Little Fox Cottage Read online

  LITTLE FOX COTTAGE

  A PAJARO BAY MYSTERY

  BARBARA COOL LEE

  PAJARO BAY PUBLISHING

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Newsletter

  Copyright & Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Booklist

  Newsletter

  Charities

  Stay in Touch

  INTRODUCTION

  CHEF BREE TAYLOR falls in love with Pajaro Bay when she brings her late friend's dog to the charming coastal village to meet its new owner. But she soon finds that the town holds some dangerous secrets, and to save her new friends she must solve the mystery of the Little Fox Cottage.

  * * *

  PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED as Driving Ms. Maisy.

  WELCOME TO PAJARO BAY, the little California beach town where the cottages are cute, the neighbors are nosy, and it's always possible to find your personal Happily Ever After.

  * * *

  1. Honeymoon Cottage

  2. Boardwalk Cottage

  3. Lighthouse Cottage

  4. Little Fox Cottage

  5. Rum Cake Cottage

  6. Songbird Cottage

  7. Sunshine Cottage

  8. Riverstone Cottage

  COPYRIGHT © 2016 by Barbara Cool Lee

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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

  Neither the author nor the publisher claim responsibility for adverse effects resulting from the use of any recipes, projects, and/or information found within this book.

  Originally published: November 30, 2016

  This edition published: March 1, 2018

  2020-05-25-J

  CHAPTER ONE

  Old Town Sacramento, California

  May 11, 11:15 a.m.

  HENRY WAS in the apartment behind them, but he wasn't alone, and Bree wasn't ready to go back inside to face him yet.

  The street in front of them, one of the prettiest in Sacramento, was bustling with pedestrians on this sunny spring day. The old apartment building had a front yard filled with roses, and the riot of color seemed to be putting every passerby in a buoyant mood.

  Bree found herself assessing each person automatically, in the way Henry had taught her. This young couple passing, arm-in-arm: they needed a quiet corner table, and something affordable but memorable. The Pastina à la Henry, perhaps, with its butternut squash rosettes nestled among the creamy egg-and-cheese pasta, to be followed by a single custard in raspberry glacé for dessert, with two spoons.

  The next man looked worried: steak for him, topped with browned butter and capers, and a side of Henry's scalloped potatoes to soothe his nerves.

  This woman trying to hurry in high heels needed chocolate, immediately.

  That young mother with a jogging stroller would choose a salad, so suss out her favorite fruit to blend into the dressing as a surprise.

  And this elderly gentleman, who stopped to sniff the roses…. But there she lost the thread of thought, as it reminded her of how Henry had chosen this apartment for its roses, which evoked his childhood home in Pajaro Bay.

  "Cécile Brünner," she said to the dog sitting next to her, and Maisy's ears perked up. That had been the name of the old climbing rose that grew right outside Henry's window when he was a boy, its scent wafting in on the afternoon breeze while he rushed through his homework so he could go outside to play.

  To her the name sounded exotic and beautiful, just like the beach-town boyhood he'd described to her: hunting abalone in the tide pools, riding bikes to the local market to buy ice cream bars for a quarter, playing with the neighbor kids in the old haunted tileworks at the end of the lane.

  He had promised to take her with him to visit Pajaro Bay soon, to see the cottage where he grew up, and the Cécile Brünner rose, which still bloomed every spring. And to meet his twin sister, Helena, who he described as the other half that made him whole, someone just like him, "but not quite as cute," he always added with a big laugh.

  His life in Pajaro Bay had sounded like something out of a fairy tale, and she was looking forward to seeing it, to learning what had made Henry the unique person he was.

  The man who had stopped to smell the roses glanced her way. "I love spring, don't you?" he said, and Bree tried to match his smile, failing miserably, she was sure. She looked down at the cement step in front of her.

  Though to all appearances, Christmas should have been Henry's favorite time of year, in reality spring was, and the roses had filled him with even more joy than usual.

  She remembered her first sight of Henry standing squarely in the midst of the kitchen at Lassiter's Restaurant, just a year ago, on a spring day much like this one. He had towered before her, a benevolent dictator ruling over his kingdom.

  In his ruby red chef's coat and matching beret, his snow-white beard neatly trimmed, and with a perpetual grin on his face, he had looked just like the Santa Claus in a vintage Coca-Cola ad. In truth, Henry Lassiter had been her own personal Santa Claus.

  And she had been scared to death of him.

  The great chef Henry Lassiter had hired her straight out of culinary school. She had been green as an unripe apple, and completely lost. The culinary school had been a dream, a dare, something she had only gotten into on a scholarship. The others in her class had worked in restaurants for years, and knew about everything from abattoirs to zwieback, while she'd done nothing all her life but cook for farmhands. Could she really be a professional chef? Dare she try?

  But then Henry had plucked her out of her graduating class and set her down in his hot, noisy, and joyful kitchen. A famous chef had for some unfathomable reason hired her as his assistant—a position more experienced cooks would have killed for, and one she was completely unprepared to take on. She'd felt like a tadpole forced onto land, gasping for air and trying to survive.

  So at first she just trailed helplessly behind him, trying frantically to make sense of the chaos:

  "Just a touch of the olive oil, Kid. We don't want to drown the peas, just moisten 'em."

  "I told you we were making pomegranate coulis, Kid, but we're going to use these gorgeous pears instead. Never get so set on your menu that you don't use the best stuff your supplier's got."

  "Chop the carrots in thicker slices, so they can caramelize without disintegrating. That's the way, Kid. You've got it!"

  She was always Kid, and he was always Henry. And for months she barely spoke. She just scrambled to keep up, scared out of her wits that she'd lose this incredible opportunity.

  But then one night Henry had said, "there's a method to my madness, Kid. You have the right instincts: you love food and you love people, and you're not afraid of hard work. You've got everything it takes to someday own a restaurant with
your own name over the door. So just relax. You're doing fine."

  After that she'd floated behind him, soaking up the lessons that seemed to come endlessly:

  Coffee in tomato sauce cut the acidity.

  A touch of cassis in raspberry ice cream deepened the flavor.

  Nasturtium blossoms in salad added a burst of bitterness in counterpoint to a vinegary dressing. They were colorful, and a bit silly. "But we can all use a bit of silliness in our lives, Kid."

  And the most important lesson of all:

  "Food is more than nourishment, Kid. It's pleasure, and sharing, and meditation. But above all else, it's love. To feed someone is a most basic way of showing them love. Never lose sight of that. It's why we're here."

  He had meant "here on this planet," not just "here in this restaurant," but she'd had a hard time wrapping her mind around that. In her experience, properly emulsifying a sauce was a snap compared to understanding love.

  She really had no idea what love was, before Henry. She had grown up on a truck farm with a survivalist father who was paranoid and isolated, fearing the world that lurked outside of his own hundred acres. There had been nothing in her childhood as frivolous as love, and the idea that life could be joyful was as alien a concept as landing on Jupiter.

  She knew that's why she was so attracted to her mentor. Not attracted to this pudgy, white-haired man in a physical way—but attracted to him as an example, as a person who taught her how it was possible to live, not just survive.

  All her life she had been taught that things had to have a practical purpose. An animal only had value on the farm as "working stock." It earned its keep, whether it was a chicken laying eggs or a cat catching rodents in the barn. If it didn't earn its keep, it wasn't allowed to stay. And no tears from a little girl who loved a sick kitten or an old chicken past its prime made a whiff of difference. Off the kitten went to the woods to fend for itself, and off the chicken went to the stew pot. And if she cried herself to sleep over it she was dismissed as being useless herself.

  Her only redeeming quality had been her ability to work hard: to do the housework, the cleaning, the laundry, and the one saving grace of her childhood, the cooking.

  In the kitchen she found an outlet for the creativity denied her everywhere else. The stained recipes in the old tin box were her only playground. The whiffs of spice were a link to a different life—and to a mother who had died so long ago that Bree had no memory of her. But through the recipe cards with their spidery handwriting she'd found a connection to something not practical, or cold, or hardened. By adding a spice here, substituting a different vegetable there, she forged her own link with the mother who was only a figment of her imagination. If the results of her efforts were tasty, she might even get a gruff, "not bad" from her father. If they weren't good…, well, she learned quickly not to fail.

  So Henry Lassiter had been a star out of another galaxy to her. As owner of a restaurant that had earned both a James Beard Award and a Michelin star, he was a celebrity beyond anything she'd ever known. But far more important to her had been the light he'd been to her. Why he'd picked her out of a bunch of culinary students she'd never known, but he'd pointed at her and said, "she'll do," and whisked her off on a whirlwind of new sights, smells, and tastes.

  She had followed along in his 250-pound wake, absorbing new ideas like a sponge, feeling the hard little center of herself thawing, beginning to reach out. It had all been so grand, a dream. Now it was gone.

  The door to Henry's apartment opened and she could see the group of people surrounding the bulky form on the floor inside.

  A tired-looking detective came out and shut the door behind him. He came over and sat next to her on the steps. He reached out one hand to pet Maisy.

  "So," he said. "Henry Lassiter was your employer."

  "Yes," she answered, though that didn't begin to cover it.

  THAT NIGHT she snuck Maisy into her studio apartment, though pets weren't allowed. She couldn't leave her alone at Henry's place. So the two of them went home and just sat, numb, for what must have been hours.

  Then she curled up on the sofa with the dog at her feet and slept.

  The next morning she started to come alive again. It felt almost like she was thawing out after being frozen. Everything hurt. The sight of the dog. The sense of loss. It all just came at her in waves as the numbness wore off and she sat there on the sofa, hurting more than she'd ever hurt, and not having a clue what to do about it.

  So she fell back on the one thing she understood: work.

  First she called Henry's twin, Helena Lassiter. She had been informed of Henry's death by the police, but Bree touched base with her, and asked her what she needed. Helena had sounded on the phone like she was in shock, at least as confused as Bree herself was, so Bree found herself getting her own act together enough to ask questions. She went over the basics with Helena: what to do with the restaurant, the apartment, the dog, and Henry himself.

  Then, grateful for something to do, she got moving.

  She called everyone the restaurant employed. They had heard about Henry's death on the news, but she talked to every one of them, from the imperious sommelier to the newly hired dishwasher, explaining that Henry's sister had authorized his accountant to release the final paychecks to all staff, and that the restaurant assets would eventually be sold. Lassiter's Restaurant had been at its heart Henry Lassiter himself, and without him, Lassiter's didn't exist. Everyone was out of a job. Including Bree herself.

  The thought of being unemployed, with no money in savings, a school loan payment due, and less than a year's professional experience on her resume, might have sent her into another tailspin, but she had other things to do, so she put that aside for the moment and kept going.

  She found a funeral home that would handle that end of things. The man on the phone was patient and compassionate, and assured her that Henry would be taken home to be buried in the little town with the abalone-filled tide pools, bike-riding kids, and Cécile Brünner roses. She kept her voice calm until the phone call ended. After she hung up she had to sit quietly with Maisy for a while until she got herself together enough to continue.

  Then she went down to Lassiter's. That was worst of all, using her key to unlock the red enameled door and step into the hush of a closed restaurant, to pass the receptionist's station with its black-jacketed menus neatly stacked, skirt around the covered tables with their empty chairs, go through the double doors into the kitchen.

  She stood in the midst of the vast emptiness of gleaming stainless steel counters, well-worn copper pots, and the cold iron of the stove that would never again feel Henry's deft touch.

  This was the place she had wanted to see least of all, but Henry would have been appalled if she'd wasted all that good food. So she emptied everything out of the walk-in cooler and loaded up her car.

  The people at the food bank were effusively grateful, and helped her unload the car. She accepted their thanks on Henry's behalf, and then drove two blocks away, parked, and cried for a while.

  AT THE CRACK of dawn two days later, she and Maisy went to Henry's apartment for the first—and last—time since his death. Maisy had come in the door eagerly, but once she searched the whole place, she had come back to Bree and sat next to her with a sigh.

  Bree had visited there the day he died to pick up the evening's menu plan, and had discovered Maisy lying by Henry on the floor. Bree had never had her own pet, so wasn't sure how much Maisy understood about what had happened to Henry, but the dog's grief was palpable.

  The apartment felt empty and cold. Henry had lavished all his creativity on the restaurant, and his home showed that. Without his overwhelming presence, it was just another generic apartment, almost minimalist in its decor.

  There was a desk with some papers on it in the dining nook, a sofa and well-worn easy chair in the living room, and a bedroom and attached bath that appeared austere and organized. The only signs of life in the kitchen were a plas
tic honey bear dripping on the counter, and a damp sponge in the sink.

  The bear had a single drop of honey clinging to its side. She wiped the counter where it had stood and then threw the sponge into the trash can. Before she tossed the honey in after it, she gathered the drip of honey on her fingertip and held it out to Maisy. The dog had a notorious sweet tooth. But Maisy just looked sadly at her, then turned her head away. So Bree licked the honey off her fingertip herself and watched as the dog curled up on the floor and closed her eyes.

  Without Henry, Maisy was as lost as she was. The dog's love for her owner had been returned in full. In fact, the only place Henry's minimalist apartment style broke down was with Maisy: there were bright red ceramic dog bowls next to the desk, an abundance of her special food in neat plastic containers in the freezer, a dozen bottles of her vitamin-enriched filtered water on the floor by the fridge, and a rainbow assortment of collars and leashes hanging on hooks over her red ticking-striped memory foam dog bed. Maisy was clearly his one indulgence away from the restaurant. Bree packed up the dog's stuff and put it in her car, but left the rest to the professionals.

  The moving men she'd hired arrived at mid-morning as scheduled. They quickly went to work, efficiently packing, labeling, and loading all of Henry's worldly goods into their van to deliver to his sister in Pajaro Bay. All the while, Maisy watched them with a suspicious expression as they messed with her person's stuff.

  The police detective came in the door just as Bree and Maisy were forced to get up so the movers could pack the desk chair.

  "Hello, Detective Graham," she said.

  "Hello, Ms. Taylor. And Ms. Maisy," he added, patting the dog, who eyed him balefully in return.

  They went over to the window, and Bree leaned on the sill. She could smell the roses and it made her heart ache.

  "Nice machine," the detective said, watching the movers lower a sleek crimson Kitchenaid mixer into a box full of packing peanuts.