Dead Men Don't Eat Quiche

  Dead Men Don’t Eat Quiche

  Martin and Owen Funny Romantic Mysteries, Book 2

  Nina Cordoba

  Table of Contents

  Copyright 2017 Nina Cordoba

  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

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Other books by Nina Cordoba

  Copyright 2017 Nina Cordoba

  Contact form is at NinaCordoba.com for permissions.

  Art Director: Sierra Acy

  Cover Art: Kostis Pavlou

  This book is fiction. Any resemblance to real people is coincidental. Places, things, groups, and entities are fictional or are used in fictional ways for fictional purposes.

  This book is a comedy. It is not meant to be used for legal advice, or as instructions for crime investigation, horseback riding, dog training, golf cart driving, dealing with cult or gang members, or taken seriously in any way whatsoever.

  Chapter One

  Nick Owen

  I flipped over on my left side for the dozenth time since I’d gotten into bed.

  Sleeping still didn’t come easy, although the reason for my insomnia had changed a few months ago. Johnny Chavez—the innocent defendant in the only murder case I ever lost—had won his appeal and that was a load off my conscience.

  Truth be told, though, his face had already been replaced much of the time in my nightly visions with a prettier one. One with big, beautiful eyes the color of chocolate.

  My cell phone rang. I turned over and stared at it for a few seconds wondering who could be calling at this hour. Even mom liked to limit her “emergencies” to between breakfast and midnight.

  Had to be a wrong number.

  I picked up the phone, checked the name on the screen, then blinked a few times to make sure I hadn’t conjured it up with wishful thinking.

  As soon as I confirmed I wasn’t hallucinating, I tapped the screen to answer the call.

  “Rika?” My voice came out higher pitched than I was comfortable with, maybe a little desperate. I wished I could have a Mulligan on answering.

  “Nick?”

  I sat up straight at the distressed sound in her voice. “What’s wrong?” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. It’s my dad. He’s disappeared.”

  “In Colombia?” I immediately regretted that I didn’t know any more than any other dumbass American about Colombia—let’s see, coffee...cocaine. Yep, that was it.

  “No, he was here...in L.A.” I’d never heard her sound so panicked, not even the night she nearly got blown up by the boss of our local crime ring. “He moved here a month ago. Now, his co-worker’s been found dead and he’s missing!”

  Missing? “Missing” in this type of situation usually meant the missing person was the perpetrator...or dead. I suddenly felt like I had a brick wedged in my stomach.

  “Are the police looking for him?”

  “Yes...” The word came out as a sob. “But they’re looking for him as a suspect! He wouldn’t kill anyone, but no one’s looking for him as a kidnapping victim.”

  While I tried to process what she was telling me, I heard her clear her throat. She took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly and I knew she was pulling herself together. The Rika I knew last summer was not a woman who cried easily. She made it through her bogus arrest, a shooting attempt with her as the target, and a bomb she had to disarm herself, all without shedding a tear, at least none that I saw.

  But she cried when we said goodbye, and the memory of those tears clawed at my heart every single day. I told myself that if it was meant to be between us—if she still felt as strongly as I did once she was back home and wasn’t depending on me to get her out of a murder rap—I’d hear from her.

  A text. A call.

  But I hadn’t heard a peep from her since she drove out of my life. I figured she’d come to her senses and moved on with her life.

  “I’m sorry.” The sob was gone from her voice. “I don’t know why I called you. It’s just that you were the only person I...”

  She seemed to have run out of words, and I didn’t want her to hang up before I told her I was coming.

  “I’ll catch the first flight I can get,” I said. “I’ll let you know when I’m arriving.”

  Her sigh of relief whooshed through the phone. “Thanks, Nick... Thanks.”

  “No problem. See you soon.” I hung up and grabbed my laptop to start searching for flights.

  Chapter Two

  Rika Martín

  I tried not to look into my rearview mirror as I gunned the accelerator, preparing to muscle my way into traffic on the I-10 freeway.

  Forty-five minutes ago, I met Nick in the baggage claim area of LAX and everything was exactly as I imagined it.

  I saw him first. He was wearing my favorite t-shirt—light blue and short-sleeved—that showed off his thick biceps as he pulled a suitcase off the conveyer belt. His buns of steel were covered by worn jeans he’d paired with cowboy boots.

  As soon as he turned and my eyes met his, he strode over to me, sliding his arms around my waist, pressing me tightly to his body, his big hands scorching my back.

  I curled my arms around his neck, resting my cheek against his chest, sucking in all the Nick pheromones I could fit into my needy olfactory glands. And those pheromones were still delicious, even if they weren’t coated in the scent of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls as they often were when I stayed with him.

  His body felt so good pressed against me, warm—like he’d brought some of the Texas heat with him—with hard manly muscles that gave a tiny bit under the pressure I applied. With Nick wrapped around me, I felt so cared for and safe. My eyes burned and I nearly cried with relief that he was here.

  He tugged gently on a chunk of hair until I bent my head back and looked up at him. His eyes searched mine like he was doing an emotional scan of my brain, trying to determine how I was holding up.

  And, in that perfect moment in Nick’s arms, I was one hundred percent certain that everything would be okay.

  Until a syrupy, twangy voice broke in, full of faux-enthusiasm mixed with pseudo-sympathy.

  “You must be Rika!” It said.

  When I leaned my head to the right to see around Nick, I found a tall, leggy blonde with hair that swooped up high above her forehead—thumbing its roots at the law of gravity—then cascaded down in layer after layer of pure sexy.

  Exactly like his last two wives.

  Someone please tell me Nick didn’t get married again already!

  Six months ago, after we’d discovered who the killer was and the charges against me had been dropped, Nick sent me away, citing his recent divorce and the fact that—even though he was only thirty-four—he’d already been married three times, as the reasons we shouldn’t be together.

  Like he wasn’t relationship material.

  And for the past six months, I couldn’t bring myself to have a relationship with anyone else because all I could think of was Nick. Nick barefoot in his kitchen making me breakfast. Nick in court in his perfectly tailored suit, mesmerizing the jury with his deep voice and striking eyes. Nick, shirtless, in his jeans and cowboy hat, holding his extra-long hose.

  But while I was obsessing about him, he hadn’t called or texted once. Instead, he’d moseyed right along and found himself another...what?

  Girlfriend?

  Lover?

  Wife?

  How would I know? He’d introduced her by her first name with no further explanation.

  Asshole.

  I lost control of my eyeballs and they flicked to the rearview mirror. Marla sat in the back seat of my Honda Fit with little Gucci, Nick’s Maltese—an unwanted residual from his last wife—in her lap.

  Gucci was decked out in a pink and black zebra striped dress with a black tutu for a skirt. A pink bow adorned the ponytail on top of her head.

  If there were ever a dog meant to wear clothes, Gucci was it, but what right did this Marla have to dress Nick’s dog? I knew Marla did it because I was absolutely certain Nick would never be caught putting clothes on a dog.

  My hot Latina blood—which I’d discovered was a thing when I caught Nick withholding evidence from me last summer—boiled up into my brain.

  Marla. Who named their daughter “Marla”? I mean it just sounded like a bitchy name, didn’t it? Truth be told, I’d never thought about it being a bitchy name before, but now...

  I peeked at her again. She was wearing a slinky, blood red dress. Unless she was on her way to the Grammy Awards, it was cut way too low in the front and slit way too high on her left thigh. Plus, she was too tall. When we were standing near each other waiting for
her three—yes, three—checked bags to come around the carousel, I felt like one of the seven dwarfs.

  Grumpy. Definitely Grumpy.

  The two Nick ex-wives I’d seen in Bolo were nearly as tall and every bit as blonde and sexy as Marla. I wished I’d at least worn heels so I could give my five-foot-five—okay, five-foot-four-and-a-half—inch frame a boost. I’d worn flip-flops, jeans, and what I thought was a flattering peasant top instead of my usual geeky t-shirts and hoodies, but now I felt like a schlub compared to sexy Marla.

  Nick held onto the passenger door armrest, mashing his imaginary brake, apparently not a fan of my driving. I jerked the car to the right, purposely cutting off a red Lamborghini, no doubt being driven by another asshole who had three blonde exes under his belt.

  Nick had been trying to control his reactions, but I heard an involuntary grunt escape his lips at what probably looked to him like a near-miss, since he’d spent the past few years in a town that only needed one stoplight, if that.

  Ha! Serves him right.

  When I called him night before last and he agreed to come, I felt such a sense of relief, I actually got a few hours of sleep. Nick Owen was coming to help me. We made a great team, and having him nearby made me feel safe and, by extension, my dad would be safe.

  But this...

  My eyes flicked to the mirror again, then sliced over to view Nick’s ruggedly handsome profile, which only pissed me off more. No one should get to have a face that good, a freaking eight-pack of abs and be as smart as Nick was. And from the pictures I saw at his mom’s house, he’d been hot his whole life.

  Well, I guess “hot” wasn’t the right word for his whole life. That would be creepy. Let’s just say, he was a beautiful baby, a cute kid, and by high school he turned into this smoking hot chick-magnet sitting next to me.

  No awkward phase with braces on his teeth or bad skin. Certainly, no extreme weight issues like the ones I’d had. And I was pretty sure he’d gotten to work his way through every gorgeous blonde in Texas.

  Huh. I remembered that Texas Ranger-slash-super model “friend” who Nick called in on my case.

  Make that, all the gorgeous blondes in Texas plus a few sultry brunettes mixed in as palette cleansers.

  Asshole.

  I jerked the steering wheel to the left unnecessarily. Marla’s body flopped over to one side. Nick flung his hand out and braced on the side of my backrest to keep himself upright.

  Stifling my satisfied smile as best I could, I said, “Sorry. It was a motorcycle. Came out of nowhere.”

  “I didn’t see a motorcycle,” Nick replied.

  “I’m not surprised.” I shrugged. “It must have been weaving through traffic at a hundred miles an hour. Thank goodness for my lightning quick reflexes.”

  “Yeah.” Nick’s voice was tinged with sarcasm. “Thank goodness.” His face had turned completely toward me and I could see his narrowed eyes in my peripheral vision, assessing me.

  Let him wonder why I was pissed. I didn’t care.

  “Do you want to fill me in on what happened?”

  “Sure,” I said. A lump formed in my throat, but I didn’t want to cry in front of Marla. It was bad enough I cried the last time I saw Nick. I don’t know what got into me. I hadn’t cried since I was a little girl and my mom was murdered, except for a few months later when my dad wasn’t allowed back into the country after his own mother’s funeral.

  But when it was time to leave Nick last summer, I blubbered like a silly teenage girl.

  So embarrassing.

  Pull yourself together, Paprika. My brain liked to annoy me with my real name when it thought I was acting stupid.

  “My dad made a reputation for himself as head chef of one of the best restaurants in Bogota,” I began. “He specializes in these fusion dishes, combining the flavors of other countries with Latin American ones. He’s known for reinventing the quiche.” Traffic ahead stopped suddenly and I came to a screeching halt six inches behind the car in front of us.

  Marla’s head flopped forward, then back again. My lips tried to turn up into an evil grin, but I squelched it before anyone could see.

  “Shit!” Nick said. If he didn’t stop with his passenger-seat driving, his big boot was going to put a hole in my floorboard.

  I ignored him and kept talking. “The founders of Microtology—Steve and Valerie Kaporsky—happened to be in Bogota a few months ago. Steve fell in love with my dad’s Triple Fusion Quiche when they ate at the restaurant where he worked. He offered him the head chef job here at the VIP Center and pulled strings to get him a quick green card.”

  “Back up a minute,” Nick said. “What’s Microtology, a company or...?”

  I eased up a few inches, then turned my head to look at him. “You haven’t heard of Microtology?”

  He shook his head.

  “The official name is the ‘Temple of Microtology.’ It’s the latest Hollywood fad religion. From the research I’ve done, they seem to believe humans’ negative behavior is being controlled by tiny microorganisms and parasites living in and on us. Their dogma is kind of convoluted and secretive.”

  Nick rolled his eyes. “Welcome to L.A.,” he said.

  “Hey, Bolo wasn’t exactly the bastion of normalcy.”

  “You’ve got me there.”

  “Anyway, my dad’s only been here a little over a month. Two nights ago, the head of security found his sous chef—Alberto Viera—dead and my dad was gone. He hasn’t been seen since Sunday afternoon when he was working with Alberto. They were still there when the rest of the kitchen staff left at three—the restaurant only serves brunch on Sundays. The medical examiner places time of death at around ten-thirty that night.”

  “Are there any other suspects?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t know. The police haven’t been very forthcoming with information. When they questioned me about my dad, though, it was clear he’s a prime suspect.”

  “And why do you believe it wasn’t him?”

  Was he serious? I turned to look at him, then slammed on the brake when I saw the traffic stopping from the corner of my eye. Nick’s head jerked forward and I was okay with that.

  “Did you come all the way from Texas to side with the cops?” I yelled.

  He lifted his hand and massaged his whiplashed neck. “I’m just wondering what you know about him, considering you’ve been in The States and he’s been in Colombia for the past, what, fifteen or sixteen years?”

  If I wasn’t strapped in and driving in heavy traffic, I would have climbed onto Nick’s lap and strangled him with his safety belt.

  “Ya know,” I said snottily. “There are millions of people in Colombia, and the vast majority are not dealing drugs or assassinating judges. They have teachers and doctors and lawyers, just like here.”

  “You’re pretty keyed up,” he replied. “Maybe I should drive.”

  “Hah! Like you could drive in L.A.”

  Nick sucked in a heavy breath. “Rika, I’m on your side, but I need to play devil’s advocate and learn everything you know so I can help.”

  “All right.” I took a deep, calming breath, but a Krispy Kreme donut sign still called to me from the side of the freeway.

  A donut was exactly what I needed right now. However, in addition to the five pounds I gained while eating Nick and LeeAnne’s meals in Bolo, I’d put on four more from pining over him since he’d sent me away.

  “What’s your dad’s name?” Nick asked.

  “Diego Martín. He started as a cook when he first came to the country. Later, he enrolled in culinary school and graduated right before my mom died. A few months later, he went to see his sick mom in Colombia and stayed for her funeral. When he tried to come home, immigration wouldn’t let him back into the U.S. He worked his way up in restaurants and became known as a cutting-edge, creative chef in Bogota.”

  “Not exactly Scarface, in other words,” Nick said.

  I chuckled. Laughter was a surprise after how stressed I’d been. I was back to being glad Nick had come. “No. Besides, Scarface was a Marielito.

  Nick raised his eyebrows.

  “A Cuban.”

  Nick nodded thoughtfully. “Murder weapon?”

  I pulled into the hotel driveway, then closed my eyes for several seconds. “Chef’s knife.”

  Twisting in my seat, I looked directly into Nick’s eyes, expecting them to be the bright Bondi blue color I remembered most when I thought of him, but found them gray-blue and contemplative.