Pasta, Pinot & Murder Read online

  Pasta, Pinot & Murder

  A Willa Friday Culinary Cozy Mystery

  Jamie Lee Scott

  Novels & Coffee

  A Willa Friday Food & Wine Mystery

  Book 1

  * * *

  Text copyright © 2017 Jamie Lee Scott

  All Rights Reserved

  PASTA, PINOT & MURDER

  Copyright © 2017 by Jamie Lee Scott

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Novels & Coffee, Forest City, IA 50436.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either 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.

  Scott, Jamie Lee, 06-11-17. Pasta, Pinot & Murder. Novels & Coffee.

  Contents

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  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

  Epilogue

  Basic Homemade Pasta Dough

  Cucumber avocado sandwich with Pomegranate mayo

  Peanut Butter, Jelly & Brie on Flatbread

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Connect with Jamie Online:

  Join The Jamie Lee Scott Newsletter

  The Gotcha Detective Agency Series

  The Willa Friday Food & Wine Cozy Series

  Join The Jamie Lee Scott Newsletter

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  Chapter One

  The best thing about being a food stylist was being able to work with food, and the worst part was dealing with clients. Not all of the clients, but enough of them. And the deadlines! There was always a deadline, wasn’t there? I knew what I had to do and when it needed to be ready, and I had plenty of lead time, but I inevitably waited until the last minute to do it all. Food styling was easier than running a restaurant kitchen by far. Being a food blogger was easier, but the income was still lacking. I still took on food styling and photography jobs, but I’d finally started earning an income from my blog.

  I’m Willa Friday, and I’m the main writer and owner of A Dish In Thyme food blog. But with my blog, it’s not just about food; it’s about wine, too. Living in the most luscious wine country in California, it was a given for me. Pear, which was in the heart of the Sonoma Valley, was where I called home. My husband’s (correct that, ex-husband’s) family owned a winery along the Russian River.

  Sure, blogging had deadlines, but there weren’t any crazy Saturday night dinner rushes in a kitchen that felt like a summer in El Paso. No picky customers who knew nothing about how a salmon should be cooked, and no staff. Yes, that was the best part: no customers, and no staff who didn’t show up for work or bother to call in sick.

  Prepping food for a photo session was tedious, but fun. Even better, no one, and I do mean no one, complained about how the food tasted. Almost no one was stupid enough to take a bite of the food sitting at my prep station. I don’t care how enticing my hero steak looked, it wasn’t edible. (A hero in food styling was the perfectly prepped piece of meat, the perfect apple slice, or the perfect plate of whatever I was photographing). Hero equaled perfect, like a romance novel, but with no flaws, because I made sure there were no flaws. Photoshop was my real hero. I’d learned how to make anything look perfect with Photoshop.

  That beautiful glass of lemonade, so cold it made the glass sweat? It was colored water at room temperature, in a glass that had been sprayed with Scotch Guard, and misted with glycerin, so the “sweat” didn’t run down the glass before the photograph was taken. And the ice cubes were acrylic.

  This was the fun of food styling and photography for me. The magic of making a mouthwatering plate of food, then taking pictures of my creation in all of its glory: the perpetual beautiful food or drink.

  I’d done the restaurant thing for almost ten years before I caved. The fact that I’d worked in that boiler room of a kitchen with my husband, a fellow chef, didn’t make it any easier or enticing. Working together had been the beginning of the end of our marriage. Then I traveled the San Francisco Bay Area for almost another decade, styling food for restaurants, bakeries, grocery stores, and wholesale clients. The travel got old, fast. I still took on a few clients for styling sessions, but now they came to me. My life consisted mostly of writing recipes, testing them, then blogging about them. And most importantly, pairing many of the meals with the perfect wine. A Dish in Thyme (adishinthyme.com) started off as a meal prep blog, and still has meal prep recipes, but I mostly made it about quick cooking, foods I love, and the wine I relish.

  I smiled as I thought about my life, while I waited for my new assistant to arrive for work. He’d been a sous chef, and was looking for another career in food while taking a break from Hell’s kitchens. At least in this career, if my employee didn’t show up, it wasn’t a complete disaster. I’d put off hiring an assistant for years, but I was ready for some help now.

  I had a photo shoot for a new coffee shop in San Francisco who wanted a new and fun look for their posters and POP (point of purchase) materials. Something that reflected their industrial stores, but with a hint of “relaxed.” Phffffft, there was nothing relaxing about coffee or the coffee business. It was craziness, with crazy customers.

  I’d already practiced with my first latte, and headed to the sink to dump it out when there was a knock on the door. I sat the white porcelain cup on the counter next to the sink and walked over to unlock the door.

  My studio was next door to my home, both of which belonged to my mother-in-law. I had signed a ten-year lease for the studio right before I divorced her son, which was two years ago. Hattie Friday was the matriarch of Vendredi Winery Inc., and her son owned and ran Vendredi’s restaurant.

  Vendredi is Friday in French. When you had a name like Friday, you couldn’t exactly name your restaurant Friday’s. Not because the name was taken, but because it sounded so blah. Vendredi’s sounded so much more chic. Too bad no one who didn’t speak French could pronounce it properly (hint: the accent is on the last syllable). The family didn’t much care if people could pronounce the name, as long as they bought their food and wine there. The property had a vineyard, a winery, a bed and breakfast with a bistro, and Peter’s fine dining restaurant. It was also home to Hattie Friday, whose mansion was at the top of the hill, and to Peter, Tommy and me. We had the cottage at the bottom of the hill.

  I kept the door to my work studio locked, because I didn’t like to be bothered when I was working, and because Hattie and my ex-husband, Peter, loved to walk in quietly to try to scare the crap out of me. Since they both lived and worked on the property, they were always around. Not only did I not lik
e their intrusions, they’d inevitably catch me on a tedious project, and I’d have to spend at least an hour fixing what got messed up when I jumped. Or I’d have to start from the beginning in some cases. Such a waste of time and money.

  I opened to the door. Jacob Jackson stood there, looking adorable in his chef’s pants and white coat. I fully expected him to pull out a toque and put it on his head after he walked in. The young sous chef, I guessed him to be about twenty-five, would have had all of the girls in Vendredi in a flutter with his dirty blonde hair and big brown eyes. Luckily, he wouldn’t be working in the restaurant or the winery. He was all mine. His smile nearly made me wish I was in my twenties again.

  “Hey, I thought maybe I was early,” he said. “The door locked and all.”

  I looked at my watch. “Actually, you’re thirty minutes late.”

  He pulled his phone from his pocket. “Oh, man, I’m so sorry. I was listening to music in my car and fell asleep. It was a late night last night.”

  What I wouldn’t give for a late night that wasn’t work related, or dealing with my daughter’s anxiety at starting college. I patted him on the shoulder. “Last time this will happen, right? I need you to be punctual. What if our client was here for the styling and photo shoot?”

  He shrugged.

  I took this as his understanding that he wouldn’t have a job if he was late again, but I didn’t push it because it wasn’t really that big of a deal. Not at the time anyway.

  “We’re starting with a photo shoot for a coffeehouse this morning. Then this afternoon, we’ll be working on a pasta dish for my blog. I’ll be teaching you some of my styling techniques.”

  “I’m a pasta master,” he said, heading over to the hand washing sink to wash his hands. “Where’re your gloves?”

  “Gloves?” I asked.

  “Yeah, food service gloves.” He looked at me like it was my first day on the job.

  Ha, he had a lot to learn. “We aren’t serving this food to the public, not to mention most of it will never be eaten. At least not on purpose. No gloves needed, unless we’re working with food dye, and you don’t want to get your fingers stained. Now, if we’re testing a recipe we plan to eat, that’s a different story.”

  “Cool.” He looked at the latte on the counter. “This looks good. You have an espresso machine?”

  “This is our project for the morning.” I pointed to the coffee machine. “I do have an old fashioned coffee maker if you want to start a pot. I only keep decaf in the studio, so I don’t get the shakes from the caffeine.”

  Jacob dried his hands, then walked over to my prep table. I saw his hands shaking already; he didn’t need any caffeine. “That coffee looked delicious. This is going to be fun, I think.”

  I sure hoped he liked it. Training a new assistant was a pain in the butt. Teaching all of the trade secrets, and the tedious ins and outs of food styling took time and money, and I disliked training, because it took me longer to get my job done. But once they had a good handle, it made my job much easier and I could concentrate more on the photography and my blog.

  “The key is attention to detail on the front end, which is the production side. The camera sees everything and magnifies it. I prefer to get it right in production, so I don’t have to do so much retouching work in post.”

  I had four white coffee cups sitting on a bar towel on the concrete countertop of my studio kitchen prep area, along with a bottle of clear dishwashing detergent, a bottle of soy sauce, and some clear foaming hand soap.

  Before I could even show Jacob how to make the “coffee”, I heard the door to my studio open. Damn, I’d forgotten to lock it again when I let Jacob in. It opened slowly and quietly, and I heard it because I didn’t have my headphones on, nor was I engrossed in a tedious project. I put my finger up to my lips, and turned to watch my mother-in-law creep into the room.

  “Good morning, Hattie.” I leaned against the counter and smiled.

  She looked up, clearly disappointed. Acting innocent, as if she hadn’t planned to scare the crap out of me, she asked, “Did you get a new car?”

  Even though Hattie owned the Vendredi property, the mansion on the hill overlooking the acres of grapes lining the hills, and her famous Sonoma Valley Hats Off Bed and Breakfast, she could be so immature. I never worked for her, but I lived in the old staff quarters, and that made me an easy target.

  She wore neon pink Lycra running pants and black running shoes with a pink swoosh. Her razor back, skin tight, top belonged on a twenty-year-old, not a seventy-year-old, but I had to give her credit, she wore it well. Being five-four and weighing a hundred pounds, she took her running seriously, and it showed.

  “No, why?”

  “I saw a strange car in front of your studio. Where’s your car?”

  “Peter has it.”

  “Whatever for? He has his Mercedes. Why would he drive your old junker?”

  What she meant was my two-year-old Lexus that I bought right before I stopped traveling to clients for my job.

  “Isn’t it a little chilly to run without a jacket?” I asked, changing the subject.

  Hattie patted her butt. “This little tush already ran ten miles today, so I’m perfectly fine. Cooling off now.” She looked at Jacob and I swear she winked. “Is this the owner of the car?”

  “I guess it depends on what kind of car it is,” he said. “I drive a Toyota Corolla. Dull gray.”

  Hattie sauntered up to Jacob. “I’m Hattie Friday, and you are?”

  “Hattie,” I never did call her Mom, “this is Jacob Jackson, my new assistant.”

  “You look familiar. Do you take the yoga class at Stretch Armstrong’s?” She looked him up and down.

  He shook his head, not able to get an answer out before she lost interest.

  She looked over her shoulder at me. “He looks like a keeper.” She reached up and pulled the elastic band from the messy bun at the top of her silver hair and let it cascade down her shoulders and back, like a shampoo commercial.

  I blushed, embarrassed more for Jacob than for Hattie.

  “Did you need something, or did you just want to make sure no one was robbing the place?” As much as I loved her, she had bad timing, and I didn’t want to spend the morning chatting with her.

  Jacob had moved to the sink again and started a pot of coffee.

  She looked at her watch, a second generation Apple Watch with the larger screen that looked ginormous on her wrist. “I’m here to remind you that you have a meeting with Alice this afternoon about the Whine and Roses benefit.”

  The Whine and Roses benefit started thirty years ago as a small gathering of the wives of the vineyard owners. It was a day of wine tasting and whining about how many vineyards were popping up, and how that was going to affect their millions. Now, it was an annual event that raised money for children’s charities. People came from all over the world to taste world class wines, and savor appetizers made by the best chefs in the Sonoma Valley. Tickets sold out every year.

  “I have it on my calendar. But if I don’t get started on my photo shoot, I’ll have to reschedule. I’m training Jacob today, so it’s going to take me twice as long to get my client work finished. You know, the client work that I get paid for. That I pay the rent with.”

  “What happened to your last assistant?” she asked, knowing full well the answer.

  I looked at the clock on the wall. “Yeah, I’ll probably have to reschedule.”

  “Don’t you dare reschedule! I’ll never hear the end of it. She was in a mood this morning, and I don’t want a phone call this afternoon.”

  “Fine.” I turned back to the counter to start the coffee shoot.

  With that, Hattie gave a finger wave to Jacob and slammed the door behind her as she left.

  “Sorry about that,” I said to Jacob.

  He grinned wide. “She’s a firecracker.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “And she’s pretty hot for a grandma.”

 
Now I blushed for Hattie.

  Chapter Two

  A fast learner, probably from his time in San Francisco restaurant kitchens, Jacob diluted the soy sauce, then poured it into the coffee cup. We had four different coffees to prep: black, latte, mocha, and coffee with cream.

  I let Jacob start with the easy stuff. I figured if he messed them up, he could do the dishes, which was the only part of the job I hated.

  I’d explained to him how to make the “coffee” and he grinned, then got started. He added a few drops of clear detergent to a small amount of the diluted soy sauce, then stirred it to make bubbles. He then spooned the bubbly liquid into the not quite full coffee cup that I’d placed on a paper towel. Black coffee. There’s always little bubbles in a cup of black coffee.

  “What happened to your last assistant, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “She went away to college.” She happened to be my daughter, Tomorrow Friday, better known as Tommy. I didn’t name her, Peter did. Long story.

  I moved my lighting into place and took a series of shots, then we added props. The client specifically said he didn’t want coffee beans in the shot. So I had Jacob cut several fresh strawberries and fan them out. I picked the hero, placing it next to the cup, which was now on a saucer with a cube of brown sugar next to it. We changed the location, took a few more pictures, then added linen napkins, biscotti, and lastly, I dribbled a few drops of coffee on the counter and took more pictures.