Fit to Be French Fried: Felicia's Food Truck One Hour Cozies, #1

By Celia Kinsey

A  CULINARY COZY TO BE READ IN ONE OR TWO SITTINGS.

When an unlikeable retiree passes out while walking home from Felica's food truck, everyone dismisses the incident as a simple medical emergency, but Felicia's not convinced. Someone had a hand in Mrs. Dunn's collapse, and Felicia is determined to find out who and why. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Cat Cozies
• Release date: May 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393003953

Book preview

Chapter One

WHEN MRS. DUNN SAID she’d like to kill her pesky parrot, I had no inkling that it was Mrs. Dunn herself who’d be darkening death’s door by sundown.

Mrs. Dunn was not my all-time favorite customer. Technically, she wasn’t a customer at all in the sense that she never bought anything. Either Mrs. Dunn had lost her driver’s license, or she liked to walk for her health, but almost every day she’d stop in on her way to or from the Whispering Palms Senior Living Complex. It didn’t matter if she was walking to the supermarket, or to Senior Bingo at the Baptist Church, or to the Dollar Store; Mary Dunn never failed to take advantage of the ice water dispenser we keep next to the food truck.

Even Marge, who carries her belongings around in a black plastic bag and sleeps on the porch of the old house that serves as Bray Bay’s tiny public library occasionally springs for a small French fry on principle.

Because I always drink your water, she’ll say.

Mrs. Dunn was burdened by no such sense of obligation.

Surely you don’t really mean it when you say you want to kill Polly? I said.

Mrs. Dunn sipped ice water from the cup she held in her right hand and tightened her grip on her shopping trolley with her left, an arm firmly clamped across the bright blue handbag she wore slung across her body. Mrs. Dunn was the sort who believes thieves are always lurking just out of the corner of one’s eye, intent on stealing one’s low-fat yogurt, bran cereal, and multi-vitamins.

I do mean it. I really hate that bird, Mrs. Dunn insisted. The only reason that stupid parrot is still alive is that they’ve been after me for years to get rid of her. That dratted bird is driving me crazy, but I can’t get rid of the blasted thing on principle.

Perhaps your parrot is driving ‘them’ crazy, too? I suggested. I didn’t know who they were, and I wasn’t about to ask. If I asked, Mrs. Dunn would remain for another ten minutes, airing her grievances and scaring away the paying customers.

Well, Felicia, said Mrs. Dunn, can’t stand around all day chatting.

Rather than placing her used paper cup into the recycling bin, she set it down on a table I’d just wiped clean. I glanced over at the serving window of the food truck. My cook, Arnie, was scowling at the back of Mrs. Dunn’s head. Arnie is a stickler for recycling.  

Mrs. Dunn took an even firmer hold on her trolley, adjusted her bright blue handbag so it hung low across her belly—the better to keep an eye on it—and shuffled off down the street back toward Whispering Palms.

We get a lot of business from the residents of Whispering Palms despite the retirement complex having its own dining room. Whispering Palms’ promotional leaflet proclaims they provide a gourmet menu approved by a state-licensed nutritionist, but most of the residents prefer my fare: good old-fashioned hot dogs, juicy hamburgers, and crispy French fries, golden brown, with a light dusting of salt.

I was just wiping up the water ring left behind by Mrs. Dunn’s abandoned cup when we got another customer, a paying one this time.

Prue, who also lives at Whispering Palms, is sweet as pie, albeit a little loopy. Even Frank,