Olive and Let Die

Last Ride

“Damn. That's the last one, isn't it?” Melanie said.

“That's the last water taxi ride.” I offered to call Liza at the Spa and have her send a boat. “Wait, I have a better idea.” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and speed-dialed a number.

He answered on the first ring. “I was hoping you'd call,” he said. A thrill raced through me as I heard his voice. I got up from the table and walked a few steps away. “Did the restaurant close early? Am I gonna get lucky tonight?”

I sucked in a breath. Getting lucky with Jack would be better than catching a thousand leprechauns, superior to an infinite number of rabbits' feet. Not that it had happened yet. “Maybe,” I teased. “I need you to do me a favor.”

“Is it
that
kind of favor? The kind where I do something for you, then you do something for me?”

“Sounds like a win-win to me.” I grinned stupidly. “Listen, I have a friend here who needs a ride out to Liza's. Are you busy?”

“I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Where are you?”

“I'm out in back of Spiro and Inky's new place. See you then.”

When I returned to the table, Melanie was gone. I squinted in the darkness and made out a humanoid shape over by the small toolshed where the lawnmower and gardening equipment were kept. “Melanie,” I said. “Don't go over there in those shoes. You're liable to step on a nail . . .”

I heard a gasp and saw the shadow of her arm fly to her mouth. I ran over, nearly gagging as a smell intensified. An odd braided rope—was it made of plastic wrap?—lay on the ground. And crumpled between a pile of two-by-fours and some sheets of insulation lay a body.

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Susannah Hardy

FETA ATTRACTION

OLIVE AND LET DIE

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

OLIVE AND LET DIE

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2015 by Jane Haertel.

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14009-7

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / November 2015

Cover illustration by Bill Bruning.

Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

To Mom and Dad,
for always believing in me

To my mom, sisters, and aunts, thanks for being my biggest cheerleaders.

To my editor, Michelle Vega, and the rest of the amazing team at Berkley Prime Crime, and to my agent, John Talbot, thanks for helping me bring Georgie and the rest of the Bonaparte Bay gang to life.

To my friends and colleagues at the Connecticut Chapter of Romance Writers of America and Sisters in Crime New England, thanks for being the best support system, professional and personal, a writer could ask for.

And, as always, to Mike and Will. For everything.

Hope of ill gain is the beginning of loss.

—EPICURUS, ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHER, 341 B.C.–271 B.C.

ONE

It's not every day a celebrity walks into your restaurant. Oh, there've been a few over the years, mostly old-time entertainers whose careers have been reduced to telling jokes or singing in the lounges of the quiet resorts on either end of downtown Bonaparte Bay, New York. Mickey Rooney. Dick Van Dyke. Once I saw Gordon Lightfoot walking down Theresa Street, but he didn't stop in.

So when Rhonda Allen, my best server, burst into the kitchen that September evening as I was just sitting down to a plate of souvlaki wrapped in a soft warm pita—my five-minute dinner break—I knew somebody interesting had come in.

Actually, my life had gotten a lot more interesting lately. A few weeks earlier I had solved a couple of mysteries—helped bring a murderer to justice, and found some priceless items hidden right upstairs where I lived with my soon-to-be-ex-mother-in-law, Sophie. My friendly divorce
would be final in a few weeks, and I had a developing relationship with a gorgeous Coast Guard officer. There were some details to be worked out, but life was looking pretty good for Georgie Nikolopatos.

“Come on, Georgie!” Rhonda grabbed my arm and pulled me along. “You're not going to believe who's in the top dining room!”

“Okay,” I said, laughing. “Who is it? Daniel Craig? Johnny Depp?” I felt a little panicky thrill. What if it really were Daniel Craig or Johnny Depp? I straightened my skirt and ran my fingers through my hair, doing my best to fluff it and wishing I'd made time to go to the salon to have my roots touched up.

“You'll see!” I followed Rhonda past my office and toward the open pocket doors leading into the largest of the dining rooms. There were a satisfying number of customers, not so many that we were crazy busy, but enough that we'd make a nice profit tonight. No disgruntled faces. In fact, there was a low, excited buzz, and eyes seemed to be turning periodically toward the front window overlooking the main drag of Bonaparte Bay.

A woman with teased-out platinum hair and a scarlet tank top ablaze with sequins sat in profile to me. Her matching red linen jacket was draped casually over the back of her chair. She extended a hand, ropy with blue veins and sporting an enormous diamond cocktail ring and a set of lethal-looking bloodred nails, toward her dining companion, a youngish woman with dark hair and glasses. The younger woman was typing furiously into her phone, as though she were taking dictation.

There was something familiar about the other woman, who was clearly in charge. I couldn't quite place her.

Rhonda tugged at my sleeve. “You know who that is, right?” The air practically vibrated with Rhonda's excitement.

I glanced over again, doing my best not to stare while still getting a better look at my guest. Nope, recognition still eluded me. “Okay, you'd better tell me.”

“I can't believe it! It's Melanie Ashley!” she stage-whispered.

Melanie Ashley. Of course. The grande dame royal witch of daytime television's most popular soap opera,
The Desperate and the Defiant.
She'd been on the show for twenty years and had been married and divorced a dozen times, half of those to the same man. At least the writers had finally stopped giving her pregnancy story lines, since she had to be pushing sixty.

“Go get Sophie, will you? She wouldn't want to miss this.” Sophie was a huge fan of the show, which she watched during her afternoon break while she pretended to be sleeping.

I busied myself by greeting the diners at table eight, then moved counterclockwise around the room, making stops along the way. I wondered how quickly I could get the lone reporter from the
Bonaparte Bay Blurb
over here for a photo op and some free advertising. Sophie appeared in the doorway, rolling her lips together. She had just applied a new layer of “Passionate Coral” lipstick, a color (according to her) she'd been wearing since the early nineteen sixties. I never had figured out where she bought the stuff. She barreled over to the table, heedless of me, and I hurried to catch up with her.

“Why you divorce that beautiful man? Again?” Sophie demanded, her Greek accent thick and her little fists balled up onto her scrawny hips. Heads whipped around to watch. Melanie turned toward Sophie, and barely had to look up to meet her eyes.

Damage control time. “It's lovely to have you here at the Bonaparte House,” I interrupted. “This is the owner, Sophie Nikolopatos, and I'm her daughter-in-law, Georgie.” Melanie stared at me, her glossy red lips slightly parted to reveal brilliant white teeth, and I felt a strange flicker of . . . something. Recognition? Well, of course I recognized her, I thought, surreptitiously studying the artificial tightness of Melanie's expertly made-up face and looking for suture lines. I'd seen her on television and in the tabloids often enough. “We'd like to offer you and your guest a complimentary bottle of wine, or a dessert, if you'd prefer.”

“No, we don't like,” Sophie fumed. “That beautiful man. How could you leave him for that, that, Toy-Boy?”

I took Sophie's arm. “Sophie, it's just a television show. Ms. Ashley is an actor. You know that, right?”

“I know she's one of those, those, tiger women!”

“You mean ‘cougar.' I smiled apologetically at Melanie, who continued to stare at me. It was getting a bit uncomfortable, actually, and I still had that nagging feeling. Her assistant glanced up occasionally from her smartphone but seemed to decide the situation did not warrant her interference.

Melanie shook her head slightly, as though to break some spell, and turned to Sophie. She apparently understood that no amount of explanation would change Sophie's mind. She leaned toward my mother-in-law and whispered, “I'm just trying to make Vincent jealous. I'm not planning to go through with the divorce this time.” Her voice, low and with a throaty rasp, sent another tendril of recognition twining up my spine. I sucked in a breath.

Sophie's eyes narrowed. She pursed up her orangey lips
and seemed to think for a moment. “Give her a drink,” she ordered me, then turned on the heel of her white walking shoes and left the dining room.

I'd never done this to a customer in my life, but I pulled out an empty chair at Melanie's table and sat down. Hard. I searched Melanie's face. She'd had a lot of work done, between face-lifts, brow lifts, and Botox and collagen injections. Her hair was different. Her nose was narrower. She'd had her boobs enhanced. Her voice was different, perhaps from years of smoking or because of a voice coach. But up close, I knew this woman. The last time I'd seen her, I was eighteen years old, had just graduated high school, and was about to start my first job waitressing here at the Bonaparte House. She kissed me on the cheek, got on the back of a Harley behind a Hell's Angel, and roared off toward Route 81.

A whole range of emotions surged through me in rapid succession: joy, relief, and disbelief, before I finally settled on something that felt just right. Anger.

“What the hell are you doing here, Shirley?” I hissed. I couldn't bring myself to call her “Mom.”