Diners, Drive-Ins, and Death (Comfort Food) - Softcover

Wenger, Christine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451415108 ISBN 13: 9780451415103

Publisher: Berkley, 2015

Synopsis

For Sandy Harbor’s tastiest comfort food, venture to the Silver Bullet Diner. But head next door to the new drive-in theater if you have an appetite for murder....
 
Trixie Matkowski has a tall order to fill this fall. Aside from dishing out delicious fare at the Silver Bullet during peak fishing season, she’s helping her friend—Antoinette Chloe Brown, or ACB for short—open a drive-in movie theater in the vacant lot beside her diner. It’s just the thing to take ACB’s mind off Nick, her missing biker beau.
 
But their plans are fried after Nick’s body is discovered during the groundbreaking for the drive-in. And when the police connect the murder weapon to ACB, she becomes the prime suspect in eighty-sixing Nick. With the fate of her innocent friend and her business on the line, Trixie must make the guilty party pay up before someone else gets stiffed....

Includes Delicious Home-Style Recipes!

About this title

About the Author

Christine Wenger is the author of A Second Helping of Murder and Do or Diner. She has worked in the criminal justice field and is thrilled to bring the beauty of upstate New York to life in the Comfort Food Mystery series.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

I wondered why Antoinette Chloe Brownelli wanted to speak to me. It couldn’t be good. On the phone she whispered and sounded serious, as if we were going to embark on an adventure worthy of 007.

Antoinette Chloe and I stood in a field—a large, overgrown field that she owned—next to my property. The weeds were choking what was left of the wildflowers and the poor little things were gasping for breath. Some butterflies still roamed over what was left of the pickings, and I could hear the buzzing of a bee. I turned to see a big, fat one land on some goldenrod. The insect might as well get what it could before frost chilled the air and turned the goldenrod to mush, but just in case Mr. Bee wasn’t friendly, I prepared to get out my EpiPen.

“Trixie. Thanks so much for coming.” Antoinette Chloe Brownelli’s purple muumuu with huge white gardenias billowed in the September breeze. Her matching purple flip-flops each sported a big sunflower that covered most of her glittery toenails.

“Of course, Antoinette Chloe. What’s up?”

I wouldn’t ever dare call her just Antoinette without adding the Chloe. Most of the time, I thought of her as ACB to save time.

I, Trixie Matkowski—and don’t you dare call me Beatrix—would do anything that ACB wanted. She’s a lovely person under all the stage makeup, the clunky pounds of jewelry, and the lime green fascinator that sported a fountain of colorful feathers. A faux peacock rested on the fountain of feathers that fluttered in the breeze and dangled precariously over her right ear.

ACB’s fake feathered friends always seemed to be hanging over her right ear, probably in an escape attempt.

“I’ve bought back the land that my snake of a husband sold to our mayor. I’d like to build a drive-in on it. I hope you don’t mind, since my land is next to your land.”

Uh-oh.

“What kind of drive-in, Antoinette Chloe? A food drive-in?”

My mind raced. I didn’t want the competition for my Silver Bullet Diner, especially not out here on the outskirts of the village. Competition might be good for the economy, but there weren’t enough people in Sandy Harbor to sustain two eating establishments right next to each other.

If it weren’t for the seasonal visitors like the fishermen, the summer vacationers, and the leaf peepers and snowmobilers, this place would be a ghost town all year long.

Antoinette Chloe already had a restaurant in the village, Brown’s Four Corners, shortened from Brownelli’s Four Corners, that she could barely handle. Why would she want another food establishment?

She moved the greenish-blue peacock into place on her hat, but it slid back down again. “A drive-in movie theater, actually.”

Whew! I could breathe again.

“But aren’t drive-ins closing all over the United States?”

“That’s right, Trixie. So why not strike while the bowling ball is hot?”

How could I argue with crazy logic like that? But as her friend, I was going to try.

“Antoinette Chloe,” I said, using my practical voice, “it seems to me that nowadays the only kids who go to movies are kids who don’t drive yet—so a drive-in movie wouldn’t work without a car. Besides, don’t you think that they’d rather be lounging in a plush chair in a nice theater?”

“Psh. Where’s the fun in that? The younger generation hasn’t experienced the fun of watching a movie with a speaker hanging from the window while the mosquitos are biting. And when it rains, it adds another layer of excitement. I’m even thinking of staying open in the winter. What a thrilling experience that’ll be if it snows!”

I’m shivering right now just thinking of watching Iron Man 29 or Batman Returns Yet Again and Again in the middle of a snowstorm.

“I don’t know if there are speakers that hang off the window anymore. I think the sound comes in on the car radio,” I said.

She waved her hands dismissively. “I’m going to go retro, so there will be speakers hanging. I want customers to experience the old-fashioned drive-in. You know, the kind with the little hills where you position your car to be higher in the front.”

“Don’t forget about the playground in front of the screen for the kids to enjoy before the movie starts,” I added, getting swept away by her enthusiasm.

“And remember when the movie started, how we’d all scream and race to the cars?”

I grinned. “Those were definitely fun times, Antoinette Chloe.”

A warm cocoon of memories enveloped me. I remembered my parents letting us wear our pajamas to the drive-in. How my mom would make a brown grocery bag full of popcorn, and how there’d be some sodas on ice in a cooler. Before the movie even started, my brother, John, would curl up on the back window ledge of the car, like it was his own balcony, but soon he’d be fast asleep.

“Maybe you have a good idea, after all.”

ACB grinned. She raised a fist in excitement just as her peacock shook loose of his feathery nest and dove into the high grass at our feet. “What fun those drive-in days were! Necking in the car with Sal . . .” Suddenly, tears flooded her eyes. “Sal and I were going to build our retirement home on this land—right on the waterfront. We had the plans drawn up and . . . and . . . everything. It was going to be our dream home. The perfect place to spend the rest of our lives together.”

She picked up the peacock, pulled out a red bandanna from her cleavage, and then slipped the peacock in. After she blew her nose, I pulled her into a hug, disturbing the cloud of perfume that surrounded her. I held my breath, trying not to sneeze.

“Sal deserved what he got—I know that, Trixie. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t miss him.”

ACB’s husband, Sal, was serving a life term at Auburn Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in New York, for the attempted murder of both ACB and yours truly, and for the completed murder of Marvin Cogswell the Third, who was once a restaurant inspector.

I patted her back. “I thought you and Sal’s brother, Nick, were an item now. You motorcycled all over North America with him, didn’t you?”

That brought a fresh round of tears, and I felt awful. What did I say?

“I haven’t seen Nick in ages,” she sniffed. “And we had so much fun on his Harley, with Nick burning up the road and me in the sidecar. I was really a hot biker mama.”

I smiled to myself as I remembered ACB’s hot-biker-mama attire: black makeup, black hair with a white skunk streak in the part, black flip-flops with glitter, and lots and lots of heavy chains draped everywhere. Oh, and a black helmet that ACB embellished with black sequins, black feathers, and a miniature Harley glued to the top.

“Nick hasn’t even called you?”

“No.”

“Is that like him?”

She moved away from me and blew her nose. “Two weeks ago, he said that he was going to cook at my restaurant, just like before. He’s such a skilled cook, Trixie—a real chef. But because he never showed up, I’ve been forced to do all the cooking myself. Thank goodness you trained me, or I’d be up Salmon River without my fuchsia waders.”

“Did you try calling him?”

“Of course. But I keep getting his voice mail. I probably left about two dozen messages.”

“Did you go to his house?”

“Yes. His place was the usual perfection. Everything in its place. I was going to dust for him, but then I thought, Hey, why should I? He hasn’t even bothered to call me.”

The red bandanna disappeared into the muumuu, and, with a flourish, she then pulled a flowered scarf out of her cleavage, shook it out, and draped it around her shoulders. This was better than a magician’s act in Vegas. Thank goodness she had a lot of cleavage for storage.

“Nick and I were close, Trixie, if you get my drift. Very, very close.”

She gazed off in the distance, and I could tell she was remembering something really . . . uh . . . special.

I smiled. “Let’s go to the Silver Bullet and have lunch. It’s Meat Loaf Monday, and I’m hungry. Are you?”

“I could nosh.”

“Good.”

I was in the process of buying the Silver Bullet Diner, the eleven cottages (there were once twelve, but that’s another story), and the big Victorian farmhouse from my aunt Stella Matkowski. It all sat on a prime piece of land that jutted out into Lake Ontario, which was called “the point” by the locals.

Aunt Stella had lost interest in everything since Uncle Porky died, and my husband (now my ex), Deputy Doug Burnham, had lost interest in me.

Aunt Stella and I both decided that we needed a change of scenery, and so she sold me her diner and took off for greener pastures. I suggested that she might want to work up an agreement with a lawyer; she said that I was family, like the daughter she never had, and that the back of a Silver Bullet place mat was more than adequate. Then she tore up the place mat, telling me to pay her a little bit at a time with the profits.

And that was that. Shortly after, I moved to Sandy Harbor and Aunt Stella moved to Boca Raton. It had almost been a year now, and neither one of us had looked back.

Since I walked here from the Victorian, we both headed to ACB’s white van that had BROWN’S FOUR CORNERS RESTAURANT AND CATERINGwritten on the side along with phone numbers, a Web site address, and a salami dancing with a loaf of bread.

ACB was a slow driver. Granted, we didn’t have far to go, but I couldn’t relax while she was going about twenty miles an hour on the highway in a fifty-five zone. I kept looking in the rearview mirror, expecting an eighteen-wheeler to zip around the bend and push us out of its way.

As ACB finally turned into the parking lot of the Silver Bullet and parked, the tension drained from my shoulders. I slid down from the passenger’s seat and waited for her to catch up so we could walk together.

Whenever I looked at the Silver Bullet, I couldn’t believe that it was actually mine. Well, that it would be mine after I kept chugging along with a payment schedule that I devised and tried to stick to.

To the left of the diner, in the middle of the point, was my white Victorian farmhouse with the wraparound porch and forest green shutters. I called it the Big House, not because it was a jail, but because it really was a big house. Behind it stood the eleven housekeeping cottages—the Sandy Harbor Housekeeping Cottages, to be exact.

In front of the cottages was a sandy swath of beach that stretched on a nice chunk of land on the New York State part of Lake Ontario. The lake was great for swimming, and the grounds were a perfect place for my guests to picnic, to build sand castles, to make mud pies, and to make memories.

That’s what my family did every summer when we rented Cottage Four. Growing up, my diary mostly consisted of three countdowns: my birthday in February, summer at the cottage, and Christmas.

“I love the lines of the Silver Bullet and how it’s so shiny . . . like a real silver bullet,” ACB said, interrupting my trip down memory lane. “I remember when your aunt and uncle had it delivered back in 1952. Everyone gathered along Main Street, as if a parade was passing by. I was just a little girl at the time, but I can remember what I wore as if it were yesterday: a pink tutu with red tights. And my hair was done up high with ringlets on top of my head.”

“Wish I was around to see it.” I meant that I wished I could’ve seen the diner being delivered—not ACB’s pink tutu—but I wouldn’t have been born for another . . . oh . . . thirty years or so.

I slipped my arm around hers as we walked, because the parking lot was slick with wet leaves and her flip-flops didn’t provide much traction.

“Antoinette Chloe, let’s go shopping for a pair of boots for you. I hear that the tractor store got in some of those waterproof boots in lots of bright colors and—”

“Boots?” She paused, shaking off a wet leaf that got stuck between her toes. “I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing boots. I’d have to be hiking in a blizzard before I’d give up my flips.”

“I’ve seen you in the snow with your flips on, and it’s a wonder that you still have all your toes. Really, you should get boots and socks. This isn’t Margaritaville, girlfriend. Sandy Harbor is more like the North Pole.”

I was starting to sound like Sister Mary Mary, my fourth-grade teacher at St. Maggots . . . oops, I mean St. Margaret’s.

“Socks? You can’t mean those ugly cotton things you put on your feet.” She stopped shuffling through the wet leaves. “That is so not going to happen.”

“You know, I have an extra pair of boots that I can give you and some wool-blend socks. They are all brand-new. What size feet do you have?”

“Eleven,” she whispered. “I wear an eleven.” She looked around furtively to see if anyone might be able to hear her, but the parking lot was empty except for us. “Yes, my feet are as big as canoes.”

“I wear a ten, so my boots might not work, but I’d love to go shopping with you,” I said.

She gave me a look, and I decided to drop the subject after this, because I felt like I had started to drift into nagging territory. And that wasn’t my intent. Besides, it was obvious that my friend didn’t welcome my flip-fop bashing. ACB had her own fashion sense, which obviously included various shades of frostbite, and I was content to leave her to her ways, even if I didn’t agree with them.

Finally, we made it to the cement ramp, which was leaf-free, thanks to my handy guys, Clyde and Max. I opened the door, and the scent of bacon and fresh coffee permeated the air. As the sign said, BREAKFAST SERVED 24 HOURS A DAY.

And the diner was packed. Yes! As we made our way to the last vacant booth, I waved at my two waitresses on duty, JoAnn and Kathy.

JoAnn started to hand out two menus, but on second thought picked one of them back up and erupted into a low, throaty chuckle. “Trixie, I bet you could recite this menu by heart.”

“I totally can.” I turned to ACB. “Antoinette Chloe, you know JoAnn, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. JoAnn used to work for me at Brown’s right after she graduated from high school.”

“It was my first job,” JoAnn said, shifting on her feet, looking a tad embarrassed. “I left for Nashville to cut a record, but the closest I got was cleaning rooms at the Opryland hotel.” She put her hand on ACB’s shoulder. “And Antoinette Chloe sent me plane fare to return home.”

Tears pooled in JoAnn’s eyes as she hugged ACB, and then she hurriedly left.

“That was nice of you,” I told my friend. In my ten or so months in Sandy Harbor, I’d heard of several touching things that ACB had done for other people.

She shrugged and waved off my comment. “I told JoAnn that I’d pay her rent for a couple of months, that she shouldn’t give up on her dream, but her mother got sick, and JoAnn felt she should come home and try again some other time.” ACB shook her head. “She never went back, but she sings in the church choir and at funerals and weddings, and, well, I think that makes her happy.”

ACB picked up her menu and studied it, while I looked at the purple-black sky. We were going to have rain. A lot of rain.

“Antoinette Chloe, this is Meat Loaf Monday, but it’s also Meatless Monday, which means vegetarian lasagna is on special tonight, too. Juanita made it, and it’s f...

Edition details

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0451415108
• ISBN 13: 9780451415103
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304