What would you expect at a seafood convention in Seattle? A lot of cold fish? Certainly not a red-hot murder . . . and another hopeless case for detective Jane da Silva to solve. Jane--who can only collect on her trust fund by investigating for her family's nonprofit Bureau for Righting Wrongs--is broke and back to singing the blues (professionally). She's belting out "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" in the convention's hotel lounge when a young woman turns up murdered in the hospitality suite bathtub. Is this a crime of passion among fish lovers? Jane quickly agrees to help the girl's grieving parents investigate their daughter's life and death. Now she's knee-deep in slippery suspects and in a stew about following the most attractive one, a Shetland Islands salmon farmer, back to his castle. But in for a penny, in for a pound (of cold smoked, of course), she's about to sniff out a bizarre secret that can rock the salmon industry and reel in a killer . . . or a lover. She just hopes they're not the same man.

CHAPTER ONE

It was in the middle of her first number, "Blue Moon," that Jane da Silva realized the Fountain Room smelled heavily of fried fish. It must be coming from the clothes and skin of all these conventioneers attending the international seafood show, she thought. She hadn't noticed it earlier when she'd been working the lobby lounge. Now, however, she was in a private banquet room, doing a party for a group that had something to do with salmon. She shifted a little on her tall stool, closed her eyes, tilted her head back and began the chorus.

The fishiness was mingling with the smells of cigarette smoke and the chlorine fumes from the room's circular fountain. This pathetic structure, an apparent attempt to create an upscale atmosphere, seemed to be made of an old Jacuzzi with a mosaic of the chunky white rocks used in gas station landscaping cemented to the outside. A weak stream of water came out of a copper pipe in the middle of the thing. Jane had cranked up the mike in an attempt to drown out the persistent whoosh that sounded exactly like a running toilet.

The Fountain Room also had crushed velvet draperies with satin cord tiebacks and plastic wood tables with cigarette burns. It was in the basement of the Meade Hotel in downtown Seattle, a bland, recently renovated hotel from the fifties that catered mostly to the business traveler on a skimpy expense account.

Jane had been working at the Meade for two weeks now and had been under no illusions from the beginning. She'd known this was a tacky gig the minute she'd clapped eyes on the piano. It was white.

Still, she supposed she was lucky to get the job. The surly food and beverage manager, a young, dark, hulking man with heavy eyebrows, hadn't asked to see a promo book or hear a demo tape. He'd taken her word for it that she knew five hundred songs, which was a slight exaggeration. (Actually, she knew the opening lines to five hundred songs and relied on her fake book and her accompanist Gary's heavy chords to do the rest.)

He hadn't asked to see Gary's ID, either, which was a blessing because Jane suspected he was under twenty-one and therefore too young to work legally where booze was served. Jane, pushing forty, wondered if she and Gary looked like a mother-son act.

Gary had been here for a few months on his own, and because of dwindling business in the lobby lounge, he'd been told to come up with a female vocalist if he wanted to stay on. "Get a babe with some class," the manager had said. Now Gary had to split the take, but the tip glass -- a brandy snifter the size of a baby's head, baited every night with fives and tens -- took the edge off the low pay.

Yesterday the manager had muttered something about a beat box, a synthesizer that provided fake percussion sounds, to jazz up the act. Gary and Jane had managed to fend him off. The thought was anathema to them both, definitely sleazy, with its soulless, jangling, thumping cha-cha beats. Not to mention unsightly. The equipment sprouted ugly wires and plugs and looked like something from Radio Shack. But what else could you expect when the piano was white?

Anyway, she'd been happy to take on this party. It was an extra five hundred dollars, and she and Gary had brazenly brought in the tip glass, which was a nervy thing to do at a private gig.

Jane smiled in the direction of a nest of conventioneers with plastic name badges. A few of them were swaying and singing along to "Blue Moon.

 

"Readers will hook onto a sharp-witted puzzler with an abundance of red herrings (and salmon and cod) that will keep them guessing to the last page."

 

"Of all the female detectives to be born in print the last decade, K. K. Beck's Jane da Silva is the one I would pick to pal around with."

 

"K. K. Beck knows how to combine mirth and murder."

 

K. K. Beck is the author of fourteen books, including We Interrupt This Broadcast, Cold Smoked, Electric City, and Amateur Night. She lives in Seattle with her husband, crime writer Michael Dibdinn, and her three...

 

Cold Smoked by K. K. Beck
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