The Semi-Sweet Hereafter

Book 0: Chocolate Whisperer Mystery

by Colette London

Genres: Culinary Cozy Mysteries; Ghost; Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

After a celebrity chef’s murder in London, a globetrotting heiress and chocolate expert can’t escape the spotlight of suspicion . . . Includes recipes!
 
Hayden Mundy Moore is an expert on everything chocolate, helping clients develop new products and revamp recipes until they're irresistible. But sometimes, a dash of murder finds its way into the mix . . .
 
Chocolate whisperer Hayden Mundy Moore is in London to lend her expertise to high-street chocolaterie-pâtisserie Primrose. Nothing more. Really! But when a famous culinary bad boy is found dead under suspicious circumstances (in her lodgings!), Hayden’s eagerness not to be involved (this time) makes her the prime suspect in the ensuing investigation.

Release date: October 1, 2016

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

When most people find out what I do for a living, they have one of two reactions. Either they think my life is a nonstop vacation (because of all the traveling I do), or they think I must have a sweet tooth the size of Texas (because of all the chocolate I sample). The truth is, those people are not wrong.

I do visit my share of exotic locales. The Taj Mahal. The Eiffel Tower. The Great Wall of China. All of them (and more) have starring roles in my Instagram feed. And I do taste more than the typical amount of chocolate. Caramel truffles. Triple mocha brownies. Cocoa cake with raspberry buttercream.

I’m guilty. Guilty as charged.

But that’s not because I’m an incurable vagabond or because I’m a glutton for Theobroma cacao. It’s because—in the first case—my eccentric Uncle Ross’s will stipulates that I keep moving . . . at least if I want to supply myself with couverture spoons and Converse (and I do). It’s also because—in the second case—sharpening my renowned taste buds with all the latest chocolaty treats is my job. Seriously. It really is.

See, I’m the world’s first (and maybe only) official chocolate whisperer. You’ve probably never heard of me. That’s exactly the way I like it. My clients hire me on a discreet—often undercover—basis to troubleshoot their floundering cakes, cookies, and confections . . . to fine-tune their frappés, mousses, and mendiants. That means that if you really like your favorite candy bar or frozen mocha drink, I might be partly responsible. Think of a famous confectioner, restaurant, or international chocolate conglomerate. I’ve probably consulted with them.

They’ll never admit it, though. Neither will I.

In my business, discretion trumps all.

At the moment, I was in London on a job, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at me. I don’t carry a briefcase or consult via conference call. I don’t brag about my prowess or troll for customers. I don’t carry five-kilo bars of chocolate with me and whip up ganache on demand. I simply travel the globe at least six months out of every year, fixing things for my appreciative client base and enjoying life while I’m at it.

I’ve always had a knack for le chocolat. I don’t know where it came from. I simply know, precisely, how any given chocolate should taste, how it should smell, how it should snap and melt, and how it should best be enjoyed. (Slowly, at body temperature, in case you’re curious.) My specialty is taking any given chocolate from “okay” to “excellent” to “ohmigod amazing!” I’m happy to say that I’ve never disappointed a client, no matter how problematic their issues (or they themselves) were.

Which wasn’t to say that I wasn’t considering doing exactly that at the moment. Disappointing a client, that is. Because my latest consultee, Phoebe Wright, had just popped up on my cell phone’s screen, demanding that I answer her call. And I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not immediately, at least.

I glanced at her image, seriously debating pocketing my phone instead of getting down to business. I hemmed. I hawed. I frowned at Phoebe’s pretty brunette image. She was nice. Very nice. Thirtysomething, pink-cheeked, polite to a fault, and very, very British. Phoebe was prone to tea breaks, crumbly Cadbury Flake bars, and marathon viewings of soapy BBC historical dramas like “Poldark”—not that she’d admit such a plebian pastime to any of her posh acquaintances, of course.

Phoebe wasn’t someone I would call a friend. Not exactly. We were of similar ages. We were sociable, too. And I do make that transition with some of my clients. But I didn’t see it happening with Phoebe. She was a bit too pinkies-in-the-air for me. She wouldn’t have been caught dead pub-crawling with me on a typical Tuesday, for instance—unlike my best pal, Danny Jamieson, my sometime security expert, who was working back in the States while I enjoyed Guinness, West Ham matches, and Maltesers without him. Not necessarily in that order.

But Phoebe was—temporarily, at least—my boss. Duty was (literally) calling. In my business, there’s no such thing as “after hours.” I’m always on the hook.

I stopped in the midst of the shopping I’d been doing and picked up the call. Before I could say hello, Phoebe spoke.

“Hiya, Hayden!” she crowed cheerfully, her bonhomie amped by years of privilege and elite schooling. “Listen, I’m sorry to trouble you this way, but I can’t quite remember if I locked up the shop properly today. Hugh bollixed up a whole batch of brownies, the poor thing, and I’m afraid I was very distracted when I dashed out. He didn’t understand what went wrong. Of course, coming from his background he wouldn’t, would he? So anyway, we mustn’t say anything more, given the circumstances, mustn’t we? So let’s just never mind that.” She inhaled. “Anyway, the thing is, would you mind checking on it for me? Just pop over and wiggle the doorknob a bit, that’s all. Primrose really oughtn’t be left open all night, now should it?”

Couched in Phoebe-speak, that meant get your butt over to Sloane Square and lock up my chocolaterie-pâtisserie for me. I knew that. Phoebe might be full of shouldn’t we? and mustn’t we? and other courteous fillers, but she was the daughter of a peer. Technically, she was the Honourable Phoebe Wright. She had no compunction about telling me what to do—no oughtn’ts required.

As far as Phoebe knew, I was right around the corner. Hers wasn’t an unreasonable request. Not really. But I was much farther from Sloane Square than that. I was supposed to have been meeting friends in Leicester Square to see a show. Having planned for the vagaries of London Underground service, I’d arrived in the West End—the “Broadway” of the U.K.—earlier than was strictly necessary. So I’d decided to kill time with one of my favorite jet-setting activities: browsing for groceries.

I know, it doesn’t sound glamorous. But bear with me.

I’ve been all over the world during my (barely) thirty years of life. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing else gives you a sense of the culture of a place more than the local grocery store. It doesn’t matter if it’s big or small, fancy or utilitarian, a bodega or a supermarché. All that matters is that it’s authentic. And, in the case of the Marks & Spencer store not far from Covent Garden, that it carries black currant jam, one of my absolute favorite British foods.

My delight with grocery stores doesn’t stop with jam, though. I’ll happily pick up anchiote seeds in Yucatán, samsa in Kashgar, or unrefrigerated eggs in Monoprix (“Monop” to the French). In Tokyo, I always hit up a conbini for cherry-blossom-flavored KitKat bars (provided it’s springtime), and when I’m in Oz, you’ll find me stocking up on delicious Capilano honey.

Phoebe, unaware of my zeal for foodstuffs, waited on the line. Hey, I’m a food professional. I was (sort of) working.

“Of course, I will.” Silently, I began composing a texted apology to my friends. “I’ll stop by Primrose right away.”

“Would you? That’s fab! Thanks ever so much, Hayden!”

“It’s all part of the service.” I sidestepped a harried Tube commuter. They swarmed shops like M&S and Pret at lunchtime and after work, moving with prototypical city speed. “I’ll let you know what I find when I get there. You can count on me.”

I heard Phoebe exhale with relief. Her worrywart tendencies could be tough to manage—mostly because I’m not a world-class worrier myself, so I can’t relate. I leave the teeth-gnashing to Travis Turner, my trusty financial adviser. He’s good at fretting. He’s good at everything. Gallingly, he’s younger than me, too. It hardly seems fair that Travis should be so organized, so responsible, and so brilliant . . . while I’m still trying to figure out all the intricacies of my favorite uncle’s will.

I’d been fortunate enough to inherit a great deal of money when Uncle Ross died. It had definitely come with strings. I still missed him, though. I missed his laughter. His wild hair.

“Are you at a party?” I asked Phoebe, distracting both of us as I picked up on the sounds of a gathering. Glasses clinked. Music played. Conversations waxed and waned. “Having fun?”

“Oh, absolutely! Must dash, though. Kisses! Bye!”

With an amplified smack, Phoebe hung up. Now that she’d gotten me to do her bidding, I guessed, she didn’t have time for chitchat. That was my life, though. I wasn’t soul mates with my clients. I was a consultant. An expert one. But that was all.

Ooh, were those McVitie’s Dark Chocolate Hobnobs?

They weren’t. They were a knockoff of the famous cult cookies. But I was hooked, all the same. I grabbed a box, added it to my stash of British goodies, then headed for the tills.

It wouldn’t be easy tromping all this stuff back across London on the Piccadilly and Victoria lines, but it would be worth it. I’d miss the show with my friends, but I’d have a few of my favorite goodies to comfort me while I texted them to reschedule. I’d be in London a while yet. I had plenty of time.

In the meantime, I’d almost forgotten my daily phone call to Travis. As a woman traveling solo, I couldn’t be too careful about safety. Checking in with my financial adviser meant that at least one person knew whether I was happily gridskipping or unhappily being mugged at any given moment. Ordinarily, I like to savor my phone calls to Travis. I like to settle in, focus, and really melt into the experience. If you heard Travis’s deep, sensual, faintly raspy voice, you’d do the same, believe me.

But given the time difference between The Big Smoke and downtown Seattle, where Travis’s office was located, I sometimes had to compromise. That meant, in this instance, pocketing my colorful pound-sterling banknotes with their pictures of the Queen and heading for the closest Tube station while waiting for the man who held the purse strings to my fortune to pick up.

Promptly, he did. Hearing the call connect, I couldn’t help smiling. Travis had that effect on me, despite everything.

“So, Travis . . . what are you wearing right now?”

It was my usual gambit. I couldn’t shake Travis’s financial leash, but I could let him know that I didn’t intend to toe the line all the time. That’s what my teasing opener was all about.

That . . . and the under-the-radar hope he’d (someday) tell me.

I’d been curious how things stood between us, but it turned out I hadn’t needed to wonder. Travis’s deep chuckle let me know that everything was copacetic. Despite the . . . incidents . . . in San Francisco and Portland that I’d run into, despite the borderline sketchy things that Travis had done to help me out of some dangerous situations in those cities, we were still buds.

“Hayden Mundy Moore.” His sexy, sonorous voice induced shivers. As usual. I imagined all the associates and admins in his office glancing up from their spreadsheets and swooning. “Shouldn’t you be working? You don’t have time to call me.”

“I always have time to call you.”

“No, you don’t. You have clients to see, chocolates to improve, cacao farmers to meet.” He knew my job as well as I did. I pictured him ticking off items on his talented hands. “Reports to write. Expenses to file. That reminds me—”

He broke off, shuffling papers in the background. Yep. Papers. Evidently, financial management required old-fashioned tree killing. I wouldn’t know. I’d never been to Travis’s office in person. I’d never met him in person, believe it or not.

“Have you been using the app I recommended?” he asked.

I frowned, remembering. “The anti-procrastination app?”

“That’s the one.” Crisply, he recited its name.

“Nope. I didn’t have time. I forgot. I mean, it broke.” I picked up the pace, jogging as I spotted a roundel—the iconic red, blue, and white symbol of the London Underground. “Anyway, my cell phone battery died. I don’t think it was meant to be.”

“And your dog ate your homework?”

“Exactly!” I paused outside the station, adding one of those tawdry free tabloid papers to my bag. “You get me.”

This time, Travis laughed outright. “Nice try. Don’t make me enlist the enforcer on this effort. I’ll do it, believe me.”

“No. I still have nightmares about the last time you two collaborated on something.” On me. “I’ll use it. I promise.”

The enforcer nickname made me grin, though. He meant Danny, of course. My on-call bodyguard and longtime platonic pal.

I’d known Danny for ages. He was my frequent traveling partner, my favorite plus one for occasional fancy events, and my most trusted confidante. People tended to take Danny at face value. They saw six-plus feet of musclebound, sporadically tattooed security expert and nothing else. But I knew better.

I knew there was more to Danny Jamieson than sticky fingers, a shady past, and a scowl that intimidated even the most hardened criminals . . . maybe because he was one of them at heart, no matter how far he’d moved from his bad old neighborhood.

Recently, “the enforcer” (Danny) had teamed up with “Harvard” (Travis) to make sure I took matters appropriately seriously while on assignment in Bridgetown—the up-and-coming foodie nirvana of Portland, Oregon. Having the men in my life, the two of them archenemies, team up to “help” me had been . . .

Well, let’s just call it unnerving and leave it at that.

“See that you keep your promise this time. I vetted that app myself.” Travis was still doggedly dealing with the issue of my procrastinatory tendencies. The idea of him needing to “vet” a productivity app was laughable. He was a productivity app—a living, breathing, authoritative machine. “It will help.”

“I’ll add it to my to-do list,” I promised, reaching past the trusty Moleskine notebook that held that very same list as I dug around in my favorite crossbody bag for my Oyster card. I’d entered the Underground station. From here, it was push or be pushed as everyone surged toward the barriers that divided the ticket hall from the escalators and stairs leading down to the various platform levels. The hubbub almost drowned out Travis.

I was pretty sure he was laughing, though. The nerve.

Was he really convinced I wouldn’t to-do-list that app? He, more than anyone, should have known how much I value my running to-do lists. They keep me on track even more than Travis does.

“I’ll do it,” I insisted. “I have a system.”

Despite open skepticism, I always get things done.

Travis didn’t reply. He was laughing too hard.

I decided to take the high road. “Gotta go, Travis.” I touched in with my card and headed for the escalator, juggling my phone and groceries. “Try to stay out of trouble, okay?”

“You do the same, Hayden. I mean it.” My financial adviser overrode my flippancy with stern sobriety. It was his go-to approach to everything. “You be careful out there.”

Aw. See what I mean? Travis is a championship-caliber worrier. He worries like a boss. He’d probably get on well with Phoebe, in fact. They’d make adorable fussbudget kids together.

If Phoebe weren’t already married to the U.K.’s most famous celebrity “sexy chef,” Jeremy Wright, of course. Details.

All the same, the fondness in Travis’s voice warmed me.

You be careful out there.

We both knew there were reasons I needed to watch out. We weren’t talking about the dangers inherent in my unconventional line of work, either—although chocolate whispering does come with certain complications. That’s just life.

Sometimes I meet unsavory types during my consulting gigs, for instance. Sometimes I’m offered a bribe to wreck a competitor’s product line. Or I stir up hurt feelings by helping one company and not another. Or I outright refuse to work with someone. I have standards. I don’t perform chocolate magic for just anyone who comes to me with substandard sweets and the ability to pay my (modest) consulting fee.

Rex Rader had been proof of that much in San Francisco.

But Travis wasn’t talking about the chocolate biz. He was talking about murder . . . and the unpredictable ways I’d become involved in it lately. It had been a while since my latest foray into the rougher side of beating buttercream and making fudge. Everything was fine now. I figured it would stay that way.

“I will.” I rode the escalator downward, glancing at ads for Lloyds Bank, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and “fatigue reducing” Floradix iron-and-vitamin supplements. “But I don’t have to. I mean, what are the odds of something happening here?”

“About twelve per million.”

“Come again, Mr. Wizard?”

“Given a population of around eight and a half million people and an average of two homicides per week, that’s—”

I groaned. Leave it to my wunderkind financial adviser to compute the chances of my getting killed while in London.

“Your predecessor, old Mr. Whatshisname, would never have settled for ‘about’ twelve per million,” I interrupted drily. Until Travis had taken over for his firm’s older associate, my required check-ins had been . . . enervating. “He would have known—”

Travis interrupted with a to-the-decimal-point calculation.

“That seems really low,” I countered, feeling encouraged.

“It is. There’s a reason your current assignment is there.”

There . . . in Safetown, aka London, where being murdered was statistically less likely than meeting Her Majesty, the Queen.

I strode through the tunnel, shaking my head as I realized Travis was trying to protect me—was hinting he had protected me.

“Did you nudge the Primrose bid to the top of the pile?”

He didn’t admit as much. But Travis handled all my requests for consultations. He was the one who decided where I went, aside from me. It was a broadening of his role, but he hadn’t minded. It wasn’t as though Danny could take on the job. He was so eager for me to “succeed”—that is, grow my business—he would have let me consult for anyone with a pulse and a bank account.

With him there to back me up, for sure. But still.

Danny was terrific. But tough times changed people. They changed their priorities and their willingness to follow the rules.

“Aw. I love you, too, Travis.” Saying so with over-the-top sentimentality, I pulled a goofy face. “I’m definitely coming to the Pacific Northwest after this job so we can meet in person.”

As if that would ever happen, I groused silently. Travis is as elusive personally as he is proficient professionally. I knew more about his dog than I did about him. Which wasn’t saying much. I’d only found out about the dog recently. From Danny. My security expert had a talent for sussing out details. And for punching people. But in this case, he’d only snooped. On Travis.

He’d gotten woefully little information, though. Darn it. “Speaking of which, I’ve been wondering,” I pressed, seizing the moment, “what kind of dog do you have, Travis?”

A moment passed. Nada. I should have expected that, I guessed. Then I realized the phone had gone dead in my hand.

There was no service on the platform. Foiled again. Even the London Underground was stymying my efforts to find out more about Travis. I sighed and queued up along the yellow line with everyone else, headed to Primrose to set Phoebe’s mind at ease.

By the time I made it to Chelsea, the tony neighborhood not far from the Thames where Primrose drew crowds every morning, I regretted my earlier shopping expedition. Sure, I’m strong. I can hoist burlap bags of cacao beans and handle heavy stainless steel sauciers in a restaurant’s back-of-house with the best of them. But even in a typically cramped bakery kitchen, it’s possible to turn around. That wasn’t true of an Underground train during rush hour. I’d gotten a lot more intimate with my fellow travelers than I wanted to be. Stepping aboveground afterward, I exhaled with relief and headed for the chocolaterie-pâtisserie.

I’d been consulting at Primrose for a couple of weeks now. Phoebe had entrusted me with a set of keys and access to the shop’s secret recipe journal—a notebook full of various bakers’ formulas, its pages splattered with cream and dusted with cocoa powder. Most establishments treated their “books” with utmost secrecy, but Phoebe had practically thrown Primrose’s at me.

She’d been desperate to sort out Primrose’s quality problems. Lately, the shop’s sweets hadn’t been sweet enough, their cakes hadn’t been tender enough, their chocolate treats hadn’t been creative enough. Those issues, combined with competition from newer artisanal chocolateries, threatened to squash Primrose’s longtime supremacy in the neighborhood.

Like many of my clients, Phoebe had come to me via referral. I had a feeling my previous consultee might have been a little too effusive in his praise, though, because Phoebe seemed convinced I could work miracles at her shop.

I was convinced I could, too, of course. I’m generally pretty confident. Honestly, all Primrose needed were some new suppliers and a few technical improvements—tweaks I could easily teach the staff, given time. But usually it’s best to manage clients’ expectations. I didn’t want Phoebe thinking I could turn her ramshackle team of bakers into geniuses overnight.

I’d come pretty far in tutoring them—in getting a feel for what was working well at Primrose (brownies, fudge) and what wasn’t (cookies, single-origin bars, cakes). But the staff were green. I’d need more time to achieve a full turnaround.

As expected, Primrose was locked up tight. The shop’s brick walls and Georgian façade stood sturdily against the encroaching sunset, an event that streaked the sky orange and lent a faint rosy glow to the neighborhood. On the corner, locals gathered for a pint, most of them standing outside the pub chatting. In the distance, I heard cars and Routemaster buses roaring down Chelsea Embankment. Here, though, everything was peaceful.

I hadn’t really expected anything else. The problems at the chocolaterie-pâtisserie didn’t include rampant carelessness, despite the mistakes Phoebe had alluded to with Hugh Menadue, one of the apprentice bakers. Overall, Primrose was a cozy and inviting shop. Its café-style tables and chairs were immaculate, its floor spotless, its windowpanes streak-free. Through those windows, in front of me, passersby could be lured inside with views of cocoa-marbled “slices” (Britspeak for pieces of cake), malted chocolate cream pies, semi-sweet cream buns, and more.

Now, though, after hours, Primrose’s display platters and vintage cake stands had been removed. The windows stood empty.

I beelined down the tight alleyway behind Primrose and double-checked the back door, too. It was similarly secure.

I called Phoebe and left her a message saying so, trying not to feel irked at having been sent on a wild-goose chase. She didn’t pick up, probably because her upper-crust soirée had taken a turn for the raucous. Don’t let anyone tell you that the English aristocracy don’t know how to party. The dark circles under my eyes proved otherwise. I hadn’t gotten a truly solid night’s sleep since coming to London to consult at Primrose.

See, I’m not just chocolate whispering for Phoebe. I’m staying at her place, too—at the guesthouse adjacent to her fancy-pants Georgian town house a few streets over, in fact.

The accommodations came with the job. While I can hold my own in the financial department, I can’t just conjure up an eighteenth-century crash pad full of antiques and luxuries for myself. So when Phoebe offered, I accepted. She hinted there’d be cocktails and tea parties, an introduction to her sought-after celebrity chef hubby and an opportunity to network with her well-connected friends. But I’d been sold at the words “four-poster in the bedroom” and “claw-footed tub in the bath.”

I might be a sneaker-wearing, chocolate-whispering bohemian most of the time, but I’m secretly a Jane Austen heroine at heart. Aren’t all women, given the opportunity? So I said yes.

Now, with visions of that old-timey bathtub swimming in my head, I rearranged my grocery bags, left the alleyway, and headed east. The Wright residence stood only a few streets from the chocolaterie-pâtisserie, on a quiet avenue chockablock with similarly grand terraced town houses equipped with white Doric-columned stone façades, dentiled cornices, wrought-iron railings, and enormously imposing six-paneled front doors.

Not that I was going in by the front door, of course. I ducked into another passageway, maneuvered past a fading lilac bush, and pushed open the Wrights’ back gate. Their walled garden (“yard” to a Yank like me) was green and welcoming, bordered by primroses (get it?) and cushiony with grass. I trod past that grass on the graveled path, my footsteps crunching in the lengthening shadows. The guesthouse wasn’t far, but reaching it always felt like invading a private space meant for family.

Me, I’m at home in hotels, in hostels, in yurts, and in bed-and-breakfasts. Growing up with a pair of globe-trotting parents and no siblings, I’d stayed in accommodations ranging from five-star resorts to remote Swiss cabins, from hammocks on a Balinese beach to cramped sleeper cars on European trains. But I hadn’t stayed in anyone’s home for years now. Including my own.

That’s because I don’t have one. Not really. Not anymore.

Not that I r. . .