creative ramblings & reverie

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Death in Tesuque

 


Back in her hometown just outside Santa Fe to cater her best friend's wedding dinner, Nina Perry's culinary sensations are decisively upstaged by the sensation opera diva Didi Vallance causes—turning up dead in the bride's swimming pool.  Given Didi's talent for antagonizing those who know her best, Nina can only hope it wasn't her father, Noel, who strangled his ex-wife after the shouting match she'd overheard while dishing out paella.  She's somewhat cheered to find that the detective on the case, Gilbert Jaramillo, is not only dishy but also willing to consider alternate scenarios.

This story was published in Fiction on the Web, an online journal based in England, in November 2020.

Here, Nina describes the meal she serves the wedding guests before her ex-stepmother (soon to be ex-ex), meets her end.

"Francesca had hired me to cater the reception, Sunday evening, after the wedding.  We'd set Spanish wrought-iron floor candelabras among the tables, and a line of farolitos on the low patio walls, lit by the wait staff as the dark came on.  I'd given the forty-seven dinner guests tiny picadillo empanadas, pink grapefruit guacamole, and griddled cornmeal gorditas with goat cheese and roasted red peppers or with manchego and dandelion greens; and then two humongous paellas—seafood with smoked chorizo, and vegetable.  A flan de naranja with a good dose of Cointreau had seen the party through until the cutting of the Mayan chile chocolate wedding cake."

 

 

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Abiquiu, New Mexico

 


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