After her music career crashes and burns spectacularly, Juliet Langley is forced to turn to the only other business she knows: food service. Unfortunately, bad luck strikes yet again when her two-timing fiancé robs her blind and runs off with her best waitress. Flushing what’s left of her beloved café down the toilet with her failed engagement, Juliet packs up and moves back to her college stomping grounds in Nashville to manage an old friend’s coffeehouse. At first glance, it seems as though nothing’s changed at Java Jive. What could possibly go wrong? Only that the place is hemorrhaging money, the staff is in open revolt, and Juliet finds one unlucky employee dead in the dumpster out back before her first day is even over.
The corpse just so happens to belong to the cook who’d locked horns with Juliet over the finer points of the health code. Unimpressed with her management style, the other disgruntled employees are only too eager to spill the beans about her fiery temper to the detective on the case. Add to the mix a hunky stranger who’s asking way too many questions, and suddenly Juliet finds herself in some very hot water. If she can’t simmer down and sleuth her way to the real killer, she’s going to get burned.
Death Before Decaf
PROLOGUE
I hate college kids. From their unwashed righteousness to their impossibly naïve view of the “real world”, they really piss me off. So, on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, what did I do? I went and moved into a craphole apartment building full of the little buggers. Oh, and I took a job at a university-area coffeehouse, so that I could serve them, too. Brilliant idea. Truly brilliant.
Now why would I go and do a stupid thing like that, you ask? Necessity. I was broke. It was either move in with my parents (again), or accept a job from an old friend and strike out on my own, penniless. I would choose loneliness and poverty over suffocation and nagging any day. Not that my parents aren’t wonderful people, because they are. It’s just that I can’t stand living under the same roof with them.
So there I was, back in Nashville, in my old college stomping grounds. I have a degree in vocal performance from Belmont, but that doesn’t do a person with paralyzing, all-consuming stage fright much good. That was why I took the job at my friend Pete’s coffeehouse, because you can’t be a teacher or a lawyer or a rocket scientist with a vocal music degree. You can, however, be a damn good restaurant manager, which I am. Well, if you don’t count the time my dickhead fiancé stole all of the money from the café we owned together and left town with my best waitress.
Life has given me lemons. What’s a girl to do? I’m going to make some coffee.
About the Author
CAROLINE FARDIG is the USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR of the Java Jive Mysteries series and the Lizzie Hart Mysteries series. Fardig's Bad Medicine was named one of the "Best Books of 2015" by Suspense Magazine. She worked as a schoolteacher, church organist, insurance agent, funeral parlor associate, and stay-at-home mom before she realized that she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Born and raised in a small town in Indiana, Fardig still lives in that same town with an understanding husband, two sweet kids, two energetic dogs, and one malevolent cat.
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