Foodie Files Cozy Mysteries Box Set Read online

  The Foodie Files, now, that’s where my true passions lied.

  I love food. I always have and always will. Coming up with a recipe is as creative an outlet as any art. It’s kind of like paint by numbers, because once you do it, then everyone else can reproduce that art—at least, in theory.

  The thrill, for me, was in turning a good cook into a chef in their own kitchen.

  The first year of the blog had been the hardest. It didn’t seem like a viable career. I spent that year taking as many online writing gigs as I could to pay the bills. But all it took was one recipe. One recipe that hit Pinterest with a bang. My followers doubled weekly for the next two years.

  Now that I have been at it long enough and have become somewhat of a lifestyle influencer, I get sponsorships, ads that make good money on the side of the blog, and free kitchen swag shows up unannounced with my hunky, but married, UPS driver almost weekly.

  Some may say that’s selling out, but what better way is there to make a living than by doing something you love? All my product reviews are honest on my end, so I accept the swag with a clear conscience.

  And leading my Foodies, as I lovingly call them, astray is never something I would consider.

  The cooking is the easy part. Creating captivating high-quality images to publish is the real work.

  I yanked the SD card from my camera and began to go through each of the photos from this morning.

  Over fifty photos of fried green tomatoes and their beautifully green un-fried counterparts, and it still didn’t seem like enough. I picked the best four and began to pass them through various filters to reduce the blemishes and crop excess away. To one, I added a cool isolated color effect. A gorgeously green tomato became the star of the show. And its beauty would hopefully get me out of trouble for picking them early without Mom’s permission.

  Now, it was time for the writing. The dreaded writing.

  A lot of writers will say there’s no such thing as writer’s block. And that might be true. But there is such a thing as procrastination, and I am its gilded queen.

  I mopped floors that didn’t need mopping, checked my dreaded email time and time again, made myself a sandwich for a late lunch. Then I decided halfway through it would’ve been better to actually cook something good. I actually cooked said meal. And those were just a few things I did while watching the cursor blink.

  There was also Jessica’s murder to fret over. Miller’s words kept coming back and stinging me anew. I did see why Javier and his partner thought Miller was the culprit. But they were wrong.

  When I finally buckled down to write, the day was waning.

  Mortgage. Food. Water. Netflix. That was my mantra. I repeated it over and over until the laptop’s keyboard began to click under my fingertips.

  The Foodie Files

  Fried Southern Delicacies Part Three - Fried Green Tomatoes

  I’ve often wondered if the book, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, or the movie, Fried Green Tomatoes starring Mary Stuart Masterson and Kathy Bates, put this Southern food item on the map or was it possibly the other way around?

  Were these tomatoes on menus prior to 1987? Well, I’ll tell you, they weren’t on many. And some argue that the fried green tomato isn’t a Southern dish at all but one that originated in the North.

  So, it’s debatable that they’re Southern. But what about a delicacy? A delicacy is usually a term meant for a rare or expensive food item. But here in the South, you’ll find this food item on most respectable menus whether they’re served as appetizer or stacked on a sandwich.

  So, what makes fried green tomatoes a delicacy, you ask? Well, they’re rarely done just right.

  Today our goal is to right those wrongs—and do so in our own kitchens.

  Have you ever wondered: Why green? Well, have you ever fried anything as watery as a ripe red tomato? Let’s just say, you’d be wasting your time. The firmness of a green tomato is exactly what we’re looking for.

  What you’ll need:

  For Tomatoes

  Green tomatoes

  Eggs

  All-purpose flour

  Cornmeal

  Salt/pepper

  Vegetable oil

  For Spreads…

  7

  Sundays were sacred. And not just for me, for all of Georgia. Lanai, especially. The mornings were quiet. Most people started them off sipping coffee on their front porches. Some say the bigger the porch the closer to God—our own riff on the southern saying, The Bigger the Bow, the closer to Jesus.

  But there were plenty of those as well. Little debutants got dressed for church. They gave their mothers fits not wanting to keep those giant bows on their precious heads.

  Around noon, the streets were flooded with cars. It was time for Sunday dinner, a time to gather with loved ones and/or family, usually those two coincided but not always. Across town, the diner filled up, the local barbecue was packed, and there was probably even a line out the door at Ruby Tuesday, Lanai’s one and only chain restaurant.

  Then there were those who preferred the wait to be on an aunt or perpetually late cousin. We were one of those families. Today was my lucky day. I was hosting the Sunday feast. And it was going to start on time for a change. I promised myself not to even wait on my cousin Melanie.

  After church, my mother, grandmother, aunt, uncle, and a couple of cousins crammed into my tiny cottage for lunch. It wasn’t much, but we utilized the small space efficiently, eating at the table, the breakfast nook, and the stools on the kitchen island.

  Melanie even managed to arrive on time. I thought I knew why. She was only a few years younger, and she most likely remembered Jessica and I mingled in the same circles.

  We finished off the meal and were on to our dessert, chitchatting about the little things that made up our small-town existence like the weather and the high school football team’s chances of going to state.

  I kept dessert foolproof this time with a build your own ice cream sundae station. The only cooking I had to do was whip up a warm berry sauce, adding just a touch of lime zest for a zip of tartness.

  Clinking spoons chinked around the dining room table. Ahh. I sighed mentally. We’d made it through. I was almost home free.

  Almost.

  “Allie, dear, I still just can’t believe you gave The Southern Depot two forks,” Mom started in again.

  “Mom, if you read the article,” I began, “you’d know I said the service was great but the food—it was just lacking… Lacking crunch and salt and the dish that was supposed to be sweet, well, it wasn’t. I really wanted to like it…”

  “Jack and I were disappointed as well,” Melanie interjected in an effort of solidarity. Maybe she wasn’t after Jessica gossip. Maybe she was just on time for once. What’s the saying about blind squirrels?

  “Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe what happened to the owner,” Aunt Denise chimed in. “From what someone said today in Sunday School, that boy Miller, her husband, is the number one suspect.”

  “You’re kidding!” Mom gasped.

  “I’m not,” Denise replied. “He took out a hefty insurance policy on Jessica. You know Rebecca Granger in my class was the one who gave them the policy. And she says they sank every penny they had in that restaurant. They’ve had a rough go, gone through cooks weekly. And that two forks review did nothing to help with their success.”

  “I know,” I let out. “But if they were already hurting, my review had nothing to do with it.”

  “Do you really think sweet ole Miller could do that to Jessica?” Grandmother asked. Grandmother was a prim and proper lady. She couldn’t imagine someone having bad manners, much less committing such a sin as murder. She adjusted herself in her seat, brushed her fingers through her platinum hair, and waited for an answer.

  “No,” I said matter-of-factly. “They’ve questioned him multiple times. The life insurance though,” I directed this towards my aunt, “they took out the same amount on each other at the s
ame time. They wanted to protect each other and the restaurant in case of a tragedy. Neither of them could’ve known something like this would happen. Trust me, I don’t think that’s the real motive here. But maybe that restaurant is.”

  “Well,” Mom threw out, “I heard that Miller killed her with one of the knives they serve with their signature pork chops…”

  “So, not only did you not read my review, you haven’t read their menu. They serve tapas,” I said, flaunting my knowledge of cuisine ever so slightly. “There’s nothing on the menu served with a giant knife, much less a signature pork chop dish.”

  “Well, I heard it was Colonel Mustard in the dining room with a salt shaker,” my sadistic younger cousin Dustin offered. Always the jokester. He didn’t care if the jokes were funny or crass. If it popped into his head, he couldn’t help but put it out there.

  While Melanie’s boyfriend Jack laughed, someone needed to pick my aunt’s jaw up off the table. “I can’t believe you just said that,” she mustered. “That poor girl is dead, and all you can do is make jokes.”

  It wasn’t often that Aunt Denise would lose her composure in front of others, but Dustin knew all of the right buttons to press. And he took great pride in doing so.

  “Sorry,” he quickly said, not sorry at all.

  “Enough gossip for today, guys.” Uncle Billy pushed his chair back and stood. “We’ve got to head out. Busy week ahead.”

  Once my family cleared out, I cleaned the kitchen. Thankfully, not much was left to do. My mother made sure to do as much as she was able, and most everyone else at least knew how to put dishes inside a dishwasher. There were only a few crumbs under Dustin’s stool and a random mess on the butcher block countertops, which I wiped down.

  Laptop computer in hand, a cup of half-caffeinated coffee in the other (God bless K-Cups), I set up a makeshift office on the couch with only a few final touches to put on the blog before pressing publish.

  Click. Click. And Click. The Foodie Files post was complete.

  I set the laptop aside, and without even thinking, I picked up my phone and started perusing Facebook—a bad habit, I know.

  Before I knew it, I was on Jessica’s page. My fingertips made nervous swipes against the screen. I couldn’t help thinking she was just my age—almost exactly my age. Our lives weren’t even yet at the halfway point yet. Or they weren’t supposed to be.

  Her photos were there, left intact by servers without tact. Happy glossy faces, shining with love. Her profile photo was from her wedding day. There were lots of shocked and saddened messages on the posts down her timeline.

  The messages were lovely and heartfelt. People wrote as if Jessica was able to read them. It was a beautiful memorial, in a technologically millennial way.

  My eyes kept bouncing up to that profile picture—pictures are worth a thousand words, after all. I tapped on it and began to scroll through all of Jessica’s photos, unsure of what I would find.

  Most of them were of her and Miller. They loved to go down to the Florida coast and hit up the white sand beaches. There was one of them with the Eiffel Tower, and then I realized it wasn’t the real tower but that of the France pavilion, part of the World Showcase in Disney’s Epcot.

  Then I came across a picture at a vineyard somewhere. This photo had Miller, Jessica, the tall business partner, Camp, the other guy, Taylor, and a mystery lady.

  It struck me, a lady had answered the phone at the restaurant earlier, but I had only met two male business partners.

  She had to be a business partner, too, one who had hid in the kitchen while Miller and I talked.

  I checked to see who was tagged in the photo, but no such luck, only Camp, Miller, and Jessica had links to their Facebook profiles.

  Buzz. Buzz.

  My phone almost popped out my hand—there’s nothing worse than a text when you’re not expecting it. Kate’s message appeared over the screen.

  Preliminary autopsy report out tomorrow. My source says she was strangled with a kitchen towel or something similar.

  That’s terrible, I replied back.

  That’s all I could say about it. A terrible person made a terrible choice, and Jessica paid the price. The ultimate price.

  It is. I’ll keep you up to speed with what I know. G’Night.

  With that text, our conversation ended. But my phone was still on the picture of Jessica. And right now my suspect list was down to the three people beside Miller and Jessica staring at me from that vineyard.

  Did one of them have motive? And were they there on Wednesday night?

  8

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  A long time ago, a friend told me to breathe out when my left foot hits the ground. Sage advice—it has alleviated many a side-stitch over the years.

  Today my rhythm was off. Every breath felt like a burden on my respiratory system. It was probably not a coincidence that I stretched this run slightly longer than a usual Monday morning jaunt through the neighborhood.

  Curiosity had gotten the better of me, and I veered off of Main Street down Broad Street where The Southern Depot came into view.

  This is innocent, I told myself. I’m just here for a run. See, I’m running.

  When I came into the parking lot, I jogged in place and checked the nonexistent watch on my wrist, noticing one of the trucks from the other day was parked there.

  Not Miller’s.

  This one was silver. It was a bit out of the ordinary for so early on a Monday. The truck was idling there, its motor running steadily like that of a semi. I decided it was best to turn around and go back the way I came. I nodded, still in the lie, at the time on my false watch.

  Better pick up the pace.

  Before I turned around completely, a lady ran up to the truck from the back of the restaurant and climbed into the passenger’s side. It could’ve been the lady from the photos. She was also short of stature and had the same color hair, but I honestly had no clue who it was.

  I jogged on, hearing the truck rumble as it went into drive.

  There’s nothing to fear. My attempt at quelling the gooseflesh on my neck was futile.

  I picked up speed and had almost made it to Main Street when the truck was beside me.

  Eyes forward, I urged myself to try to be as inconspicuous as possible. You’re just a girl out for a normal morning run. The truck idled beside me, taking far longer than any truck going the posted speed would ever do. Pass me. Pass me. I slowed, and it did the same.

  There were no cars in front of it.

  All of a sudden, the truck vroomed menacingly. It burned rubber heading away at a rather insane speed for our small downtown area—a juxtaposition from mere moments earlier.

  My heart pumped as fast as it did on the rare sprints away from dogs. The stitch reared its ugly head again as I sucked in deep muggy breaths of air.

  Despite it, I kept moving forward. Even though it seemed I was out of harm’s way, I had the sudden urge to be accompanied by a few dozen more people. There’s safety in numbers—or so the saying goes.

  Out of breath and grabbing my side in pain, I threw the door of The Java Hutt open with relief.

  Oddly, I seemed prepared for this today. I’d thrown on my “Fueled by Caffeine and Chaos” tank-top over my sports bra before the run. I already had the chaos. There didn’t seem like a better time for the other.

  “Morning… Gertie…” I heaved. “The usual please…. And a water cup.”

  She handed me the cup first, and I walked over to the water pitcher, poured, and downed the glass. Then I poured another.

  “Are you all right?” Detective Portillo asked with half a laugh.

  I jumped at the sound of his voice, and he laughed harder.

  “Yeah,” I said, sighing as my breath came back to me. “Just finishing up my morning run. Had to stop in for a coffee.” I gestured toward the counter where Gertie already had the macchiato waiting on me. I grabbed it and smiled to her in thanks.

  “Are
you sure you’re going to be able to make it home from here?” he asked.

  This was one of those defining moments. I could’ve said yes, but it would’ve been an out-and-out lie. I was winded and still a little scared.

  “Usually I’d say yes, but today, I’m not so sure.”

  I tried to nonchalantly take a sip of my coffee, but it scorched the roof of my mouth. “Ouch! Today’s just not my day.”

  Javier smiled—what was it with that thing. He used it like a weapon. “How about I give you a ride home?”

  “That’d be great,” I chirped. Too eager, easy, girl. “Thanks.”

  I followed him out to his car, and like a true gentleman, he opened the door for me. His car was as tidy as an Uber. It smelled like him. The manly scent hung like a cloud and cut through the sweet smell of my macchiato, not to mention the other smells exuding from my body.

  Pull yourself together, I encouraged. Try and act somewhat normal.

  Once he started the car, we had a few awkward moments of silence. And no radio. Another one of my ticks, I just can’t stand prolonged silence. It was just too much for me. I had to start yapping like one of my mother’s dogs.

  “So, I heard that Jessica was strangled…”

  Sure, normal people start conversations that way.

  “That’s correct,” Javier said. He looked at me funny. “You know, I don’t actually know where you live.”

  “Oh.” I chuckled. “Take the next right. So, has Miller been cleared yet?”

  “No, he hasn’t.” Javier spun the wheel one-handed.

  “Any new leads?” I asked. Some small talk.

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” he said slowly.

  “Well, I don’t think Miller did it,” I said flatly. “The next left.” I pointed.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because I live on that street.”