What on earth had I been thinking when I gave up my job in the Food and Beverage Division at Marvelous Marley World? All things food-related had been my first love, and I had started in the park as a chef, straight out of culinary school. Despite the increasing number of women training as chefs, a decidedly male-oriented culture had prevailed in the theme park and hotel kitchens. One of the worst insults meted out was, “You do that like a housewife.” The statement was typically delivered by a European chef while slashing the air with a French knife for emphasis.
I loved being a chef and succeeded in working my way up to Sous Chef quickly. It’s at that point I completed a degree in business administration, with a minor in communications, and made the leap from the kitchen to Food and Beverage Management. The move into management gave me the opportunity to influence the overall quality of food in the park, to oversee hiring, training, and professional development of kitchen staff, and do what I could to find creative ways to provide excellent food to the guests while heeding the constant drumbeat to cut costs.
After twenty-five years at the “Cat Factory,” our insiders' term for the corporation founded on Catmmando Tom’s success, I made another leap. The decision to move out of the Food and Beverage Division into Public Relations wasn’t an easy one. What had I been thinking? For one thing: that I wasn’t getting any younger. The likelihood of obtaining the senior position in the Food and Beverage Division before I retired had dimmed when I was passed over for promotion by Max Marley’s daughter. Mallory Marley-Marston, in my book, bore a resemblance to Cruella de Vil, alluding to a figure from another well-known distributor of animated tales. Maybe that resemblance was because the woman hated animals and people.
Her anorectic thinness and aversion to food made it difficult to understand how she had chosen the Food and Beverage Division as her bailiwick. She spouted a lot of hooey about bringing healthy eating to the parks and resorts while claiming to have a background in nutrition. According to gossip, that “background in nutrition” came directly from lectures in rehab where she ended up after her eating disorder and pill-popping got the better of her.
More than once I had seen the pill-popping for myself. “Vitamins,” she had said as she knocked back a couple during a meeting. “Allergies,” she had told us at another event. At one point, during the first year of her rule, she had taken an unexpected absence. Twenty-eight days to be exact, as in rehab. It was supposed to be hush-hush, of course. But people still speculated on the timing. While the cat’s away, the mice will play, so that old adage goes. Those were 28 glorious days, despite the challenge of having to step in to fill her shoes without notice. Too soon, though, she was back at the helm, waving a finger in my face and speaking to me in a shrill voice. I can’t remember what accompanied the finger-pointing, since all I heard was that line from the Wizard of Oz: “And your little dog, too!”
I was considering early retirement when a position opened up, here, in PR. Because of my minor in communications, I had been more engaged in PR than most execs in the Food and Beverage Division. For years, I had worked with key people in PR and knew what went on in the division very well. The director, Doug Addams, invited me to apply when his second-in-command made a sudden mid-career move to a “real PR firm.” Doug was not unaware of my plight having dealt with Mallory-the-Worm-Hearted, as he called her, many times. He was more than happy to facilitate my move.
PR is a smaller division than Food and Beverage. The move had been a lateral one rather than a move up, but the Hallelujah Chorus had gone off in my head the day that option opened up. Despite the constant troubleshooting, my new job involves, I am still inclined to do a little mambo whenever Doug and I leave a meeting in which Mallory is present. The absolute worst meetings are those in which her daddy was also in attendance. She affects a slight Southern drawl in his presence, and a giggly, demure demeanor, with her claws and fangs retracted. The Southern accent is inexplicable, given she was brought up in Los Angeles.
“Southern California,” Doug once offered with a shrug of his shoulders and a shake of his head. Even the Southern accent is easier to take than that obsequious little-girl routine.
I had just finished perusing my email, checking for any new hot spots on the “faux paws” radar, when all the trouble broke loose. My office phone rang, my smartphone pinged, an alert popped up on my desktop computer, and Doug Addams burst through my office door. He did not even knock—a breach of protocol for the oh-so-proper director of PR.
“We’ve got to get to Catmmando Mountain, now! They’ve found a body.” With that, he was gone. I grabbed my smartphone, made sure I was wearing my corporate name tag and set off in hot pursuit.
“A body—as in a human one—a real dead person?” I ran to catch up with Doug as he reached the elevator and hit the down button.
“Yes, a body. One of our maintenance guys found it and called it in. The police are on their way. Security has already shut down Catmmando Mountain Conquest and cordoned off the area. I’ve also sent a team from Crowd Control to set up a perimeter and redirect guests away from the scene.”
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Find Murder at Catmmando Mountain Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #1 @ http://smarturl.it/georgie1 in paperback and kindle eBook format.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Life is an extravaganza! Figuring out how to hang tough and make the most of the wild ride is the challenge. On my way to Oahu, to join the rock musician and high school drop-out I had met in San Diego and married in Tijuana, I was nabbed as a runaway.
Eventually, the police let me go, but the rock band broke up. Our next stop: Disney World, where we “worked for the Mouse” as chefs, courtesy of Walt Disney World University Chef’s School. More education landed us in academia at The Ohio State University. For decades, I researched, wrote, and taught a number of gloriously nerdy topics.
Retired now, I’m still married to the same, sweet, guy and live with him near Palm Springs, California. I write mysteries set in sunny California! The Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery series set here in the Coachella Valley and the Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery Series set in California’s Central Coast, The Georgie Shaw Mystery series set in the OC, and coming soon, The Misadventures of Betsy Stark also set here in the desert. Join me at: http://www.desertcitiesmystery.com where you’ll find me
Snooping into life’s mysteries with fun, fiction, & food—California Style!
Books & Anthologies by Anna Celeste Burke
Cowabunga Christmas, Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #1 http://smarturl.it/cove1
Gnarly New Year, Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery # 2 http://smarturl.it/cove2
Epic Easter, Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #3 Out Soon!
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A Dead Husband Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #1 http://smarturl.it/deadhus
A Dead Sister Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #2 http://smarturl.it/deadsis
A Dead Daughter Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery # 3 http://smarturl.it/deaddau
A Dead Mother Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #4 Out Soon!
Maddie’s Project based on an episode from A Dead Mother, out now in Mother’s Day Magic with Love http://amzn.to/1Tt9YTH
Love A Foot Above the Ground Prequel to the Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery Series http://smarturl.it/loveabove
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Murder at Catmmando Mountain Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #1 http://smarturl.it/georgie1
[Abridged version, Happy Homicides 2: Thirteen Cozy Mysteries (Crimes of the Heart)
http://amzn.to/1WJwH3J
Love Notes in the Key of Sea Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #2 out in Kindle and Paperback editions August, 2016 http://smarturl.it/georgie2 Available in abridged form now, in Stories of Sun, Sand and Sea~~11 beaches…anything can happen http://amzn.to/1s4hRaZ
All Hallows’ Eve Heist Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #3. out fall 2016 http://smarturl.it/georgie3 and in Happy Homicides 5.
Celeste Burke, Gnarly New Year (Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #2)
Gnarly New Year (Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #2) Page 11