A Food and Wine Club Mystery Boxset Books 1 through 5

by Cat Chandler

  “You do too. What’s going on in Paris?”

  Matt’s smile slowly faded as he peered intently back at Nicki through the computer screen. “Nothing much to report. What’s going on in Soldoff?”

  “About the same,” Nicki shrugged. She wasn’t liking the way he was staring at her as if he was reading her mind. “Um. I had to make some homemade pastries for Maxie and Jenna to try out this morning. Suzanne wants to add a breakfast menu to our classes.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Usually the mention of food was a good distraction for Matt, but he didn’t seem to be buying it this morning, so Nicki tried something else. “I finished all the articles we talked about, including how the smoke from the fires might affect some of the Cabernet harvest.”

  “Hmm.”

  When that fell flat too, she latched onto her last option. “What have you got the Paris office working on?”

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, reminding Nicki of Chief Turnlow in an odd kind of way. “All right. I know that face, Nicki Connors. What’s happened?”

  Since there was no use trying to bluff her way out of it, Nicki leaned forward on her elbows and made sure to keep her smile firmly in place. “It’s nothing you need to be concerned about, Matt. Really. Someone I know had an accident, that’s all.”

  He sat up straighter and adjusted his glasses. “It wasn’t Jenna or Alex, was it?”

  “Oh no. No, of course not,” Nicki hastened to assure him. “I don’t think you’ve ever met her. It was Viola Richards.”

  “Viola Richards?” Matt repeated slowly, his eyes crinkling at the corner as he rubbed a hand across the bottom of his chin. “Isn’t she the woman who traces family trees back to famous people? Or occasionally an infamous one? I think I saw her on a BBC special once a long time ago.”

  “That’s right.” Nicki was always amazed at how much Matt kept up with even the most remote details of the daily news. “She’s a friend of Maxie’s.” Nicki paused and frowned at that. “Well, not a friend, exactly. Maxie said she’s more of a business acquaintance.”

  Matt nodded. “Now I remember. Maxie mentioned her once or twice. She didn’t seem too impressed with Viola Richards’ way of making the family connections. I think Maxie called it something along the lines of ‘genealogy light’.”

  Nicki grinned. “Really? That sounds like Maxie’s very polite way of saying she thought the woman was a fake.”

  “I’d have to agree with that.” Matt’s smile made a brief appearance before it faded away again. “How do you happen to know Viola Richards?”

  “Oh. She’s been staying in the townhouse across from mine.”

  “Across from yours? I thought she lived in London. Has she moved to Soldoff?”

  Shaking her head, Nicki picked up a pen and idly doodled on a notepad next to the computer. “No. She was on vacation here.”

  “Was?”

  Nicki winced when Matt’s voice level went up a notch and he was back to crossing his arms over his chest as he stared back at her.

  “I don’t suppose she ran into a mailbox on her way to the airport to fly home?”

  Knowing Matt was not going to be happy about what had happened to Viola Richards, Nicki hedged her answer a bit. “Not exactly.”

  “Well, are you going to tell me what kind of accident Ms. Richards had?”

  “Not if I could help it,” Nicki said under her breath, then shrugged at Matt’s glare. “She fell into the pool.”

  Matt frowned. “What pool? Your townhouse doesn’t have a pool.”

  “No, it doesn’t. The only one that does is the townhouse Viola was staying in,” Nicki explained. “It looks like she lost her balance, hit her head, and then fell into the pool.”

  “Looks like?” Matt sighed. “And don’t tell me. You found her body, didn’t you?”

  Glad she didn’t have to fess up to that, which she was sure would make Matt go ballistic, Nicki shook her head. “No. Maxie did.” She smiled when he looked relieved, but it didn’t last more than a second or two.

  “How soon did you come along after Maxie found the body in this townhouse that’s right across from yours?”

  “Oh, just a few minutes. But myMason showed up right away,” Nicki said, using the popular nickname the whole town had adopted for the retired police chief. Since Maxie always referred to her husband as “my Mason”, the rest of the town did too, only everyone else always ran the two words together, making them one.

  “And what did Mason and Chief Turnlow have to say about it?” Matt asked.

  Nicki shrugged. “Maxie’s husband thinks it was an accident. That she’d had too much to drink, then tripped and fell into the pool, hitting her head against the edge along the way.”

  “What does Chief Turnlow think?” Matt prompted when Nicki fell silent.

  “He’s going to wait to see what the coroner has to say.”

  Matt nodded, sending a thick lock of dark hair tumbling over his forehead which he absently swatted away. “Sounds reasonable.” He leaned forward until his nose looked like it was almost pressed against the screen. “And what do you think, Nicki?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  He groaned and flopped back against his chair. “I knew it. You think she was murdered, don’t you?”

  “Maybe,” Nicki said, drawing the word out. “But maybe not. It was too early in the morning to have a visitor, and I didn’t notice anything out of place.”

  “Okay, what did you notice?” Matt definitely sounded like he was losing his patience, which he rarely did, so that wasn’t a good sign.

  “There was Scotch spilled all over the place.”

  Not looking a bit impressed by that, Matt shrugged. “Doesn’t that fit with her drinking before she fell into the pool?”

  Nicki chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “But she couldn’t have been in the pool very long. The smell of the Scotch was too strong for it to have been spilled hours before. And besides, I don’t think she drank Scotch at all. At least, she never had during any of the dinners I made for her.”

  Matt smiled. “Your very fantastic dinners lend themselves more to wine. Why were you making her dinners?”

  Why indeed? Something else Nicki had been pondering ever since they’d discovered Viola floating in her backyard pool. “She usually came knocking on my door every night around dinner time.”

  “Well, at least now I know you haven’t been out on any dates.”

  “Matt.” Nicki shook her head at him. “You know better than that.”

  “Sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving several tufts of it sticking straight up. It was a habit of his whenever he didn’t like what he was hearing. “I just can’t believe I’m thousands of miles and a whole ocean away when you find a dead body.” He looked around as if he was considering something.

  “You had better not be thinking about flying here, Matt Dillon,” Nicki warned. “There isn’t any reason for you to disrupt your life again for me, and especially not over something that is in all probability, an accident.”

  He blew out a breath as he settled back into his chair. “I don’t mind disrupting my life for you, Nicki Connors. You are definitely worth it. And if you’re going to be finding bodies, I need to be there.”

  “I didn’t find the body,” Nicki reminded him. “Maxie did. And her husband is right here to help her through any questions the chief has.” She leaned forward on her elbows and rested her chin in her hands. “We’re all fine here, Matt. I want your promise that you won’t be showing up on my doorstep and wreck the whole schedule you have worked out, so you can come home next month.” She paused and lowered her voice. “I miss you. I’d like to have you at least as close as Kansas City.”

  “Which still isn’t close enough as far as I’m concerned,” Matt said.

  “Your magazine is based there, so that’s where you need to be. But at least it’s closer than Paris.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m working on
that.”

  Working on what? Nicki frowned but let it go to return to something more urgent. “You haven’t given me your promise yet, Mr. Dillon.”

  “Fine, you’ve got it,” Matt groused. “As long as you promise me you’ll stay out of trouble.”

  “Fine,” Nicki said in a perfect imitation of his tone, making him smile. “I’ll do my best,” she added which had him rolling his eyes.

  “Somehow, Connors, that isn’t making me feel a whole lot better.”

  Just then an alarm sounded, its strident ring coming clearly through the computer’s speakers. Matt reached over and a moment later, the sound stopped.

  “I have a conference call.” He didn’t sound very happy about it as he sent her an apologetic look.

  “It’s pretty late there, isn’t it?” Nicki glanced at the clock in the corner of her computer screen and mentally added nine hours to the time.

  “It’s not late in Kansas,” Matt said. “We’ll talk some more tomorrow.”

  She gave him a warm smile. “Of course. I wouldn’t miss our daily call.”

  Matt smiled back at her. “I wouldn’t either.”

  A few minutes later, Nicki gave him one last wave before clicking off. As Matt disappeared from her screen, she leaned back in her chair and sighed.

  These last few months when he’d been away had been harder than she’d thought they would be. Which was really kind of silly. After all, they didn’t live in the same town. Or even the same state for that matter. So what difference did it really make if Matt was in Kansas City or Paris?

  Sighing over something she had no logical explanation for, Nicki pushed away from her desk and stood up to stretch just as she heard the front door open. A second later it slammed shut with a distinct rattle, and the sound of flip flops echoed down the short hallway to the office.

  Jenna had been slamming doors and wearing flip flops for as long as Nicki had known her. Even around the minuscule apartment they’d shared in New York before moving out to California, Jenna had worn flip flops. Nicki had come to think of it as a computer geek sort of thing. Along with her friend’s favorite attire of a baggy sweat suit with her long, unruly hair clipped up into a twist on top of her head.

  Jenna’s head appeared around the open doorway to Nicki’s office. “So. All finished talking to the infatuated Matt Dillon?”

  “Yes, I am, and he’s not that bad,” Nicki laughed.

  Jenna snorted out her disbelief at that. “He’d have you chained to his side if he thought he could get away with it.” She walked into the room and balanced her hip on the corner of Nicki’s desk. “Is he getting on the next plane to San Francisco?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Her friend’s eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t tell him about Viola Richards floating in the pool just across the street?”

  Lifting her arms over her head to give her back another stretch, Nicki smiled. “I told him. And no, he wasn’t happy. But he did promise he would not get on a plane and come rushing to help solve a murder we don’t even know actually is a murder. It’s probably an accident just the way myMason thinks it is.”

  “Uh huh.” Jenna’s tone was skeptical, and so was the expression on her face. “That doesn’t sound like Matt.”

  Nicki didn’t think so either, but she was also certain that Matt would keep his word and stay in Paris.

  Jenna pointed out the front window toward the cars and vans littering the street in front of their joined townhouses. “It looks like the whole CSI forensic crew is here.”

  Nicki walked over to the window and stared out to the street. “Do you think Alex is with the coroner today?” Alex had been their third roommate in New York while she’d pursued her medical degree. She lived one town over in the much larger Santa Rosa, with her new husband, Tyler. Alex had developed a friendship with Dr. Thomas Garland, more locally known as Dr. Tom the county coroner, and sometimes filled in for him.

  “Nah.” Jenna walked closer to the window and stood next to Nicki. “I talked to her last night, and she’s working the afternoon shift in the emergency room today, so she’s probably at home. Why?”

  Nicki tapped a finger against her chin as she considered all the vehicles with their flashing lights. “Maybe we should give her a call.”

  Her tall dark-haired friend immediately grinned. “Thinking of giving her a heads-up about this newest body?”

  “What are friends for?” Nicki laughed.

  “And since Viola Richards was a friend of Maxie’s, well, sort of a friend, then it’s only natural that we would be concerned about how she died,” Jenna said with a roll of her eyes.

  “Of course.” Nicki took one last look out at the street before retreating toward her desk where she’d left her cell phone.

  Jenna glanced at the far wall, dominated by a large whiteboard. “Should I break out the markers and start setting up our murder board?”

  Exasperated, Nicki let out a long sigh. “We don’t know that there even was a murder, so we don’t need to set up the board.”

  “But we might have to, dear.” Maxie stepped into the room, a determined look on her face. “I know what my Mason thinks, but I’m not at all sure I agree with him. Or that Chief Turnlow does either.”

  Nicki immediately crossed over to her landlady and put a sympathetic arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Maxie. I know this hasn’t been easy for you.”

  Maxie sighed and let Nicki lead her over to the small couch off to the side of the whiteboard. “No, it hasn’t been easy or pleasant.” She sighed again. “The truth is, I didn’t like Viola very much, or respect the work she did.”

  “It’s not possible to like everyone,” Jenna said. “You shouldn’t feel bad about that.”

  “I don’t,” Maxie responded. “But I do feel responsible. Viola died on my property under some very odd circumstances.” She glanced over at Nicki. “So we should be prepared to set up the murder board, dear.”

  Jenna picked up Nicki’s cell phone and held it out to her. “I’ll bet Alex can find out what’s in that coroner’s report almost as soon as it’s written. Guess it’s time to make that phone call.”

  Chapter One Hundred Six

  The next morning dawned cool with a slight haze that Nicki had no doubt would burn off in the next hour or so. She quietly closed the door to her townhouse. The last thing she wanted to do was wake up Jenna and inevitably face a barrage of questions.

  Nicki crossed the street on her tiptoes, constantly glancing over her shoulder to be sure there wasn’t any movement at Jenna’s place. Nicki let out the breath she’d been holding when she reached the back gate, which was thankfully out of the line of sight of any of Jenna’s windows. She eyed the yellow-and-black crime scene tape crisscrossing the opening and frowned.

  So far, every time she’d made the decision to go past any tape the chief had put up, she’d been caught. Pursing her lips as she thought it over, she finally decided that maybe she shouldn’t push her luck and should stay on this side of the fence. Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a look around.

  Fortunately, the gate was situated in a spot that gave her a clear view of the lap pool in back. Nicki cocked her head to one side and studied it for a full minute. The blue water was a nice contrast to the green plants growing all along one side, as well as the gray tones of the granite patio that led up to the edge of the pool. It was a very pretty scene, and hard to imagine someone had died there only yesterday.

  The smell of liquor was completely gone. Nicki took a deep sniff of the air just to be sure, but didn’t catch even a small trace of Scotch, or anything else besides the faint whiff of chlorine from the pool. But all that did was reinforce her thought that Viola hadn’t been dead very long before Maxie came into the backyard and found her floating in the water.

  The smell of Scotch wasn’t the only thing missing. Nicki didn’t see any evidence that a forensic team had been there. No dust from fingerprints, or any other kind of prints, as far as
she could tell. Frowning, she leaned over the lower part of the “X” in the tape. The living room didn’t look disturbed either, which didn’t really surprise Nicki. After all, there wasn’t any official declaration that there had been a crime.

  At least not yet.

  Clearly the chief had put the tape up as a precautionary measure, just in case the coroner ruled that Viola Richards’ death hadn’t been an accident. Either that, or he wanted to be sure Nicki wouldn’t go snooping around back there.

  That thought had her straightening up quickly enough. With nothing much else to see, Nicki backed away from the gate and made her way toward the front of the townhouse. Using the same path through the foliage that she had the day before, she slipped past the leafy branches until she was standing in front of the window to Viola’s home office.

  Pressing her forehead against the glass and cupping her hands around the edges of her face, Nicki peered inside. The desk was placed in the room so that the window was at its back. Viola apparently favored a stool to sit on, so Nicki had a clear view of the laptop’s screen, which was turned off, and the lack of furnishings in the room besides the desk with its backless seat.

  Just as she’d noticed yesterday, everything on the desk was neat as a pin. Nicki was about to turn away when her eye was suddenly caught on the footrest underneath the desk. She squinted to get a better look. Yes. It was all the way up against the front panel.

  Nicki frowned as she mentally estimated the distance from the stool to the footrest. Viola Richards had had a square build in a very short body. She couldn’t have even claimed Nicki’s petite height. So why was her footrest all the way at the front of her desk when her legs wouldn’t have been able to reach it?

  Nicki’s eyes immediately tracked to the top of the desk where she could clearly see a notepad with a pen lying across it, sitting next to the edge. Too far away for Viola’s short arms to comfortably write on it while she was working at her laptop.

  Pushing away from the window, Nicki made her way out of the bushes and back to the street. She turned over the possibility of someone tampering with Viola’s laptop as she slowly walked back to her own place. She had just stepped onto her walkway when her phone beeped with an incoming message.