Here Comes the Body

Book 1: Catering Hall Mystery

by Maria DiRico

Genres: Female Sleuths; Animal Cozy Mysteries; Culinary Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

After her philandering husband's boat went down, newly single Mia Carina went back to Astoria, the bustling Queens neighborhood of her youth. Living with her nonna and her oversized cat, Doorstop, she's got a whole new life—including some amateur sleuthing . . .

Mia is starting work at Belle View, her father's catering hall, a popular spot for weddings, office parties, and more—despite the planes that occasionally roar overhead on their way to LaGuardia and rattle the crystal chandelier. Soon she's planning a bachelor party for a less-than-gentlemanly groom. But it goes awry when the gigantic cake is wheeled in and a deadly surprise is revealed . . .

Since some of her family's associates are on the shady side, the NYPD wastes no time in casting suspicion on Mia's father. Now, Mia's going to have to use all her street smarts to keep him out of Rikers Island . . .

Release date: February 25, 2020

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 180

Sample

At 6:45 A.M., Mia Carina woke up to Frank Sinatra singing “New York, New York” from the alarm on her phone, a happy reminder that she was in Queens, not Florida, and no longer a “person of interest” in her adulterous husband’s disappearance.

Mia had only been back in Astoria a few days. She could have left the Sunshine State months earlier. But she’d chosen to hold her head high, despite the cloud over it, and retain her position as general manager for the Palm Beach branch of Korri Designs, a go-to destination for the uber-wealthy seeking ridiculously expensive leather goods. Luckily, a little notoriety had proved a good thing sales-wise. Between her status as a person of interest in a salacious murder investigation and the whispered rumor that her father was a well-known mafioso—which happened to be true—Mia sold enough overpriced accessories to pay for a first-class ticket out of town when she gave notice.

She yawned, stretched, and snuggled up to Doorstop, the sleek ginger Abyssinian cat sharing her pillow. Then she threw off the covers. Doorstop responded with an annoyed meow. “Sorry, bud,” the thirty-one-year-old-most-likely-a-widow said, grinning at the smoky blob of orange fur burying its head under the covers. “Mama’s got to get to work.”

Mia rolled off the blow-up mattress currently serving as her bed and scrambled to her feet. She noticed the birdcage on top of a still-to-be-emptied box and got a pang of sadness. Formerly the home of her pet parakeet, Pizzazz, the cage stood empty of its resident. As she was leaving her Palm Beach apartment, she had been jostled by a crowd of local reporters eager to make their bones by getting a departing comment from her. The cage door flew open and Pizzazz, confused and scared, flew off. Mia delayed her flight home and plastered the neighborhood with flyers promising a hefty reward for the bird’s return, but so far no one had reported a sighting.

She padded through the empty second floor of her grandmother’s two-family house into the bathroom for a shower, then pulled clothing out of her suitcase: a black pencil skirt and fitted jacket she paired with a silk turquoise top that brought out the blue in her eyes. Mia had learned from her boss at Korri that her crystalline orbs, wavy dark brunette hair, and pale skin made her a “Winter.” Cool, bright colors flattered Mia. She’d also learned never to dress better than the customers, something she kept in mind while putting together an outfit for her first day of work at Belle View Banquet Manor, a party venue surrendered to her father, Ravello Carina, by a gambler who couldn’t pay his debts.

Mia filled Doorstop’s food and water bowls, grabbed her purse, then headed downstairs, a pair of black high heels in one hand. Elisabetta Carina, Mia’s beloved grandmother, stood waiting in the home’s small vestibule. Mia kissed Elisabetta on both cheeks as Hero, her grandmother’s chubby terrier mix, barked protectively. “Hero, stai zitto,” Elisabetta scolded in her native tongue, which she still preferred to English despite decades in America. Hero responded with an annoyed grumble.

“At least he likes Doorstop. He’ll get used to me.” Mia bent down to pet the mutt, who gave her a haughty glance, then succumbed to the affection.

“I made you breakfast. Fried eggs and sausage,” Elisabetta said. The eighty-three-year-old was not one to let a clogged artery or two get in the way of her favorite fatty foods, much to her cardiologist’s chagrin.

“Grazie, but I don’t have time. I want to get to Belle View early. Suss out the place.”

“Va bene, I’ll put it in a container. You can have it tomorrow.” While the thought of day-old, reheated fried eggs might be anathema to the average human, Mia took it in stride. For the Carinas, wasting food was sacrilege.

Elisabetta zipped up the jacket of her velour track suit, her daily uniform. Today’s outfit was burgundy with navy trim. “I’m going on a power walk with the Army.”

Mia couldn’t help smiling. The “Army” was a posse of Italian and Greek grandmothers who’d lived on the block for fifty, sixty, even seventy years, and “power walk” was a euphemism for gossipy stroll.

“I’ll see if anyone’s giving away furniture,” Elisabetta continued as she did a few half-hearted stretches to ostensibly warm up. “Maybe someone’s decided to turn their second bedroom into a sewing room.” “Sewing room” was another neighborhood euphemism. It meant an ancient, dusty sewing machine squashed between boxes of half-broken Christmas ornaments and polyester clothes from the seventies that were “too nice to give away.”

“That would be great.”

Elisabetta hugged her granddaughter. “I’m so glad you’re back. Ti amo. I love you, bella bambina.”

“I love you too, Nonna. Ci vediamo stasera. See you tonight.”

Elisabetta left to meet up with her senior crew. Mia opened the Pick-You-Up rideshare app on her phone and tapped in a request, then put on her heels and stepped outside. Easter had just passed, but the tidy front yards of the brick two-family homes were still awash in pastel decorations and strings of lights shaped like rabbits, eggs, lambs, and chicks. No holiday went uncelebrated or undecorated on 46th Place. Competition to outspend and one-up each other turned the sweet little old ladies of the neighborhood into bloodthirsty competitors. Mia’s own grandmother was the worst offender. When Mia was little, Elisabetta even roped her into undercover spy work. While Elisabetta delivered batches of her famous pizzelle cookies to unsuspecting neighbors, her granddaughter would plead a need to use the bathroom, but instead sneak a peek at any decorations laid out in a spare room, later reporting as many details as she could remember to her eager nonna, who’d then make sure to top them.

A moving van at the far end of the block caught Mia’s eye. Gentrification was starting to rear its upscale head in the neighborhood. She was furious when Elisabetta told her that real estate agents were intimidating elderly locals by implying they were losing their wits, then offering flyers for assisted living facilities along with their business cards. The block was an oasis of tradition and neighborliness—holiday decoration battles excepted—and Mia would fight to keep it that way.

A silver, older-model Prius pulled up in front of the Carina home. Mia shook her head but marched down the stairs and got into the back seat of the car. “First the airport, now here? You can’t be the only Pick-U-Up car in the area.”

The driver, Jamie Boldano, shrugged and smiled. “Let’s just call it luck.” Jamie, whose father, Donny, was Ravello’s boss, had the misfortune of being the sole intellectual in a family of mobster goombahs. Determined to forge his own path, he’d embarked on a teaching career, but was now earning a master’s degree in family therapy and ridesharing to pay the bills. Mia and Jamie had grown up together and even briefly dated in high school. Mia wasn’t the only Carina who wished she’d married Jamie instead of adulterer Adam Grosso. But Jamie, struggling to find himself, hadn’t asked. And now Mia, burned by her marital disaster, had more interest in cold fried eggs than in another relationship.

Jamie followed local streets until he merged onto Grand Central Parkway. As they drove past LaGuardia Airport, Mia flashed on when she and husband Adam made their move to Palm Beach. Theirs was a whirlwind relationship that began during Mia’s celebration of her twenty-seventh birthday with some girlfriends at Mingles, an aptly named Astoria hangout. Her friends were impressed when a 750 liter of Dom Perignon champagne was delivered to their table, “courtesy of the gentleman at the bar.” Mia was more impressed by the “gentleman at the bar,” who had the tawny blond looks of a Northern Italian and introduced himself as “your future husband, Adam Grosso.”

At the end of the evening, Adam had helped a drunk Mia into a taxi, then jumped in with her. A hookup turned into a torrid romance, which turned into an impulsive wedding a month later during a weekend getaway in Vegas. Adam revealed to Mia that when they met, he was only supposed to be in town for a week before moving to Florida to begin work as a manager at Tutta Pasta, a popular Palm Beach restaurant. He’d extended his stay for a few weeks just to be with her. She rewarded him with her hand in marriage and relocation to the Sunshine State, much to her brokenhearted family’s chagrin.

Basta, Mia said to herself. Enough focusing on four years of my life I’ll never get back. Like the saying goes, that was then, this is now. And now I’m in a car with Jamie. Smart, kind and cute Ja—No! Stop! Basta! She pulled out her tablet and tried to focus.

“So,” Jamie said, “looking forward to today?”

“Yes, in a big way.” Mia hesitated. “But I’m nervous. I’ve never done anything like this. Neither has my dad. It has to work out. I don’t want him going back to his old job. No offense to your dad or anything.”

“No worries, I get it. If it makes you feel better, I hear Ravello’s doing a great job running the place. Nothing seems to throw him, which is important when you’re dealing with the biggest events in people’s lives. Weddings, anniversaries, birthdays—they’re all emotionally high-octane events that can cause as much stress as pleasure.”

“I think that’s your psych degree talking.”

Jamie blushed. The fact that Mia found this trait of his attractive made her blush as well. “We’re here,” Jamie said as he drove through a parking lot and pulled up in front of a nondescript building from the mid-1960s.

Mia released a breath, and the unexpected sexual tension she felt dissipated. She looked out the window at her new work home. Belle View Banquet Manor was perched on a small outcropping of land squeezed between Flushing Bay and the parking lot that served its marina. Belle View’s glass-paned architecture was designed to take advantage of the views—some scenic, some not so much. The catering venue was also adjacent to the landing pattern for LaGuardia.

“Nice location,” Jamie said. “You know, it has the same name as the mental ward in Manhattan.”

“Yeah, we’re not gonna lead with that on the website.” Mia shoved her tablet back in her purse. “Thanks, Jamie.”

“See you later.”

“You might. Or you might not.”

“Odds favor the former.” Jamie shot her a slightly devilish grin and drove off. The son of Donny Boldano might claim independence from his mobbed-up family, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t occasionally take a page from their dicey book.

Mia inhaled and exhaled a few times to quell her nerves. I can do this, she told herself. Still feeling insecure, she said it out loud, yelling at the parked cars surrounding her, “I can do this!”

“Go for it!” someone yelled back. Mia hadn’t noticed a deliveryman sitting in the driver’s seat of a UPS van, checking his phone. Embarrassed, she returned the thumbs-up he flashed her. Then she adjusted her skirt, pulled open one of Belle View’s heavy glass doors, and entered the grand foyer.

A massive crystal chandelier dangled over the space, which with its white walls and tiled floor, was otherwise unremarkable, even bordering on dingy. The baseboards were scuffed; a faded triptych of a wedding from decades ago decorated one wall; a gilded plaster statue of Cupid did a valiant job of hiding a water stain. Mia felt deflated. She’d pictured a more grandiose venue, like the legendary Leonard’s of Great Neck, with its ornate ballrooms and twenty-foot chandelier presiding over a two-story grand foyer. Then Mia looked past Belle View’s far less impressive foyer into a large banquet room. A wall of windows framed the view of Flushing Bay, where boats bobbed serenely at the World’s Fair Marina’s docks. Her spirits rose again. Despite the hints of shabbiness, Belle View enjoyed a lovely location, much nicer than the flashier party palaces in the area. I can work with this, she thought.

Mia was about to go look for her father when she was startled by a large rumble. Two decorative urns filled with ferns began to vibrate. Her heart raced. “What the—”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, that’s just a 737 coming in for a landing.”

Mia turned and saw Ravello Carina standing at the entry to a hallway. Ravello threw open his arms. “Bambina.”

“Dad.”

She ran to her father and disappeared into the large man’s bear hug. Ravello Carina was built like an ancient growth oak tree, majestically tall and broad of trunk. Mia knew his imposing presence was the main reason Donny Boldano anointed him head of the Boldano family’s illegal gambling enterprise; it deterred participants from welching on their debts. Still, Ravello wasn’t a fan of confrontation. He’d eagerly segued from intimidation to the challenge of running Belle View as a legit business, much to his daughter’s relief.

Ravello released Mia. “You look good. You feel good?” He said this with a Queens accent thick as a slice of hand-cut hard salami.

Mia nodded. “I like this place, Dad. It has a lot of potential.”

“I think so, too. The room you were looking at is the Marina Ballroom. The Bay Ballroom is upstairs. Place needs work but it’s got good bones. You almost forget LaGuardia’s there.” Ravello pointed west, where the 737 that had landed could be seen lumbering down the runway toward the terminal. “I’ll give you the royal tour in a little. First, coffee.”

Mia followed her father up a glass-paneled circular staircase with a steel railing. They reached the landing and Ravello threw open the doors of the Bay Ballroom, revealing a banquet table laden with breakfast treats. A banner above it read WELCOME, MIA.

“Surprise!”

The greeting was bellowed by a small group of unfamiliar faces except for one. Ravello had hired Cammie Dianopolis, a neighbor who lived around the corner from Elisabetta, to help him coordinate events, with the proviso—put in place by Cammie—that her duties would lessen once his daughter came on board. Cammie ran up to Mia and gave her a hug that rivaled Ravello’s in strength. “You’re here. I’m so happy. Now I can coast.”

“Thanks so much for helping out my dad. I’m excited about working with you.”

“But you working harder, right?”

“Right.” Mia extricated herself from the woman’s grip and subtly massaged a bruised rib while Cammie checked out her reflection in a nearby mirror, patting a few stray hairs from her fluffy frosted ’do back in place. She’d found her style in 1988 and stuck with it, to the point of ordering her favorite lavender eye shadow from a website that specialized in locating discontinued makeup.

Ravello put his arm around Mia’s shoulder. “Let me introduce you to the rest of the staff.”

He was about to do exactly that when the door to the room flung open. A slim woman with stringy black hair appeared, clad in a mini dress that looked like it was made from bright red ace bandages. She was pretty but in a hard way. She pointed a finger attached to a tattoo-sleeved arm at Ravello. “You,” she said, her tone angry and accusing.

“Me what?” Ravello seemed flummoxed by the intruder.

“You know what.” The woman pulled a cell phone out of her tiny purse and held it up to him.

Mia moved closer to her father. “Dad, what’s going on?” Ravello responded with a confused shrug.

The woman waved the phone in the air. “Our date. Through Meet Your Match dot com. What’d you think, it was a freebie? Angie here doesn’t do freebies.” She pointed a long, red-lacquered nail at herself. “You owe me.”

Mia was incredulous. She knew her father had barely dated since his marriage to her mother had been annulled five years earlier. But she couldn’t imagine him resorting to a paid escort.

“Sweetie, I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Ravello said. He looked embarrassed. “I swear on a bible, I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

“Liar.” The woman spit out the word. She took a step toward Ravello, who remained frozen in place. “Either give me my fee or I’ll make big trouble. I know who you are.”

“Oh please,” Mia scoffed. “Everyone knows who he is. If that’s your biggest threat, you need better material.”

The woman, still holding the phone, waved her arms in the air dramatically. “I want my—”

A giantess wearing a chef toque stepped out of the group. “Okay, we’ve had enough of the crazy, sister.”

“That’s Guadalupe Cruz, our chef,” Cammie, who’d been watching the odd scene with fascination, whispered to Mia. “She was an army cook in Iraq.”

Guadalupe approached the interloper, then took all of a second to grab the woman and hold her under one arm like a football. She strode out of the room, her charge kicking and screaming a stream of profanities. “As you were,” the chef called to the others as she disappeared down the stairs.

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Cammie pointed to the buffet. “Let’s eat before the bagels get stale.”

A murmur of agreement was followed by a rush to grab a plate. Ravello started to follow, but Mia pulled him back. “Hold up, Dad. What was that?”

The mobster gave a helpless shrug. “Mia, believe me, I have no idea. There are nut jobs all over this city. I guess one found her way to Belle View. This Belle View, not the one in Manhattan. Where she obviously belongs. Because she needs mental help.” There was a loud buzzing overhead. “Sounds like a turboprop. Must be the 9:10 from Syracuse on its final approach.”

Ravello detached himself from Mia and joined the others at the buffet. She frowned as she watched him pour a cup of coffee and chat with the others. She knew her father well. He was telling the truth when he said he didn’t know the woman. But he was also hiding something.

And it was never good when a Carina hid something.

Mia tried to corner her father and press him for more information about the mysterious Angie, but Ravello avoided his daughter, segueing into a conversation with a different employee every time she approached him. She finally gave up and concentrated on meeting her new co-workers, who were a rainbow coalition of a few full-time but mostly part-time cooks, waiters, and support staff. They raved about Ravello with genuine fondness, which made her happy. Even Evans, the odd, monosyllabic sous chef, put two words together to form a compliment: “He’s cool.”

After half an hour of snacking and making small talk, Cammie pulled Mia aside. “Let’s go to your office and go over the day. I want to hand over a couple of clients to you and leave early. I booked a mani-pedi at Spa Castle in College Point.”

Mia followed Cammie down the stairs into a warren of small offices tucked into the less scenic side of the hall facing the west side of the parking lot. They stopped in front of a door sporting a nameplate that read MIA CARINA: ASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGER. Mia fought back the urge to burst into happy tears. “I have a title,” she said, her tone colored with emotion. “I have an office. I never had one before.”

“Trust me, the thrill wears off,” Cammie said. “Especially after your first pain-in-the-tushy client.”

Cammie opened the door and the women entered the office. With its ancient metal desk, battered file cabinet, and large corkboard missing chunks of cork, it had all the charm of a supply closet, which Mia assumed it once was. But it was hers, and she loved it for that. The tiny room was where she would start her new career, her new life, and put the misery of Florida behind her.

A bright spot was the large flower arrangement taking up half the desk and scenting the room with lilies. Mia pulled out the card and smiled as she read it. “Aw, it’s from my dad.”

“He probably put it together himself.”

“Really? He does that now?” Mia examined the bouquet, trying to imagine her father’s meaty fingers arranging the delicate baby’s breath, tiger lilies, and iris. “He hasn’t mentioned it.”

“You know that Bermuda cruise he went on? He took some class on napkin folding and floral display. The teacher lives in Manhattan and he still goes to her for classes. Private classes, if you know what I mean.” Cammie followed this surprising statement with a wink.

“Dad’s got. . .