Tough Cookie

Tough Cookie

by Diane Mott Davidson

Narrated by Barbara Rosenblat

Unabridged — 10 hours, 4 minutes

Tough Cookie

Tough Cookie

by Diane Mott Davidson

Narrated by Barbara Rosenblat

Unabridged — 10 hours, 4 minutes

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Overview

New York Times bestselling author Diane Mott Davidson serves up tantalizing mysteries garnished with heart-stopping suspense and wry humor. In this tempting tale, caterer and sometimes sleuth Goldy Shulz proves she is one “tough
cookie” as she faces threats to her business, her family, and her very life.
Everything seems to be going wrong for Goldy. The health inspector has shut down her catering business in Aspen Meadow, Colorado, due to non-standard plumbing. When she hosts a live cooking show for PBS, she drops eggshells into
the cookie dough. On the way home from that humiliating experience, she finds the chairman of the State Parole Board-dead with hundred dollar bills drifting in the snow around him.
Goldy's troubles really begin, however, when the police launch a murder investigation and drag her into the middle of it.

Editorial Reviews

bn.com

When her home catering business is temporarily shut down, tough cookie Goldy Schulz doesn't crumble. She reinvents herself as a personal chef and takes a job hosting a local cooking show for PBS, where the money is good and the exposure is terrific. After all, it's only a little cooking and some cozy chitchat, brought to viewers from Colorado's posh Killdeer Ski Resort. How dangerous can it be? Murder is back on the menu in this tasty culinary mystery, seasoned with a hearty dash of intrigue, by the author of Sticks & Scones.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Chef/amateur sleuth Goldy Schulz returns for a ninth outing in Davidson's popular culinary mystery series. Goldy's home-based catering business in the Colorado high country is temporarily suspended by drain problems, so she accepts a stint on a PBS cooking show before the Christmas holidays. After a meeting with Goldy, Doug Portman, her wealthy ex-boyfriend, is found dead on a back country ski run, with thousands of dollars flying from his pockets. Goldy discovers that an old acquaintance, Nate Bullock, had also been discovered there after an avalanche in almost the same spot three years earlier, and she herself is a victim of misadventure when her van is nudged over a cliff. Determined to find the killer lurking on the ski slopes, Goldy unearths motives aplenty, possibly among her culinary friends in a mountain restaurant. Davidson's creative recipes, scattered liberally throughout the narrative, add flavor to this spirited tale, which follows Goldy from one life-threatening escapade to the next. The characters are sometimes too good to be true (such as Goldy's husband, who's a county sheriff), but others have a refreshing edge, like pink-haired coffee-shop owner Cinda Caldwell. The ending is cookie-cutter predictable, but overall this is hearty fare for those who like their murder with a bit of nosh on the side. Agent, Sandra Dijkstra. (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Product Details

BN ID: 2940171056896
Publisher: Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date: 09/28/2012
Series: Goldy Schulz Series , #9
Edition description: Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Show business and death don't mix. Unfortunately, I discovered this while hosting a TV cooking show.

Up to then, I'd enjoyed being a TV chef. The job didn't pay well, but this was PBS. Arthur Wakefield, the floor director, had crisply informed me that most chefs made nothing for guest visits, much less five thousand clams for six shows. He could have added: And what's more, those chefs' kitchens haven't been closed by the county health inspector! But Arthur said nothing along those lines. Like most folks, he was unaware that my in-home commercial catering kitchen had been red-tagged, that is, closed until further notice.

So: Bad pay notwithstanding, I was lucky to have the TV job. Actually, I was lucky to have any food work at all. And I certainly didn't want more than our family and a few friends to know why.

I could not tell my upscale clients—those who'd made Goldilocks' Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right! the premier food-service business of Aspen Meadow, Colorado—that our plumbing wasn't up to code. And of course, I could never let it be known that my dear husband Tom was ransacking the house for valuables to sell off, so we could buy fancy drains and thereby get my business reopened. No plumbing? No drains? It sounded nasty. Sordid, even.

In September, things had gone badly. The county health inspector, giggling from the shock engendered by his surprise visit, closed me down. The bustle in our kitchen immediately subsided. Calls for catering gigs stopped. Suppliers sent letters asking if I wanted to keep my accounts current. Yes, yes, I always replied cheerfully, I'm looking forward to reopening soon! Soon. Ha!

Without my business,an enterprise I'd lovingly built up for almost a decade, I entered a spiritual fog as thick as the gray autumnal mist snaking between the Colorado mountains. I gave up yoga. Drank herb tea while reading back issues of Gourmet. Spent days gazing out the new windows in our beautifully-remodeled-but-noncompliant kitchen. And repeatedly told Tom how gorgeous the kitchen looked, even if I couldn't work in it....

Truly, the place did look great. So what if it didn't meet new county regulations mandating that every commercial kitchen sink have backflow protection? Months earlier, Tom had rescued the remodeling job after a dishonest contractor had made our lives hell. During time away from his work as a Homicide Investigator for the Furman County Sheriff's Department, he'd put in marble counters, cherry cabinets, expensive windows, a solid oak floor. And the wrong drains.

To fix the problem, Tom was now tearing out the guts of three new sinks and prying up the floor beneath. He insisted we should heal our temporary cash-flow problem by selling a pair of historic skis he'd bought years before in an odd lot of military memorabilia. In October, I'd started calling antiques dealers while wondering how, during a prolonged closure, I could keep my hand in the food business.

There'd been no takers for the skis. How else to get money? I'd wracked my brain for other ways to work as a cook: Volunteer at a school cafeteria? Roll a burrito stand up and down Aspen Meadow's Main Street?

Eventually, it had been my old friend Eileen Druckman who'd come through with a job. Loaded with money and divorced less than two years, Eileen had just bought the Summit Bistro at Colorado's posh Killdeer Ski Resort. Eileen—fortyish, pretty, and blond, with cornflower blue eyes and a full, trembling mouth that had just begun to smile again—had hired a good-looking young chef named Jack Gilkey, whose food was legend in Killdeer. To Eileen's delight, she and Jack had quickly become an item personally as well as professionally. When I told Eileen my business woes, she and Jack had kindly offered me the position of co-chef at the bistro. But I couldn't work restaurant hours—seven in the morning to midnight—fifty miles from home. Restaurant workers, I'd noticed, had a high mortality rate, no home life, or both.

Eileen, ever generous, had promptly pitched a cooking-show idea to the Front Range Public Broadcasting System. They'd said yes. I'd demurred. Eileen argued that my cooking on TV, at her bistro, would boost her business plus give her a huge tax write-off. Meanwhile, I could use my television exposure to publicize the new culinary venture I'd finally hit upon: becoming a personal chef. That particular avenue of food work requires no commercial kitchen; it only requires a wealthy client's kitchen. Just the ticket.

So I'd said yes to show business. The Killdeer Corporation had offered free season ski-lift passes to me as well as to my fourteen-year-old son, Arch. Shot through with new enthusiasm and hope, I couldn't wait to cook and ski. I gave up herb tea for shots of espresso laced with whipping cream. In November, I plunged eagerly back into work.

Every Friday morning, I would appear at Killdeer's Summit Bistro to do my bit before the camera. At first I was nervous. And we did have a few mishaps. Thankfully, Cooking at the Top! was taped. Viewers never saw me slash my hand—actually, sever a minor artery—while boning a turkey during the first episode. The spray of blood onto the prep counter had been distinctly unappetizing. The following week, I produced a meringue so sweaty it needed antiperspirant. I also dropped two roasts—one of them stuffed—and splattered myself with a pitcher of Bearnaise. But with glitches edited out, even I had to admit the Saturday morning broadcasts looked pretty good.

On the upside, I told jokes on-screen and mixed cream into smashed garlicky potatoes. I chatted about the rejuvenating properties of toasted, crunchy almonds while folding melted butter into almond cake batter. I gushed about the trials and joys of learning to ski as I chopped mountains of Godiva Bittersweet Chocolate. I swore to my viewers that my recipe made the darkest, most sinfully fudgy cookies on the slopes. I even assiduously followed Arthur's tasting instructions: Take a bite. Moan. Move your hips and roll your eyes. Say M-m-mm, Aaah, Oooh! Yes! Yes! Watching the footage, Tom had quipped that the program should be called The Food-Sex Show.

All in all, the first four weeks of taping went well. By Week Four, though, my personal-chef business still had not taken off. I only had one upcoming job. Arthur Wakefield himself had offered me a gig the following week: preparing food for a holiday in-home wine-tasting. Arthur supplemented his floor director income by working as a wine importer. He needed to showcase some new wines—and serve a gourmet meal—to high-end customers and retailers. So, even in the personal-chef department, things were looking up.

Unfortunately, in Week Five, Cooking at the Top! hit a snag, one occasioned by a predictable Colorado crisis: blizzard.


From the Audio Cassette edition.

Copyright 2000 by Diane Mott Davidson

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