I steadied my racing heart and said, “Cool!” I set the cookbooks on the sales counter, then put Tigger on the floor and gave his bottom a push. Brave feline, he meandered beneath the children’s table, probably hoping to score a crumb. “But please, kids, call me Jenna. Not Miss. I’m not a teacher.”
The girl’s father frowned. Guess he preferred decorum. I wasn’t so hot on it. I liked to live fast and loose . . . sort of.
“But you’re so tall,” the girl said.
I grinned. I wasn’t an Amazon, but at five-eight, I was slightly taller than her doughy father. “Teachers can be short, too.”
“If you say so.”
The first Friday of September was a perfect time in Crystal Cove to invite children to a cookie-decorating class. The weather hovered in the low seventies. Nearly every day by midmorning, the sun shone brightly. And school and homework hadn’t taken over the kids’ total concentration, quite yet. For the class, in addition to ordering a fresh batch of cookie cookbooks like The All-American Cookie Book, Betty Crocker The Big Book of Cookies, and Simply Sensational Cookies, we had stocked up on fun cookie-decorating sets complete with squeezable icing bottles and interchangeable design tips. Our theme for today’s class was creatures of the deep.
“Did you bake the cookies, Jenna?” one of the parents asked.
“Me? What a laugh.” I still wasn’t adept at making cookie batter—my limit of ingredients for recipes was a daring total of seven—but as an occasional artist, I totally embraced piping icing out of a squeeze bottle.
“Miss Jenna, look at my octopus.” A little boy with gigantic freckles wiggled his green, gooey octopus cookie in the air, and then shoved his gruesome creation toward the face of the frothy-haired girl. She squealed.
Aunt Vera, a flamboyant sixty-something and co-owner of The Cookbook Nook, moved to my side, the fabric of her exotic caftan billowing and falling. “Don’t you love kids?”
Me? I adored them. Except for the time I did an ad campaign at Taylor & Squibb, my previous employer, for Dipsy Doodles. A few prankster boys squeezed the contents of their glue and glitter pens onto the girls’ clothing and—gag me—hair. Parents were livid.
“Yoo-hoo, Jenna. Kids?” my aunt repeated.
“Uh, sure. Love ’em.” I didn’t want any of my own. Not yet. I wasn’t quite thirty. And a widow. Timing was everything. I said, “Absolutely. How about you?”
She adjusted the silver bejeweled turban on her head—my aunt would prefer to give tarot card readings than figure out how to market our joint enterprise—and chuckled. “I would have loved to have a dozen. Just like you.”
“Aw. I love you, too.” My aunt, on my father’s side, had doted on me from the day I was born. When I moved back to Crystal Cove to help her open the cookbook shop, she offered me the cottage beside her beach house. I felt blessed to have her in my life, especially with my mother gone.
“While the kiddies finish up,” Aunt Vera said, “let’s discuss the town’s other ventures for this week.”
“As far as I know, the mayor has planned a dozen new events for the month of September, including a Frisbee contest, a paddleboarding race, and Movie Night on the Strand.” Crystal Cove was a lovely seaside town on the coast of California with beautiful rolling hills to the east and a glorious stretch of ocean running the length of the town to the west. The mayor of our fair city was always on the lookout for events that would lure tourists. “To pay tribute to the events the mayor has fashioned, I’ve ordered dozens of new cookbooks with beach and/or movie themes.”
“Good idea. You’ve included The Beach House Cookbook, I assume?”
“I have.” The Beach House Cookbook had beautiful photographs of food and the seaside. Cookbooks with enticing pictures, in our business, were guaranteed sales. I still couldn’t believe it, but some people bought cookbooks merely to peruse. Prior to my new enterprise, I was a function and use person. If it didn’t have a function, I didn’t use it. “I’ve also brought in At Blanchard’s Table: A Trip to the Beach Cookbook.” This particular cookbook included recipes that were as delicious as they were simple. Prosciutto bundles? Balsamic goat cheese? They sounded easy enough that even I could make them. “Also, I ordered Good Fish: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the Pacific Coast.” The Seattle-based author of Good Fish was a seafood advocate who really educated her readers. I especially loved that she had brought in another knowledgeable source to pair the fish with wine.
“That title’s a mouthful.”
“Between you, me, and the lamppost,” I said, “some titles on cookbooks go on forever.”
“They do, but competition is fierce and specificity matters. An unpretentious title like Good Food won’t light a fire under the audience intended.”
My aunt was right. She was always right. She knew cookbooks backward and forward. Me? I was just getting the hang of how popular they were. At my aunt’s behest, I had returned to Crystal Cove to run The Cookbook Nook and café because, well, my life in San Francisco, as I’d dreamed it, was over. I needed a new beginning. My aunt needed a marketing whiz.
“I love what you’ve done in the bay window,” Aunt Vera said.
Our store was one of many in Crystal Cove Fisherman’s Village. The bay window faced the parking lot and was our first calling card to passersby. In keeping with the town’s monthly events, I had set out a seaside–themed display, complete with bright yellow oars, aqua blue Frisbees, and coral and white sand toys. On a table by the decorative kitchen items that we carried, I had set up our movie-themed table, which included the women’s fiction books Chocolat and Like Water for Chocolate, both of which had been made into movies, and a mystery series about a cheese shop, which I heard might become a television show à la Murder, She Wrote.
“Jenna.” My best friend and new assistant in the store, Bailey Bird—Minnie Mouse in size and Mighty Mouse in energy—hurried into the shop. “Whee. You’ll never guess.” She gripped my hands and spun me around. The skirt of her silky halter dress fluted around her well-formed calves. Sun streaming in the big plate-glass windows highlighted her short copper hair. “I just spoke with the mayor, and she wants us.”
“For what?”
“To hold the Grill Fest.”
“But Brick’s always hosts the Grill Fest.” Brick’s was a barbecue restaurant about a half mile from Fisherman’s Village.
“Brick’s is going under. It just declared bankruptcy.”
“Oh, no. That’s horrible.”
“It is, isn’t it? Tragic. However, the mayor doesn’t want to delay the fest. She’s afraid that could hurt the town’s economy,” Bailey rushed on. “Tourism—”
“Can’t afford any setbacks,” I finished, quoting the mayor.
“It takes money to run this place, she says. The squeaky wheel gets the biggest piece of the pie.”
“Now you’re mixing metaphors.”
“The mayor said it.”
Our mayor, a frizzy bundle of raw energy, was nothing if not Crystal Cove proactive. Without tourists and the taxes they paid, how else could we finance our infrastructure? Only ten thousand people, including part-timers, lived here. Though many residents had incomes well above normal, the town still couldn’t manage to maintain the elaborate maze of windy roads, the parks, the aquarium, the city college that specialized in the study of grapes—truly—and The Pier, which was a major go-to spot, complete with a boardwalk, restaurants, stores, and more.
“I suggested we have the fest here,” Bailey said, polishing her fingernails on her silky bodice. “I said, ‘Jenna will think it’s a fabulous idea.’ You do, don’t you? Think it’s a good idea?” She slurped in an excited breath. “We can set up portable cooking stations, like we do for our cooking classes. We can have the kitchen shop down the way provide the tools and grills or sauté pans, depending on a contestant’s preference. Think of the traffic. The cross-promotion. The conflict. The press.”
Last year’s fest had garnered all sorts of media coverage th
anks to one contestant—the winner for eight straight years—who had lambasted the runner-up for her grill steak recipe. They had ended up in a spatula fight. Someone had filmed the spectacle, which went viral on YouTube.
“And think of all the grilling cookbooks we can stock, like Simply Grilling: 105 Recipes for Quick and Casual Grilling,” Bailey said, the title tripping easily off her tongue.
I was familiar with this particular cookbook.
“The author not only gives a clear account of the types of grilling and the utensils needed,” Bailey continued, “but she also includes a recipe for one of my all-time favorite foods, Buffalo Sliders with Blue Cheese Slaw. And the pictures? Family-style adorable.” Bailey had a mind like a steel trap. If I let her, she could probably recite the contents of every book in the shop.
See what I mean about long titles? “What’s this year’s challenge?” I asked.
“Grilled cheese.”
Aunt Vera applauded. “Oh, yum. We’ll serve delectable sandwiches at the Nook Café.” The café was an adjunct to The Cookbook Nook. During the opening month, we hadn’t landed on a name for the café, and then we settled on the obvious. “Folks will flock to us for lunch and dinner. Ca-ching.” My aunt was not interested in money. She had plenty because, years ago, she had invested wisely in the stock market. But she was all about bragging rights. She took great pride in our tasty enterprise.
My friend Bailey on the other hand, was all about dollar signs. “You’re right, Vera.” Back at Taylor & Squibb, Bailey, who had been in charge of monitoring on-air, magazine, and Internet campaigns, would visit my office daily and give me a rundown of our earnings. Not our, as in Taylor & Squibb, but our, as in ours. Hers and mine. She knew, down to the penny, what we were earning for our holiday bonuses. She needed to know because most of her monthly paycheck went to clothes.
“Meow!” Tigger raced from beneath the cookie preparation table and leaped onto the counter by the register.
“I didn’t do it.” The freckle-faced boy threw his hands in the air, which of course meant he had . . . whatever it was.
I hurried to the counter and scooped up Tigger, a new wave of anxiety gushing through me. “Shh, fella. You’re okay. Why are you so jumpy today?” I checked him out, making sure he didn’t have icing in his eyes or ears—he didn’t—and breathed a sigh of relief. I frowned at the boy, whose mother was giving him a quiet talking-to. I imagined pulling a cat’s tail had been one of his crimes. He nodded to her, but I could see he was holding back giggles.
As I set Tigger on the ground and encouraged him to be brave and mingle with the public again, I heard a jangle.
“Phone’s ringing,” Bailey said as she rounded the counter and set down her things.
I rummaged through my purse, which I had stowed on a shelf beneath the antique National cash register, and retrieved my cell phone. The readout said: Whitney. Wholesome, wondrous Whitney. My sister was brilliant at most things, but being a home business entrepreneur, she was a little dim when it came to knowing the hours other people kept at work. I asked Bailey to mind the shop, then sneaked to the storage room with my cell phone and pressed Send. “Hey, Sis.”
“Sit down.”
“I can’t. We have a kids’ soiree going on.” Not to mention a café to run and more cookbooks to inventory.
“Jenna Starrett Hart.
Because I had established myself in my previous career as Jenna Hart, I had used my maiden name, even after David and I got married. I decided not to change it. Harris . . . Hart. Too close to mess with.
“Jenna,” my sister barked. She rarely barked.
I settled onto the old hardback chair at the desk. “What’s up?”
“You know I’m here in Crystal Cove.”
“No.” If she was checking up on me after my encounter with a murderer last month, I was going to clock her. I didn’t need a reminder. I had put the past behind me. And I could clock her. I had six inches on her and a lot more hard-earned muscle, especially since I’d returned to a daily routine of running on the beach.
“Yes. I’m at the Seaside Bakery on The Pier getting the cake for Dad’s surprise party tonight. You know it’s tonight, right?”
I would if she would clue me in. To anything. Ever. Luckily I didn’t have plans.
“Anyway, you will never guess who I am looking at right now.”
I groaned. My sister could be such a celebrity hound. “Brad Pitt? George Clooney?” I asked, playing along. Lots of famous people vacationed in Crystal Cove.
“He’s got a surfboard. He’s tan. And he’s dyed his hair, but it’s him. It’s David.”
My breath snagged in my chest. “What?”
“He’s not dead, Jenna. David is alive.”
“He can’t be . . . He isn’t . . .” My husband died in a boating accident. Two years ago.
“I’m going to follow him. I’ll call you back.” The call ended.
The air around me turned to ice. I leaped to my feet and hurried from the stockroom to the sale counter. “Bailey.” I clutched my friend’s wrists. “He’s . . . He’s . . .” I couldn’t catch my breath.
“Spit it out.”
I did. In one quick stream.
“He can’t be. Whitney was wrong,” Bailey assured me. “She didn’t see correctly.”
“Whitney . . .” Well-meaning, warped Whitney. I inhaled. “My sister has supersonic vision. She’s like a hawk. As I kid, I could never win at hide-and-seek. She always knew where I was.”
“She didn’t see him. David is—”
“I have to go. I have to find out for sure.”
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