A Chili Death: A Classic Diner Mystery

by Jessica Beck

  The First Time Ever Published!

  A Brand New Series from the New York Times Bestselling Author of The Donut Shop Mysteries

  The Classic Diner Mystery Series

  Book 1

  A CHILI DEATH

  by

  Jessica Beck

  To my family,

  for giving me their unconditional support over the years, even in the most trying of times!

  A Chili Death: Copyright © 2012 by Jessica Beck

  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. 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.

  Recipes included in this book are to be recreated at the reader’s own risk. The author is not responsible for any damage, medical or otherwise, created as a result of reproducing these recipes. It is the responsibility of the reader to ensure that none of the ingredients are detrimental to their health, and the author will not be held liable in any way for any problems that might arise from following the included recipes.

  Chapter 1

  First things first.

  I didn’t kill Howard Lance.

  Just because I’d been the one who found him dead in the deep freezer at my family’s café, The Charming Moose Diner, didn’t mean that I had anything to do with it, and neither did my husband, Greg. At first, nobody was pointing any fingers at him, though. Before we’d narrowed down Howard’s time of death, it appeared that my husband had what must have been the best alibi in the state of North Carolina; on the evening of the murder, Greg was playing poker with the sheriff, the mayor, the head of our local church’s building fund, an auto mechanic, and the town barber. There wasn’t a soul in all of Jasper Fork, North Carolina who would dispute the words of that collection of solid citizens.

  Me? I wasn’t so lucky. Greg had left the diner at six, a full hour before we normally locked the doors for the night. Mom came back one night a week to cover the last hour of the kitchen while we were open, and we always had fun working together. After we closed that night and Mom went home, I’d decided to stay behind, intent on updating the inventory in our freezer while my husband had his weekly night out with the boys. After all, there was no reason to hurry home to an empty house. Still, I didn’t begrudge my husband his poker games. Working and living together made for close quarters sometimes, and we needed a break from each other every now and then, no matter how much we loved each other. I chose to take an afternoon off myself every week, but I usually did something far more sensible than play cards: I went shopping with my best friend, Rebecca Davis. She was an attorney in Jasper Fork, and she could usually get free long enough to join me for an hour or two.

  But that was all beside the point. As I was saying, I was supposed to be doing inventory in our walk-in freezer, but I’d gotten lost in a mystery novel one of our customers had left behind, and it was just past eight before I got around to bundling up and heading into our chilly storage area.

  The last thing in the world I expected to find when I started poking around in the freezer was a dead body, stiff in more ways than one.

  I had absolutely nothing to do with it being there; at least that was what I kept telling Sheriff Croft, though it was pretty clear from the start that he didn’t entirely believe me.

  Maybe I should back up a little and start from the beginning.

  The day before the murder, at just a little past three in the afternoon, we were in the beginnings of that common lull between lunch and dinner that always came as a welcome break. As usual, Mom had worked the grill for the breakfast shift, but she’d gone home when Greg took over the kitchen at eleven. Our first-shift waitress, a single mother named Ellen Hightower, had just finished her workday at two so she could be home and ready when her kids got off the school bus, and our other server, college student Jenny Hollister, wasn’t due in until four. We always managed for those two hours, with me covering the tables and also darting to the register whenever I needed to ring up a customer’s bill. I had the oddest schedule of all, working the register from six to eight am six days a week, then taking a break until eleven, when I worked until four. I took one more hour off before I came back at five to work until we closed at seven. It made for a long day, but the breaks were nice, and I’d long grown accustomed to the hours, practically growing up in The Charming Moose.

  “Order up,” Greg said as he rang the small bell in the kitchen to let us know when meals were ready. I smiled at my husband, and he winked as he returned my grin. Greg was a big man, with a firm jaw and a full head of brown hair, and he was every bit as handsome to me now as he was when we’d met twenty years ago during our first year of high school. I’d added a good fifteen pounds since then, but Greg said he liked me that way, and I wasn’t crazy enough to try to tell him that he was wrong. He had been the only guy in the entire school who’d played on all of the varsity boys’ teams and taken home economics at the same time. Trust me, nobody made fun of his choice of classes back then, and they didn’t say a word to him about his cooking now. I was a decent cook myself, but I lacked Greg’s skill and imagination. He could take the most common fare—comfort food, really—and turn it into something really special.

  As I grabbed the order from the pass-through between the kitchen and the dining room, I glanced at the plate, laden with homemade meatloaf lightly covered with Greg’s special tomato sauce, mashed potatoes dotted with tiny dabs of butter, and fresh crisp green beans. There was a substantial dinner roll to go along with it all, and my stomach grumbled at the sight of all of that largesse. As soon as I served Chester Longfield, I was going to have my husband make me up an order just like it.

  “Here you go, Chester,” I said as I slid the plate in front of him. We had a long gray Formica counter and red vinyl-topped stools that nearly ran all the way across the front of the place, but there were also four booths and eight tables for folks who preferred seating that didn’t swivel; Chester had taken up residency at one of those. “Can I top off that sweet tea of yours while I’m here?” I asked.

  “You know that I’d be hurt if you didn’t,” Chester said with a glimmer in his eye. He’d been coming to the diner for nearly fifty years—ever since my grandfather, Moose, had first opened the place at the tender young age of nineteen—and Chester was one of our sea of regulars, an odd array of folks who came by frequently to have a meal with us.

  After Chester was taken care of, I grabbed my pad and jotted my own late lunch order down on it. As soon as I hung it on the small spinning rack, Greg’s hand reached up and made it disappear.

  “That’s funny. I didn’t hear the front door open,” Greg said as he poked his head out through the opening. “Don’t tell me Chester wants a repeat.”

  “That one’s for me,” I admitted. “It looked so good that I just had to have one myself.”

  “You know what? I’ll make two, and we can try to eat together, just as a change of pace.” Given the nature of our business, there was no guarantee that the plan would work, but it was sweet of him to try to share a bite with me.

  “It’s a date,” I said.

  While I was waiting for my own meal, I started wiping down the long counter. As I did, a slick-looking tall man in his fifties wearing a fancy suit and carrying an expensive leather briefcase came into the diner.

  “Good afternoon. My name is
Howard Lance, and I need to speak with the owner of this establishment immediately,” he said, and then paused as he glanced at a piece of paper in his hand and asked, “Is this right? Is his name really Moose?” I wasn’t thrilled with the man’s condescending tone of voice, or the mocking edge buried just beneath it as he said my grandfather’s name.

  It was time to take him down a notch or two. I pointed to the spot by the cash register where my favorite thing from my childhood sat, a carved wooden moose my grandfather had made for me long ago. He’d crafted it out of walnut, and the lush patina of the wood had grown richer and richer over the years.

  “Direct your comments and complaints straight to him,” I said as I pointed with my ballpoint pen in the carved animal’s direction. “He doesn’t mind listening one bit, but don’t expect much of a reply. Moose is what you might call a little reserved when he’s around strangers.”

  The man looked clearly flustered by my comment as he glanced at my wooden moose. “I’m sorry, but I must not have made myself clear. I need to speak with the diner’s owner,” he repeated.

  Greg came out from the kitchen wearing his apron, where he usually spent his days creating our lunch and dinner offerings, making everything himself from scratch, from apple pie to fried zucchini. His natural expression almost always included a smile, but at the moment, there was a storm brewing in his eyes. “Is there a problem, Victoria?”

  “This man’s looking to have a word with Moose, but when I pointed him out, he got kind of quiet.”

  Greg nodded knowingly. “It doesn’t surprise me. Moose is like that sometimes.”

  “That’s what I told him.”

  The man looked at each of us in turn as though we’d lost our minds. “What kind of loony bin have I walked into?”

  “Lower your voice, or you’ll hurt Moose’s feelings,” I said. “He may look tough on the outside, but he’s got a truly sensitive soul.” Moose had been with me since kindergarten, and when I’d taken over the family restaurant, the first thing I’d done was to make sure there was a place for him right up front beside me.

  “For a place named Charming, nobody is being very pleasant with me,” the man said.

  My dad had always disliked the name The Charming Moose, and he’d tried to turn the place into Joe’s the second he took over, but no one in Jasper Fork would stand for it, and he soon gave up and learned to accept it. As for me, I liked the name. I thought it gave the place some character, and more than a little style.

  “Mr. Lance, you have to be cordial to get it back in return,” I said.

  The frustration was clearly growing in his voice as he said in frustration, “Whatever. I’ve had about all the nonsense I’m going to take. Now, I’m asking you people for the last time, who’s in charge here?”

  He’d directed his question to Greg, another big mistake on his part.

  My husband shook his head as he replied, “Don’t look at me. You’ll have to talk to the lady. She’s the boss.”

  “This isn’t your business?” he asked as he looked directly at my husband.

  “Me? No way. I may be the chief cook and bottle washer around here, but Victoria’s the one who runs the diner. If you have something to say, you’re going to need to take it up with her. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an apple pie in the oven that’s nearly ready to come out.”

  I watched Greg duck back into the kitchen. No doubt he thought that he’d be safe there from my wrath over the fallout of this particular conversation, but I wasn’t so sure. I was getting tired of tap-dancing with this guy. “What exactly can I do for you, Mr. Lance?”

  He opened his briefcase and slapped a document down on the counter in front of me. “You can give this to Moose Nelson the next time you see him, and tell him that he has ten days to respond to this, or suffer the consequences. Good day.”

  Before he could leave, I said, “I don’t know. I think it’s a little windy out.”

  He turned and looked at me again. “What are you talking about?”

  “You said that it was a good day, and I commented on the weather from my own perspective. The middle of October can be a bit blustery for my taste. What part of that conversation didn’t you understand?”

  He didn’t even try to come up with a response as he stormed out of the diner.

  After he was gone, I glanced at the paper he’d left.

  I was about to crumple it up and toss it in the trash when something pretty dire shouted out from the heading, so I started reading it more carefully.

  Greg came out a few minutes later with two full plates of our meatloaf special.

  I glanced up at him and said worriedly, “Thanks, but I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.”

  He looked down at the plates and frowned. “I could always make you something else, if this doesn’t sound good anymore.”

  “It’s not the food. It’s this.”

  Greg put the plates down on the counter and took the document from me. He scanned it, and then shook his head in disbelief. We weren’t doing his food any justice letting it cool like that, but there was just no helping it. My husband said, “Victoria, this is serious. We need to find your grandfather, and fast.”

  “He’s still fishing at Cloud Lake with my dad,” I said. Father and son took a week off alone every year to go fishing, staying at a cabin that my grandfather had built himself on the mountain lake. There was no electricity or running water at the cabin, but neither man seemed to mind the lack of modern amenities. Moose spent quite a bit of time up there by himself, but my grandmother, Martha, didn’t seem to mind his absences. She claimed she was happy for the time away from him, but it was clear they still loved each other very much. They’d both retired from running the diner eight years before, and my father had grown weary of the grind after only a few years of being in charge. He’d moved on to other jobs, though Mom had stayed on when Greg and I had taken over.

  I went on, “You know there’s no cell phone coverage up there, so the only way we’re going to talk with either one of them is to drive up to the lake ourselves, and we don’t have time to do that, not if we’re going to keep the diner open today.”

  “I’d be happy to go for you,” Chester volunteered from his seat not far away. To be honest, I’d forgotten he was still there.

  “It’s sweet of you to offer, but do you even know where the cabin is?” I asked.

  Chester laughed. “I’ve spent more than one night with Moose at the lake. I could find it in the dark, which I’ll have to do, if I don’t get going pretty soon. I hate this time change. It always throws off my system.”

  “Thanks for offering, but we’ll figure something out,” I said hastily.

  Chester wouldn’t hear of it, though. “Nonsense, my seventeen-year-old grandson has been clamoring for some quality time with me for months—only the stars above know why—so I’ll let him drive me. Trust me, it will be our pleasure.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “We really don’t have much choice, Victoria,” Greg said. He turned to Chester and said, “We’d be in your debt.”

  “Believe me, the pleasure is mine.”

  Chester reached for his wallet, but I plucked his bill out of his hand and tore it into two pieces. “Your money’s no good here today, sir.”

  He looked quite pleased by the prospect. “In that case, I’ll take some of that apple pie that smells so heavenly with me for the trip.”

  He’d clearly been kidding, but Greg retrieved the pie he’d made earlier and boxed up two large slabs of it up. “For you and your grandson,” Greg said.

  As he presented the box to Chester, the older man said, “That’s not necessary. I was just teasing you.”

  “It’s the least we can do. Enjoy it.”

  “I will,” he said as he started for the door. Chester paused, and then he turned back to me. “What exactly is it that I’m supposed to tell him, Victoria? Moose might not be ready to leave, and I don’t need to tell you how stubborn your gran
dfather can be at times.”

  “Just tell him that Rome is burning,” I said simply.

  “That’s it?”

  “Believe me, it will be enough.”

  After Chester was gone, Greg asked, “Shouldn’t you have given him more information than that? It was kind of cryptic, wasn’t it?”

  “More information would only complicate things. There’s been a longstanding family tradition that in dire times, that phrase will bring every able body running, no questions asked.”

  Greg looked a little hurt, so I asked him, “What’s wrong?”

  “Why haven’t I heard about this before now? After all, I’ve been married to you for twelve years. Doesn’t that make me a member of your family, too?”

  “Of course it does.” I wrapped my arms around my husband as I explained, “The only reason you haven’t heard it is because we haven’t had a major crisis in all this time.” After giving him a reassuring hug and a quick peck, I added, “There’s nothing we can do about this until Moose gets here. Why don’t we go ahead and eat?”

  Greg looked down at the plates, and then said, “Forget it. Everything’s cold now.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” I said as I grabbed a fork.

  He wouldn’t hear of it, though. “Let me at least warm these up. I’ll be right back.”

  I wasn’t about to argue, and after he took the plates back into the kitchen, I looked at the document one more time.

  It appeared to be official enough, but I couldn’t testify about the validity of the claim.

  One thing was certain.

  EVICTION NOTICE and REPOSSESSION were printed in large enough letters to get anyone’s attention.

  I just hoped my grandfather could clear it up, or The Charming Moose was going to be in some serious trouble, and soon.

  I picked up the phone to call Rebecca, but I stopped mid-dial and put it back in the cradle. I’d almost forgotten that my best friend was out of town at a legal conference at the moment, and as much as I wanted her official opinion about this document, I wasn’t about to disturb her unless it turned out to be absolutely necessary.