A Baked Ham

Other Books by Jessica Beck

The Donut Shop Mysteries

Glazed Murder

Fatally Frosted

Sinister Sprinkles

Evil Éclairs

Tragic Toppings

Killer Crullers

Drop Dead Chocolate

Powdered Peril

Illegally Iced

The Classic Diner Mysteries

A Chili Death

A Deadly Beef

A Killer Cake

A Baked Ham

The Ghost Cat Cozy Mysteries

Ghost Cat: Midnight Paws

Jessica
Beck is the
New York Times
Bestselling Author of the Donut Shop Mysteries from St. Martin's Press and
Author of The Classic Diner Mystery Series and The Ghost Cat Cozy Mysteries
from Cozy Publishing.

To every man and woman working
the grill!

A BAKED HAM: Copyright © 2013

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be
reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without
permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials
in violation of the author’s rights. This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.

Recipes included in this book are
to be recreated at the reader’s own risk.
 
The author is not responsible for any damage, medical or otherwise,
created as a result of reproducing these recipes.
 
It is the responsibility of the reader to
ensure that none of the ingredients are detrimental to their health, and the
author will not be held liable in any way for any problems that might arise
from following the included recipes.

Chapter 1

Given what I knew about the
murder victim, it was probably a shame that no one but the killer saw Benjamin
Barrymore Booth’s final performance.
 
Knowing Benny, I doubt that he had died conventionally without his fair
share of drama; after all, it just wasn’t his style.
 
I thought it odd when Benny failed to take
the stage during Jasper Fork Community Theater’s opening night of their
production of
The Last Man Left
, but
when the sheriff came out to announce what had happened to the actor, nobody
was more surprised than me.

Ordinarily, the whole thing
wouldn’t have had that much of an impact on my everyday life, but there was a
complication, as there always seemed to be around my family and me.
 
The problem was that
both
of my grandparents had just taken part in a rather public
argument with the dead man less than an hour before he’d shuffled off this
mortal coil, and that put me, my family, and my staff from The Charming Moose
Diner right in the middle of another murder investigation.
 

It might help if I backed up a
little.
 

My name’s Victoria Nelson, and
along with my somewhat eccentric extended family, I run The Charming Moose
Diner, a quaint little place located in Jasper Fork, North Carolina.

Twenty minutes before the play in
question was set to begin, I was standing in the lobby of the community theater
when I squeezed my husband’s hand.
 
“I’m
so excited that we’re going to see a real play.”
 
We were both outfitted nicely for the occasion,
me in a black dress that managed to make me look trim despite the fact that I
was nothing of the sort, and Greg wearing the only suit he owned.
 
There was no doubt that my husband looked
dashing, but it was a little startling seeing the handsome man I’d married in
anything but blue jeans, a T-shirt, and an apron.
 
Greg’s work behind the grill at our diner
would ruin that suit in thirty seconds, but sometimes I forgot just how dashing
my husband looked when he was all cleaned up.

“I don’t know how
real
it’s going to be,” Greg said with a
grin.
 
“With Benny Booth playing the lead,
I’m not expecting too much.”

“He does tend to get a little
carried away with his roles at times, doesn’t he?” I asked.

“Are you kidding me?
 
He’s the biggest ham this side of Hormel,”
Greg said.
 
“It’s going to take every
ounce of my restraint not to bust out laughing when he starts emoting like he
does.”

I squeezed his hand a little
harder for just a second.
 
“You’ll manage
to contain yourself, though, right?”

“Victoria, I’ll be so good you’ll
think I fell asleep, which just might happen if this play is going to be as bad
as folks are saying it will.”

“That I don’t mind one bit.
 
As long as you don’t snore, you’ll be fine,”
I said.
 
I was about to add something
else when I heard a familiar voice shouting on the other side of the theater
lobby.

“Benny, are you on drugs, or have
you just lost your mind?
 
I can’t believe
that you made a pass at my wife right in front of me!
 
Keep your hands to yourself, or I swear right
here and now that I’ll break them both off and feed them to you if you ever try
something like that again!”
 

That was my grandfather’s voice,
there was no mistaking it, and he was angry.

“Come on.
 
Let’s go,” I told my husband as I started
pulling him through the crowd toward the argument.

“Finally, things are starting to get
interesting,” Greg said with a slight smile as he allowed himself to be
led.
 
He was long used to my grandfather;
in fact, the two of them were as close as they could be.
 
I wasn’t quite so amused by the spectacle
myself.
 
The last thing I wanted was for
Moose to get into any serious trouble.

“I assure you,” Benny said, “that
I never touched your wife.”

“You just patted my fanny, and
you know it!” Martha said.
 
Normally my
grandmother was a calm and levelheaded woman, but at that moment, she was as
angry as I’d ever seen her in my life.

“That’s it,” Moose said as he
started to take his suit jacket off.
 
“Now you’re insulting us both by trying to lie about what you did.
 
You’re going to pay for that, Bennie boy, and
I’m the man who’s going to collect the bill.”

I was about to try to stop things
from escalating further when Sheriff Croft stepped in between the two men.
 
The sheriff looked grim as he clamped one
hand down on Moose’s shoulder, and the other on Benny’s.
 
Not many men in Jasper Fork could restrain my
grandfather with one hand, and even less would be willing to try it, despite my
grandfather’s age, but the sheriff didn’t even blink.
 

As expected, Moose didn’t take
particularly kindly to the lawman’s touch.
 
“Let me go,” my grandfather said as he fought to pull away from the
sheriff.
 
“I have a score to settle with
this over-baked ham, and I mean to do it right here and now.”

Greg stepped in at that moment
and put his own hand on Moose’s other shoulder.
 
“Take it easy, my friend,” he said in an easy voice.
 
“We both know that this isn’t the time or the
place.”

“What if he’d tried something
like that with your wife?” Moose asked my husband angrily.

“If he’d grabbed
my
behind, he’d have pulled back a
stub,” I said.
 
“Greg’s right,
though.
 
Settle down, Moose.”

“Victoria, this isn’t any concern
of yours.
 
I’m handling the situation
just fine all by myself,” my grandfather replied.

“Funny, it looked as though you
could use some help from where I was standing.”
 
I noticed that the crowd around us was deadly silent, paying careful
attention to every word uttered in our argument, no doubt so that they could
repeat it all faithfully back later, with their own embellishments added, of
course.
 
I couldn’t really blame them.
 
They were probably getting a better show in
the lobby than they’d ever see on stage.

“You’re needed backstage, Mr.
Booth,” a young man with a clipboard said urgently.

“Sorry, but I must go,” Benny
said with great flourish.
 
He turned to
the sheriff and asked, “Will you kindly release me, Officer?
 
I am needed, and after all, the show must go
on.”

The sheriff let Benny go, and the
actor stepped quickly away while my grandfather was still being restrained by
both Greg and the sheriff.

As Benny made his way through the
crowd, Moose yelled out, “This isn’t finished, you over-baked ham, not by a
long shot.”

Once the actor was safely out of
sight, Moose looked at the sheriff and Greg as he calmly said, “There’s no need
to restrain me now.
 
You can both let me
go.”

“Only if you promise me that
you’re not going to do anything about Benny Booth,” Sheriff Croft said.

My grandfather bit his lower lip
as he shook his head.
 
“If that’s what
it’s going to take to release me, you might as well lock me up, Sheriff,
because that’s a promise I won’t make.”

The sheriff frowned, and then he
turned to me.
 
“Victoria, will
you
promise to watch him?”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said
with a laugh.
 
“There is no
way
that I’m taking on that
obligation.”
 
Moose looked pleased by my
refusal, but clearly my grandfather misunderstood my intent.
 
I hadn’t turned the responsibility down out
of loyalty to him so much as to refuse to take on that kind of overwhelming
charge.

“Don’t worry.
 
I’ll watch him,” Greg said.

“Just as long as
somebody
does,” Sheriff Croft said as he
released Moose.
 
Greg quickly followed
suit, and as soon as Moose was free, he started for the nearest exit.

“Where are you going now?” the
sheriff asked.

“Anywhere but here,” Moose
said.
 
“If you think I’m going to go in
there now, you’ve lost your mind.”
 
My grandfather
made his way through the crowd, which parted as though it had no choice, and
soon enough Moose stormed out through the front door of the theater.