Today I'm excited to showcase Six Feet Deep Dish by Mindy Quigley, the first book in her new Deep Dish Mysteries, what's not to love when you mix murder and deep dish pizza.
Enjoy!
ISBN-13: 9781250792433
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperback
Release Date: 08-23-2022
Length: 320 pp
Deep Dish Mysteries #1
Buy It: Amazon/ B&N/ IndieBound
ADD TO: GOODREADS
Overview:
Fresh mozzarella, tangy tomato sauce, and murder: the perfect recipe for a delicious first entry in Mindy Quigley's Six Feet Deep Dish, a delectable new series...Delilah O’Leary can’t wait to open her new gourmet deep-dish pizzeria in Geneva Bay, Wisconsin—a charming resort town with a long history as a mobsters’ hideaway, millionaires’ playground, and vacation mecca. Engaged to a hunk with a hefty trust fund, Delilah is poised to begin a life that’s just about as delicious as one of her cheesy creations.
Just before opening night, though, Delilah’s plans for pizza perfection hit the skids when her fiancĂ© dumps her and leaves her with a very large memento from their relationship—Butterball, their spoiled, plus-sized tabby cat.
Delilah’s trouble deepens when she discovers a dead body and finds her elderly aunt holding the murder weapon. Handsome local police detective Calvin Capone, great grandson of the legendary gangster, opens an investigation, threatening to sink Delilah’s pie-in-the-sky ambitions before they can even get off the ground. To save her aunt and get her pizza place generating some dough, Delilah must deliver the real killer.
Read an excerpt:
CHAPTER 1
The problem with perfection is that it doesn’t exist. Somewhere, deep down, I knew this. But in the high-end hotel kitchens and Michelin-starred restaurants where I honed my cooking skills, the name of the game was churning out perfection on a plate. Dish after dish, night after night. No mistakes. Ever.
I opened the doors of my new top-of-the-line Everest three-door commercial fridge and allowed the chilly blast of air to wash over me.
“It’s all there, Delilah. Nobody’s touched anything since the last time you checked an hour ago.”
I jumped at the sound of my sous-chef’s voice. “Oh, hi, Sonya,” I began. “I just needed to get—”
“What? A life?” Sonya Dokter nudged past me with her hip.
She pointed to different sections of the refrigerator as she spoke. “Fresh organic spinach. Check. Locally grown red and white onions. Check. Metric tons of the finest quality Italian sausage from pigs whose lives were more pampered than a Kardashian’s. Check. Parmesan, pepperoni, provolone, peppers, prosciutto, pepperoncini, and pineapple. All present and accounted for. Cheese so fresh it’ll slap your backside and call you ‘Sweetie.’ Check-er-oo.” Sonya put her arm around my shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze as she pulled me away from the fridge. She gently pried my hand from the handle and shut the door. “Relax. We’re ready.”
Part of me knew she was right. I’d tested the new appliances dozens of times. I’d spent the previous day polishing the stainless steel worktops until they sparkled and scrubbing the floors until I could practically hear them begging for mercy. But a bigger part of me wanted to make one last practice pizza before the guests arrived for my new restaurant’s soft opening.
I reached for one of the huge bowls where that night’s already-risen pizza dough was resting. Sonya slapped my hand away. “No more dough for you. Tonight is for you and Sam to enjoy. No pressure. Let the rest of us worry about the execution. A soft opening should be a celebration. I, for one, am ready to get this pizza party poppin’.”
Sonya shimmied her hips and twirled in her vintage rockabilly polka-dot dress. Her hair—chopped into a midnight black bob with high-cut bangs—swished as she spun.
Pizza making is a floury, saucy business, and Sonya and I usually sported matching chef’s whites and hairnets while we worked. For tonight, though, I’d wrestled my wilderness of coppery chestnut hair into a sleek up-do. I had opted for a low-cut wrap dress, which I hoped accentuated some of my curves and camouflaged others, while Sonya rocked her plus-sized pin-up model look.
“You’re a walking party,” I said, smiling at her. “Just add champagne.”
“Or better yet, bourbon,” she replied, striking her best Bettie Page pose and blowing me a red-lipped smooch.
I walked through the kitchen again, ticking off items from my mental checklist for tonight’s party and tomorrow’s grand opening, while Sonya threw on an apron and began mustering little battalions of red and green peppers to chop. Bins of semolina and flour, industrial-sized cans of crushed San Marzano tomatoes, and jars of oil-cured Spanish olives lined the shelves. Garlic-infused tomato sauce gently burbled on the stove. I dipped a tasting spoon into the sauce and brought it to my lips—balanced, comforting, rich. The same adjectives could probably be used to describe my fiancĂ© and business partner, Sam Van Meter. I tasted it again. Something was keeping it from being one hundred percent right, but I couldn’t quite identify the flaw. Alas, the same thing could probably be said about my relationship with Sam.
Moving to Geneva Bay, Wisconsin, and opening a restaurant was more my dream than Sam’s. The resort town was only about an hour and a half north of Chicago, but it felt worlds away. I’d spent most childhood summers next to the lake’s inviting blue depths, sunbathing and gobbling down titanic-sized pistachio sundaes during our annual family vacations. Whenever I was overwhelmed by the constant din, clanging pots, and expletive-laced tirades of the Chicago restaurant kitchens where I’d worked, my mind traveled to Geneva Bay. Living here full-time was a wish come true.
On those childhood trips, my family always stayed at my great-aunt Biz’s quaint waterfront cottage. Small houses like hers were increasingly rare, many of them razed to make way for the lake houses of the nouveau riche or dwarfed by the legions of imposing, turn-of-the-century estates that ringed the lake. Those older mansions had been built as summer getaways for the biggest names in Chicago business: Wrigley, Schwinn, Vicks. In Geneva Bay, the names were attached to fabulous homes instead of well-known products. As a kid, I’d fantasized about living in one of the breathtaking mansions, and now that dream, too, was coming true. Sam and I were midway through remodeling a hulking Queen Anne mansion built during Prohibition by one of the many Chicago tough guys who’d minted a fortune running illegal booze from the Canadian border to the Windy City via Wisconsin.
Sam knew how much Geneva Bay meant to me, and he’d been the one to offer to bankroll our move and invest in my restaurant. As a sophomore in college, Sam had created an app to allow users to access baseball stats in real time, which apparently is (1) a thing some people feel the need to do, and (2) very lucrative. He sold the majority stake in his company, Third Base Analytics, for a small fortune when he was twenty-six, allowing him to devote the last decade to spending some of the money he’d amassed.
After sprinkling a smidgen more crushed red pepper into the tomato sauce, I tasted it again. A smidgen closer to that ever-elusive goal … perfection. My fingers brushed the smooth stacks of three-inch-deep round steel pans that would hold our new restaurant’s signature menu item: Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. My twist was to draw on my years in top restaurants to create innovative recipes using top-notch ingredients, rather than the typical sausage, peppers, and cheese pies churned out by Chicago’s old guard deep-dish establishments.
I checked the sauce again. Good. Very good. But …
“Stop with the sauce already. We’re not going to have any left for the pizzas if you keep taste-testing it,” Sonya said, giving me a not-too-gentle shove toward the door that led out to the dining room. “Why don’t you check the setup out front?”
With one last wistful look at the pizza dough, I walked into the thirty-seat dining space. The windows facing the lake seemed almost like gigantic landscape paintings, revealing a dazzling palette of watery blues and arboreal greens. Every time I saw this view, I had to pause for a moment to let my eyes take a deep, long drink of it.
No one would guess that a few short months ago, this building had been derelict, in danger of demolition. It had fallen into disrepair years before, after the Feds raided the previous tenant’s business—a pizza-place-cum-mob front called Rocco’s. The eponymous Rocco, Rocco Guanciale, was now serving time instead of pizza, twenty-five to life at a federal prison upstate for crimes that included running an illegal gambling ring, extortion, and fencing stolen goods, with the odd bit of pimping and drug dealing thrown in just for kicks. He ran his criminal operation from the small apartment over the restaurant, an apartment Sam, Butterball—our oversized butterscotch tabby cat—and I were temporarily living in while our new house was being remodeled.
The restaurant was slightly removed from downtown Geneva Bay, fronting a narrow inlet and a modest pier—convenient for criminals, but also perfect for diners seeking serenity. While other potential buyers had been deterred by the building’s unsavory connections, I’d thought of it as a selling point. Growing up on the rough-and-tumble South Side of Chicago, my sister Shea and I had been raised on our father’s stories of wise guys and beat cops. Chicago had its fair share of big-city problems and unsavory history, but no one had more affection for the grit, ingenuity, and openheartedness of the place than our father did. When he’d passed away the previous year, I’d decided that opening a restaurant with a Chicago theme and a unique spin on the city’s signature dish would be my way of honoring him.
As I made my final inspection of the dining room, Daniel, my old friend and newly hired bartender, glided into view outside the windows, rowing his kayak toward shore. Even from a distance, I recognized his athletic frame and neon green boat. Like many Geneva Bay dwellers, during the warmer months, Daniel commuted around the large lake by watercraft. Unlike the well-heeled residents who tootled back and forth in deluxe powerboats, though, our ultra-fit bartender paddled in a sleek kayak, which he stored at the small dock just on the other side of the tree-lined parking lot from the restaurant.
Banished from the kitchen, I continued to busy myself with restraightening and recleaning the dining area for a few minutes until Daniel strode in, unzipping the top of his wetsuit to reveal his bronzed pectoral muscles. He removed his Ray-Bans and blinked the late afternoon sunshine out of his eyes. As his vision adjusted, he stopped and stared at the canvases that hung from the ceiling.
“Cool, huh?” I said, gesturing at the artwork. “They went up this morning.”
He raised an eyebrow and ran his hands through his close-cropped black faux-hawk haircut. “It’s a statement. I’ll give you that.”
The interior space had finally been finished earlier that day. Shiny gunmetal gray wallpaper and gleaming honey beige wood floors formed a subdued backdrop for the funky, mismatched bubble-gum pinks and maraschino reds of the dining chairs. A warm, beechwood bar paralleled the back wall, while seductively lit bottles of alcohol perched on the shelves behind it. Huge, vivid portraits suspended from the high ceiling added a sense of drama.
I’d commissioned the new artwork for the dining room from an up-and-coming student painter at Chicago’s Art Institute. I’d asked for something that would “put Chicago’s past and present in perspective,” instructions the artist took quite literally. The canvases depicted famous Chicagoans, with a twist. One featured Oprah Winfrey and Harry Caray in vivid colors, pushing a miniature sepia-tone Al Capone in a baby carriage. Another had Michael Jordan and Jane Addams holding hands with a tiny, pigtailed Bugs Moran. The city’s old-time gangsters were made into children—smaller than life—while its more reputable citizens were rendered as towering adults.
“You don’t like it?” I asked.
“You got Capone up there with a pacifier and Pampers. Maybe you’re playing with fire a little.” Daniel wobbled his hand back and forth. “People can be touchy.”
“It’s art,” I huffed. “I moved here to escape the grind of the city, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still love Chicago. Besides, who’s going to defend the reputations of a bunch of crooks from a hundred years ago?”
Just then, Melody, our hostess, ducked through the vestibule and slipped past Daniel.
“Ready for the big day, chef?” Melody chirped in her cheery Upper Midwest accent. “I’m having, like, an excitement heart attack right now.” Sometimes Melody’s nonstop optimism grated on me, but I had to admit that my heart was feeling a little fluttery, too. She looked up at the newly installed artwork. “Cripes! Baby Face Nelson as an actual baby. Too funny,” she squealed.
I raised my eyebrows at Daniel in a silent “I told you so.”
“It’s pretty edgy, ’n so?” Melody continued, using the Wisconsinese contraction for “isn’t it so?” “People are still sensitive about that stuff.” She removed her sunhat, sending her blond curls springing out in every direction. “My grandpa lives in Manitowish Waters—where the big Dillinger shoot-out was? Dillinger’s gang went on the lam up there, took an innkeeper and his wife hostage, and shot six people. The whole town’s still traumatized. Even a tiny, baby Dillinger would be…” Melody looked at me and dragged her index finger horizontally across her throat. She shrugged. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, though.”
Now it was Daniel’s turn to give me an “I told you so” look.
An apron-clad Sonya burst through the kitchen door, carrying a steaming spoon in one hand and cupping her other hand under it. “I knew you’d need to taste it again, and change something, even though you tasted it literally five minutes ago.”
“You make it sound like I’m some kind of crazed control freak.” I looked to Melody and Daniel for support. Melody suddenly found urgent bits of napkin folding and centerpiece arranging to do.
“I need to get changed now,” Daniel said, quickly slipping away toward the restrooms.
I grabbed the spoon from Sonya. Melody edged closer, still not making eye contact, waiting for my verdict. I took a slow sip of the sauce. I paused, letting the blend of garlic, oregano, basil, spices, and tomatoes meld in my mouth. “Perfect,” I declared.
“Really?” Sonya asked. She tipped her head down and shot up a black-penciled eyebrow. “Nothing you’d change?”
“Nope, it’s perfect.” I bit my lower lip.
“Nothing?” She waved the spoon back and forth like an orchestra conductor’s baton.
I shook my head, pressing my lips tightly together.
“Ok-a-ay,” she sang, still looking doubtful. She turned back toward the kitchen, walking in slow-motion strides. With every step, she cast an expectant glance over her shoulder.
Just as she reached the kitchen door, I broke. “Maybe just a pinch more oregano,” I blurted. “And by ‘pinch’ I mean three-quarters of a teaspoon.”
“I knew it!” she said triumphantly. By now, Daniel had rejoined us, looking causally spiffed up for the evening’s festivities in black trousers and a tight black T-shirt. He and Melody each handed Sonya five-dollar bills.
“I am not that predictable,” I protested.
“I could set my watch by you,” Sonya said with a wink.
It was hard to deny. Sonya and I had roomed together when we were students at the Chicago Culinary Institute almost twenty years before, and we’d overlapped in restaurant and hotel kitchens for years afterward as we climbed through the ranks. She probably knew me better than my actual sister did. When I decided to open my own place, Sonya was my first hire.
Sonya turned to head back to the kitchen, but stopped to say, “Hey, I noticed the new sign still hasn’t gone up outside. Is it going to be ready in time?”
“I hope so,” Melody added. “It’s confusing for people that the Rocco’s sign is still out there. I’ve already had a couple of sketchy guys drop by looking to put money on next Sunday’s Cubs-Brewers game. I told them we just do pizzas now, not, you know, all that other stuff.”
“Sam’s taking care of the sign,” I replied. “And for your information I haven’t micromanaged him at all.”
What I didn’t say is that Sam and I had had a pretty epic blowup about me micromanaging every single other aspect of the restaurant, and that he’d gone as far as packing a bag and heading out the door a few weeks prior. In the past, when we argued, one of us—usually him—would quickly back down and apologize. While our personality clashes were nothing new—I was Type A and Sam was Type Zzzz—our arguments lately had taken on a sharper edge. Honestly, I was scared. Sam’s unshakable calm had buoyed me through many a rough patch over the past three years. To prove that I trusted him and to prevent a breakup, I’d agreed to hand all the marketing over to him with the added concession that I would stay completely out of it.
Through the windows that overlooked the parking lot, we watched a large yellow truck emblazoned with the words Lundqvist & Son rumble to a stop. “Speak of the devil. I think that’s the sign people now. Melody, can you run upstairs and let Sam know?” I held up my hands, palms out. “This is me, macromanaging from a healthy distance.”
Though I was dying to take charge of the sign installation, I busied myself helping Daniel work out some kinks in the bar’s electronic point-of-sale system while we waited for Sam. Sonya went back to the kitchen to get the first of the night’s pizzas baking. Even in our blast furnace of an oven, the heavily layered pies would take at least thirty minutes to cook, so if we were going to be ready when guests arrived, the cooking needed to get underway. A few moments later, Melody came back, followed by Sam.
“Smells great in here. And looks great, too,” my fiancĂ© said, eyeing me up and down. “That’s quite the dress.”
He twinkled his toothpaste-commercial grin and let his gaze skim the low neckline of my dress. As he leaned in to give me an unhurried kiss on the lips, a week’s worth of stubble grazed my cheek. His long, brown hair was gathered into a loose man bun on top of his head. The hairstyle had become an off-limits topic between us—he was strongly pro man bun, while I felt that it made him look like an out-of-work samurai.
Despite his less-than-fastidious grooming, it was hard to deny that Sam was a mouthful of man candy. We sometimes got looks from women on the street, radiating wonder at the fact that I—a freckly, queen-sized working-class gal with exaggerated facial features—had landed this stylishly disheveled hunk. And that was before they learned that Sam was a gazillionaire. Truth was, I didn’t totally understand it myself. Closest I could come to an explanation was that mellow, passive Sam craved both my cooking and the whip-cracking structure I brought to his life. Our yin-yang dynamic, plus good, old-fashioned romantic chemistry, had gotten us through a lot.
Sam clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Are you ready for the big sign reveal?” He moved his hands to my shoulders and squeezed, like a coach trying to pep up a player for the big game. His voice boomed out, “Sam and Delilah’s Deep-Dish Pizza.”
I’d initially been opposed to Sam’s idea of having our names on the restaurant, thinking the play on the biblical Samson and Delilah was too kitschy. But everyone we’d run the idea past loved it, so in the end I’d relented.
“Looks like Butterball liked your outfit as much as I do,” Sam smirked, pausing to pick at a thick cloud of creamy-yellowish fluff that clung to the dark material of my wrap dress.
Daniel, who was standing nearby, chimed in, “With the amount of fur that cat sheds, you’d think he’d be lighter.”
I glared at Daniel. My staff knew that Butterball’s weight was a point of contention between my fiancĂ© and me. Sam, who’d brought the tubby rescue cat with him into our relationship, was forever trying to restrict Butterball’s calories to get him to shed some of his excess tonnage. Even when Butterball bleated pathetically for nom-noms at four a.m. or stalked his food bowl like a prisoner of war, Sam’s resolve held firm. I, on the other hand, had trouble controlling my natural chef’s instinct to see that everyone is happily fed, and snuck treats to our famished fur-baby when Sam wasn’t looking. I had to admit, though, that even I was beginning to find Butterball’s increasing porkiness troubling. Recently, Sonya had mistaken the snoozing feline for a fur-covered footrest.
The push-pull of Sam constantly trying to rein in Butterball’s diet and me constantly indulging him meant that our cat had a very obvious favorite parent; Butterball made his preference for me known by rubbing fur onto every piece of clothing I owned. Sam claimed that I’d stolen his cat’s heart with an endless buffet of tasty bribes, the truth of which stung, especially since I often wondered if I’d won Sam the same way. After all, food is love, but too much food is heartburn and diabetes.
Sam and I walked outside to find an ancient, rake-thin man edging slowly out of the passenger’s side of the sign truck. Watching him climb down was like watching the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz try to move without being oiled. Seconds stacked into minutes as we waited for the old man to fully dismount. The sun dipped lower toward the horizon. At last, he creaked over to where we stood underneath the old Rocco’s sign.
He stuck out a cadaverous, liver-spotted hand for Sam. “Tommy Lundqvist.”
Sam returned the handshake. “I’m Sam Van Meter. We spoke on the phone. This is my fiancĂ©e, Delilah O’Leary.”
Copyright © 2022 by Mindy Quigley.
The problem with perfection is that it doesn’t exist. Somewhere, deep down, I knew this. But in the high-end hotel kitchens and Michelin-starred restaurants where I honed my cooking skills, the name of the game was churning out perfection on a plate. Dish after dish, night after night. No mistakes. Ever.
I opened the doors of my new top-of-the-line Everest three-door commercial fridge and allowed the chilly blast of air to wash over me.
“It’s all there, Delilah. Nobody’s touched anything since the last time you checked an hour ago.”
I jumped at the sound of my sous-chef’s voice. “Oh, hi, Sonya,” I began. “I just needed to get—”
“What? A life?” Sonya Dokter nudged past me with her hip.
She pointed to different sections of the refrigerator as she spoke. “Fresh organic spinach. Check. Locally grown red and white onions. Check. Metric tons of the finest quality Italian sausage from pigs whose lives were more pampered than a Kardashian’s. Check. Parmesan, pepperoni, provolone, peppers, prosciutto, pepperoncini, and pineapple. All present and accounted for. Cheese so fresh it’ll slap your backside and call you ‘Sweetie.’ Check-er-oo.” Sonya put her arm around my shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze as she pulled me away from the fridge. She gently pried my hand from the handle and shut the door. “Relax. We’re ready.”
Part of me knew she was right. I’d tested the new appliances dozens of times. I’d spent the previous day polishing the stainless steel worktops until they sparkled and scrubbing the floors until I could practically hear them begging for mercy. But a bigger part of me wanted to make one last practice pizza before the guests arrived for my new restaurant’s soft opening.
I reached for one of the huge bowls where that night’s already-risen pizza dough was resting. Sonya slapped my hand away. “No more dough for you. Tonight is for you and Sam to enjoy. No pressure. Let the rest of us worry about the execution. A soft opening should be a celebration. I, for one, am ready to get this pizza party poppin’.”
Sonya shimmied her hips and twirled in her vintage rockabilly polka-dot dress. Her hair—chopped into a midnight black bob with high-cut bangs—swished as she spun.
Pizza making is a floury, saucy business, and Sonya and I usually sported matching chef’s whites and hairnets while we worked. For tonight, though, I’d wrestled my wilderness of coppery chestnut hair into a sleek up-do. I had opted for a low-cut wrap dress, which I hoped accentuated some of my curves and camouflaged others, while Sonya rocked her plus-sized pin-up model look.
“You’re a walking party,” I said, smiling at her. “Just add champagne.”
“Or better yet, bourbon,” she replied, striking her best Bettie Page pose and blowing me a red-lipped smooch.
I walked through the kitchen again, ticking off items from my mental checklist for tonight’s party and tomorrow’s grand opening, while Sonya threw on an apron and began mustering little battalions of red and green peppers to chop. Bins of semolina and flour, industrial-sized cans of crushed San Marzano tomatoes, and jars of oil-cured Spanish olives lined the shelves. Garlic-infused tomato sauce gently burbled on the stove. I dipped a tasting spoon into the sauce and brought it to my lips—balanced, comforting, rich. The same adjectives could probably be used to describe my fiancĂ© and business partner, Sam Van Meter. I tasted it again. Something was keeping it from being one hundred percent right, but I couldn’t quite identify the flaw. Alas, the same thing could probably be said about my relationship with Sam.
Moving to Geneva Bay, Wisconsin, and opening a restaurant was more my dream than Sam’s. The resort town was only about an hour and a half north of Chicago, but it felt worlds away. I’d spent most childhood summers next to the lake’s inviting blue depths, sunbathing and gobbling down titanic-sized pistachio sundaes during our annual family vacations. Whenever I was overwhelmed by the constant din, clanging pots, and expletive-laced tirades of the Chicago restaurant kitchens where I’d worked, my mind traveled to Geneva Bay. Living here full-time was a wish come true.
On those childhood trips, my family always stayed at my great-aunt Biz’s quaint waterfront cottage. Small houses like hers were increasingly rare, many of them razed to make way for the lake houses of the nouveau riche or dwarfed by the legions of imposing, turn-of-the-century estates that ringed the lake. Those older mansions had been built as summer getaways for the biggest names in Chicago business: Wrigley, Schwinn, Vicks. In Geneva Bay, the names were attached to fabulous homes instead of well-known products. As a kid, I’d fantasized about living in one of the breathtaking mansions, and now that dream, too, was coming true. Sam and I were midway through remodeling a hulking Queen Anne mansion built during Prohibition by one of the many Chicago tough guys who’d minted a fortune running illegal booze from the Canadian border to the Windy City via Wisconsin.
Sam knew how much Geneva Bay meant to me, and he’d been the one to offer to bankroll our move and invest in my restaurant. As a sophomore in college, Sam had created an app to allow users to access baseball stats in real time, which apparently is (1) a thing some people feel the need to do, and (2) very lucrative. He sold the majority stake in his company, Third Base Analytics, for a small fortune when he was twenty-six, allowing him to devote the last decade to spending some of the money he’d amassed.
After sprinkling a smidgen more crushed red pepper into the tomato sauce, I tasted it again. A smidgen closer to that ever-elusive goal … perfection. My fingers brushed the smooth stacks of three-inch-deep round steel pans that would hold our new restaurant’s signature menu item: Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. My twist was to draw on my years in top restaurants to create innovative recipes using top-notch ingredients, rather than the typical sausage, peppers, and cheese pies churned out by Chicago’s old guard deep-dish establishments.
I checked the sauce again. Good. Very good. But …
“Stop with the sauce already. We’re not going to have any left for the pizzas if you keep taste-testing it,” Sonya said, giving me a not-too-gentle shove toward the door that led out to the dining room. “Why don’t you check the setup out front?”
With one last wistful look at the pizza dough, I walked into the thirty-seat dining space. The windows facing the lake seemed almost like gigantic landscape paintings, revealing a dazzling palette of watery blues and arboreal greens. Every time I saw this view, I had to pause for a moment to let my eyes take a deep, long drink of it.
No one would guess that a few short months ago, this building had been derelict, in danger of demolition. It had fallen into disrepair years before, after the Feds raided the previous tenant’s business—a pizza-place-cum-mob front called Rocco’s. The eponymous Rocco, Rocco Guanciale, was now serving time instead of pizza, twenty-five to life at a federal prison upstate for crimes that included running an illegal gambling ring, extortion, and fencing stolen goods, with the odd bit of pimping and drug dealing thrown in just for kicks. He ran his criminal operation from the small apartment over the restaurant, an apartment Sam, Butterball—our oversized butterscotch tabby cat—and I were temporarily living in while our new house was being remodeled.
The restaurant was slightly removed from downtown Geneva Bay, fronting a narrow inlet and a modest pier—convenient for criminals, but also perfect for diners seeking serenity. While other potential buyers had been deterred by the building’s unsavory connections, I’d thought of it as a selling point. Growing up on the rough-and-tumble South Side of Chicago, my sister Shea and I had been raised on our father’s stories of wise guys and beat cops. Chicago had its fair share of big-city problems and unsavory history, but no one had more affection for the grit, ingenuity, and openheartedness of the place than our father did. When he’d passed away the previous year, I’d decided that opening a restaurant with a Chicago theme and a unique spin on the city’s signature dish would be my way of honoring him.
As I made my final inspection of the dining room, Daniel, my old friend and newly hired bartender, glided into view outside the windows, rowing his kayak toward shore. Even from a distance, I recognized his athletic frame and neon green boat. Like many Geneva Bay dwellers, during the warmer months, Daniel commuted around the large lake by watercraft. Unlike the well-heeled residents who tootled back and forth in deluxe powerboats, though, our ultra-fit bartender paddled in a sleek kayak, which he stored at the small dock just on the other side of the tree-lined parking lot from the restaurant.
Banished from the kitchen, I continued to busy myself with restraightening and recleaning the dining area for a few minutes until Daniel strode in, unzipping the top of his wetsuit to reveal his bronzed pectoral muscles. He removed his Ray-Bans and blinked the late afternoon sunshine out of his eyes. As his vision adjusted, he stopped and stared at the canvases that hung from the ceiling.
“Cool, huh?” I said, gesturing at the artwork. “They went up this morning.”
He raised an eyebrow and ran his hands through his close-cropped black faux-hawk haircut. “It’s a statement. I’ll give you that.”
The interior space had finally been finished earlier that day. Shiny gunmetal gray wallpaper and gleaming honey beige wood floors formed a subdued backdrop for the funky, mismatched bubble-gum pinks and maraschino reds of the dining chairs. A warm, beechwood bar paralleled the back wall, while seductively lit bottles of alcohol perched on the shelves behind it. Huge, vivid portraits suspended from the high ceiling added a sense of drama.
I’d commissioned the new artwork for the dining room from an up-and-coming student painter at Chicago’s Art Institute. I’d asked for something that would “put Chicago’s past and present in perspective,” instructions the artist took quite literally. The canvases depicted famous Chicagoans, with a twist. One featured Oprah Winfrey and Harry Caray in vivid colors, pushing a miniature sepia-tone Al Capone in a baby carriage. Another had Michael Jordan and Jane Addams holding hands with a tiny, pigtailed Bugs Moran. The city’s old-time gangsters were made into children—smaller than life—while its more reputable citizens were rendered as towering adults.
“You don’t like it?” I asked.
“You got Capone up there with a pacifier and Pampers. Maybe you’re playing with fire a little.” Daniel wobbled his hand back and forth. “People can be touchy.”
“It’s art,” I huffed. “I moved here to escape the grind of the city, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still love Chicago. Besides, who’s going to defend the reputations of a bunch of crooks from a hundred years ago?”
Just then, Melody, our hostess, ducked through the vestibule and slipped past Daniel.
“Ready for the big day, chef?” Melody chirped in her cheery Upper Midwest accent. “I’m having, like, an excitement heart attack right now.” Sometimes Melody’s nonstop optimism grated on me, but I had to admit that my heart was feeling a little fluttery, too. She looked up at the newly installed artwork. “Cripes! Baby Face Nelson as an actual baby. Too funny,” she squealed.
I raised my eyebrows at Daniel in a silent “I told you so.”
“It’s pretty edgy, ’n so?” Melody continued, using the Wisconsinese contraction for “isn’t it so?” “People are still sensitive about that stuff.” She removed her sunhat, sending her blond curls springing out in every direction. “My grandpa lives in Manitowish Waters—where the big Dillinger shoot-out was? Dillinger’s gang went on the lam up there, took an innkeeper and his wife hostage, and shot six people. The whole town’s still traumatized. Even a tiny, baby Dillinger would be…” Melody looked at me and dragged her index finger horizontally across her throat. She shrugged. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, though.”
Now it was Daniel’s turn to give me an “I told you so” look.
An apron-clad Sonya burst through the kitchen door, carrying a steaming spoon in one hand and cupping her other hand under it. “I knew you’d need to taste it again, and change something, even though you tasted it literally five minutes ago.”
“You make it sound like I’m some kind of crazed control freak.” I looked to Melody and Daniel for support. Melody suddenly found urgent bits of napkin folding and centerpiece arranging to do.
“I need to get changed now,” Daniel said, quickly slipping away toward the restrooms.
I grabbed the spoon from Sonya. Melody edged closer, still not making eye contact, waiting for my verdict. I took a slow sip of the sauce. I paused, letting the blend of garlic, oregano, basil, spices, and tomatoes meld in my mouth. “Perfect,” I declared.
“Really?” Sonya asked. She tipped her head down and shot up a black-penciled eyebrow. “Nothing you’d change?”
“Nope, it’s perfect.” I bit my lower lip.
“Nothing?” She waved the spoon back and forth like an orchestra conductor’s baton.
I shook my head, pressing my lips tightly together.
“Ok-a-ay,” she sang, still looking doubtful. She turned back toward the kitchen, walking in slow-motion strides. With every step, she cast an expectant glance over her shoulder.
Just as she reached the kitchen door, I broke. “Maybe just a pinch more oregano,” I blurted. “And by ‘pinch’ I mean three-quarters of a teaspoon.”
“I knew it!” she said triumphantly. By now, Daniel had rejoined us, looking causally spiffed up for the evening’s festivities in black trousers and a tight black T-shirt. He and Melody each handed Sonya five-dollar bills.
“I am not that predictable,” I protested.
“I could set my watch by you,” Sonya said with a wink.
It was hard to deny. Sonya and I had roomed together when we were students at the Chicago Culinary Institute almost twenty years before, and we’d overlapped in restaurant and hotel kitchens for years afterward as we climbed through the ranks. She probably knew me better than my actual sister did. When I decided to open my own place, Sonya was my first hire.
Sonya turned to head back to the kitchen, but stopped to say, “Hey, I noticed the new sign still hasn’t gone up outside. Is it going to be ready in time?”
“I hope so,” Melody added. “It’s confusing for people that the Rocco’s sign is still out there. I’ve already had a couple of sketchy guys drop by looking to put money on next Sunday’s Cubs-Brewers game. I told them we just do pizzas now, not, you know, all that other stuff.”
“Sam’s taking care of the sign,” I replied. “And for your information I haven’t micromanaged him at all.”
What I didn’t say is that Sam and I had had a pretty epic blowup about me micromanaging every single other aspect of the restaurant, and that he’d gone as far as packing a bag and heading out the door a few weeks prior. In the past, when we argued, one of us—usually him—would quickly back down and apologize. While our personality clashes were nothing new—I was Type A and Sam was Type Zzzz—our arguments lately had taken on a sharper edge. Honestly, I was scared. Sam’s unshakable calm had buoyed me through many a rough patch over the past three years. To prove that I trusted him and to prevent a breakup, I’d agreed to hand all the marketing over to him with the added concession that I would stay completely out of it.
Through the windows that overlooked the parking lot, we watched a large yellow truck emblazoned with the words Lundqvist & Son rumble to a stop. “Speak of the devil. I think that’s the sign people now. Melody, can you run upstairs and let Sam know?” I held up my hands, palms out. “This is me, macromanaging from a healthy distance.”
Though I was dying to take charge of the sign installation, I busied myself helping Daniel work out some kinks in the bar’s electronic point-of-sale system while we waited for Sam. Sonya went back to the kitchen to get the first of the night’s pizzas baking. Even in our blast furnace of an oven, the heavily layered pies would take at least thirty minutes to cook, so if we were going to be ready when guests arrived, the cooking needed to get underway. A few moments later, Melody came back, followed by Sam.
“Smells great in here. And looks great, too,” my fiancĂ© said, eyeing me up and down. “That’s quite the dress.”
He twinkled his toothpaste-commercial grin and let his gaze skim the low neckline of my dress. As he leaned in to give me an unhurried kiss on the lips, a week’s worth of stubble grazed my cheek. His long, brown hair was gathered into a loose man bun on top of his head. The hairstyle had become an off-limits topic between us—he was strongly pro man bun, while I felt that it made him look like an out-of-work samurai.
Despite his less-than-fastidious grooming, it was hard to deny that Sam was a mouthful of man candy. We sometimes got looks from women on the street, radiating wonder at the fact that I—a freckly, queen-sized working-class gal with exaggerated facial features—had landed this stylishly disheveled hunk. And that was before they learned that Sam was a gazillionaire. Truth was, I didn’t totally understand it myself. Closest I could come to an explanation was that mellow, passive Sam craved both my cooking and the whip-cracking structure I brought to his life. Our yin-yang dynamic, plus good, old-fashioned romantic chemistry, had gotten us through a lot.
Sam clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Are you ready for the big sign reveal?” He moved his hands to my shoulders and squeezed, like a coach trying to pep up a player for the big game. His voice boomed out, “Sam and Delilah’s Deep-Dish Pizza.”
I’d initially been opposed to Sam’s idea of having our names on the restaurant, thinking the play on the biblical Samson and Delilah was too kitschy. But everyone we’d run the idea past loved it, so in the end I’d relented.
“Looks like Butterball liked your outfit as much as I do,” Sam smirked, pausing to pick at a thick cloud of creamy-yellowish fluff that clung to the dark material of my wrap dress.
Daniel, who was standing nearby, chimed in, “With the amount of fur that cat sheds, you’d think he’d be lighter.”
I glared at Daniel. My staff knew that Butterball’s weight was a point of contention between my fiancĂ© and me. Sam, who’d brought the tubby rescue cat with him into our relationship, was forever trying to restrict Butterball’s calories to get him to shed some of his excess tonnage. Even when Butterball bleated pathetically for nom-noms at four a.m. or stalked his food bowl like a prisoner of war, Sam’s resolve held firm. I, on the other hand, had trouble controlling my natural chef’s instinct to see that everyone is happily fed, and snuck treats to our famished fur-baby when Sam wasn’t looking. I had to admit, though, that even I was beginning to find Butterball’s increasing porkiness troubling. Recently, Sonya had mistaken the snoozing feline for a fur-covered footrest.
The push-pull of Sam constantly trying to rein in Butterball’s diet and me constantly indulging him meant that our cat had a very obvious favorite parent; Butterball made his preference for me known by rubbing fur onto every piece of clothing I owned. Sam claimed that I’d stolen his cat’s heart with an endless buffet of tasty bribes, the truth of which stung, especially since I often wondered if I’d won Sam the same way. After all, food is love, but too much food is heartburn and diabetes.
Sam and I walked outside to find an ancient, rake-thin man edging slowly out of the passenger’s side of the sign truck. Watching him climb down was like watching the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz try to move without being oiled. Seconds stacked into minutes as we waited for the old man to fully dismount. The sun dipped lower toward the horizon. At last, he creaked over to where we stood underneath the old Rocco’s sign.
He stuck out a cadaverous, liver-spotted hand for Sam. “Tommy Lundqvist.”
Sam returned the handshake. “I’m Sam Van Meter. We spoke on the phone. This is my fiancĂ©e, Delilah O’Leary.”
Copyright © 2022 by Mindy Quigley.
Praise:
"Every now and again a cozy comes along in which the author not only checks off all of the boxes but does such an excellent job in the process that the book totally stands out from the crowd. This is the case with Six Feet Deep Dish....Droll and witty, sophisticated and credible, this is a series to watch out for." ―First Clue (starred review)"Funny, exciting, suspenseful... Delilah is a breath of fresh air." ―Open Book Society (five stars)
"Your mouth will water from the first page of this delightful new cozy. You’ll also love the characters, and the perfectly plotted murder had me guessing the whole way through. Delilah is my new favorite amateur detective." ―Paige Shelton, New York Times bestselling author
"Delilah O'Leary is as appealing as the pizzas she serves at her new restaurant. Fiercely loyal to her friends and employees, the strong willed, hugely competent Delilah is a cozy heroine for our times. I loved everything about her and her refreshing can-do attitude to cooking pizza, running her restaurant, and solving murders, along with the occasional healthy dose of insecurity! Six Feet Deep Dish is a wonderful start to a promising series, and I can't wait to visit Geneva Bay and enjoy more of whatever's being served at Delilah & Son." ―Vicki Delany, National bestselling author
"Quigley pens a deliciously twisty mystery layered with salty suspects and packed with local flavor. Six Feet Deep Dish is sure to leave cozy readers drooling for more." ―Julie Anne Lindsay, bestselling author
"A delight. A delicious adventure, full of wit and charm....Quigley’s excellent writing will amuse and entertain as readers immerse themselves in her twisty plotting." ―Tracee de Hahn, author of the Agnes LĂĽthi Mysteries
"Delicious....Six Feet Deep Dish will only stoke your appetite for the next in this must-read new foodie cozy series." ―Maddie Day, author of the Country Store Mysteries
About the author:
I think I'd get a kick out of this one and definitely get a craving for deep-dish pizza. :)
ReplyDeleteI know I would :)
Deleteyou are so welcome :)
ReplyDeleteDeep dish pizza is tasty and I am guessing this book is too. Great cover.
ReplyDeleteit sure seems so
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