Summary

It's time for a savory soirée--but something sinister is stewing--in Raquel V. Reyes's second delightful Caribbean Kitchen mystery, perfectly delicious for fans of Mia P. Manansala.

Fall festivities are underway in Coral Shores, Miami. Cuban-American cooking show star Miriam Quiñones-Smith wakes up to find a corpse in her front yard. The body by the fake tombstone is the woman that was kicked out of the school's Fall Festival the day before.

Miriam's luck does not improve. Her passive-aggressive mother-in-law puts her in charge of the Women's Club annual gala. But this year, it's not canapes and waltzes. Miriam and her girlfriends-squad opt for fun and flavor. They want to spice it up with Caribbean food trucks and a calypso band. While making plans at the country club, they hear a volatile argument between the new head chef and the club's manager. Not long after, the chef swan dives to his death at the bottom of the grand staircase.

Was it an accident? Or was it Beverly, the sous chef, who is furious after being passed over for the job? Or maybe it was his ex-girlfriend, Anastasia?

Add two possible poisonings to the mix and Miriam is worried the food truck fun is going to be a major crash. As the clock ticks down and the body count goes up, Miriam's life is put in jeopardy. Will she connect the dots or die in the deep freeze? Foodies and mystery lovers alike will savor the denouement as the truth is laid bare in this simmering stew of rage, retribution, and murder.

Excerpt

Halloween was a week away, and we didn’t have a single decoration up. The living room was littered with shopping bags, extension cords, four-foot-tall plastic jack-o’-lanterns, and one handsome Frankenstein.

“Babe, we’re going to need a ladder and a staple gun,” Frankenstein said.

“Can you borrow one from a neighbor?” I asked as I squeezed my foot into a shoe that had fit perfectly a few weeks ago but was now tight. My costume, like my husband’s, was a modification of something I already had. I’d taken a white apron and smeared it with beet juice. In red marker, I’d written Chef Vampira on a paper toque, the tall hat fancy chefs wore. I was not a trained chef, but I had reached local stardom with my cooking shows, Cocina Caribeña and Abuela Approved.

“Do I look undead enough? Do I need more white makeup?” I asked.

“No, but I need more spirit gum. This bolt keeps falling off.” Robert held the plastic hexagon out to me. For his costume, he’d taken one of his old, heavy New York suits and cut it to make him look like he was too tall and brawny for it. The cuffs were cut into a jagged hem, and the jacket’s back seam was unstitched halfway. He’d used a hair product I’d found at the store called Moco de Gorila, gorilla snot, to slick his dark-brown hair into a hard shell. Gross name, but boy, did the stuff work. The green makeup and plastic bolts were from a kit. I knew he wouldn’t need the wool suit in Miami, but it still pained me a little to see it in shreds.

We’d moved to a three-bedroom, two-bath house with a yard in Coral Shores, a village within Miami, from a tiny NYC apartment about three months ago. That was partially the reason there were no lawn decorations up. I’d had to buy them since we’d never had a yard or storage space for them before. The other reason was that it had been a whirlwind since I’d set foot back in my hometown of Miami. My best friend, Alma, had pushed me into an unexpected job that I now loved. It wasn’t the food anthropology professorship I’d studied years for, but something slightly adjacent to it, at least. I did try to squeeze historical facts and tidbits about cultural crossroads into the show whenever possible. The show filmed once a week, and episode lucky thirteen was set to tape Monday. I planned to make joumou, Haiti’s much-loved pumpkin soup, as a nod to the Halloween theme.

In addition to our new house and my new job, I’d gotten our son Manny settled into preschool. We’d bought real, grown-up, quality furniture and had a cement patio poured. Oh, and I’d helped solve a murder.

“Mami. ¿Dónde está Camo?” Manny asked.

“No sé, mi príncipe,” I replied.

“Little man, I heard some rustling over there.” Robert pointed to a pile of bags.

Manny, who had been in his police officer costume since he had sprung out of bed that morning, excited for the Fall Festival, called for his calico kitten. The festival put on by Agape Montessori, his new school, was a much-loved village event open to the public. Or so I was told when the school’s director talked me into having a booth. UnMundo, the Spanish language network that I worked for, had agreed to sponsor the booth and provide three hundred treat bags for the kids. Robert had also volunteered to staff a stall. His was sponsored by his environmental engineering consultant firm and was about the endangered Florida Atala butterfly. His educational non-candy giveaway goodies—a butterfly eraser and a pencil set plus butterfly temporary tattoos—were sitting on the dining room table neatly packaged in recycled paper bags, a project that had taken the two of us most of the night.

“Ponte las pilas,” I said, looking at the time. Even though Robert didn’t speak Spanish, he’d picked up a good bit of it being married to me and knew the phrase meant to get energized. “We need to get going, or we’ll be late. I’m sure there’s setup to do before the gates open at ten.”

“Mami. ¿Puedo llevar a Camo con nosotros?” Manny asked. He was cradling the young kitten on its back, and the multicolored fluff ball had a paw on his cheek. I snapped a picture with my phone. Super sweet. The two were in love with each other. That was another surprise the whirlwind of the last three months had blown into our lives. We hadn’t planned on having a pet, but Stormy Weatherman, the mother of the lady whose murder I’d solved, had shown up at our doorstep with the kitten last week. Manny had named the cat Camo, an odd name despite the cat’s camouflage-like patterning. My son’s favorite relative, Officer Gordon Smith, is to blame. The day Stormy came by, we were having a housewarming party to inaugurate our new patio, and Gordon happened to be wearing camo cargos. Gordon was also the reason for Manny’s costume choice. “No, mi amor,” I answered. No, he could not take his pet to the fair. I encouraged him to put the kitten in his room and motioned for Robert to get the boxes of treat bags.

“Okay, got the first load.” Robert walked toward the door. “Don’t you have something on the stove?” he asked, glancing back to the kitchen.

“Huh?”

“That big pot of water. Did you start cooking something this morning?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I went to check. The cassava I’d peeled and left to soak in the large cast aluminum pot was on the eye. “Oh. No, that’s not on. It’s just soaking.” I dumped the milky water into the sink and refilled it. I loved the root vegetable, but it took planning to prepare. It required a day—two was better—to leach the toxins from the tubers to make it safe to eat.

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About the Author

Raquel's Cuban-American heritage, Miami, and Spanglish feature prominently in her work. Mango, Mambo, and Murder, the first in the Caribbean Kitchen Mystery series, won a LEFTY for Best Humorous Mystery. The New York Times Book Review wrote, “it executes its mission—with panache.”