by Kathy Krevat
The Trouble with Talent
Books by Kathy Krevat
The Trouble with Murder
The Trouble with Truth
The Trouble with Talent
Table of Contents
Books by Kathy Krevat
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
Teaser Chapter
About the Author
The Trouble with Talent
Kathy Krevat
LYRICAL UNDERGROUND
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
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.
LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2019 by Kathy Krevat
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.
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Lyrical Underground and Lyrical Underground logo Reg. US Pat. & TM Off.
First Electronic Edition: June 2019
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0300-0 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0300-9 (ebook)
First Print Edition: June 2019
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0303-4
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0303-3
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my sister, Donna Lowenthal, the rock of our family who cared for our mother for ten years. You are a bright light in the world, always upbeat, giving of your time and energy, and so much fun to be around. Love you!
Acknowledgments:
I’d like to thank Jessica Faust, my awesome agent, for making my publishing dreams come true, and Tara Gavin, my wonderful editor, for making this book so much better.
This book wouldn’t exist without the help of my critique group, the Denny’s Chicks: Barrie Summy and Kelly Hayes. I would not be writing today if it wasn’t for the gentle editing of my first critique group, Betsy, Sandy Levin and the late Elizabeth Skrezyna.
I can never express the gratitude I feel toward all of the family and friends who support my writing career:
Lee Hegarty and Don Van Riper, Manny and Sandy Krevat, Donna and Brian Lowenthal, Patty Disandro, Jim Hegarty Jr., Michael and Noelle Hegarty, Jeremy and Joclyn Krevat, Matthew and Madhavi Krevat, James Bedell, Lori and Murray Maloney, Lynne and Tom Freeley, David Kreiss and Nasim Bavar, April Lopez, Lori Morse, Simone Camilleri, Amy Bellefeuille, Sue Britt, Cathie Wier, Joanna Westreich, Susan O’Neill and the rest of the YaYa’s, my Mom’s Night Out group, and my book club.
A special shout out to Terrie Moran, author of the Read ‘em and Eat mystery series, for her friendship and encouragement, and to Dru Ann Love for her friendship and support of the cozy mystery community.
Special thanks to the following experts for unselfishly sharing their knowledge:
Christopher Hamilton, CEO, Hamilton College Consulting – his wonderful company is nothing like the one in this book!
Andrea Overturn, oboist, and teacher, and Ben Brogadier, oboist and student, who answered many questions about music and shared their passion for playing the oboe.
Jordan Barrett, hairstylist, Salon Forte, for her salon knowledge.
Tania Yager (Twisted Heart Puppet Works) and Lynne Jennings, both from the San Diego Guild of Puppetry.
Jim Hegarty, for website and technical assistance, and for being so cool.
Katie Smith, NewRoad Foods, for her knowledge of making organic pet food.
Dr. Susan Levy, for her medical knowledge.
Judy Twigg, for being a typo-finding guru.
Any mistakes are my own!
Mountains of gratitude and love to my brilliant, beautiful and creative daughters, Devyn and Shaina Krevat, and to Lee Krevat, the love of my life!
Chapter 1
I gulped down the last of my coffee and dragged myself to the front door for the dreaded morning run, regretting my decision to get in better shape in time for the holidays. And that was before I got knee-capped by the smallest goat I’d ever seen outside of a YouTube video.
“Wha-ow!” I yelled as the little tyke with a surprisingly hard head made contact and then backed up to take another run at me.
“Stop it.” I moved a few steps away and put my hand down to fend him off.
Then I noticed his accomplice, Charlie the rooster, who stared at the doorbell and back at me, as if he understood that something had gone wrong with the normal order of things. He was a Buff Laced Polish rooster, with an elaborate comb full of long feathers that fell in front of his eyes, making him look even more confused.
Before Charlie belonged to my neighbor, he had been used for psychology experiments. Now he pushed buttons wherever he could find them. One of his favorites was our doorbell, which gave him the reward of hearing a nerve-jangling rendition of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Normally, whoever answered the door would walk him down the street back home to his farm.
The door opening before he rang the doorbell delayed him for just a moment, and then he hopped up on the planter and aimed for the button. I snagged him out of the air in mid leap. “No doorbells this early,” I scolded. “Dad and Elliott are sleeping.”
My cat, Trouble, was scowling at us through the kitchen window that looked out over the porch. She hated Charlie and usually made a loud fuss when he arrived. The goat must have thrown her off, because she hadn’t made a sound. She was an orange tabby and the morning sun was highlighting her white chest and paws while keeping her face in the shadows, but the rooster and goat didn’t even notice.
I carried Charlie down the stairs and the goat followed, hopping sideways on all four hooves and kicking his hind legs in the air. “Looks like you have a new friend,” I said to Charlie as I put him down. We walked down the street in an odd parade, Charlie pecking at every speck on the ground, and the goat trying to climb everything, even making an unsuccessful attempt at the mailbox.
Then he jumped a bunch of times, twisting back and forth in a little happy goat dance that made me smile. “You are adorable!” I couldn’t help but hope that it belonged to Joss Delaney. He owned the organic chicken farm at the end of the block and since we were dating, I’
d be able to see this cutie-pie a lot.
We walked up to Joss’s porch and I let Charlie bounce off the porch swing to get to the doorbell. We waited, six eyes on the door.
Joss smiled when he saw me and then noticed the goat. “Pegasus?”
Pegasus the goat pranced toward him a few steps then dipped his head again.
“Watch it,” I said. “His head butts are lethal.”
“Stop it,” Joss scolded the goat, who lifted his head and danced again as if saying it had all been a big joke. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I reached down to scratch the goat’s back and he arched up. “He just surprised me.” I noticed the white spot on his side that looked just like a wing. “So you have a goat named Pegasus.”
He blew out a breath. “Seems like it. Gemma gave them to Kai, totally assuming that they could stay here.”
Gemma was Joss’s ex-wife and his daughter Kai’s mother. They’d been through a nasty divorce and came to an uneasy truce a few months before. “That’s nice?” I couldn’t help how my voice rose at the end to make it a question. I hurried to add, “You said ‘them.’ More than one?”
He pointed to the pen near the barn where I could see another adorable goat peering out from behind the open gate. “That’s Percy.”
“Like from the Percy Jackson books?” I guessed. Percy was smaller and fluffier than Pegasus, and he had longer ears. The black and brown spots all over his white fur resembled a jigsaw puzzle.
“Yep,” Joss said. “Kai can’t get enough of them.”
She loved the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books by Rick Riordan. They were filled with mythology and adventure.
Joss grabbed my hand as we walked over to reunite the goats. “Sorry I’m so distracted. These guys just arrived yesterday.” The small pen held several brightly colored wooden tables of various heights and balls of different sizes. “At least Gemma sent food and toys along with them.”
“Where did she get those? Goats “R” Us?” I asked just as Percy leapt onto a blue table and Pegasus followed, pushing him off the other side, only to take turns doing it again.
Joss smiled and then examined the latch as he pulled the gate shut. “Maybe Kai didn’t hook it properly.”
“Maybe Charlie is luring them into his life of crime as an escape artist.”
He pretended to frown at Charlie, and then lifted him to stare into his face. “I wouldn’t put it past him.” He set Charlie down in his own pen.
“I better get my run in before the farmers’ market,” I said. I’d loaded everything I needed, other than Trouble, into the car the night before. “Kai still sleeping?”
He nodded and pulled me close for a kiss, finally focusing those blue eyes on me.
We broke apart and I was breathing fast before I even started my run.
“Still on for Tuesday?” he called after me.
“Of course.” I looked back to see him watching me run down the block. I sent him a flirty wave, and then ruined it by stumbling.
Joss and I had started dating a few months before and had settled into a delightful pattern, fitting in dates during the weekends his daughter was with her mother, and when my son Elliott had rehearsals during the week. Kai had become ensnared in the same love of theater and had enjoyed watching Elliott’s rehearsals and helping with costumes.
November in Sunnyside, California provided the best weather for morning exercise. The air was cool with only a hint of moisture as the sun came up, pushing the low-lying gray clouds of the marine layer back to the ocean. The hills in the distance were still uncharacteristically brown. We usually started getting rain in October, but not this year. All of Southern California was on high alert for fire danger—a bigger fear than earthquakes.
I’d taken up jogging again when I unpacked the last boxes from my dad’s garage, signaling that Elliott and I were staying put.
We originally moved in with my father during his second bout of pneumonia, and I assumed we’d move back to the city once he was recovered. My dad and I butted heads for a lot of my adult life, ever since I dropped out of college when I got pregnant with Elliott. We resolved a lot of our issues and he admitted that he wanted us to stay, and I admitted that Elliott and I wanted that too.
Now we were making up for lost time.
Elliott had brought the box inside, chanting, “The last box,” in the same tone as the dodo’s saying “the last melon” in the Ice Age movie. The box contained toiletries from the back of the kitchen closet, unmatched socks, and my Weight Watchers scale.
I hadn’t been to the gym in ages, but my clothes all still fit, and I kept myself busy with my job that was often physical—lifting boxes of cat food, stirring five gallon pots of Seafood Surprise in a pan the size of a manhole, and lugging around a cat carrier filled with a cat who ate very well. I’d confidently set the scale down on the kitchen floor and stepped on it.
The sound that came out of my mouth was something like “Gak!” The number on the small screen sparked my new morning routine of jogging and eating egg white omelets for breakfast.
Once my muscles loosened up and I got past the aches and pains, I went through my to-do list in my head while I ran.
I owned the Meowio Batali Gourmet Cat Food Company and we were poised to enter a new phase. Based on the success of introducing my products to the San Diego-based Twomey’s Health Food Stores, I’d recently sent a business proposal to Natural-LA Grocers, which had more than fifty stores throughout Los Angeles.
It was all I could do to focus on the normal day-to-day issues instead of wondering why I hadn’t heard from them yet. To keep my mind off of it, I’d gone back into product development mode, trying out new recipes and taste-testing them on Trouble. I’d learned long ago that if Trouble didn’t like the food, it wouldn’t sell. This last round of new product development had confirmed that she still didn’t like anything with curry, but I wasn’t ready to give up on a Thai-themed product.
My business had settled into a solid schedule of working in the commercial kitchen at least two mornings a week. But it left me enough time to handle the farmers’ markets, as well as work on marketing and the other behind-the-scenes tasks. Meowio had grown so much in a short period of time. And it all started with Trouble.
I was just getting by as an apartment manager, collecting rent and handling issues like plumbing and lost keys for a small building in downtown San Diego, when I found Trouble abandoned in an empty apartment. She was so tiny then, too young to have been taken away from her mother, and had a lot of digestive problems. I started cooking her food and learned that some of my friends’ cats had the same issues. I sold my food to more and more cat owners, eventually expanding to farmers’ markets. Now Meowio Batali Gourmet Cat Food was sold all over San Diego. And soon, maybe all over Los Angeles.
It wouldn’t have happened without Quincy Powell, a successful business tycoon who spent his “retirement” helping small companies get off the ground. He’d invested in my company and let me use his commercial kitchen at a heavily discounted rate. Even better, he’d brought Meowio under his benevolent umbrella—providing networking opportunities with the other companies he helped.
My head chef Zoey and her part-time assistants could handle production without me, but I needed to keep my hand in every part of the business, including managing booths at two farmers’ markets a week so that I could hear firsthand what my customers wanted.
My phone rang and I realized I’d forgotten to turn it off. I checked the screen and saw that it was my friend Yollie. It must be an emergency for her to be calling this early on a Saturday. I stopped running to answer. “Hi Yollie,” I wheezed out. “Everything okay?”
“Colbie! Thank God!” She sounded as breathless as I did.
“What’s wrong?”
“I need to ask you a huge favor,” she said. “Can you pick up Steven at his music les
son this morning? My car broke down and he has to be picked up on time.”
Steven was a senior in high school, completely stressed out by the college application process. He dedicated a lot of time to practicing oboe and hoped to be accepted to a world-class music conservatory. He’d even started using his middle name of Steven years before because there was already a famous oboist with the name Jordan George.
Frankly, I thought Jordan George had more of a musician sound to it than Steven George, but at his insistence, even Yollie now called him Steven.
“What time?” I asked. “I have the farmers’ market.”
“Can you get there before eight?”
Who had a music lesson so early on a Saturday? “No problem.”
“Oh thank goodness,” she said. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“Can you text me the address?” I bounced a little to keep my muscles warm.
“It’s a couple of miles from your house,” she said. “Hold on.”
I waited for her to send me the link and clicked on it. “That’s not very far.”
“I know this is going to sound crazy, but his teacher has a bunch of rules that I’m going to email you.” Her voice was apologetic.
“Rules?”
“Yes,” she said. “Like you have to stay in your car until Steven comes out. He’ll get in trouble if you don’t follow all of the rules.”
“Okay,” I said in my I’m humoring you voice.
She wasn’t convinced. “Seriously, Colbie. This is important to Steven.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll follow the rules.” I rolled my eyes.
“I owe you big-time,” she said. “Let me know when you have him.”
I hung up and stretched my legs before looking at the document Yollie sent. First of all, the teacher’s name was Benson Tadworth. No wonder he had control issues. Second, he called himself an “Oboe Master.” For some reason, that triggered the Darth Vader music from Star Wars to play in my head. Third, the list of rules was way over the top. Parents must arrive ten minutes early for drop-off and pick-up and must stay in their car. Payment must be on time on the first day of the month or your student will be dropped immediately. Students must practice three hours a day and document their times to the minute. Students must master reed making, practicing a minimum of one hour every day and at least fourteen hours a week.