by Jane Heller
“Who’s playing?” I asked Ray. “Is it your Gators, honey?”
“No.” He smiled tolerantly. “Florida’s a college team. The pros are the ones that play on Thanksgiving Day. This is the Dolphins-Patriots game.”
Just then, Doug bounced into the room, picked up the remote control from the coffee table, and started channel surfing.
“Hey!” said Ray, looking irritated. “We’re watching the game.”
Doug winked at me. “My brother and his football.”
“‘My brother’ nothing. I’m not the only one who’s into it.” Ray glanced at the others, but they were remaining neutral. “We all want to see the game, Doug.”
Doug ignored Ray and kept hitting the clicker, eventually landing on the Golf Channel, where a tournament was in progress.
I felt hungry, suddenly. I wondered how the turkey was coming along.
The instant that Doug placed the remote control down on the coffee table, Ray swiped it and put the football game back on.
Doug smirked. “In case you’re not aware of it, bro, golf is the fastest-growing sport in the country. You ought to pick up a club and learn how to play, do some networking. Be good for your career.”
As Ray’s jaw clenched, I fantasized about the rest of the meal. Was Sharon going with a basic bread stuffing for the turkey or something a bit showier? Chestnut, for instance? Or polenta?
“My career’s fine,” Ray said tightly. “I’m doing exactly what I want to do, not what my father told me I should do.”
“Ouch,” Doug said mockingly. “I guess that was supposed to be a putdown. Well, excuse me if I don’t think it’s a sin to follow in Dad’s footsteps. I’m proud I’m a moneymaker like he was. I don’t have to stay awake at night wondering how I’m going to pay my bills.”
“Neither do I,” said Ray. “Because I don’t live beyond my means.”
Perhaps Sharon is putting garlic in the mashed potatoes this year, I thought. Or maybe she’s doing her sweet potato puree.
“Listen, Ray boy,” said Doug, his tone laden with condescension. “You’re embarrassing yourself in front of all these nice people.”
“Really?” Ray replied, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “My impression is that all these nice people are wishing you’d take a hike and let us watch the game in peace.”
The truth was, all the nice people were talking among themselves and completely oblivious to the tiff and the game. All but me, of course. I knew what was coming. I dreaded what was coming. After I had finally made up with Sharon, after she and I had finally settled our differences, after we had finally become the loving sisters our mother had implored us to become, our men were about to allow their own sibling rivalry to boil over. The irony was breathtaking.
“You want me to leave, is that it?” said Doug.
“If you put that lame golf tournament on again, I’ll leave,” said Ray.
They were both on their feet by this point, fulminating over which of them would be the one to walk out, when Sharon appeared.
“Dinner is served,” she trilled.
And a Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.
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
Website
Mainly Jane blog
Yankees blog
Facebook
Twitter
More from Jane Heller
Romance and murder are on the menu in USA Today bestselling author Jane Heller’s wild comic novel Three Blonde Mice. 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 color 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.”
I polished off my glass of Whitley Farm’s Merlot-Petit Syrah. It was pretty decent for a blend produced in Connecticut, which was not, after all, California. In California, we’d be blathering about how a wine’s structure, balance, and aroma were a religious experience. Not that I was a wine connoisseur. I drank red mostly because it was packed with life-saving antioxidants, allegedly. Women my age—I’m on the diminished-estrogen-level side of forty-five and a borderline hypochondriac—need all the help we can get.
“Now that you’re all sufficiently lubricated, are you ready for our Whitley Mystery Challenge?” asked Rebecca, our fearless leader, as servers clad in yellow aprons that matched the walls stood at attention over by the table where our tote bags awaited us.
“Mystery Challenge?” I rolled my eyes. “I hate mysteries. They’re in the same category as surprises, and you know how I feel about those.”
“Elaine,” Jackie groaned. “Try to just go with the flow for a change.”
“Your servers are going to blindfold you,” Rebecca explained, “and then you’ll taste several of Chef Hill’s offerings that showcase Whitley’s commitment to sustainable food systems. You’ll smell and touch each bite, savor it, and explore the culinary experience. Afterwards, you’ll remove your blindfolds, and we’ll discuss what you were eating, and you can assess your palate’s ability to identify flavor profiles. This is how you’ll begin to cultivate you
r bounty and learn where it comes from.”
“Give me a break. Do we really need to know where our bounty comes from?” I said. “Personally, I think people who obsess about whether their salmon is sockeye or chinook are schnooks. It’s a piece of fish, not a priceless diamond, and all it does is swim through my intestinal tract and land in my toilet bowl. And foraging? Seriously? What if we get Lyme disease from traipsing through the woods, not to mention poison ivy? Oh, and The Huffington Post had an article the other day about a man who drank raw milk from a farm like Whitley and came down with Guillain-Barré syndrome.”
“Elaine.” Jackie groaned again, while Pat giggled.
Okay, I admit I was risk-averse and paranoid, anticipating danger, disaster, and death when no possibility of these things existed. Such traits could be amusing if you were a friend and irritating if you weren’t.
“You’ll end up liking this trip,” said Jackie, as a rosy-cheeked male server with a mullet headed our way carrying something that wasn’t food. “You’re just being your usual neurotic self.”
She was probably right. She and Pat knew me better than almost anyone. We’d met at a New York courthouse the day we’d all shown up to divorce our worthless spouses. Twenty minutes after our chance encounter in that musty, charmless lobby, we’d moved from consoling each other about our exes to celebrating our shared courage in shedding them, and then we’d ditched our lawyers and gone out for lunch—a long lunch involving a piano player who sang “Hey Jude” and kept extorting everybody to join in, which nobody did. Many more get-togethers followed, and the Three Blonde Mice became as close as sisters. It didn’t matter that we were very different in terms of personality and background. We genuinely cared about the friendship, and nurtured it.