Goldy Schultz, owner of Goldilocks Catering, has with some reservations, agreed to cater a low-cal lunch banquet for Mignon Cosmetics. It could open up a new market, and her assistant, Julian, is dating one of the Mignon sales associates, Claire Satterfield. And it's only one afternoon. How bad can it be?
Her doubts come rushing back when she has to run a gauntlet of animal rights activists calling themselves Spare the Hares, who even have dead rabbits to wave around. Then Claire Satterfield is killed in the mall parking garage by a hit-and-run driver before they even have all the food inside. Goldy calls 911, and she and her homicide detective husband Tom have to break the news to Julian.
Even more disturbingly, Goldy discovers the police don't think it was an accident.
This is an intricate story involving illicit affairs, commercial espionage, cutthroat competition and fraud between Mignon sales staff, and an old, well-buried scandal of terrible injuries caused by cosmetics testing. Goldy learns more about her neighbors and potential clients than she really wanted to know--and all while there's drama enough in her own family and household. It's not just Julian losing Claire. Marla, Goldy's best friend and the other ex-wife of her abusive ex-husband John Richard Korman, has had a heart attack. Do I need to say that John Richard is not staying away, and that Goldy has some difficulty letting the fancy security system Tom has installed do its thing? No?
This is a fun, fast-paced mystery with the main secondary characters just developed enough to make an engaging story.
Recommended.
No free galley to declare on this one; I borrowed it from the library.
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