7:00 am: Alarm goes off. Contemplate the snooze button. Another twenty minutes won’t hurt.

7:02 am: Dog nose in my eye. Get up, load coffeemaker and set it on kill. I’m going to need all the help I can get today.

I take Teddy, my probably-German-Shepard rescue mutt out to do what needs to be done and stare at the ocean while I think about the day ahead of me. I agreed to host the local library’s fall fundraising banquet in the artisan marketplace I own and manage, and I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. But right now, thinking about everything I have to do, Present Me isn’t very happy with Past Me.

7:48 am: Showered, dressed, and caffeinated, I make the short walk across the field that separates the tiny cottage where I live from the marketplace building. It’s October, and here on the Northern California coast that means we’re having some of the nicest weather of the year. I take my time and enjoy the cool air and bright blue skies—the winter rains will start soon enough.

The market won’t open for several hours, but I’m far from the first one there. Robbie is in his charcuterie shop, unloading fresh salamis and slabs of guanciale into the deli case, while Helen wipes specks of dust off her jars of pickles and Orlan arranges the display of apples at the front of his produce shop into perfect pyramids. I greet them but don’t stop to chat—the coffee hasn’t quite taken full effect yet, and I’ll be more human in a bit.

9:36 am: Julie Muller, co-owner and head cheesemaker of Dancing Cow Cheese knocks on the door of my closet-sized office to say that the tables for the party have arrived. I’ve spent the last hour working on taxes, so a little manual labor sounds like a nice break. And at the same time I can get some more information about what to expect from tonight. In addition to being the driving force behind the marketplace’s star tenant, Julie is on the board of the Friends of the Library, and hosting their event here was her idea. Not that I’m worried about something going wrong; Julie wouldn’t allow it. She’s so competent, I can’t imagine there being anything she can’t handle.

12:13 pm: After a busy morning, I feel like I’ve earned my lunch. There was a time, back in the old days when I was a programmer working in a cube farm, when lunch was a microwave burrito, or leftover takeout, but things have improved. Carmen is trying out some new fall empanada flavors for the shop she shares with her wife, Iryna (who makes pierogis of her own), so we all get a chance to weigh in on the benefits of combining wild mushrooms and caramelized onions. (Verdict: good.) With some of Robbie’s ham as an accompaniment, a nicer meal would be hard to imagine.

One thing we don’t have in the marketplace is a beverage vendor, but today even that is taken care of by Nathan, my neighbor from up the hill, arriving with a growler of the beer he’s offered to provide for the party. It’s an even better deal than it sounds like, considering Nathan’s status as the former “boy wonder of Northern California brewing.” (He hates that quote, so we bring it up a lot.) The teasing and gifts are a big change from the relationship I had after I first set up the market, and he did everything he could to get it shut down. Now. . .well, relationship is a loaded word. But the beer is good.

3:00 pm: We’ve closed the marketplace early to set up for the party and my best friend Betty arrives right on time with the first batch of appetizers. In addition to running a guest ranch with her husband she’s started a catering business, and this is her first event. A lesser mortal might be stressed out of her mind, but for Betty this is just another day. If she wasn’t such a great cook and a nice person, I would probably have to hate her.

5:25 pm: I check the door to my office one more time to make sure it’s locked before going to find something to do to help set up. The marketplace vendors have all secured their shops, since there are going to be a lot of people here tonight, and not enough eyes to watch them. The last thing we need is to have any of the guests getting into someplace they shouldn’t. I start counting the place settings when I notice that Iryna is heading towards me, looking like she has something on her mind. . .

A Dismal Harvest, A Claudia Simcoe Mystery #2
Genre: Cozy
Release: March 2022
Purchase Link

It’s autumn on the Sonoma Coast, and Claudia Simcoe is sure that the gourmet harvest dinner being held at her artisan marketplace will wipe away any memories of the unpleasantness last summer. But then the newly installed video surveillance system shows local lawyer Clark Gowan removing something from a hidden compartment in the marketplace walls . . . and Claudia’s visit to his office the next day reveals that he’s dead, shot with one of his own vintage guns.

The town’s new no-nonsense police chief wants to know about the compartment, but she’s more interested in the fact that Julie Muller, famed cheesemaker and one of Claudia’s tenants, broke in to Gowan’s office the night before he was killed. Concerned for her friend, and also about the revelation that Gowan, who was involved in the sale of the marketplace building, was not entirely on the up and up, Claudia is determined to learn more.

The building’s Prohibition-era history offers some clues, and the victim’s illegal legal work turns out to have affected a number of people in town, from Julie to the farm museum he cheated out of a significant amount of land. Meanwhile, Claudia still has a marketplace to run, and she is more confused than anyone when it comes to her relationship, or lack-thereof, with her craft-beer-making neighbor.

Still, Claudia thinks she’s getting a hand on this investigating thing, until another gruesome death, secrets from her building’s past, and a low-speed tractor chase make her wonder if she’s really ready to reap what she’s sown.

About the author
Daisy Bateman is the author of the Marketplace Mysteries series, in which the owner of an artisan foods marketplace on the Sonoma Coast solves murders and stops for the occasional snack. Daisy is a mystery lover, cheese enthusiast, and world-renowned expert in Why You Should Buy That. In what passes for normal life, she works in biotech and lives in Alameda, California, with her husband and a labradoodle on a mission to chew the world into tiny pieces.

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