Murder and Food Porn: A Northwest Cozy Mystery (Northwest Cozy Mystery Series Book 8) Read online

  MURDER AND FOOD PORN

  By

  Dianne Harman

  (A Northwest Cozy Mystery - Book 8)

  Copyright © 2018 Dianne Harman

  www.dianneharman.com

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form without written permission except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  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.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1726036825

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book was inspired by the mouth-watering images of food on Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media sites. It’s almost impossible to eat in a restaurant without having someone take a photograph of their food. I have to admit I’ve been guilty of doing just that. Well, I don’t post them on social media, but there certainly have been occasions when I’ve taken a photo, hoping I could recreate the presentation.

  So, to all of you foodies out there – I’m with you. I completely understand and appreciate the appeal of a beautifully presented dish. Thanks for being the genesis of this book.

  Although I normally have dogs on my covers, and yes, they are in this book, I opted to do what a food photographer does, let the dish be the focal point. I didn’t think having a Doberman pinscher on the cover along with a fabulous grilled meat photo would work.

  As always, a huge thanks to my team for designing covers, editing, coming up with ideas, copyediting, and generally making me look good. I so rely on each of you.

  And to you, my readers, I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed writing it – and thanks for continuing to read my books.

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  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  EPILOGUE

  RECIPES

  ABOUT DIANNE

  PROLOGUE

  Toni Adams glanced at her buzzing cell phone which was lying on the pale pink silk comforter on her bed and took a sharp intake of breath before accepting the call. Despite her desire to tell the caller exactly what she thought of him, her sunny nature and impeccable manners resulted in her sounding more pleasant than she actually felt right at that moment.

  “Hi, Hector, what can I do for you?”

  She’d lost count of how many times Hector Delgado had already called her that day. He was the janitor at her office building on Bainbridge Island, and the pretext for his call was a dripping faucet in the small shared kitchen on the floor above her food photography studio. She chewed her lip as he began to speak, not concentrating on what he was saying. Her head was spinning with all the things she still needed to do before leaving on her vacation the following day.

  “I’m pretty sure you’ve got it all under control, Hector. I know you can handle it. I’m working from home today, like I told you earlier. Yes, I’ll be here all afternoon, but thanks for keeping me updated, I appreciate it. I’ll see you next week when I get back.” Her grimace turned to a smile when her sister Hillary appeared in the doorway. “Um, I’ll look forward to it too,” Toni said, trying to end the call, but Hector kept talking. “I really have to go now, Hector. Bye.” She gritted her teeth as she set the phone back down on the bed.

  Hillary grinned, flipping her blond curls over one shoulder. “How’s lover boy?”

  Toni scowled. “That was Hector, and he’s not my lover boy.”

  “He’d like to be, though. You’re too nice to him. He’s going to keep asking you out until you make it clear you’re not interested.”

  “What more can I do?” Toni said as she got up from where she was sitting on the bed and walked over to the open doors that led onto the balcony with its sweeping view of Puget Sound. She rubbed the goosebumps on her bare arms and pushed the doors shut. It wasn’t quite cold enough for a sweater, but the early fall afternoon was cooler than it had been of late. “I’m not sure what part of ‘No’ he doesn’t understand.”

  “Maybe Hector’s hoping you and Jace will break up, and he can be your rebound relationship,” Hillary suggested. “By the way, I’m just getting ready to leave for a quick last-minute trip to Seattle. Do you need anything?”

  Toni shook her head. “No, I’m good. It will take me a couple of hours to finish up some editing and then get my photo shots off to YumYum Magazine. I can’t trust my assistant, Barrie, not to mess it up. She’s been a nightmare recently. After that, whatever else is on my to do list and doesn’t get done will just have to wait until we get back from our voyage to the glaciers.” Toni’s hazel-colored eyes shone as they met her sister’s blue ones. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m sorry for having been so preoccupied since you arrived yesterday, but I promise I’ll be all yours once we set off for Vancouver in the morning.”

  Hillary rolled her eyes. “You’d better be. I want to hear all about how things are heating up with you and Jace, and you can tell me about whatever it is at work that has been bothering you.”

  “What do you mean?” Toni reached both arms behind her head and pulled the ends of her auburn ponytail tighter. It was a girlish style for a woman in her late thirties, but she always wore her hair tied back when working, otherwise her unruly mane got in the way and obstructed her vision.

  Hillary frowned. “I knew it. You always fiddle with your hair when something’s on your mind. Why don’t I skip Seattle, and help you out here?”

  Toni shooed her sister towards the doorway. “Absolutely not. I know you want to nose around Pike Place Market, and you’d be helping me by getting out of the way. Your vacation has already started. Will you be back in time for dinner this evening? My friend Cassie De Duco and her husband, Al, have invited us over for dinner at 7:00 p.m.”

  “Sure,” Hillary said on her way out. “That sounds great. By the way, I’m taking your car to Seattle, so if I’m not back in time can you call Uber to take you to Cassie’s, and I’ll meet you there?”

  “Good idea. I’ll text you her number and address. Now go!” Toni paused, smiling as Hillary made her way downstairs. The rattle of keys and the click of the front door being closed signaled when Toni was alone again, and she wandered back into the bedroom.

  A small suitcase was open on the floor, her clothes already neatly rolled and packed in it. Toni was a seasoned traveler. Her Food Porn Photography business took her out of the state of Washington a lot, and international trips were also becoming more regular. What had started as a hobby, taking photos of food for fun, had grown in five years to Food Porn being the go-to photography company for food magazines, newspaper features, cookbooks, and blogging sites. Despite the headaches the business side of things caused her at times, her love of snapping photos of delicious food items never faded. If her waistline had expanded as a result, Toni considered t
hat a fair trade-off.

  Kicking her shoes onto the rug, she lay against the stack of pillows on the bed and opened her laptop to start work. She had a home office downstairs that she rarely used, preferring to prop her computer on her knee while lounging on the bed, the sofa, or one of the comfy outdoor chairs on the patio at the edge of the sprawling garden.

  Toni lost herself in her work as her nimble fingers moved the wireless mouse across the mousepad. Cutting, pasting, adding filters, and honing colors to an array of mouth-watering food shots came intuitively as a result of thousands of hours of practise. Every so often she would ask Alexa, the smart speaker in the corner of the room, to play a song she liked, or answer a question of importance.

  “Alexa, what’s the weather forecast for the next few days in British Columbia and Alaska?”

  She and Hillary were planning on driving to Vancouver, spending two days sightseeing, and then taking a cruise from Vancouver, British Columbia to Anchorage, Alaska. On the return leg they would fly back to Vancouver and drive home.

  When she was satisfied with everything she’d done, Toni fired the photos she’d edited off to the editor at YumYum Magazine with a quick email.

  Steve, hope you love these. They’re making me hungry, so it’s just as well I’m heading out to dinner soon. It was great catching up at the shoot. Call me if you need anything else.

  Best

  T

  She extended her pale freckled arms into a stretch before snapping the laptop shut. Glancing at her phone, she saw there were new text messages from her assistant, Barrie, and also from Hector, neither of whom she wished to communicate with. A serious talk with Barrie was long overdue, but she decided it could wait until after she got back from her vacation. Glancing at her watch, she jumped up. There was still no word from Hillary, but it was definitely wine o’clock.

  Toni made her way downstairs to the kitchen in her bare feet, walking across the stone tiles to the giant steel refrigerator. Not for the first time, she marveled to herself how she had ended up in this amazing home, which was far too big for one person, and literally straight from the pages of a magazine. She’d snapped it up as a pocket listing when it was featured in a Bainbridge Island Homes supplement for The Seattle Times. One of the home stagers who’d worked on it had tipped her off that the owners would accept an offer. She hoped one day to have a family to fill the empty rooms with noise and laughter.

  Jace and I will have beautiful babies, she thought as she smiled to herself, thinking of their dinner date the evening before. Jace had made his feelings for her very clear, and for Toni, Jace was “The One.” Just thinking about him gave her a warm and fuzzy feeling. She’d been married before, when she was just out of college, but it hadn’t lasted. They were both too young, but they’d gone ahead with it against everyone’s better advice.

  “When you’re twenty-three you think you know it all,” her mother had warned her. “Don’t blame me when it all ends in tears.”

  It did, and she didn’t.

  Toni returned the warning when her mom, Sheila, had remarried several years after Toni’s dad had died.

  “When you’re sixty-three you think you know it all,” Toni had said while fixing Sheila’s veil, because Sheila had insisted on another church wedding for her second-time-around. “I hope it works out for you, Mom, I really do.”

  There was no getting through to Sheila that her boy toy, Ethan, was only after her for her money. It was way too late for that by the time the wedding march had started up and Toni was walking her mother down the aisle before giving her away, to a husband who wasn’t much older than Toni.

  She poured a glass of wine from one of the several bottles in the wine fridge, and made her way into the great room, getting no satisfaction from the memory of her mother’s ill-fated marriage and having been proven right. The money had lasted just about as long as her mother, who had died at sixty-eight. The death certificate may have said the cause of death was heart failure, but Toni knew it was a broken heart.

  The sound of footsteps in the kitchen caused her to turn. “Hillary? I’m in here.” A look of surprise crossed her face when she saw who was coming through the doorway. “Oh, it’s you.”

  Her killer was holding a gun and rapidly walked towards her.

  “Maybe we can talk about this,” Toni said in a frightened voice, while she stepped backwards until she felt the mantel behind her. The cold steel muzzle of the gun was pushed against the skin on her neck.

  Her killer smiled. “I don’t think so. It’s a bit late for that.”

  The gun cracked twice. Toni’s wine glass hit the floor first, the liquid seeping into the carpet. A split-second later Toni’s body fell to the floor in a pool of white wine mixed with blood.

  CHAPTER 1

  “Somethin’ smells darn good,” Al De Duco said as he walked into the kitchen of his Bainbridge Island home, followed by his majestic Doberman, Red. “What’cha makin’ us fer dinner?”

  His wife Cassie, who was chopping onions on a wooden board for their salad, looked up. “Out,” she ordered when she saw the two of them, raising her arm and pointing the knife towards the doors that opened onto the patio. “How many times have I told you not to come into the house when you’re dripping wet? If you insist on going swimming in your clothes, you could at least take off your soggy things before you come inside.”

  Al smirked. “Don’t think Dino Arygros would appreciate it. He waved at me from his garden while we were comin’ in.”

  Cassie lowered the knife and resumed chopping. Al and their neighbour Dino were regular sailing companions and had become good friends. The fact that their gardens bordered on the shores of Puget Sound meant they were ideally placed to jump into Al and Cassie’s sailboat or Dino’s cigarette boat any time the two men decided they needed to be out on the Sound.

  Which was often.

  “Hmph. I’m sure it would take more than the sight of you in your underwear to scare Dino,” Cassie said with a bemused frown. “What happened anyway? Did you fall into the Sound again?”

  Al chuckled. “Not me, it was Red, messin’ around like he does all the time when he sees some of them ducks in the water. He went over the side, and I threw him the life ring. I jes’ jumped in the drink to keep him company.”

  Cassie raised her eyes. “Somehow, I doubt it was Red fooling around. I don’t think he has much of a sense of humor, unlike Balto. He’s the straightest dog I’ve ever met.” Red stared at Cassie then wandered outside, leaving a trail of water behind him.

  Cassie’s face turned into a scowl at the sight of the puddles on the floor.

  Al took that as his cue to leave. “Pass me a cold one, will ya’ Cassie? Ima gonna’ get outta yer’ way and hit the patio. It’s a nice evenin’. I can dry off in the late sunshine.”

  “I’ll bring one out,” Cassie said with a half-smile. “Along with a towel and some dry clothes.”

  A few minutes later, Cassie joined Al on the patio, where he was sprawled out on a chaise lounge, his wet clothes piled in a discarded heap on the ground. “Here,” she said, throwing him a towel and some shorts. “Try and maintain some modesty.” She disappeared back inside and returned with a bottle of beer along with a glass of wine for herself. “I hope you haven’t forgotten we have company coming for dinner, so you still have to shower.”

  Al pulled on his shorts and Cassie handed him his beer. He joined her at the table overlooking the garden, where Red was looking for a squirrel in the thick undergrowth under the shady tall pine trees that ringed the perimeter of the garden.

  Al took a swig of his beer and lazed back in his chair. “Man, this is the life. What’d ya’ say was fer dinner, and who’s joinin’ us?”

  “I’m cooking gourmet patty melts along with barbecued peaches. The patty melt was served at a restaurant I reviewed recently, and I persuaded the chef to give me his top-secret recipe.” Cassie smiled, sipping her wine. “It’s one of the perks of being a food critic for The Seattle Times,
I guess.”

  “Yeah, yer’ a cheap date these days,” Al said with a twinkle in his eye. “I’d kinda’ like to take ya’ somewhere fancy where I get to pay for a change, instead of the check bein’ comped every time we go to eat. Why don’t we both get all gussied up and do that tomorrow night?”

  Cassie’s face lit up. “You’ve got yourself a date, handsome.”

  “Great.” Al leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on Cassie’s lips. “Yer’ pretty cute yerself’. Tell ya’ what, whaddya’ say ya’ go to the salon beforehand while I’m at work, get yer’ nails painted or yer’ hair curled or whatever goes on in them places.” He grinned. “My treat.”

  “Sure, Al,” Cassie said smoothly. “What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is mine, right?”

  Al chuckled. “That’s about right. No wife of mine puts her hand in her wallet with Al around.” He gazed at her with adoration, his voice cracking. “There ain’t nothin’ pleases me more than makin’ ya’ happy. Did I ever tell ya’ how lucky ya’ are?”

  “All the time, honey, all the time,” Cassie said, and she grabbed Al’s hand and squeezed it tightly. It was hard to believe that just a year earlier she had been married to someone else, before her life was upended when her former husband, Johnny Roberts, was murdered on a golf course in Whistler, British Columbia.

  Meeting Al had been unexpected, but they’d fallen head over heels for each other, and Cassie had grabbed the opportunity for a second shot at happiness in a heartbeat when Al had proposed. “But I already tell myself that every day.”

  Al gently wiped her cheek. “Now don’t ya’ go and start cryin’, sweetheart. Not even with them happy tears. What time are our guests coming fer dinner?”

  “Toni should be here about 7:00 p.m. Hillary might be a little later.” Cassie checked her watch. “We should probably think about getting ready soon. Dinner’s all taken care of except for you doing a quick barbecue.” She glanced back at Al, who was looking confused.

  “Tony Macaroni is coming here for dinner? Over my dead body. Or his, if he dares show up.”