Princess Charming

by Jane Heller

  “No problem,” I told Kingsley, who seemed relieved. He thanked me again for my patronage and my tip and took the suitcase wherever.

  I cast a final, nostalgic look back at Cabin 8024—its puny porthole, its dorky decor, its lumpy bed—and I sighed. It was in this stateroom that I had made love to Simon, in this stateroom that I had discovered a part of myself I’d never dreamed existed.

  “Thanks for the memories,” I said out loud, grabbing my purse and my carry-on bag and heading down the hall.

  I was to meet Pat and Jackie on Deck 2, near the Purser’s Desk. Simon wasn’t on our flight to New York, but he promised to join us at the Purser’s Desk to say goodbye—as soon as he was finished with Dr. Johansson, with whom he’d had an appointment to clean up the cuts and bruises Kenneth had inflicted.

  “Well, well. Here’s our Elaine,” Jackie said when I hurried over to my friends. “Our heroine.”

  There was an edge to her voice. I asked her if anything was the matter—other than the fact that her ex-husband and business partner had tried to arrange her death.

  “She’s upset that you didn’t tell us about the murder plot when you first found out about it,” said Pat. “Frankly, I’m a little muffed too.”

  “Miffed, Pat,” I corrected her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Now listen, you two,” I said. “I’m going to ask you a question and I want an honest answer. If I had told you, a couple of days into the cruise, that I overheard two men on the phone talking about killing one of their ex-wives—and that I thought one of those ex-wives might be one of us—would you have believed me? Or would you have rolled your eyes and said, ‘Elaine and her paranoia’?”

  “I suppose I might have been a little skeptical,” Pat admitted.

  “Jackie?” I asked.

  “No doubt about it. I would have rolled my eyes and said, ‘Elaine and her paranoia,’” she conceded.

  “I rest my case,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m still trying to deal with what happened. I’m having a delayed reaction, I guess.”

  I hugged her. “You’re entitled to feel a little shell-shocked. So are you, Pat.” I hugged her too. “We’ve all been through quite an ordeal.”

  “You can say that again,” Jackie nodded. “Poor Sam. I mean, Simon. Look at him.”

  We turned around to see Simon limping toward us. His face was covered with Band-Aids.

  “Have a bad morning shaving?” Jackie teased him.

  “Actually, I’ve just come from your friend, Dr. Johansson,” he reported to Jackie. “He told me I’d be less likely to scare people if I wore the Band-Aids, but I’m not so sure.” He laughed. “Oh, and he also told me to remind you that you can expect a visit from him in the spring.”

  Jackie smiled. “Thanks,” she said. “Now at least I have something nice to look forward to when I get home.”

  “Are you worried that all the publicity about you and Peter and Kenneth will drive customers away from the nursery?” I asked, knowing how the media love a good scandal—and how fickle “loyal” customers can be.

  “Sure I’m worried,” said Jackie. “But there is a positive side to Peter being shipped off to jail: I’m in charge of the business. I’ll be able to do things my way, without him—or Trish—breathing down my neck.”

  Simon patted her tenderly on the shoulder. He was fond of her, it was easy to see. Of both of my friends. “What about you, Pat?” he asked. “Any immediate plans?”

  “Well,” she began, a shy grin spreading across her face, “Bill has been invited to speak at a conference in New Zealand next month, and I’m going with him. In the past I would have said I was too busy with the children, but not anymore. I know they’ll understand.”

  “Of course they will,” I said, thinking how excited Lucy must have been that her father would be back in her life on a full time basis. “What’s Bill speaking about at the conference?”

  “Diverticulitis,” she said.

  “Pat?” I asked. “I’m curious about something: Why is it that you mangle commonly used words but always get the medical terms exactly right?”

  Pat considered the question, then said, “It might be the same phenomenon that occurs with stutterers. They stutter when they talk, but they don’t stutter when they sing, you know?”

  We all reflected on Pat’s theory and couldn’t think of any reason to refute it.

  “I hate to break this up,” Simon said, “but we’ve got shuttle buses to catch.”

  “I can’t believe we’re on different flights back to New York,” I said, wrapping my arms around his waist and pulling myself closer to him. “What rotten planning.”

  Jackie and Pat winked at each other. “Let’s give the lovebirds their space,” Jackie suggested. “They probably want to say goodbye in private.”

  The two of them hugged Simon and said they hoped to see him soon, Jackie clinging to him for an extra second or two.

  “Without you, I would be at the bottom of the ocean,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.

  “But you’re not,” he said softly. “You’re on your way home and everything’s fine.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered and went with Pat to the Customs area, where I would meet them in another few minutes.

  “Alone at last,” said Simon, kissing me, his lips among the few parts of his face not obscured by the Band-Aids.

  “I was just thinking,” I said. “After seven nights at Table 186, eating dinner at my kitchen counter is going to feel a little strange. I bet I’ll be so disoriented I’ll sit there waiting for Ismet to tell me the specials.”

  “I could make the experience less disorienting.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “By coming over and eating dinner at your kitchen counter with you. You’ll swear you’re still in the Palace Dining Room.”

  “Only if you show up ten minutes late.”

  Simon laughed. “What time are you microwaving?”

  “Seven-thirty.”

  “I’ll be there at seven-forty.”

  “Perfect.”

  About the Author

  After nearly a decade of promoting bestselling authors for New York publishing houses, Jane Heller became a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author herself. Her 13 novels, nine of which have been sold to Hollywood for movies and television, are now entertaining readers around the world. She has also written a nonfiction book about her passion for baseball and the Yankees, as well as a survival guide for those caring for a loved one with a chronic or critical illness. Her new novel, Three Blonde Mice, a spinoff of her popular novel Princess Charming, will be published by Diversion in August 2016. Born and raised in Scarsdale, New York, Heller currently resides in New Preston, Connecticut, with her husband, Michael Forester.

  Connect with Jane

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  More from Jane Heller

  If you enjoyed the hijinks on the high seas for Elaine, Jackie, and Pat, then you’ll love the heat the Three Blonde Mice can generate in the kitchen. In their wild next romantic adventure, the three best friends go on a cooking excursion led by a famous chef, only to discover one of their classmates is very keen on practicing knife technique. They and eight other guests will learn how to cook farm-to-table meals at a chic farm-to-table retreat, with renowned TV/restaurant chef Jason Hill. Elaine is less than thrilled—especially because the program wasn’t supposed to include a surprise appearance by her former boyfriend Simon, who’s still the love of her life but can’t commit to her. What’s more, after milking a cow and making cheese, she stumbles on evidence that one of her fellow agritourists is out to murder Chef Hill at the resort’s Bounty Fest finale.Three Blonde Mice serves up a crackling romance between Elaine and Simon, a twisty whodunit involving a screwball cast of suspects and a satire of current food fads and the farm-to-table chefs who perpetuate
them.

  Read on for an exclusive extended preview of Three Blonde Mice!

  Prologue

  The fingers hovered over the laptop’s keyboard, fidgeting and flexing, poised to begin typing. And then suddenly, propelled by the writer’s burst of inspiration or clarity of purpose, they were off, racing over the keys in a manic hurry. Within minutes, the following words appeared on the screen:

  Dear Pudding,

  Did you know I call you Pudding, by the way? No, of course not. The name came to me as I was watching your cooking video on YouTube. You were talking about how you’ve loved pudding since you were a kid—chocolate pudding, banana pudding, rice pudding, tapioca pudding, sticky date pudding with caramel sauce. I had this hilarious image of your body dissolving into a vat of thick, spongy, gelatinous pudding, sort of like the Killer Robot from Terminator 2 melting into liquid metal or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters transforming into the gummy white goop that buries Manhattan. Listen to me carry on about movie villains. Too much time on my hands, I guess.

  Anyway, I signed up to be a guest at the hotel’s Cultivate Our Bounty week just so I could get close to you, but since we won’t have quality time alone until the very end, I thought I should write a quick note to say how much I despise you.

  Yes, despise you. Does it scare you to hear that? Are you shocked that someone doesn’t think you’re God’s greatest gift to the world? I’ll pretend to be your fan for the entire week, and you’ll probably buy my act, because you don’t have a clue. You walk around like you’re this important chef, someone whose passion in the kitchen we’re supposed to admire, but we both know you’re in it for the money and the ego. You’re all about having foodies slobber over you as a promoter of the farm-to-table movement—excuse me, the farm-to-fork movement. Or is it plough-to-plate, cow-to-kitchen, barn-to-bistro, or mulch-to-meal? I can’t keep track of your terminology anymore, can you? Bottom line: There’s only one movement you promote, and it’s your own.

  You’re a fraud—100 percent con artist. You wouldn’t know authenticity if it hit you over the head with one of your overpriced cast iron skillets. You have the image of this do-gooder who’s all about the land and the farmer and the planet, when in fact you have no conscience, no remorse for your actions. Do you know how much those actions enrage me? Enrage me, as in pure, unprocessed, non-genetically modified rage. If you don’t get that, you will—as soon as it sinks in that your miserable life is nearly over. When that happens, your instinct will be to use this letter to protect yourself, but you won’t show it to anybody—not the police, not even the little toads who work for you, because you have too many secrets of your own and can’t risk the exposure. Pretty interesting predicament you’re in, wouldn’t you say?

  I’m sorry about having to kill you on Saturday at the Bounty Fest thing. Not because you deserve to live—we’re all better off with you dead, believe me—but because killing isn’t something I do on a regular basis, and I really don’t want to get caught. There’s always the chance that some unlucky bastards could show up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I’d have to take them out too. Still, while I’d rather not commit multiple murders, killing you will be so satisfying after what you did that I’ll just have to shrug off potential collateral damage. Besides, any idiots who fall for your Cultivate Our Bounty bullshit deserve whatever they get.

  The fingers sagged over the keys, depleted after their flurry of activity, but eventually directed the cursor to the navigation bar, clicked “file,” then “print.” Seconds later, the Dear Pudding missive materialized on plain white paper, ready to be sent to its recipient or, perhaps, delivered in person.

  Day One:

  Monday, July 15

  1

  “Welcome. Welcome,” said the woman who was standing in the center of the room. Fifty-something years old, she had a weathered but pleasant-looking face and wore a Whitley-logoed T-shirt with a pair of blue jeans. Her gray hair was fashioned into two long, age-inappropriate braids. If she’d had a beard and mustache, she would have been the spitting image of Willie Nelson. “I’m Rebecca Kissel, Whitley’s executive director. I’m so pleased that you’ve chosen us for your agritourism experience and are here at our Welcome Happy Hour. We’ve got an exciting week planned for you, and the weather is supposed to cooperate, so I know it’ll be fun as well as educational. You’ll enjoy meeting our in-house staff as well as your fellow agritourists, but the highlight will be your interactions with the renowned farm-to-table master we’ve snagged for you: Chef Jason Hill, who personifies clean, sustainable food that’s as beautiful to look at as it is to eat. He’ll be your instructor this week as our artisan in residence and will preside over our Saturday Bounty Fest finale to which we invite our non-Cultivate-Our-Bounty guests as well as members of the community.”

  She nodded at a long table set up across Whitley’s Harvest Room, a serene space that overlooked infinite pastures. It was painted in the palest yellow and decorated in a neutral palette of bleached oak flooring and oversized white-slipcovered chairs. There were also strategically placed white poufs—cubes that doubled as ottomans on top of which rested reading materials about the property’s rich agricultural history.

  “Before you leave tonight,” she continued, “please stop by the hospitality table and pick up your personal earth-friendly, 100 percent recycled cotton Whitley tote bag. There’s one for each of our agritourists as well as one for Chef Hill—you’ll see your nametag pinned to your bag—and it contains maps of the property, a biography of Chef Hill, his recipes that you’ll be preparing, a copy of his latest cookbook, the schedule of events, and lots more. The tote bags are handy because you can repurpose them for the beach, for work, for groceries, for gardening, whatever you like.” She beamed, as if she were about to announce a cure for cancer. “You’ll really appreciate the bags after you’ve cooked with us this week. Just think how much fun it’ll be to bring your homemade fruit preserves, pickled vegetables, and raw nut balls to your friends and neighbors!”

  “Speaking of nut balls, whose idea was this trip anyway?” I said to my best pals, Jackie Gault and Pat Kovecky, as we huddled together in a room full of strangers at the start of our week’s vacation. Well, more precisely it was a “haycation” because we were staying on a farm.

  No, we weren’t camping out in some broken-down barn. Please. I’m a person who has standing appointments for twice-weekly blowouts. We’d booked the Cultivate Our Bounty package at Whitley Farm, a Relais & Chateaux resort in Litchfield, Connecticut. It boasted a restaurant headed by a James Beard Award nominee and guest cottages outfitted with four-poster king-size beds swathed in Frette linens and layers of down, and we were there to learn where our food comes from and take culinary classes so we’d be able to cook the stuff. We would be milking a cow and making cheese from that milk; selecting a grass-fed, pasture-raised chicken and then roasting it with herbs we picked in the garden; foraging among the weeds for elderberries, milkweed, and other oddities of nature and then turning them into edible menu items. From Whitley’s brochure: “Our goal is to increase understanding and appreciation of the land and the food it provides by giving our agritourists the opportunity to cultivate the bounty that sustains us while experiencing true farm-to-table cooking.”

  “It was my idea,” said Jackie in her low, husky voice. “I thought the Three Blonde Mice deserved a week that didn’t involve a hit man and a wacko ex-husband.” She knocked back the last of her wine and heaved a grateful sigh, as if she’d been waiting all day for that glass. She preferred hardcore alcohol like bourbon and Scotch but would drink anything you put in front of her—too much of it lately, if you asked me. As for her “Three Blonde Mice” bit, it was the nursery rhyme nickname I’d given the three of us when we met seven years ago, and not because we were mousy. My hair was shoulder length and highlighted to a near platinum blonde; Jackie’s was cut short and utilitarian like a punk boy’s, spiky and strawberry; Pat’s was a maze of tight frizzy curls—the c
olor of oatmeal with glints of gray.

  “I think it’ll be enlightening,” said Pat, after a decorous sip of her wine. She held her glass with her pinky extended like someone drinking tea out of one of those itsy bitsy china cups. “A nice change from last year’s trip, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m counting on it,” said Jackie.

  We took vacations together every year, and the last one was a disaster: a seven-day cruise to the Caribbean on an enormous floating hotel called the Princess Charming, during which Jackie’s ex-husband Peter had hired one of the other passengers to kill her on the ship. Yes, kill her. (The would-be hit man was in the dining room with us every night. At the 6:30 early-bird seating, if you can believe it.) On top of that, she and Peter had been partners in J&P Nursery, a landscaping and gardening center in Bedford, a New York suburb frequently referred to as one of the most posh hamlets in America. The nursery serviced the fifty-acre estates of Wall Street hedge fund managers who viewed themselves as country gentlemen and therefore bought a lot of topiary. But when Peter turned out to be a crook, a cad, and a creep, and was carted off to the big house, the business became Jackie’s responsibility.

  Pat gave Jackie’s arm an affectionate squeeze. “We won’t let anything or anyone upset the apple tart this week, don’t you worry.”

  “Apple cart, Pat.” I always tried to restrain myself from correcting her, but, despite her privileged upbringing and Ivy League education, she was hopelessly susceptible to malapropisms and often spoke in sentences you’d expect to hear from a foreign exchange student. “I’m sure apple tarts will figure into our week here though.”