porch. White rattan chaise longues overlooked a perfect little dipping pool shaded by palm trees with an elegant waterfall at the far end.

“Wait until you hear how many events Jennifer has me working,” Mom said. “She wants me in the kitchen a couple of days a week, of course, but she’s already put me in charge of two parties. I’m developing the menu for tomorrow—a Southern belle’s Christmas luncheon. I’m thinking curried chicken salad with grapes and pecans, and a green salad, and then for the ladies who don’t eschew carbs, big buttermilk biscuits and maybe Scarlett O’Hara cupcakes.”

“Oh swoon,” said Miss Gloria. “No one in her right mind is going to eschew those carbs. What is a Scarlett O’Hara cupcake?”

“It has to be red velvet, don’t you think?” I asked.

“Maybe with raspberry cream cheese frosting? That’s what I tried out this morning. We’ll see if you approve.” Mom led us to the table, which she’d set with shimmery gold place mats, tan polka-dot napkins, and white plates. A bright orange bird of paradise swooped from a clear glass vase at the center for contrast.

“Watch out Martha Stewart,” Miss Gloria said with a cackle. “You are so clever. It already looks like you’ve lived here forever!”

We loaded our plates in the kitchen and brought them out to the poolside table. Mom slid a platter of the pink-icing-slathered cupcakes in the center, to remind us to save room. I spread a thin layer of honeyed butter onto a warm biscuit, admiring the tiny flecks of green scallion in the dough, and then bit into it.

“Oh my gosh, these are the best,” I said, and then tasted the chicken. “And the curry is exactly right—a little bite but not enough to put anyone off.”

Miss Gloria only rolled her eyes and moaned with pleasure.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Mom said when we were halfway through lunch. “I almost forgot to tell you the other news. You remember my cousin Chuck? His daughter, Cassie, is a pro golfer. She and her husband are popping down to the island for a couple of days this week and I’ve insisted they stay with me. And weren’t you going to make a dinner reservation at Latitudes when Sam’s here this weekend? Would it be a problem to add two more people?”

“Not really,” I said, though more people made it challenging to concentrate and harder to manage. “As long as they don’t mind me ordering and tasting their food.”

Latitudes is the restaurant on Sunset Key, the small
private island a stone’s throw from Mallory Square, at the very bottom of Key West. Dinner guests have to make a reservation well ahead and then take a water taxi to the island. For me, this dinner would be work more than pleasure, as I’d been assigned to review the restaurant for the next issue of
Key Zest
. I couldn’t afford to take a second trip over—I had to get what I needed in one visit.

“I know they’ll get a kick out of a little window into your world,” Mom said. She bit into one of the cupcakes, sighed with satisfaction, and patted her lips with her napkin. “I also set up a tee time at the Key West golf course for Cassie and her husband, Joe, and Eric and you. I invited Eric because he and Joe are both psychologists so I figured they would hit it off. I know Eric played a little as a teenager. Your muscle memory doesn’t forget that kind of history, right?”

This was crazy in so many ways that I was struck dumb. Well, almost dumb. “Back up a minute.
I
don’t play golf,” I managed to squeak, because I couldn’t say the things that really came to mind. Out loud. To my mother. In front of Miss G.

Mom laughed, a silvery peal that meant she’d started marching down a path and would not be deviating from it. “How hard could it be? And, besides, Cassie’s a pro. I’m sure she’ll be happy to give you some pointers.”