Sometimes the best way to know a person is by asking questions, so let’s meet Erin.

What is your name?
Erin Margaret Murphy. I’m half Irish and half Italian, as you can tell by my name. My mother always says that when I was born, my father told her she’d named the first two so he was naming me – and he wasn’t telling her until the ink on the birth certificate was dry. Happily, she and I both like my name.

How old are you?
Old enough to know better, according to my mother.

What is your profession?
Groceries. It’s been the family business since my great-grandfather opened Murphy’s Mercantile on Front Street in Jewel Bay, Montana in 1910. A small, downtown grocer can’t compete with a full-sized supermarket, so these days, we’re a local foods market in the same old pile of bricks in the heart of a town that calls itself the Food Lover’s Village.

Do you have a significant other?
I do indeed, lucky me.

What is his name?
Adam Zimmerman

What is his profession?
In summer, Adam runs a wilderness camp for kids. In the off-season, he directs other programs for kids at the local health club, and teaches wilderness medicine. Bit of a wild man, truth be told. But so darn cute!

Any children?
Give us a little time – we’re getting married in three weeks. What on earth was I thinking, planning a wedding for Christmas Eve?

Do you have any sibling(s)?
Nick is four years older than I, a wildlife biologist who runs with the wolves and a highly eligible bachelor. My sister Chiara – it’s said with a hard C and rhymes with tiara – is two years older than I. She’s an artist and runs Snowberry, a co-op gallery across the street from the Merc. She and her husband, Jason Phillips, have a 6 year old, Landon, my favorite nephew. My only nephew, at the moment — they’re expecting a baby shortly, but if they know the sex, they aren’t telling.

Cats, dogs or other pets?
Mr. Sandburg, a sable Burmese, came to live with me after his original owner, an elderly friend in Seattle, died. Pumpkin, a full-figured orange tabby, joined us after my friend Christine died. If you see a pattern here, so do I. No more deaths; no more cats.

What town do you live in?
See, this always makes me scratch my head. Because we live six miles outside of an unincorporated town – Jewel Bay looks like a town, but there’s no mayor, no council, no city nothing. If we want something done, we do it ourselves. Which creates a wonderful, close community – most of the time. When it doesn’t – well, things can get, shall we say, heated? But I lived in Seattle for 10 years, after college, and much as I loved it, I am never moving again.

House or building complex?
Until a few weeks ago, I lived in a beautifully-restored caretakers’ cabin on a glorious stretch of property above the lake. But after my mother remarried last summer and Adam and I got engaged, we bought the Orchard from her – the house my grandparents built in the 1950s, the house my parents bought in the 1980s, the house where I was raised, in the middle of a marvelous cherry orchard. Heaven.

What is your favorite spot in your house?
Much as I love the house – we’ve remodeled it from top to bottom — my favorite place on this entire property is still the tree house my dad and my grandpa built for me.

Who is your best friend?
For a while there, I couldn’t have said, but thank goodness, it’s Kim Caldwell, again. We didn’t talk for years – after my father died, it was like I lost my best friend, too – but thank goodness we worked past that.

Amateur sleuth or professional?
I’m an amateur, she’s a professional. Seriously, I’m a glorified grocer and my BFF is a sheriff’s deputy and detective. She doesn’t always like me getting involved – okay, she never likes me getting involved, but she’s come to understand I can ask questions and make connections she can’t precisely because people in town still see me as Tom and Fresca Murphy’s youngest, that girl who took over the grocery store and finally made it into a thriving business.

Whom do you work with when sleuthing?
Me, myself, and I. But I’ll take all the help I can get.

Favorite meal?
The last one I ate.

Favorite dessert?
At the moment, Christmas cookies.

Favorite hobby?
Hmm. Does snooping count?

Favorite vacation spot?
Wherever Adam is taking me for our honeymoon. The man will not say! He did tell me to make sure my passport is current, and promised he’d tell me what to pack before we go. I thought about trying to sleuth out the destination, but he’d be so disappointed if it wasn’t a surprise that I can’t bring myself to poke around and figure it out.

Favorite color?
Red, as in my red cowboy boots. I feel like a princess in them. That may not compute to you, but I became a rodeo queen by accident my senior year of high school, and still love to ride, especially with Kim.

Favorite author?
Three-way tie between Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, and Dorie Greenspan. I mostly read cookbooks. You can learn so much about a time and place from them!

Favorite sports team?
I don’t follow sports much, though when I lived in Seattle, I dated a man who was crazy about the Sounders soccer team and indifferent to food. Needless to say, not a match made in heaven.

Movies or Broadway?
Movies. I am particularly fond of PBS Mystery and all versions of Sherlock Holmes, though I still think Jeremy Brett and Ted Hardwicke were the best Holmes and Watson.

Are you a morning or a night person?
Night-ish, because that’s when the really great old movies are on. But I rarely stay up after midnight without a very good reason. (I’ll let you decide what that might be!)

In a few sentences, what is a typical day in your life like?
Typical? No such thing in retail, especially during tourist season – meaning May to September, and December. Plus, we love our festivals here and I somehow got roped into being head of the Village Merchants’ Association, which is sort of like being the mayor with all the work and none of the glory. So I buy and sell groceries, put out fires, put on concerts and galas and film festivals—you name it, I might do it on any given day. Not to mention going after the occasional killer, if someone messes with my family, my friends, or my hometown.

All of which is making that vacation – wherever it might be to – sound pretty darned attractive. But you know, even though we’re only going to be gone two weeks, I’ll miss the Merc and Jewel Bay. Because there truly is no place like home.

You can read about Erin in As The Christmas Cookie Crumbles, the fifth book in the “Food Lovers’ Village” mystery series. The first book in the series is Death Al Dente.

Erin is one smart cookie, but can she keep the holiday spirit―and herself―alive till Christmas?

In Jewel Bay, all is merry and bright. At Murphy’s Mercantile, AKA the Merc, manager Erin Murphy is ringing in the holiday season with food, drink, and a new friend: Merrily Thornton. A local girl gone wrong, Merrily has turned her life around. But her parents have publicly shunned her, and they nurse a bitterness that chills Erin.

When Merrily goes missing and her boss discovers he’s been robbed, fingers point to Merrily―until she’s found dead, a string of lights around her neck. The clues and danger snowball from there. Can Erin nab the killer―and keep herself in one piece―in time for a special Christmas Eve?

Includes delicious recipes!

Purchase Link
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About the author
Leslie Budewitz blends her passion for food, great mysteries, and the Northwest in the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in Jewel Bay, Montana, and the Seattle Spice Shop Mysteries. Death al Dente, the first Village mystery, won the 2013 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. New York Times bestseller Laura Childs says “Small town charm and big time chills.” The 2015-16 president of Sisters in Crime, Leslie lives in NW Montana with her husband, a singer-songwriter and doctor of natural medicine, and their gray tuxedo cat, an avid birdwatcher. Visit Leslie at lesliebudewitz.com.

All comments are welcomed.