It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder

Book 3: Catering Hall Mystery

by Maria DiRico

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries; Animal Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

Astoria, Queens, is decorated within an inch of its life for the Christmas season, and Mia Carina is juggling her job at the Belle View catering hall with a case of murder . . .



Mia's busy with a full schedule of events at the family business—among them an over-the-top Nativity-themed first birthday party and a Sweet Sixteen for a teen drama queen. But her personal life is even more challenging. Her estranged mother has returned—and her lifelong friend Jamie has discovered a shocking secret about his past. He's so angry that he starts hanging out with Lorenzo, who claims to be his long-lost brother—even after it becomes clear that Lorenzo's story is as fake as a plastic Christmas tree.



Then a body turns up among the elves in a Santa's-workshop lawn display, and amateur sleuth Mia has a buffet of suspects to choose from. Amid the holiday celebrations, she intends to find out who's the guilty party . . .

Release date: October 26, 2021

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

“How can you type with those nails?” Mia wondered.

The nails in question belonged to her Belle View Banquet Manor coworker, Cammie Dianopolis. ’Twas the season and Cammie’s nails reflected this. Each was a true work of holiday art, extending off a finger by a full inch or more and sporting a design celebrating one of the twelve days of Christmas, with the thumbnails doing double duty to meet the required twelve days. Glitter and appliquéd rhinestones added a festive sparkle.

“You think I type. That’s adorable.” Cammie held up her cell phone. “I’m recording our business conversations—i. e., this one. I have an app that’ll transcribe it and turn it into a doc I can print out and read while I’m getting my pedicure.” She checked her phone. “Which reminds me, I gotta leave for my appointment in fifteen.”

“Is it too much to ask that you at least put in a full morning here?”

“Yes.” Cammie wagged a finger at Mia. Sunlight glinted off a ruby-red rhinestone. “Must I constantly remind you of our deal?”

“You will continue to work here if by work, we mean coasting.” Mia recited this by rote. She and her father, banquet hall owner Ravello Carina, put up with Cammie’s absenteeism for several reasons: despite her lax office hours, she always delivered; she was a close friend; and her ex-husband was Detective Pete Dianopolis. Pete wrote self-published thrillers under the pen name Steve Stianopolis. Assuming he would be the next Lee Child or James Patterson and being a cheapskate, Pete begged out of his twenty-five-year marriage before the money he envisioned poured in and made him a chick magnet. When the pour turned out to not even be a trickle, he skulked back to his ex. Pete would do anything to win back Cammie, which included providing the occasional stealth info on a couple of murder investigations that had dogged Belle View and the Carinas.

Mia glanced out the small window behind her. It was December and snow blanketed the banquet hall parking lot, which it shared with the Flushing Bay Marina. In the distance lay the bay—and the LaGuardia Airport runway. As if on cue, a plane roared above them, on its final approach to the airport. The room’s furnishings vibrated for a moment, then stopped. “Getting a pedicure in the winter seems like a waste of money,” Mia said.

“Oh, for sure. But it’s a waste of Pete’s money, not mine. Plus, going over the notes from this morning as someone pampers my tootsies is my idea of multitasking.”

The women heard a light rap on the doorframe and looked up to see Shane Gambrazzo, former male model and current Belle View employee, standing there, his six-three perfect physique filling the doorframe. With his chiseled features, windswept, naturally blond hair, and pale green eyes that provided a perfect contrast to his tawny complexion, Shane was an easy candidate for handsomest man alive—which he absolutely hated. He was determined to live down his magazine cover-boy past and prove his worth in the event industry. As far as Mia was concerned, Shane was doing exactly that and then some. In the mere few months he’d worked at Belle View, bookings had increased exponentially. She was convinced some women—and a few men—invented events simply to breathe the same air as Shane. If he noticed, Shane chose to ignore it, instead focusing on negotiating great deals on everything from rentals to bulk toilet paper. Shane was proving to be a dreamy-come-true employee.

“Just wanted to let you know that I got the signed contract for the Adrianakis-Mahmoud wedding.”

“They were talking about a guest list of four hundred,” Mia said. “That’s major coin. Great work.” She avoided eye contact and delivered the compliment to a spot above Shane’s shoulder, which was the best way to dodge getting sucked into his vortex of gorgeousness. “I don’t know if you saw it, but I emailed a list of prospective clients who specifically asked for you to lead their tour of the facilities.”

“Oh.” Shane didn’t seem happy about this. “Are you sure you’re okay with that? Me giving all these tours instead of you? I feel like that’s happening more and more.”

Mia, remaining focused on the spot, waved a hand to dismiss his fears. “I could not be more okay with it. I’ve got plenty on my plate and welcome the extra time.”

“If you say so.” Shane didn’t sound remotely convinced.

“Hey Shane, you got any special Christmas plans? Like, with someone special?” Cammie was fascinated by the newest staff member. Using her endless hours of free time to Google him, it was she who discovered the cover boy–playboy past he seemed determined to put behind him. Cammie was equally determined to match him with Mia, which entailed sussing out the competition.

Mia shot Cammie a warning look to back off. But Shane, who was on to Cammie’s attempts at data retrieval, simply shrugged. “Probably just stay home and recover from all our holiday parties.”

Mia applauded Shane’s efforts to keep his relationships at Belle View purely professional, even passing up the boozy party postmortems the staff occasionally indulged in. The downside of this was Shane coming across as “a stiff,” as Mia’s frenemy Teri Fuoco bluntly put it. Teri, a nosy reporter with the local e-paper, the Triborough Tribune, had finagled a few dates with Mia’s sous and dessert chef, Evans, giving her more opportunities than Mia liked to hang out at Belle View.

There was a pause in the conversation. Considering Shane’s past wild exploits, Mia thought he exuded a surprising awkwardness when it came to social interaction at Belle View. She worried he might not feel like a fit with her and her coworkers and vowed to do whatever it took to make him happy. She even managed to convince herself this was for purely professional reasons.

“Do you have plans?” Shane asked the women, succumbing to the pressure of engaging with her and Cammie.

“There’s the party here for everyone Christmas Eve,” Mia said, “which I hope you’ll come to. Christmas Day, I’m gonna visit Posi in jail”—Mia’s older brother, unable to break his habit of stealing sports cars and selling them to rich Eastern Europeans, was finishing a sentence at a nearby minimum-security facility—“and then I’ll probably have a quiet dinner with my dad and nonna. You’re welcome to join us.”

“Thank you,” Shane said, his tone polite. Mia tamped down her disappointment at the pro forma non-response.

“My plan is to milk Pete for all the gifts I can get out of him,” Cammie said, her tone bright.

“Mmm-hmm,” Shane said, unsure of how to respond. “Well . . . I’ll check out the list you sent me, Mia, and start booking the tours.”

Shane left for his own office. Mia released a breath and deflated. Cammie eyed her. “You’re gonna have to make eye contact someday.”

“Not if I can help it.”

Cammie gave an irritated grunt. “Peismatáris os moulári. Stubborn as a mule.” She made a face at Mia and picked up the bottle of circa-1980s mauve nail polish she’d bought from a site that sold discontinued cosmetics. Cammie had landed on a style during that flashy decade and still swore by it, down to a wardrobe and makeup built around the period’s signature colors of peach, turquoise, and the aforementioned mauve.

Cammie headed off for her winter pedicure. Mia’s cell rang. She checked the caller ID and bit her lower lip. Kaitlyn Venere’s super sweet sixteen was the current bane of Mia’s existence—that and the Bianchis, new parents who insisted on what Mia considered a wildly inappropriate Nativity theme for their baby’s first birthday, with the family in the roles of Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus. But teen Kaitlyn’s effort to keep up with or even, God willing, outdo her uber-competitive classmates with her celebration, made her a hormonal roller coaster of emotions and drama. Mia dreaded Kaitlyn’s calls but also felt for the girl, whose parents had basically given their daughter a blank check, then cut and run from the planning.

Mia steeled herself, then pressed the green button on her cell phone. “Hi, Kaitlyn.”

“Daniella Di Nunzio stole my Tiffany’s theme!” The news was accompanied by histrionic sobs. “I thought Grace Haddad was my friend, but she wants to get in Daniella’s group, so she told her my theme and now she’s friends with her and not with me and Daniella’s doing my theme and I hate her, and I hate Grace!”

Mia fumed on Kaitlyn’s behalf. High school was no picnic for anyone, but social media, reality shows, and influencers seemed to have turned it into a cutthroat hell-scape for the current generation, where no secret was safe, and no friend could be trusted. “I’m so sorry. But let her have the Tiffany’s theme. We can do better.”

“We can?” Kaitlyn sniffled but sounded hopeful. “How?”

Caught, Mia tap-danced. “I’ve got a bunch of ideas floating around in my brain,” she lied. “Let me narrow it down to the best of them and get back to you.”

“Okay. Thanks, Mia.”

“Of course. That’s what I’m here for. Don’t worry about a thing. You’re gonna have the best party ever.”

“I have to, or my life is over!”

Kaitlyn delivered this with the force of a Greek tragedian and signed off. Mia groaned and shook a fist at the heavens. Then she texted Shane: We need a new theme for Kaitlyn.

Another one?! he texted back.

Yup. Mia accompanied this with a line of crying emojis, which Shane responded to with a bitmoji of himself with his head exploding. Even his avatar is gorgeous, Mia thought. She followed this with some internal scolding. Shane shot her another text, this one about the first birthday revolving around a manger: The Bianchis want camels for their wise men.

Of course they do she wrote back. A minute later, Shane sent her a cartoon of a camel dancing, set to the Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian.” Mia chortled. Her personal interactions with Shane might border on robotic, but they enjoyed a warm, jokey camaraderie through technology.

Her cell rang again. Mia looked at it askance. She relaxed when she saw the caller wasn’t Kaitlyn. She didn’t recognize the number and decided to let it go to voicemail, in case the call was spam. Mia opened her internet browser and tapped in unique sweet sixteen themes. A list popped up that proved to be no help at all, being that she and Shane had already burned through most of them with Kaitlyn. She debated better wording and went with over-the-top sweet sixteen parties. Her cell rang again. The screen showed the same number as before. Whoever it is really wants to talk to me. Mia took the call.

“Mia, bella, hello. It’s Donny.”

She sat up straight, the sweet sixteen forgotten. Donny was Donny Boldano, head of the Boldano crime family. Her father Ravello had been a lieutenant in the organization, but now ran Belle View as a legitimate business for them, much to Mia’s relief, as well as her father’s, who had burned out on running the family’s illegal gambling enterprises. “Mr. B, hi. How are you?”

“Good. Good. I’m calling from a burner phone.”

“Yeah, I wondered. I didn’t recognize the number.” Mia’s heart thumped like a bass drum. Why was Donny Boldano calling her instead of Ravello? And from a burner phone? She panicked for a moment, thinking it might be bad news about her beloved father, but calmed down when she reminded herself that she’d seen him leave his office for the men’s room only ten minutes earlier. He was still in the building. And probably still in the men’s room. Which made Donny’s call all the more curious.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m calling you. Especially from a burner phone.”

Donny wasn’t exactly reading her mind. These were obvious questions under the circumstances. “Yes. Exactly.”

“Uh . . .” There was a long pause. Whatever Donny had to say wasn’t coming easy. Mia’s heart thumped again. “Mrs. B and I would like to talk to you about something. Don’t worry, it’s not business,” he hastened to add. “Everything’s good with Belle View. You’re not in trouble.”

“Oh, thank God,” Mia couldn’t help saying.

“It’s . . . um . . . a personal matter. Do you happen to be free tonight?”

Mia, whose social life over the past few months had consisted of feeding her cat and bird, then falling asleep in front of the TV or her laptop screen, said, “Yes. I am free.”

“Wonderful. I don’t want you getting stuck in rush hour traffic, so let’s say eight. We’ll have cake and coffee. Oh, and sweetheart—please don’t mention this to Jamie.”

“No worries. He’s been so busy with school and Madison, I haven’t seen or spoken to him in weeks.”

Donny signed off. Mia leaned back in her chair and considered the odd conversation. Jamie Boldano was the youngest of the capo di capo’s two sons. He eschewed the family business to become a teacher and was now working toward a master’s degree that would allow him to transition into a career as a family therapist. When Mia returned to New York after her adulterous husband was presumed dead in a boating accident, she and Jamie had danced around the possibility of picking up a relationship that had petered out in high school. But they soon came to realize their lives were headed in different directions. Jamie was planning to move into his girlfriend Madison’s apartment in Manhattan, but his eventual goal was a therapy practice and white picket fence home in Connecticut. Mia was a proud outer boroughs girl whose dream was eventually owning her own Astoria two-family home, preferably right next door to the one she currently shared with her nonna, Elisabetta.

She heard lumbering footsteps coming down the hall, indicating her father’s approach. A minute later, Ravello appeared at her door. He looked perturbed. “Bambina, I’m lost.”

“You don’t mean that literally, I hope,” a nervous Mia said. At a recent Belle View birthday party for a centenarian with a touch of dementia, the guest of honor had been found wandering the parking lot coatless in twenty-degree weather after getting off-track on his way back to the Marina Ballroom from the bathroom. Fortunately, Mia had discovered the elderly man before frostbite set in and steered him back to the ballroom in time to blow out two of the one hundred candles on his birthday cake.

“No, thank God.” Ravello, reliving that frightening moment, crossed himself.

“Lin’s present?” Mia guessed. Her father had a girlfriend for the first time since his marriage to her mother Gia had been annulled almost six years prior. Lin Yueng was an elegant former attorney who owned a florist’s shop in the East Village. Ravello was smitten when he took her flower-arranging class on a cruise and had pursued the relationship from the sea onto dry land. Mia wasn’t ashamed to admit she’d take the lovely Lin over her own mother Gia, a beautiful narcissist now living in Italy with her second husband, a low-level crook who’d been deported after serving a sentence for a variety of petty crimes. If threatened with waterboarding, Mia wouldn’t be able to recall her last conversation with Gia.

Ravello parked himself on one of the two folding chairs in Mia’s office. He ran a hand through his thick thatch of hair, which remained dark brown without a speck of gray despite his fifty-plus years. “Lin’s so . . . classy. I don’t know from classy. With your mother, it was all about the bling. Lin doesn’t even wear jewelry except tiny little gold stuff. And clothes? Fuhgeddaboudit.”

“Let me talk to Madison. She might have some interesting ideas. And deals.” Mia had come to like Jamie’s girlfriend. They’d bonded the way women who’d dated the same man often did—by making good-natured fun of his quirks behind his back. Madison, a blogger at a popular fashion website, had also endeared herself to Mia with her connections and discounts. “But here’s an interesting development, Dad. Donny Boldano called. He wants me to meet with him and Aurora tonight. Just us. And not tell Jamie.”

Ravello stared at his daughter. “Just you?” he repeated.

Mia nodded. “Any idea what it might be about?”

Her father shook his head. “Not a clue.” Ravello crossed his arms in front of his chest. His face darkened. “And I don’t like that. I don’t like that one bit.”

Being that it was early December, night had already fallen when Mia left Belle View to run home and grab a quick dinner before the drive to the Boldanos. She’d calmed her father down, reassuring him that there was no menace in Donny’s tone. Over the past few months, Donny had expressed pleasure multiple times about the uptick in business at Belle View. Mia’s only concern was a fear that Donny and Aurora had hatched a plan to try and reunite her with Jamie. Mia knew Jamie’s father hadn’t been happy when his son fell in love with a non-Italian girl. But as far as she knew, Donny had come around. She’d even heard him brag about Madison’s Mayflower passenger ancestors. Personally, Mia thought that if everyone who claimed they had Mayflower ancestors actually had them, the boat would have sunk leaving its British harbor. But there was no denying blond, blue-eyed Madison’s Waspy origin story.

Mia drove her pre-owned Honda Civic through Astoria, past street after street gussied up to the nth degree for the holidays. The neighborhood observed the old-fashioned tradition of decorating the weekend after Thanksgiving, and the decorations went up with blinding, blinking lights, an exorbitant-electric-bill extravagance that made sunglasses at night not a song but a necessity. Lawns and roofs featured a rainbow of lights and blow-up figures. Every door and window frame glowed. The displays were shameless in their gaudy abandon. A entire home on Forty-first Place was dressed up as a gingerbread house. Even the home’s roof featured an arrangement of lights designed to look like tiles made of candy. On Forty-second Place, a sign in the yard shared the call letters of a radio station where anyone could tune in for holiday songs timed to the house’s light display. It’s like every Target in America emptied its holiday displays here, Mia thought as she drove by a house programmed to cast laser snowflakes on itself.

There was a method to the decorating madness. Each year, one block won a cheesy gnome Santa Claus trophy for best decorations. More importantly, every home’s front yard featured a box mounted on a pole to collect donations for charity. A second trophy went to the block that raised the most money for their chosen nonprofit. Mia and Elisabetta’s block, Forty-sixth Place, was raising money for the local animal rescue.

Mia stopped for a red light. While she waited for the light to change, her attention wandered over to the two-family house on the corner. Known locally as the Miracle on Forty-fifth Place, the home belonged to Jacinta Benedetto, contemporary to Mia’s grandmother and Christmas display archrival. For the most part, Jacinta’s decorations were on a par with her neighbors. But one item set her apart from all others. In the dead center of her small yard stood a four-foot animatronic of adored Astoria native son Tony Bennett, dres. . .