Biscuits and Slashed Browns Read online

  THE SUSPECT LIST

  “Sonia was pretty upset with the professor yesterday morning. Said he was taking money from big business and didn’t do real research. Maybe they had more behind their disagreement than what she mentioned.”

  “But to kill him?” Adele shook her head.

  “Exactly what I said to the detective.”

  “Sonia’s a real sweet person, normally,” Adele said. “So who else?”

  “Sajit Rao.”

  “Turner’s father?”

  I nodded. “When Connolly was in the restaurant yesterday morning, Dr. Rao came in to talk to Turner. You should have seen his face when he saw Connolly there. The two sat and talked with each other for a few minutes and it ended up with Dr. Rao accosting him about his science. Definitely fireworks.”

  “Along the same lines as Sonia’s accusation?”

  “Yep.”

  “Interesting.” Adele drummed her fingers on the table.

  “I believe Nick Mendes, the young chef from the competition, might have had an issue with the victim, too. He didn’t lift a finger to help him when he choked, as you saw.”

  “It was sure enough strange. I wondered about it at the time. How can you find out more about him?”

  “I’ll go see Christina,” I said. “She might know a bit more. Although if the knife in the body was really hers, Thompson is probably looking at her motives, too . . .”

  Books by Maddie Day

  FLIPPED FOR MURDER

  GRILLED FOR MURDER

  WHEN THE GRITS HIT THE FAN

  BISCUITS AND SLASHED BROWNS

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Biscuits and Slashed Browns

  MADDIE DAY

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  THE SUSPECT LIST

  Books by Maddie Day

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Recipes

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Edith Maxwell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-1121-2

  First Kensington Mass Market Edition: February 2018

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1122-9

  eISBN-10: 1-4967-1122-X

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: February 2018

  In memory of my nephew,

  Christopher Michael DeYoung, 1973-2016,

  who was taken far too soon from this world.

  May your sunny attitude and caring ways

  live on in all who loved you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First, my apologies to the actual Brown County Maple Festival, during which no one has ever been murdered (to my knowledge).

  My thanks to John Talbot, whose enthusiasm for this series turned out to be a great predictor of readers having the same reaction. Also thanks to John Scognamiglio, and the great support team at Kensington Publishing. The Wicked Cozy Authors continue to keep me sane (mostly) and inspired: Jessie Crockett/Jessica Ellicott/Jessica Estevao, Sherry Harris, Julie Hennrikus/Julianne Holmes/ Julia Henry, Liz Mugavero/Kate Conte, and Barbara Ross. You gals are the best (and check out all those new names). As always, Sherry Harris continues as part of her insightful edits to suggest that my protagonist Robbie is kinder and much less stupid than my earlier drafts portray her. She’s right, of course.

  I’ve loved incorporating colorful phrases for police lieutenant Buck and other characters to use in these books. Thanks to New Englander Julie Hennrikus, from whom I heard “Sweating like a whore in the front row of church.” Reader Becky Lewis contributed several other colorful expressions used in the region. My sister Barbara Bergendorf, a Hoosier for the past few decades, also helped out, dialect-wise, and in this book let me use her world-famous Cracked Wheat Bread recipe.

  A family of four walks into the restaurant for lunch in one scene. While I was writing this book, my nephew Christopher (Barbara’s son) died suddenly and tragically. The family I included in the book is a version of him, his wife, Janine, and their wonderful children, Jordan and Max, as a small token of the family’s happy years together.

  Suzanne Loomis generously bid high for the right to name a character in this book at the Merrimac River Feline Rescue Society auction. Thanks from the kitties, Suzanne! She wanted to honor her late cat Chloe, so now Adele has a new rescue cat. The real-life Flick Chicks, a half dozen dear friends of mine, will recognize the group Mona belongs to in this book. May we gather for food, wine, conversation, and occasionally even a movie for another twenty years or more.

  Once again, a big huge thank you to my sons, my sisters, my man, and my many author and Quaker friends for supporting me in myriad ways. Love and hugs, always.

  To cozy mystery readers and librarians, I continue to be delighted by how much you adore this series. Thank you again! Please know that a positive review of a book you liked goes a long way to help authors. I would be ever grateful to see your opinion on Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, and elsewhere if you enjoyed my story (and check out my other author names: Edith Maxwell and Tace Baker).

  Chapter 1

  The banner outside Pans ’N Pancakes proclaimed “JOIN MAPLE MANIA!” The Brown County Maple Festival’s logo of a grinning bottle of syrup beamed its invitation. But the look on Professor Sonia Genest’s face would have frozen butter on a tall stack of hot flapjacks.

  I’d hung the banner for the fifth annual festival across the wide covered porch of my country store restaurant and had stepped into the road to check the level. Instead, I watched as the voluptuous thirty-something professor glued her fists to her hips. She glared from the bottom step at a portly man in a suit with sharply creased trousers. He’d just climbed out of a black Lexus parked in the las
t of the ten spots angling in to the store’s wide covered porch. Incongruous with his attire was a Red Sox cap perched atop his head.

  “How dare you?” she snarled, not trying to keep her voice down. Sonia, a lifelong resident of our little town of South Lick, Indiana, and a regular at Pans ’N Pancakes, had just finished a full breakfast inside. She was a woman who appreciated a good meal.

  The man clasped his hands in front of him and sort of smiled, but his top lip curled, making him look like he’d tasted curdled milk. “My dear, can I help it if my grant proposal was funded and yours wasn’t?”

  “I’m not your dear, Warren.” Strictly business, she spoke each scorn-laced word distinctly. Her outfit was all business, too, a black wool coat over a gray jacket and skirt with black tights and ankle boots. “And if it weren’t for the conference, I’d never have to set eyes on you.”

  The academic conference on maple tree science was on a parallel track with the county’s Maple Festival. The festival organizers aimed to bring tourists to town in March, a normally dead time of year for local businesses. On the festival schedule this afternoon was the breakfast cook-off, with area cooks competing to produce the winning maple-favored breakfast item. And it was slated to be held right here at my restaurant. I hoped I was ready.

  I abandoned my banner examination and approached the pair. They must be continuing a prior disagreement. “Good morning, sir. I’m Robbie Jordan, owner and chef here.” I extended my hand.

  “Ah, Ms. Jordan.” The man patted his expansive stomach and talked through his smile, his tiny eyes almost disappearing in the flesh of his cheeks. “I’m Warren Connolly.” He offered a puffy padded palm. “I was just coming to sample your menu. Your restaurant is quite the talk of the conference.”

  I shook his extended hand. I’d never really trusted people who talked and smiled simultaneously. Sonia looked like she didn’t, either.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Connolly,” I said. “Are you at Indiana University or from out of town?” A truck rumbled by on the road and I had to strain to hear his response.

  “It’s Professor Connolly. I teach and do my research at Boston College.”

  “‘Research.’” Sonia surrounded the word with finger quotes. “You call it research to accept money from climate-change deniers and then counter well-established facts with some environmental fantasy?” She shook her head, streaked dark blond hair flying, and turned away, her words sizzling the chilly early-March air. “Great breakfast, Robbie,” she called as she headed for her car.

  “Thanks,” I answered, but I wasn’t sure she heard me. I shivered and hugged myself. I wasn’t exactly dressed for forty-degree weather in my jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt, and blue-and-white striped store apron. The sun promised to warm the day later, though. Cold nights and warm days created perfect conditions for inciting maple sap to run in the veins of trees all over Indiana’s most heavily forested county. Since it was only eight o’clock, we were still in the chilly part of the cycle.

  “How about that breakfast?” I said in a bright tone to the professor.

  He laid a hand on the railing and nodded once up, once down. “Excellent idea,” he said, but his now unsmiling gaze was on Sonia’s silver sedan as it disappeared down the road toward the center of town.

  * * *

  Back in the store, Turner Rao gave me a frantic look as I inhaled the welcome scents of bacon and biscuits. Danna Beedle, my able assistant since I’d opened last fall, had traveled to San Diego for a volleyball tournament. Turner was the new part-time employee I’d hired and I’d apparently been outside a few minutes too long. He frantically flipped whole wheat banana walnut pancakes, turned sausages and strips of bacon, and rescued two almost-burnt slices of toast. Across the room a customer with an empty platter waved his hand in the air like he wanted his check, while another caught my eye and held up her coffee mug signaling for a refill. I pointed Professor Connolly to a table for two in the corner, mouthed, “Sorry” to Turner, and grabbed the coffeepot.

  I’d restored order in a couple of minutes, grateful I’d found the slim twenty-two-year-old to help out. Danna and I had agreed we really needed a third worker. Turner was a good enough short-order cook to man the grill, and despite his recent college degree he didn’t mind waiting and busing tables or doing cleanup. Danna and I also wore all hats around here, although I was the only one who did the books and paid the bills. It was my business, after all.

  I’d purchased the run-down country store over a year ago, and had used the carpentry skills my late mother taught me back home in California to carry out the renovation work myself. Now I was the proud proprietor of a popular breakfast and lunch restaurant. I also sold antique cookware and a few other odds and ends in the store, including my aunt Adele’s gorgeous yarn from her nearby sheep farm. I was almost finished renovating the second floor of the building into several rooms I planned to rent out as a bed and breakfast. The village of South Lick in scenic hilly Brown County had become my home—my apartment conveniently abutted the store at the back—and I couldn’t be happier.

  My new life would fall apart, however, if I didn’t keep my customers as happy as I was. I delivered a menu to the professor and asked if he’d like coffee.

  “Sure.” He gave the menu a once-over glance and handed it back. “I’ll have the Kitchen Sink omelet, with biscuits, plus bacon—crisp—and hash browns.”

  In the background buzz of diners chatting, silver clinking, sausages sizzling, I waited for the please. When it wasn’t forthcoming, I said, “You got it.”

  “I don’t suppose you serve Bloody Marys, do you?”

  “Sorry, no liquor license.” I decided not to mention I had an entirely legal BYOB policy in place. I didn’t advertise it, but regulars knew they could bring a bottle of wine or a couple of beers to lunch to celebrate special occasions. The state restricted the practice to wine and beer only, and I wasn’t allowed to pour it. Someone occasionally showed up with a bottle for Sunday brunch, but so far never for breakfast on a Friday.

  “I didn’t think so.” Connolly’s mouth pulled down in disappointment. “Where’s the best bar in town?” He drummed his fingers on the table. A gold ring featuring an embedded diamond dented his right pinkie.

  I glanced at the big old schoolroom clock on the wall—he wanted a bar before nine in the morning? “The Casino Tavern, on the other side of town. Actually it’s the only bar in town.” A casino in South Lick had flourished for a couple of decades over a hundred years ago, in the heyday of mineral springs spas. The present-day bar was a casino in name only. “The conference is in Nashville, right?” I’d lived in Brown County for four years. By now I said the name of the colorful artsy county seat like the locals did—Nashvul.

  “That’s correct.”

  “The bar’s on the road out of town heading that way. You probably passed it on your way here.” I saw Turner make the hand signal meaning an order was ready. “I’ll go get your food started.”

  Apparently please wasn’t the only word missing from this Bostonian’s vocabulary, since he didn’t thank me, either. I gave Turner the order, delivered three platters to a table of South Lick residents, and poured the professor’s coffee. He didn’t even look up from whatever he was doing on his phone.

  Back at the grill, I asked Turner, “Want to switch?” We tried to change jobs once an hour or so to avoid boredom—and to give each other a break from rude customers.

  “Sure. One second.”

  I watched Turner’s long smooth-skinned fingers deftly wrap around the handle of the pitcher holding the pancake batter. His mother, Mona Turner-Rao, was a local girl but his father, Sajit, had been born in India. The family owned a maple tree farm in the county and Sajit was also somehow affiliated with the university over in Bloomington. After pouring six pancakes worth of batter into identically sized disks, Turner pulled off his stained apron and donned a fresh one from the box.

  I was checking the status of the current orders on the lined-up sl
ips of paper when the bell on the door jangled.

  “What’s he doing here?” Turner muttered under his breath.

  His father hurried toward us. He wore a fleece vest over a blue Oxford button-down, and was bulky where his son was slim. “Turner, I need your help at the farm.” His accent wasn’t a strong one, but his son’s name sounded almost like “Durner.”

  “Baba, I told you.” Turner kept his voice low. “I have a job. I can’t just leave.”

  “But we have much to prepare for tomorrow. You know we are hosting the sugaring off demonstration for the festival.” His hands flew through the air as he talked.

  The festival schedule included opportunities to learn about sugaring off—like the one at the Rao maple farm—fun events for children, a Native American maple syrup demonstration in Brown County State Park, and themed culinary cook-offs like the one this afternoon. Sugaring off, the process of slowly boiling down maple sap to remove the water, resulting in thick, sweet syrup, was particularly popular. The organizers were hoping the cook-offs would draw crowds, too.

  “I can’t.” Turner, at six feet standing several inches taller than his father, lowered his face right in front of his father’s. “Robbie would be alone here. I’m not leaving.”

  Mr. Rao exclaimed in whatever his native language was. I didn’t understand the word but it sure sounded like he was exasperated.

  “You are a smart boy.” He shook his head at his son. “What are you doing cooking for your job? And cooking meat, no less! We paid for you to earn your degree. You should be using it, not doing women’s work making American breakfast.”

  I sniffed, and tore my gaze away from the pair. Just in time I flipped the cakes before they burned, and scooted four crispy sausages to the cooler end of the grill. Turner had told me his father wasn’t particularly happy about him working for me, but I hadn’t realized Mr. Rao felt so strongly about it. “Women’s work” indeed. What century did he live in, anyway?