A Food and Wine Club Mystery Boxset Books 1 through 5

by Cat Chandler

  Nicki fell back against her chair. “Eight or nine? Is this for our charity event? Because it’s on Saturday.”

  “I know, dear. But when Addie called in a near panic this morning, what could I do but come up with a solution?” Maxie flipped her hands over so she could hold onto Nicki’s. “I know the schedule will be tight, but I’m sure we can all manage. Addie will have the shopping done tomorrow by noon. I was firm on that. Then you’ll have a whole day and a half to get the baking done.”

  “Saturday is three days away, Maxie, not a day and a half.” Nicki pointed out. She was doing some calculating in her head. It was for a charity event so she wanted to help all she could, but she would need another pair of hands, and right now was not a good time to ask Jenna to pitch in. She turned and gave Matt the once-over.

  “What?”

  “Does the job of sidekick include being my baking assistant?”

  “Um.” Matt scratched his head.

  Nicki could almost hear the wheels turning frantically in his head as he searched for an excuse. She looked away and pretended not to notice when Maxie kicked him under the table.

  He grimaced slightly before forcing out a smile. “Sure it does. I’d be happy to help out with the Society’s Literacy for Kids cause.” He gave her a wink. “After all, you’re creating future readers for the magazine.”

  Nicki smiled before nodding to Maxie. “Okay. My sidekick and I will give it a good try.”

  “Do or do not. There is no ‘try’,” Maxie laughed. “It’s one of my favorite movie lines.” She rose and gathered up her purse and sweater. “I will see you later this evening when I come by to help update the murder board and pick up your list. In the meantime, I’ll see about arranging for us to pay Ramona a visit tomorrow afternoon. If you drop in on the ex-husband in the morning, then I’m sure we’ll have all the information we’ll need to catch Catherine’s killer.” She bent and brushed a kiss across Nicki’s cheek and then did the same to Matt. “Try not to argue too much children.” She smiled at them both before heading out the door.

  Nicki turned to Matt with her mouth formed into an “O”.

  “Did Maxie just say she expected us to solve this murder by Friday?”

  Matt stared right back at her. “I think so. Did she just quote Yoda from Star Wars?”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Nicki was mixing batter in a bowl and nibbling half-heartedly on carrots and hummus when the front door of her townhouse slammed shut. She chuckled and went right on scraping the sides of the bowl as the sound of Jenna’s flip-flops tracked her approach to the kitchen.

  “Hey!” Jenna lifted her nose and sniffed the air. “Are you making my favorite peanut butter bars?”

  “Maxie drafted me into making a whole store of desserts for the charity event. I had several bags of peanuts I bought for the cooking demonstration, so I thought I’d put them to use now and just have Addie replace them tomorrow.” She slapped Jenna’s hand away when she tried to peek under the dishcloth covering a bowl sitting next to the blender.

  “Is that homemade peanut butter?”

  “You know that’s the only way to make the bars properly.” Nicki scooped up the bowl and popped it into the refrigerator.

  “So what’s in that bowl?” Jenna pointed to the one in the mixer stand.

  “Batter for a sheet cake.”

  “And what’s in that little cup beside those carrots? Are you making carrot cake?” Jenna asked.

  Nicki laughed. “I’m eating that one. It’s hummus, and it’s my dinner.”

  “Not anymore it isn’t.” Jenna plopped a bag from Mel’s Burgers onto the counter. “You can have a sparkling water to satisfy your inner ‘must-be-healthy’ voice, but right now, what you need is good red meat and a little company.”

  “Did Maxie call you and tell you she’d roped me into baking half the night?” Nicki asked, debating with herself about trading her hummus for grease and calories on a bun. But it was a very delicious grease and calorie concoction, and she was in the mood for something more satisfying than hummus and carrots. Giving in, she reached into an upper cabinet and took down two plates.

  “That’s the spirit.” Jenna beamed at her. “And no, Maxie didn’t call me. Matt did.”

  “Matt?” Nicki gave her friend a puzzled look. “What did he say?”

  “That you were upset about the chief making Charlie his prime suspect, and that I should come over and take your mind off this whole murder thing for a few hours. Those were his words. He also said I should be sure you ate something besides a handful of lettuce for dinner. When did he become your food monitor, anyway?”

  Nicki shook her head. “I have no idea. You should have heard him trying to convince me to eat a deli sandwich for lunch. You’d think I was wasting away to skin and bones the way he was talking.”

  “Well then I won’t tell him how I got you to eat a hamburger. It might hurt his feelings. Especially if he hears about the fries.” Jenna upended the bag and dumped a mountain of French fries onto the kitchen counter.

  Giving up any pretense of eating anything healthy for the evening, Nicki walked over to the refrigerator and got out a bottle of ketchup. She dug in right along with Jenna, and enjoyed every bite. Apparently grease and calories were exactly what she had needed.

  “I know Matt said not to talk about the murder, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” Jenna put her burger down and used a napkin Nicki had supplied to wipe a dribble of grease off her chin. “Besides Charlie, and of course finding the body, what else is bothering you about all of this?”

  “Everything,” Nicki admitted. “Nothing makes sense. I mean, would a daughter really kill her mother just to get money to go abroad for a year? Why wouldn’t she just whine long enough until Catherine caved in? That first day Alex and I talked to Suzanne, she said that’s what Ramona had always done in the past, and her mother had always caved in. So why kill her this time around? But Ramona doesn’t have an alibi for that night. Neither does Catherine’s twin sister, and neither does Charlie.” Nicki got off her high stool and started to pace around the kitchen. “At least we can eliminate Mario. He did have an alibi. He was at the restaurant all night.”

  “And he doesn’t really have much of a motive,” Jenna pointed out. “Catherine bought into an investment that wasn’t going to grow much. It seemed like an impulse thing on her part.”

  Nicki nodded her agreement. “I thought so, too. When she talked about it at the Society luncheon, it almost seemed like entertainment to her. I think she would have sold it back to Mario sooner rather than later. He even said so when I asked him about it.”

  “And I don’t get the knife at all.” Nicki resumed her pacing. “I’m sure it wasn’t Catherine’s. There wasn’t another one even close to that one in quality in her knife drawer. And every one I saw in there was dull. Alex said the knife used to kill Catherine was not only very high quality and expensive, it was also extremely sharp. But why would the killer bring it?”

  “Um… to stab his intended victim?” Jenna said.

  “But that would mean the murder was premeditated. Why wouldn’t the killer bring a hunting knife? It’s made to kill things. Why an expensive chef’s knife? And why was Catherine acting so strange at the restaurant? Even the waiter said she seemed completely distracted. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Jenna said. “But Matt was right. This whole thing is going to drive you crazy. After we’ve finished our burgers, let’s go have some fun. I left my laptop next to the hallway table. I say we set it up and try out a couple of these programs Trident sells. Jeff gave me a copy of most of their software. Except for the stuff still under development.” She wiggled her eyebrows at Nicki. “Wouldn’t you like to see what Rob or Matt will look like in thirty years? It might influence which one you’ll let stick around.”

  “Funny,” Nicki said. “But sure, I’d like to see this stuff you’ve been raving about for the last week. Why don’t you get your laptop while I put th
is sheet cake into the oven?” As Jenna disappeared into the hallway, Nicki called after her, “and get ready to explain when he went from ‘the giant client’ to ‘Jeff’.”

  An hour later Nicki was laughing so hard, tears were rolling down her face. Jenna had turned Matt’s future likeness into a silver-haired supermodel, while Rob had come out looking like a cross between Homer Simpson and Mr. Magoo.

  “That’s just mean, Jenna,” Nicki declared once she could draw a complete breath. “Rob would never let himself go like that, and Matt looks like he stepped out of a Hollywood movie. And without his glasses.”

  “Not a problem.” Jenna tapped a few keys and Matt’s glasses suddenly appeared on the face of the silver-haired stud staring back from the screen. The computer geek tilted her head and studied the image. “I think he looks better with the glasses. Maybe he shouldn’t undergo that fantastic new procedure that my future world has developed to make everyone’s eyesight perfect.”

  “Along with their hair, nose, eyes and everything else,” Nicki grinned. “Except for poor Rob.”

  “Lover-boy has the soul of a troll so he deserves to look like one.”

  “That’s very poetic and once again, not nice.” Nicki leaned forward and tapped the key to bring up the other images they’d already played with. “But this age enhancement program really is amazing.”

  Jenna had scanned in one of Nicki’s pictures when she was five-years-old, and the computer had produced an image of what she would look like today. Except for a slight difference in the hair color, it was almost perfect. In fact it was so close, Nicki’s jaw had almost dropped all the way to the floor. Jenna showed her the same age progression she’d done on one of her own childhood photos with the same result.

  “The facial recognition program is even better,” Jenna declared. “It analyzes different points on your face then matches those to thousands of pictures. I’d show it to you, but we don’t happen to have a database with thousands of pictures in it.”

  Nicki sat back and took a sip of her wine. This whole “get away from the murder thing” had helped her relax for the first time since she’d found Catherine slumped over her pasta dinner. She hadn’t realized how wound up she’d become, and made a mental note to thank Matt not only for the idea, but for calling Jenna about it.

  “What else can these programs do beside project a face into the future?” Nicki asked, genuinely interested in what Jenna was trying to showcase in the new website she was designing for the mysterious Jeff at Trident Industries.

  “It has a wardrobe and style program.” Jenna tapped some keys and up popped another set of icons to choose from. “Go stand over by that wall so I can take your picture, and I’ll show you what this can do.”

  Nicki did as she was told and stood patiently while Jenna snapped a photo of her standing and then another close-up of her head and shoulders. While her friend was uploading the images to her computer, Nicki poured them both another glass of wine and pulled the second sheet cake out of the oven. Leaving it on the counter to cool, she set the timer for thirty minutes before rejoining Jenna on the sofa in the living room.

  “Okay. All set.” Jenna brought up the image of Nicki standing next to the wall. “So here’s the high-tech way to select your wardrobe for the day.” Jenna started changing Nicki’s outfit, sticking with pants and blouses, since that was what she’d been wearing when the picture was taken. Nicki laughed when her image suddenly appeared in a full-length ball gown, with a skirt that sparkled to go along with the tiara Jenna had put in her hair.

  “Now you know what you’d look like as a princess.” Jenna grinned at her friend. “Not a bad look for you.”

  “But it would look better on you. That dress would be so much more striking with your height and darker coloring. I look like a washed-out cake-topper.”

  Jenna snorted. “You’d never look like a washed-out anything. You’ve got a show-stopping face and figure that would look great in a wheat sack.”

  “Hmm. I might have to try that sometime, just to prove you wrong.” Nicki nodded. “What else have you got?”

  “Let’s try the style enhancement program.” Jenna pulled up Nicki’s head and shoulders picture and turned her from a honey-blond into a darker brunette. Then she gave her long curly locks and put a streak of blue in her hair starting from her forehead and curling down past her shoulder. “Now you can see what you’d look like if you ran with a punk crowd instead of your staid and steady friends.”

  Nicki scooted closer to the screen and studied the image for a long moment. “Can you pull a picture off the internet and do this same thing?”

  “Certainly. Do you have someone in mind?”

  Nicki nodded. “Do a Google search on Cynthia Dunton from San Francisco.”

  Jenna sighed. “Uh oh. Sounds like we’re back to murder.”

  “Just curious.” Nicki watched as Jenna switched to the search engine and began looking for an image of Cynthia. They were in luck when they came across an old staff photo for the public library in the city.

  “This should work,” Jenna said under her breath as she pulled the photo into the application built by Trident. “Okay. What would you like to do?”

  Nicki pursed her lips and closed her eyes, pulling up an image of Catherine in her mind before looking back at the librarian’s picture on the computer. “Make her hair lighter. Can you put in highlights and then make the eyebrows narrower?”

  They worked on the picture for several minutes until Jenna sat back and whistled softly. “Wow. I wouldn’t be able to tell her apart from Catherine.”

  “Well, they are twins, so that’s not so surprising,” Nicki said. “I just hadn’t realized how much they look alike.”

  Jenna nodded. “Me neither. At least not from that photo.”

  Nicki continued to study the image, but finally shook her head. “A picture doesn’t always tell the whole story.” At Jenna’s questioning look, she shrugged. “Right now you wouldn’t even recognize Cynthia, if all you had to go on was that photo. She’s got pitch-black hair that’s cut into a short and shaggy kind of style.”

  Jenna glanced back at the image on the screen and frowned. “Why? That would look terrible with her coloring.”

  “Some kind of hair disaster,” Nicki said. “Although I can’t imagine that it looked worse than it is now. But Ramona liked the Goth look on her aunt and Catherine did not, from what Cynthia said. But there’s more to it than just a hairstyle. They have different taste in clothes and makeup, and Cynthia walks with a slight stoop in her shoulders while Catherine didn’t. It was a lot of little things that made them so different from each other.”

  “Okay, I get that.” Jenna sniffed the air. “If it’s about time to frost those cakes, I call dibs on the bowl.”

  “What are you, Jenna Lindstrom? Five years old?” Nicki laughed.

  Jenna closed the laptop and stood up. “If it gets me the frosting bowl, being five years old works for me.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  “I guess this is the day we talk to the ex-husband. The guy who owns the art gallery, right?” Matt glanced at the large silver watch on his wrist. “It’s still early. He might not have opened up yet.”

  Nicki glanced across the square. She and Matt were standing outside his hotel, enjoying a patch of morning sunshine as they planned out their day. She’d met him in the hotel lobby, leaving her townhouse right after she’d pulled the peanut butter bars out of the oven and left them cooling on the counter.

  She smiled when he stifled a huge yawn. Despite all the hours he was putting in trailing her and her friends around town, Nicki was sure Matt still worked late into the night on magazine business. The thought gave her a case of the guilts, which she appeased by pointing at the Starbucks on the other side of the square. “We can get a cup of coffee while I fill you in on our baking schedule for tomorrow, and what Maxie said about making a quick run out to see Ramona this afternoon.”

  “Sounds good.” Matt grinned.
“A walk and talk followed by a cup of coffee works.”

  He strolled alongside her, automatically shortening his steps so Nicki didn’t have to run to keep up with him. “How much baking do we need to get done?”

  Nicki laughed. He sounded as if he was about to take a march to the gallows. “Not as much as you’re obviously dreading. I made two sheet cakes last night and finished off the peanut butter bars this morning. So that leaves the raspberry tarts, which I fully intend to leave to you, with detailed instructions and close oversight of course, and only three more items on our to-do list. Since we don’t have to go shopping for any of the ingredients, it shouldn’t take us too long, and I may tackle one of them tonight while you’re slaving away on magazine business.” She stopped just short of the doorway into Starbucks. “It shouldn’t take us more than a few hours on Friday morning, so you’ll have most of the day free to work on your agenda for the festival in L.A. I’ll even throw in pizza and beer for you to take back to the hotel if it will help. And you won’t get that offer once Alex gets here for the weekend.”

  “Alex’s arrival means nothing but health food?” Matt sighed.

  “Health food and healthy lifestyle,” Nicki said. “That means running in the morning and tofu for lunch.”

  When Matt looked horrified, Nicki burst into laughter. “I’m kidding. Alex can eat a whole batch of zucchini fries in one sitting.”

  “Zucchini and fries are two words that shouldn’t be in the same sentence,” Matt declared, holding the door into Starbucks open for her.

  Nicki gave him a quick pat on the cheek as she passed by him. “You might really like them.”

  “Uh huh.”

  They’d ordered their coffee and were back on the sidewalks, cardboard cups in hand, within a few minutes. Matt took a short sip and then frowned down at his cup.

  “Is something wrong with your coffee?” Nicki asked.