A Side of Murder (A Cape Cod Foodie Mystery, Band 1) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Amy Pershing is a lifelong mystery lover and wordsmith. She was an editor, a restaurant reviewer and a journalist before leading employee communications at a global bank. A few years ago (with the final college tuition bill paid), she waved goodbye to Wall Street to write full time (and spend more time sailing on the Cape!). A Side of Murder, the first of the Cape Cod Foodie mysteries, is her debut novel.

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One

Okay, so here's how it's gonna go down."

I looked sternly at my dining companions, who were eyeing me warily over the rims of their wineglasses. They were not used to me looking at them sternly.

"We order one meat, one vegetarian, one seafood, and one pasta entrŽe."

"Pasta doesn't count as vegetarian?"

That was Jenny, a mother of three with the body of a sixteen-year-old that she proudly claims is the result of her dedicated meat-and-potatoes-only diet. She was probably worried that I was going to make her order eggplant.

"No. Pasta doesn't count as vegetarian," I explained. "Some restaurants like to think it counts as vegetarian, but that's how vegetarians get fat. That and too much cheese. No, a real vegetarian entrŽe is about vegetables. Maybe with grains or legumes, but the focus is on vegetables, like a ratatouille."

"Sorry I asked," Jenny muttered to Miles, who was sitting next to her and had been quietly entertaining himself by checking out the other patrons at the Bayview Grill. "What's a legume anyway?" she asked him.

Miles looked at her like she'd just arrived from Mars. Miles is a farmer. What he doesn't know about legumes isn't worth knowing. "Beans, lentils, chickpeas-that kind of thing," he said. "How do you not know that?"

Jenny shuddered. "I don't eat 'that kind of thing.'"

I tried to continue with their instructions. "Appetizers can be anything you like-"

"Well, hallelujah," Miles said. He poked Jenny in the side with one massive elbow, almost knocking her off her chair. "I'd like that cutie-pie over there at the bar."

I ignored him.

"Anything you like," I repeated, "but it needs to make sense with your entrŽe."

"I'm lost," said Helene, running a ring-bejeweled hand through her mane of silver curls. Helene was Fair Harbor's new librarian. I'd known her exactly twenty-four hours and couldn't imagine anyone less like a librarian.

"I've been eating out for forty years," she said, "and I never once worried if my appetizer made sense with my entrŽe. I don't even know what that means."

I sighed. Well, no one had ever said writing restaurant reviews for the Cape Cod Clarion was going to be easy. Actually, I reflected, that wasn't true. I was the one who had said it would be easy.

I tried to clarify. "It means that if you're having the hanger steak for your entrŽe-"

"That's mine!" Jenny said, suddenly all in. "I call I claim the hanger steak."

I call I claim? What is she, six?

"And a half dozen Wellfleet oysters to start," she added.

Jenny always had oysters to start. And, as these were Wellfleet oysters, which are universally acknowledged to be the best on the Cape (and all Cape Cod oysters are awesome), I was surprised she wasn't starting with a dozen.

"That's fine," I said. "A classic pairing."

I turned back to Helene. "If, like Jenny, you're having the hanger steak," I explained, "you don't want to order the barbeque sliders as a starter."

She nodded thoughtfully. At least Helene was taking this seriously. But then she ruined it by saying, "Actually, barbeque followed by steak sounds yummy."

I gave up.

"I'll order for all of you," I announced. "And once we get our food and you've had a chance to taste and consider your choices, I will discreetly exchange plates with each of you, one by one, and sample each dish. Then we'll discreetly switch back again. We'll go clockwise around the table, starting with Helene."

"I'm lost again," Helene fake whispered to Miles.

"Don't you worry, honey," he said. "Wait until she gets a glass or two of wine into her. Then we can do whatever we want."

He grinned at me, looking exactly like the overgrown five-year-old he was. If five-year-olds had big, bushy lumberjack beards.

I began to worry for real. My dining companions were definitely not taking my first foray into restaurant reviewing seriously enough. And Miles was right about the two glasses of wine. I was a notoriously cheap date. But I was also the night's designated driver, so no worries there.

"No wine for me," I said firmly more to myself than to Miles, "even if it kills me."

A poor choice of words, as it turned out.

My name is Samantha Barnes. Sam to my friends. I stand six feet one and a half inches tall in my stocking feet, six two and a half in my chefÕs clogs. IÕm not exactly beautiful, especially when IÕm sweating over a hot stove, but, as my grandfather used to say, I clean up nice. IÕm blessed with my Italian American motherÕs clear olive skin and my Yankee fatherÕs high cheekbones, but my brown hair and eyes can be fairly described as unmemorable. When IÕm not wearing the standard black-and-white-checked chefÕs pants and double-breasted white jacket, I have a weakness for floaty dresses and dangly earrings.

Ten years ago, I had packed my bags and headed off to New York's Culinary Institute of America (fondly referred to by its alumni as the CIA) to learn how to cook professionally and swear creatively. Before that I had lived all my life on Cape Cod, that sandy spit of land reaching out into the Atlantic from the coast of Massachusetts like a crooked arm. I grew up on the "elbow" of the Cape in a small town called Fair Harbor (pronounced Fay'h Hahbah, if you're local). Summer population, around 20,000; year-round population, 6,798.

Actually, 6,797. Now.

After graduating from the CIA, I single-mindedly climbed my way up New York City's restaurant ladder from prep cook to line cook to sous-chef and finally head chef, each time moving to a better kitchen. I was a rising star. Someday I was going to open my own place.

I was proud of being a successful woman chef in a decidedly male field. I was tough, and I didn't let the male chefs intimidate me. For the first time in my life, my height was working for me. Those macho men literally could not look down on me. Because, let me tell you, most male chefs are off-the-chart macho. They are the baddest of bad boys.

My big mistake was marrying one of those bad boys. He'd told me my love had changed him. Well, that wasn't true.

Things got very scary very quickly. I'd seen Stefan's temper flare at work but never at home. So I was totally unprepared the day it happened. A big screaming man with a knife in a busy professional kitchen is one thing; a big screaming man with a knife alone with you in the tiny kitchen of your New York walk-up is quite another. That we took it out into the street didn't help. Neither did the subsequent YouTube video of our difference of opinion posted by a helpful bystander.

But more about that later.

I try to be a nice person. In general, I like people and assume they are good at heart, especially if they make me laugh. I will forgive a lot for a good laugh. If my reaction to someone is not positive, I trust my radar and assume they are not nice people. Also, until recent events taught me better, I tended to take what people said and did at face value. What you saw, I thought, is what they were. This misconception has not worked out well for me (see failed marriage, above). In fact, that spring, the spring I came metaphorically limping home to the Cape, the spring when my friend Krista offered me a temp...