Topped Chef: A Key West Food Critic Mystery
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MORE PRAISE FOR
THE KEY WEST FOOD CRITIC MYSTERIES
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
“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
“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
“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 D. MacDonald to Carl Hiassen—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
Death in Four Courses
“In a crowded cozy market, Lucy Burdette’s Key West Food Critic series stands out among its peers.”
—The Florida Book Review
“Anyone who’s ever overpaid for a pretentious restaurant meal will relish this witty cozy.”
—Publishers Weekly
“All the elements of a winning recipe: Key West, food, and fun! The not so secret ingredients? Lucy Burdette’s exquisite plotting and sly prose set her apart. Death in Four Courses is a full-course feast!”
—Julia Spencer-Fleming, New York Times bestselling author of One Was a Soldier
“I’ll say it unashamedly: Death in Four Courses is mouthwatering. Hayley Snow is delicious. This humor-seasoned food for thought will tickle your mental taste buds.”
—Florida Weekly
“This enjoyable mystery series, with its attractive tropical setting, is also seasoned by the appealing characters and meals. The novel, done in the style of the Joanne Fluke series, is sure to attract food-fiction fans and will also appeal to Key West readers, although the combination of the two here is unique.”
—Booklist
“By the second book, Hayley has settled into her role more, though we rarely see her at her computer and we agonize with her over looming deadlines. Then magically she turns in that stunning article. Would that it were that way in real life. Still Hayley and the series show growth, and I’m eagerly looking forward to Topped Chef, next up in the Hayley Snow series.”
—Story Circle Book Review
“The Food Critic series may feature Key West cuisine, but I’d compare these tasty books to Chinese food: After reading one, in a half hour you’ll be wanting to read another.”
— Key West Citizen
Other Key West Food Critic Mysteries
An Appetite for Murder
Death in Four Courses
TOPPED CHEF
A Key West Food Critic Mystery
Lucy Burdette
OBSIDIAN
Published by the Penguin Group
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New York, New York 10014, USA
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For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com.
First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, May 2013
Copyright © Roberta Isleib, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-101-60961-3
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.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
For John, the chocolate sauce and nuts
on my Mexican Sundae
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1
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Recipes
Excerpt from the next Key West Food Critic Mystery
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am so grateful to the folks who bought character names for Topped Chef in the name of charity. They are such good sports as they have no idea what I’ll come up with when they write their checks! Peter Shapiro bought an auction item to benefit the Waterfront Theater in Key West, and requested that I put Randy Thompson in the book. I added Peter himself just for fun. Thank you to Randy for allowing the use of his name and for sharing his stories. Toby (Davidson) Scott bought an auction item to benefit our dearly beloved E.C. Scranton Memorial Library in Madison, Connecticut. Thank you, Toby! Though the names are real, inspired by real pe
ople, the characters are purely fiction.
Thanks to Adam Boyd for allowing his name to be used; to Tim and Stacie Boyd for their recipe; to Leigh Pujado for details on the gym, which I should already have known intimately—and for her cameo appearance. Thanks to Ron Augustine for his insights on tarot and Key West and to Jane for connecting us; thanks to my wonderful Key West friends Steve, Eric, Cory, Cathy, and Jim, for sharing stories and lives. Pat Cronin provided details about how paramedics would react in a crisis. Huge thanks to Rose Anati for helping me understand the ins and outs of reality television. I would have been lost without her, though of course all mistakes are mine!
I’m utterly grateful to the usual suspects—Hallie Ephron, Susan Hubbard, Chris Falcone, Angelo Pompano, Susan Cerulean, and John Brady, who never let me down when it comes to brainstorming, feedback, and support. My blog mates and dear friends at Jungle Red Writers, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, and Killer Characters fill my inbox every day with laughter and support. Thanks to all my writing friends in the mystery and cozy community who share tips and encouragement.
And thank you to my fabulous agent, Paige Wheeler, and her gang at Folio Literary, and to Sandy Harding, my amazing editor, who makes every page better, and the supporting cast at NAL. I appreciate you every one, including Kayleigh, Elizabeth, the illustrators who produce my fabulous covers!
But most of all, thanks to readers, booksellers, and librarians for reading the Food Critic mysteries and spreading the word! I hope you’ll enjoy this vicarious visit to Key West—all the good parts in the book (including restaurants) are real. The rest of it, I made up.
TOPPED CHEF KEY WEST
The Staff
Peter Shapiro, executive producer|director
Deena Smith, assistant to the executive producer
The Judges
Sam Rizzoli
Toby Davidson
Chef Adam Boyd
Hayley Snow
The Chef Contestants
Henrietta Stentzel
Randy Thompson
Buddy Higgs
The Homeless Guys
Turtle
Tony
The Cops
Detective Nathan Bransford
Officer Steve Torrence
Staff at Key Zest
Wally Beile
Danielle Kamen
Hayley Snow
Friends at Tarpon Pier
Miss Gloria Peterson
Connie Arp
Ray, Connie’s fiancé
Janet Snow, Hayley’s mom
Sam Cooper, Janet’s boyfriend
Then she also read Sirine’s coffee grounds and said she could see the signs written in the black coffee traces along the milky porcelain: sharp knife, quick hands, white apron, and the sadness of a chef. “Chefs know—nothing lasts,” she told Sirine. “In the mouth, then gone.”
—Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent
1
“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh.“What do you say, Piglet?”
“I say, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?’” said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said.
— A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
Evinrude woke me from a sound sleep, first with his rumbling purr and then with a gentle but persistent tapping of paw to cheek. I blinked my eyes open—the bedside clock read six fifteen. I hissed softly at his gray-striped face. “I love you dearly, but you’re a monster,” I told him as I rolled out of bed. “Spoiled rotten cat flesh.”
Tail hoisted high, he trotted out of the room ahead of me, meowing loudly. Miss Gloria’s lithe black cat, Sparky, intercepted him before he reached the food bowls lined up in the corner of the tiny galley of our houseboat. He sprang onto Evinrude’s back and wrestled him to the floor. While they boxed and nipped at each other, I poured a ration of kibbles into each bowl, refreshed their water, and then staggered onto the deck to check out the morning.
The plum-colored night sky was shifting to pink to make room for the day, which looked as though it might turn out “glorious and whimsical,” as the Key West Citizen had promised. A quartet of wind chimes tinkled lightly from the boats down the finger. Had there been a stiff wind or the first spitting drops of a cold rain, I’d have gone directly back to bed. But on a morning like this, there was no excuse to avoid the dreaded exercise I’d prescribed for myself.
Twice in the past ten days, I’d lured myself out of bed to go jogging before work, with the promise of a thick, sweet café con leche from the Cuban Coffee Queen as a reward on the way home. In addition to adding heft to my resume, my position as food critic for Key Zest had added a bit to my waistline over the past months; I was anxious to reverse the trend. And besides that, the Key West Food and Wine Festival loomed this week—it promised a series of tasting sessions that could ruin the most stalwart dieter. Which I was definitely not.
And most pressing of all, my first real date with detective Nate Bransford had been rescheduled for this evening. (You can’t count a threesome including your mother as a romantic encounter.) So it wasn’t hard to convince myself that today should be the third session—not that jogging two miles would magically transform my figure from jiggles to muscles, but I had to start somewhere. And maybe it would help work out the predate jitters, too.
I hurried back inside, replaced my pajamas with baggy running shorts, red sneakers, and a T-shirt that read “Dinner is ready when the smoke alarm goes off.” I’d bought the shirt for Christmas for my stepmother—who, while a brilliant chemist, was famous in our family for cremating roasts and burning even soup from a can—but lost my nerve before sending it. Why jostle a relationship that had recently settled into a pleasant détente?
I tucked my phone into my pocket and dashed off a note to my roommate, Miss Gloria, who lets me live onboard her houseboat in exchange for errands like grocery shopping (which I adore anyway), and sending occasional reports on her mental and physical condition to her son in Michigan. I stand between her and a slot in an old-age home—and I take my responsibility seriously. The Queen’s Guard of Tarpon Pier.
I wrote: Jogging—ugh! Call me if you want a coffee.
Then I hopped off our deck, tottered along the dock, and started grinding up the Palm Avenue hill over the Garrison Bight, which is Key West speak for harbor, toward the Old Town section of Key West. There aren’t many changes in elevation in this town, so I was just as happy to get this challenge over with early on. I puffed past the U.S. Naval Air Station’s multistory building—Fly Navy—and then by the pale pink and green cement block apartments for enlisted folks and their families. I finally chugged around the curve onto Eaton Street, my lungs burning and my thighs cramping into complaining masses. I picked up my pace, pushing harder because I smelled bacon: The Cole’s Peace Bakery called to me like a Siren to Ulysses. Stopping for an unscheduled bacon and cheese toast on crispy Cuban bread would devastate my fledging resolutions.
As I hooked right on Grinnell, heading toward the boardwalk that wound along the historic seaport area, I tried to distract myself by thinking about my tasks for the day. There’d be e-mail to answer, as the biweekly issue of Key Zest, our fledgling Key West style magazine, hit in-boxes today. And I was in charge of responding to the usual flurry of complaints and compliments. For the first time in my short career, I’d had to swallow hard and write a negative review. This was bound to come sooner or later. Key West is a foodie paradise, but like Anywhere, USA, there are lousy meals to be had, too. As a careful follower of the major newspaper restaurant critics, I’d read plenty of stories about critics suffering through horrendous dinners. Or worse yet, bouts of food poisoning. I’d actually memorized one of the New York Times critic Sam Sifton’s sharper quotes: “And lobes of dismal-flavored sea urchin served over thick lardo and heavy toast were just dreadful: the eighth band after Nirvana to write l
oud-soft-loud music and call it new.”
But hearing about rotten reviews and writing them were two different animals. I wasn’t convinced that I would ever develop a killer instinct—famous critics seemed to enjoy ripping apart a horrible dinner. Me? I could only imagine the chef sweating in the kitchen, slaving over the stove, plating the meal, praying that his special whatever hit the mark. It broke my heart to think about dissing some poor chump’s food.
My second meal at Just Off Duval a couple nights earlier had started off well. True to its name, the restaurant was located a half block from Duval Street, far enough from the bustle of the town’s main party artery to mask the grit and noise. My friend Eric and I had ordered glasses of wine and settled into the pleasant outdoor patio edged with feathery palm plants to enjoy our dinners. The night was cool enough for a sweater, and the scent of roasting meat had my stomach doing anticipatory back-flips. A half loaf of stale Italian bread and a pool of olive oil that tasted almost rancid were the first signs the experience would be a downer. I jotted a few notes into my smartphone, agreeing with Eric: Any restaurant should be allowed a tiny misstep.