Bake Offed

Book 8: Five-Ingredient Mystery

by Maya Corrigan

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Culinary Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

Managing a fitness club café and collaborating on recipes with her grandfather are Val Deniston’s usual specialties, only she’s about to set sail into another murder case—this time at a mystery lovers convention!

When the Deadly Desserts bake-off lives up to its name, Val and Granddad turn up the heat on a killer . . .
 
The Maryland Mystery Fan Fest sounds like exactly the fun getaway cafe manager Val Deniston and her grandfather could use. Granddad will even compete in a dessert competition in which contestants assume the roles of cooks to famous fictional sleuths. Playing Nero Wolfe’s gourmet cook Fritz is an exciting challenge for Granddad. A restaurant manager is playing Lord Peter Wimsey’s valet and cook Bunter. But Granddad is steamed to learn who will be playing Sherlock Holmes’s landlady, Mrs. Hudson—his nemesis Cynthia Sweet, who he believes ripped off his five-ingredient theme from his column “Codger Cook” to use in her own recipe column.
 
Apparently, he isn’t the only one who has a beef with his not-so-sweet competitor. When she’s found dead in her room with the teakettle whistling, it’s up to Val and her grandfather to sort through the festival goers to find out who was most definitely not a fan of Cynthia Sweet . . .
 
Includes delicious five-ingredient recipes!

PRAISE FOR CRYPT SUZETTE

“Grandad is a hoot and his jobs as a food reviewer and part-time detective provide endless possibilities for fun and murder . . . Charming.”
—Kirkus Reviews
 

Release date: November 29, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Val Deniston looked forward to a weekend of murder for pleasure. With discussions, contests, and games centered on crime and detection, the Maryland Mystery Fan Fest promised to be more fun than stumbling on real bodies. Val had done that all too often.

Her friend Bethany O’Shay, an avid mystery reader, had organized the weekend and coaxed Val and her grandfather into helping her. Val would monitor discussion panels and run the mystery trivia contest. Granddad would compete in the Deadly Desserts bake-off and serve as the charity auctioneer. Val printed a copy of the schedule from the fest’s website and joined Granddad in the sitting room of the Victorian house they shared.

Lounging in his recliner near the sofa, Granddad was flipping through a thin paperback with yellowed pages to prepare for the bake-off. Each contestant had to assume the role of a famous detective’s cook and make a dessert the sleuth might have eaten. He’d been assigned to play Fritz, chef to Rex Stout’s food-obsessed detective Nero Wolfe. For the last week, Granddad had devoured Stout’s mysteries from the 1930s and the following decades.

He slammed his book shut. “The bake-off organizer told Bethany I’d have no trouble finding a recipe, but the books only have fancy dishes with scads of ingredients. Nero Wolfe eats weird stuff like starlings, and it takes twenty of them to make a meal. I’ve gone through all his books I could scare up in Bayport. Not a single dessert in any of them.”

Val perched on the sofa. “Dorothy could put in a rush order for more books.” The new bookshop owner would go out of her way to help Granddad, her neighbor when she was growing up here. “How many Nero Wolfe books are there?”

“Almost fifty. Any dessert in them would probably have twenty ingredients, like the other stuff Wolfe eats.” Granddad ripped off his bifocals, causing the tufts of white curls that fringed his balding head to stick out sideways. “How am I supposed to pretend to be a gourmet cook?”

Val didn’t remind him he had extensive experience faking culinary expertise. Two years ago he could do little more than boil an egg when he wangled a job as a recipe columnist, calling himself the Codger Cook. “It’s only for an evening. Wing it.”

“You think I can get away with making one of my five-ingredient desserts?”

Bending the rules was nothing new for Granddad. “You can get away with it, but you won’t win with it. The organizer who assigned you to play Nero Wolfe’s chef might have a dessert in mind. I’ll ask Bethany for the organizer’s contact info while you look at the fest schedule.”

She gave him the printout and called her friend, interrupting Bethany’s tizzy over finding a weekend sitter for her spaniel, Muffin. If the fest hotel had allowed dogs, Muffin would have been among the attendees. After listening to Bethany’s woes, Val asked her for the bake-off organizer’s contact information. Bethany texted it to her.

“Here’s the name, e-mail address, and phone number.” Val showed Granddad her phone. “Do you want me to write this down or text it to you?”

He adjusted his bifocals. As he peered at her phone, his bushy white eyebrows rose halfway to what would have been his hairline if he hadn’t lost most of his hair. “Cynthia Sweet organized this! I wouldn’t ask her for advice. She ripped off my five-ingredient theme for her articles in the Baltimore newspaper. Her column, ‘Granny Sweet’s Pantry,’ used to focus on cakes until she saw how popular my idea was and switched gears.”

Val could have pointed out that several five-ingredient cookbooks had been published before he won the competition for the Treadwell Times recipe columnist. She could have also reminded him that he’d used her recipes, minus a few ingredients, to make his reputation as the local cooking guru. She opted instead to make sure he stood by his commitment. “I hope you won’t pull out of the bake-off after all the times Bethany went along with your sleuthing schemes.”

“Nah. Though Cynthia Sweet set me up for failure, I’m looking forward to a weekend away. Folks from Baltimore, DC, and Northern Virginia will go to the fest. I can give out my business cards and offer my services beyond Maryland’s Eastern Shore.”

When he’d handed out business cards around Halloween, he’d touted himself as a ghost buster. Val was almost afraid to ask. “What kind of services?”

“With my private investigator course and experience solving murders, I can be a consultant to mystery authors.”

“First, you’ll need to make a good impression. You only have a few days to decide on a dessert, find and test recipes, and practice your bake-off presentation.”

He stared across the room at the bookshelves surrounding the fireplace. “I just remembered something. Your grandmother once made a cake from some Nero Wolfe thing she inherited from her favorite aunt. It’s probably in the attic.” He levered himself out of the chair and headed toward the stairs.

“Good luck on the hunt.” The attic of the century-old house was crammed with junk and possibly a rare hidden treasure. When Val moved in two years ago, she’d envisioned sorting through all of it, but managing the athletic club café and moonlighting as a caterer had kept her too busy to tackle the daunting task.

She surveyed the books on the coffee table—crime novels her friend Bethany had given her, written by authors who’d be at the fest.

Val passed over the book with an exploding car on the cover and one with a gun-toting woman silhouetted in a dark alley. The third book, with a sepia-toned image of a woman in old-fashioned clothes on a bicycle, piqued her interest. The cover text described the main character as a woman who encounters a murder while cycling across the country in the 1890s. Val started reading and had got as far as the third chapter when the doorbell rang.

She went into the hall, peered through the sidelight, and was surprised to see Bram Muir on the porch. He waved to her through the sidelight, a big smile on his face and a lock of brown hair falling over his forehead.

She flung the door open and gave him a long, welcoming kiss. “I didn’t expect you, but I’m glad you’re here. Did you eat yet? We did, but I could whip up some leftovers for you.”

“I ate on the fly. I wish I could stay, but I have to get back to the bookshop.”

“Your mom’s doing okay, I hope.” When Dorothy broke her ankle on an icy sidewalk and couldn’t work her usual long hours, mother and son had switched roles. Six weeks later, he still ran the shop with help from her, not vice versa. That meant Val didn’t see quite as much of him as she had in his first three months in Bayport. And they’d had to postpone the Valentine’s Day trip to Paris he’d planned for them.

“Mom’s therapy is going well, but her ankle still aches, especially toward the end of the day.” Bram took off his jacket and hung it over the newel post. “I’m here because your grandfather called and asked me to give him a hand moving something heavy. He didn’t want you to hurt yourself trying.”

Though she was on the small side at five foot three and slim, Val kept in good shape bicycling and playing tennis, but Bram’s muscular build made him a far better mover. “You two will need a foreman—I mean, a forewoman—to oversee this operation.”

“Lead the way. I’ve never been to the attic.”

As they climbed to the second floor and up the narrow stairs to the dim and cobwebbed attic, she described Granddad’s role in the fest bake-off.

The trunk he wanted to explore stood behind a stack of footlockers. Bram moved them to make a path. He had to use brute force to loosen the hasp and raise the lid of the old trunk.

Granddad rummaged in it for a minute and then shouted, “I’ve found it! I’ve found it!”

Bram’s eyes widened. “Those were the first words Sherlock Holmes spoke. He was holding up a test tube when he said them.”

Val smiled. A tech entrepreneur, Bram was also a Sherlock enthusiast and often brought his idol into the conversation. She couldn’t see what Granddad had found because he was still bending over the trunk, but she was sure it wasn’t a test tube. “Is it a Nero Wolfe book?”

Granddad straightened up and brandished his discovery. “That’s what it looks like, but it’s not.”

Even in the dim light, Val could make out the image on the dust jacket and the words Too Many Cooks in big white letters and By Rex Stout in smaller black type. “So it’s a Rex Stout book with a different detective than Nero Wolfe?”

“Nope.” Granddad moved to stand under the single bulb that hung from the ceiling. He opened the cover of Too Many Cooks to reveal the title page, but there were no bound pages beyond it. Instead, it was a collection of loose cards. “It’s a book-shaped box with recipe cards. I need better light to study the recipes.”

“Let me see them.” Val took the cards he held out and flipped through the first few. “Nero Wolfe’s Baked Oysters in the Shell. Nero Wolfe’s Terrapin Maryland. Nero Wolfe’s Sponge Cake.” She stared in amazement. “Eggs. Sugar. Lemon. Flour. Salt. Five ingredients, Granddad! You can bake it at the fest.”

He grinned. “That’ll show Cynthia Sweet she can’t get the better of me!” He put the recipe cards back in the box. “There’s gotta be a story behind this fake book. I’m gonna look it up online.”

Back on the first floor, he thanked Bram for his help, went into the study, and sat down in front of the computer.

Bram took his jacket from the banister and put it on. “I may be able to squeeze out some free time on Sunday. The teenager who’s working at the shop can put in more hours this weekend. Do you want to get together on Sunday, or will you be busy the whole weekend?”

“I promised Bethany I’d stay until after the gala luncheon on Sunday. Unless there’s a massive traffic jam, I should be back no later than five.”

He looked disappointed that she couldn’t spare more time. “Let’s plan on having dinner together. You’re a good friend to give up your days off to help her.”

“I’m happy to go for other reasons. I’ve never been to a gathering of writers and readers before, and I’ll get out of Bayport for the first time since moving in with Granddad.” Though Val loved the town where she’d settled after leaving her job in Manhattan, she’d welcome a change of scenery, the foothills of the Appalachians instead of the coastal plain.

Bram put his arms around her and held her close. “I’m sorry we couldn’t make that trip to Paris on your Valentine’s Day birthday.”

“I’m sorry too, but taking care of your mother was what you had to do.”

“We’ll reschedule the trip as soon as she’s got her stamina back.”

“And Paris will be warmer than it would have been in February.” Val kissed him goodbye, closed the door after him, and went back to the book she’d started.

Twenty minutes later, Granddad interrupted her. “There’s good news and bad news.”

“Let’s get the bad over with.”

“I got an e-mail from the publisher about my cookbook proposal. The editor liked it, but they’d just made an offer to another writer with a similar concept.” His brows knit together and his eyes narrowed. “I’ll bet Cynthia Sweet is that other person and she submitted an idea for a five-ingredient cookbook too.”

Val tried to put a positive spin on his bad news. “Saying that a book competes with another one already in the works is a gentle way for a publisher to reject a proposal.”

“You mean my book’s no good, and they’re lying so they don’t hurt my feelings?”

“They’re not lying. You’re interpreting a similar concept to mean five-ingredient recipes. The publisher requested proposals for cookbooks focused on the food of the Chesapeake Bay area. That’s probably what they mean by a similar concept.”

“Maybe you’re right. You used to work for a cookbook publisher, so you know how they operate.”

“I do. Unless you’re a famous chef, it’s hard to get a cookbook published because of the competition and even harder to make any money on it.” This wasn’t the first time she’d made that point. No harm in repeating it. “So much for your bad news. What’s the good news?”

He held up his attic treasure. “This recipe box is worth a pretty penny. It comes from a publicity tour Rex Stout did when Too Many Cooks was serialized in a magazine in 1938. The publisher put on a lunch in a dozen cities. Each guest got one of these boxes as a souvenir. Inside is a menu card, a printed note from Rex Stout, and thirty-four cards with recipes for dishes mentioned in the book.”

In her former life as a cookbook publicist, Val had heard of lavish publicity tours for celebrity chefs’ cookbooks, but none could top that. “Did Grandma’s aunt go to that lunch?”

“Nah. It was for folks in the business of promoting books. Philadelphia was one of the stops on the book tour, and that’s where she lived. She mighta got the box at an estate sale or an antique shop or even from a neighbor. It’s a collector’s item now.”

Worth a pretty penny, whatever that meant to Granddad. “How much would someone pay for that recipe box?”

“There’s one on eBay with a dust jacket more beat up than this one. It’s listed for two thousand dollars. A rare book dealer is selling one in better condition for almost twice as much.”

“Wow.” Val made up her mind to check the attic soon for other treasures amid the junk.

He held up the box. “This will make a good story to tell at the bake-off when I’m acting as Nero Wolfe’s chef.”

She was tempted to suggest he thank Cynthia Sweet for assigning him that role, but bringing up his nemesis might dampen his good spirits.

The fest hotel in Frederick County, Maryland, was an L-shaped building with an older red brick side dwarfed by a modern addition. Val and Granddad rolled their suitcases into the lobby that connected the two wings at four on Friday afternoon. They’d left the ingredients and pans for Granddad’s dessert in the car because the bake-off would be held in a different location.

Granddad looked longingly at the small bar in the far corner of the lobby. “I could use a beer after two hours in the car.”

“Let’s get our room keys first. The check-in line is short now, but it may get longer.” Val started toward the reception desk.

A sixty-something woman with a narrow face and long chin intercepted them. Her bottle-blond hair was tied with a pink velvet bow at the nape of her neck. “You must be Don Myer, the Codger Cook, and his granddaughter, Val. Bethany told me to be on the lookout for you two. I’m thrilled to meet you. I’m Cynthia Sweet.”

From what Granddad had said, Val had expected the woman to resemble the evil Cruella de Vil. But no, Cynthia spoke with a honeyed voice and gave off a floral scent. Her flared dress featured huge red roses on a baby-blue background. “Nice to meet you, Cynthia.”

“Hello.” Granddad’s voice was barely audible.

Cynthia reached into her rose-patterned quilted tote bag, pulled out a key card, and extended it to Val. “Bethany asked me to give you the key card for the room you’re sharing with her. She went to the community center to make sure everything’s ready for the bake-off.”

“Thank you.” Val put the card in her jacket pocket. “What’s the room number?”

“I’m in 310, and it’s the door after mine. The community center’s kitchen will be available from five o’clock on for us to prepare our desserts.”

Granddad peered with narrowed eyes at Cynthia. “For us to prepare our desserts? You’re the organizer and a contestant?”

“That’s right. I’m going to bake as Mrs. Hudson—Sherlock Holmes’s landlady. The third contestant is Dave Proctor. He’ll be playing Bunter, Lord Peter Wimsey’s valet and cook. Dave went to the Culinary Institute, but he’s never cooked professionally.”

“What’s he do for a living?” Granddad said.

“Restaurant management.” Cynthia turned to Val. “You’re not allowed in the kitchen. Only contestants.”

Val guessed that Bethany had mentioned Val was a caterer and Cynthia didn’t want a pro helping Granddad with his dessert. “I appreciate your holding on to the key card for me.”

“I’m glad you came early enough so I can make a cup of tea before the bake-off. Don’t forget to stop for your fest badges in the foyer of the Poe wing.” Cynthia pointed to the corridor to the left of the reception desk. “I’m going to freshen up. Bye now.” She crossed the lobby to the elevators.

Val said, “Cynthia Sweet doesn’t seem as bad as you made her out to be.”

Granddad got in line for room registration. “Synthetic Sweet should be her name. She’s like a sugar substitute that leaves a bad aftertaste. It’s unfair to organize the bake-off and then compete in it. She probably asked her best pal to judge the contest.”

“No. Bethany picked the judges from the fest volunteers, and the audience will also get to vote. I think you’re prejudiced against Cynthia.”

Before he could reply, the desk clerk beckoned him. Granddad requested and received a room on the third floor, where Val and Bethany’s room was. Once he had his key card, he and Val went into the Poe wing. A gray-haired man at the fest table directed them to check in with the younger woman next to him for their badges.

They got in line behind a slim, sandy-haired man. When he advanced to the table, he gave his name as Dave Proctor.

Val tugged Granddad’s sleeve and whispered, “The man in front of us is the third contestant in the bake-off.”

“I’ll introduce myself to him if I get the chance.”

The woman at the fest table handed Dave an envelope and muttered something to him with her head down.

When he stepped to the side, Val gave her name to the woman, expecting a friendly welcome to the festival. Instead, all she saw was the brim and the crown of a purple hat with Trisha embroidered on it. Granddad moved over to talk to Dave while the woman thumbed through a long box of envelopes.

Without looking up, she thrust an envelope toward Val. “Here’s your packet. In it you’ll find your name tag and tickets for the Deadly Desserts bake-off tonight, tomorrow’s box lunch and evening reception, and Sunday’s gala luncheon. You don’t need tickets for the movies at nine each night—Murder on the Orient Express tonight and Clue tomorrow night.”

“Thank you. Could I pick up my grandfather’s packet too?” Val pointed to him. “He’s over there. His name is Don Myer.”

Trisha raised her head and turned to look at Granddad through glasses that dwarfed her face. The name tag pinned to her gray sweatshirt identified her as Trisha Turbek. She wore her long brown hair pulled through the ponytail hole of her baseball cap, like Val’s high school friends used to do, but Trisha had to be twice the age of a high schooler.

She hunched over the box again and drew out a second envelope. “You’ll get a detailed schedule with the room locations and a fest tote from Perry Mason.” She pointed to the man with thick gray hair at the table with her.

“Not Mason, Macon.” He held up his name tag. “Perry Macon.”

Trisha didn’t bother looking at it. “Sorry. My grandmother watches Perry Mason reruns, so that’s what’s in my brain.”

Standing nearby with Dave, Granddad glanced at the man at the fest table. “You mean . . .