Cozy Case Files, A Cozy Mystery Sampler, Volume 11

By Vivien Chien, Ellie Alexander, Elizabeth Penney and 3 more

Looking for a new cozy series? In the new edition of Cozy Case Files, Minotaur Books compiles the beginnings of six charming cozy mysteries publishing in Winter 2021 for free for easy sampling.

The eleventh edition of Cozy Case Files features the latest cozies by the following authors: Ellie Alexander, Vivien Chien, Mariah Fredericks, Diane Kelly, Elizabeth Penney, and Paige Shelton.

It’s 1914 New York, and a killer is stalking Broadway in Death of a Showman.

A treasure hunt through Edinburgh gives way to a search for a villain terrorizing the city in Deadly Editions. It’s the end of a beautiful Maine summer in Bodies and Bows, and apron shop owner Iris Buckley must track down a killer before her best friend is arrested for murder and everything unravels.

In Murder with a View, the body of a popular country music singer turns up in Nashville carpenter Whitney Whitaker’s latest real estate investment. Oregon’s favorite bakery Torte’s newest venture - a pop-up ice cream shop - is swirling into a nightmare in Chilled to the Cone.

And in Fatal Fried Rice, a delectable cozy set in Cleveland, Ohio, Lana Lee may be next on the chopping block when her cooking class turns deadly and Lana is forced to investigate to clear her name.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jan 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781250814852

Vivien Chien

VIVIEN CHIEN (she/her) was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio where she grew up in a mixed-race home, making for some very interesting cultural experiences. She found her love of books and the written word at an early age while writing short stories about her classmates in elementary school. When she’s not writing, Vivien enjoys frequenting local Asian restaurants, frolicking in bookstores, and searching for her next donut. She is the author of the Noodle Shop Mystery series, including Death by Dumpling and Misfortune Cookie, which was nominated for the Lilian Jackson Braun Award.

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Cozy Case Files, A Cozy Mystery Sampler, Volume 11 by Mariah Fredericks, Paige Shelton, Elizabeth Penney, Diane Kelly, Ellie Alexander, and Vivien Chien

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Table of Contents

About the Authors

Copyright Page

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In the fourth in this absorbing series set in Gilded Age New York lady’s maid Jane Prescott is thrust into the world of show business, where a killer is stalking Broadway.

It’s the summer of 1914 and Jane Prescott—lady’s maid to Louise Tyler, daughter of a wealthy New York society family—has just arrived home from Independence Day celebrations to find musician Leo Hirschfeld playing the Tylers’ piano.

Jane’s brief courtship with Leo had ended before the Tylers’ vacation to Europe earlier in the summer, so she isn’t entirely surprised to see him. She is, however, shocked to learn that he’s been engaged to write a new Broadway show—and that he’s married a chorus girl in his musical.

Jane and Louise Tyler are pulled into the sparkling and dramatic world of Broadway, with Louise becoming an investor in the show, and Jane accompanying her to rehearsals as her chaperone. But behind the glittering facade of costumes and love songs, the cast is restless and prone to deception, culminating in the death of the show’s producer: Sidney Warburton.

The accusation that Leo was involved jolts Jane, and her old friend and tabloid reporter Michael Behan, into action. Determined to close the curtain on these murders, Jane must strip back the masks of these consummate actors until she knows the truth.

Last night, my grandson and his wife took me to the theater. I know you’ve seen a lot of shows, he said. But I don’t think you’ve ever seen anything like this. My firstborn grandchild, he likes to be first in everything, using words like best and most and biggest without a trace of irony.

The show’s creators have been very secretive as to what the show actually is, beyond its title and a pair of glowing yellow eyes above the marquee. Leo feels this is an excellent way to get people wildly curious when you don’t have much to show them. He was annoyed by the news that they had renovated the theater to accommodate the new show, reportedly tearing out several rows of seats, painting the walls black, and even punching a hole through the ceiling. I reminded him that the Winter Garden had started life as a horse exchange and this was hardly its first renovation.

Cats. He shook out the newspaper. What’s next? Aardvarks?

Amy likes cats.

Amy is six years old. What’s everyone else’s excuse?

Amy was my excuse. My great-granddaughter is a shy child who has not quite found her place among her contemporaries and so prefers four legs to two. As the oldest and youngest in the family, we are both sometimes puzzled by the world in which we find ourselves. Perhaps because I am too old to register as fully human, she often seeks me out at gatherings. It was my hand she held as we went into the theater and she kept hold of it as we sat down, both intrigued and alarmed by a young woman in a leotard and whiskers who pranced down the aisle and made a great show of licking her arm.

As promised, there were cats. Many cats. There was leaping and pouncing and singing. There was not, so far as I could tell, a story. Someone once told me that all good stories are about love, and I waited for the beasts to form attachments. But they just jumped around hissing and announcing themselves. The idea seemed to be that they wanted to go somewhere, some finer place, and if they performed well enough, they would be chosen. All in all, it was a lot of animals writhing in a junkyard.

It does have the one good song, I told Leo over lunch. And it’s quite the spectacular. At the end, two cats go floating off on an enormous tire.

So, that’s why they punched a hole in the ceiling. Well, at least there were no accidents and nobody got killed.

No.

We went on with our lunch. But I knew we were both thinking of his first Broadway show. When someone had been killed.

And not at all by accident.

1

Louise Tyler was in a rage.

The provocation was Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Tonic—or rather the absence of it. On our voyage back from Europe, Louise had sent several ship-to-shore telegrams with instructions to the new cook to have the beverage at hand when we returned. We had been home only fifteen minutes when we discovered the tonic was not in the house. Neither was the cook.

I could not recall ever seeing Louise Tyler in a rage. Nor, from his expression, could her husband, William, who watched helplessly as she tore around the house, calling down vengeance on the cook, on all cooks, and all telegrams, and all empty iceboxes. This led to a general damnation of sea travel and weddings that required them, culminating in a derisive dismissal of Europe itself. Except for the London Zoo and its penguins. They had been charming. The rest of the continent could go hang.

When the mistress is out of sorts, the maid must find remedies. I said, Mrs. Tyler, why don’t you let me run you a bath? Then later, I can go to the market…

Why don’t you go now, Jane? urged William. Take the car, it’ll be faster.

Having just picked us up from the Chelsea Piers, Horst the chauffeur had not even finished bringing in the trunks when William told him to take me to Gristedes in the family’s newest acquisition: a Rolls-Royce called the Silver Ghost. William had encountered the car in London and fallen madly in love.

It’s been a long journey, I reassured William. Mrs. Tyler will feel better now that she’s home.

At least I hoped she would. We had been traveling since September 1913 and it was now June 1914. For nine of those months, Louise’s composure had been heroic. But over the last few weeks, she had finally … well, cracked. The trip abroad had been fraught from the start. Weddings are always difficult, a sister’s wedding particularly so, and the wedding of the lovely and unscrupulous Charlotte Benchley—no blood had been shed, and for that we could all be grateful. Petite, blond, and exceedingly wealthy, Charlotte had charmed the old world into submission. The acid tongue was used sparingly, the fluttered lashes employed steadily. As an American, she was permitted to be outrageous at times; she could ask if it were true that the Meissen went missing in any great house visited by Queen Mary, if the duke of Beaumont was really so fond of telegraph boys, and why on earth would anyone fight over Alsace and Lorraine, the food was so terrible. Under the count’s tutelage, she had become an excellent shot, a talent she claimed in the name of Wild Bill Hickok and Jesse James. No one believed it, but they enjoyed her willingness to play into the American myth where infants chewed on raw bison meat and played with guns instead of rattles. I did not get to know the count well, but William indicated there might not be that much to know.

As was so often the case, Charlotte’s success was Louise’s burden. Under the aegis of the captivating countess-to-be, the Tylers were whisked from one European capital to the next in an endless series of balls, operas, teas, and shooting parties. The protocols in each country were varied and byzantine; a virtual nightmare for anyone who had both a terror of committing faux pas and a fatalistic certainty that she would. Louise passed her hours in a state of deadly tedium laced with deep anxiety. Still, she shouldered on, climbing in and out of several outfits a day and as many packing cases in a month. In addition, Charlotte having lived without the responsibility of her mother for over a year refused to take up that duty again, and so the job of managing Mrs. Benchley on the continent without diplomatic incident fell to William and Louise—and myself. I was very fond of the family matriarch, but after several months in her constant company, even I flinched at the sound of her voice piercing and simple like a child’s whistle.

By the time we reached Vienna, where the wedding was to be held, Louise’s nerves were frayed to the point of breaking. One evening, she had collapsed on the bed—I winced as she crushed a gorgeous dress of sunset-red silk chiffon—to announce, I’m sick to death of aristocrats. Count, duke, prince, I don’t care if I meet another in my lifetime. They speak five languages and haven’t a single interesting thing to say in any of them. I never knew how American I was until I came to Europe.

I had reassured her that we would soon be home and life would seem much brighter. Peeling jewels and gloves from her wrists, Louise had sighed. I hope so. Unfortunately, the voyage had not been smooth and low spirits were not improved by seasickness.

Still, now we were back in New York. I had missed the city more than I could have imagined, its arrogant skyscrapers that turned avenues into shaded canyons, the mad bustle of its streets with trolleys, horses, cars, and pedestrians rushing in all directions. I missed the smells, the multilingual invective, and the sense that everyone was here to go somewhere and do something.

And I missed its people. William had instructed the staff remaining at home to forward all mail, but as the letters had to follow us around the continent, things were delayed. Or lost. I had nothing from my oldest friend, Anna, and a single letter from my uncle, reporting a leak in the roof and Berthe’s twisted ankle. Only one person had promised to write and kept that promise. Were it not for Michael Behan, I would have had no idea what was happening in America during our absence. His first letter arrived in London two weeks after we did.

Dear Miss Prescott,

Having bid farewell to you and the sulfurous purgatory that is New York in August, a young man’s fancy turns lightly to baseball. Christy Mathewson’s arm is stout, his aim true. The streets are redolent with the stench of horse droppings and politics. The first milch goat show was held in Rochester. No doubt you are sorry to have missed it.

Yours,

MB

Dear Mr. Behan,

There is no baseball in London, but horse droppings are in fashion here as well. I would gladly report on the question of Home Rule or the new wax figures of Balkan monarchs at Madame Tussauds. But all I’ve seen are backstairs and bad tempers.

Sincerely,

Jane Prescott

Dear Miss Prescott,

The new income tax law became law today. Times predicts, Some confusion is certain. Everyone seems to think something should be done about Mexico, no one seems to know what. Have you met Czar? He seems an idiot.

Dear Mr. Behan,

Have not met Czar. We are in Paris now and I have learned to swear at porters in three different languages. Travel is enlarging.

His next letter was less cheerful.

Dear Miss Prescott,

It is after midnight in the newsroom. Maybe it’s the rain, maybe I’m tired. But yours truly is in a foul mood. I have no great fondness for the old country, but things have gone awry in our new one. Take recent events in Ludlow, Colorado. Rockefeller may preach workaday religion, but his vision of do unto and so forth doesn’t seem to stretch to his employees, many of whom are on strike. Rather than do something sensible like pay them, he turned a bunch of thugs loose on them with the predictable result that a lot of people are dead. Including two women and eleven children who were burned to death. The city’s pure and earnest are naturally vying for the title of most outraged. But I wonder if they don’t have a point this time. Who the hell turns ex-convicts and mercenaries on women and children?

Sorry to be grim. Will go kick Harry Knowles to feel better.

Briefly, I wondered if this was why I had not heard from Anna. If the murder of striking women and children upset the normally apolitical Michael Behan, it would inspire a lethal rage in my anarchist friend. In fact, I preferred not to think how Anna might respond. I wrote back to Mr. Behan that he should kick gently; it was not Mr. Knowles’s fault. And that I hoped my letter found him feeling more cheerful. As it happened, it did.

Dear Miss Prescott,

The city continues its decline in your absence. The Bergen