Mystery of the Holiday Hustle
Title: Mystery of the Holiday HustleSeries: Mallory Beck Cozy Culinary Capers #10
Published by: Denise Jaden Books
Release Date: 2023-11-13
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Pages: 165
ISBN13: 979-8558494365
ASIN: B08NDVKM1K
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Before the murders… there was the mystery that started it all.
Newlywed Mallory Beck is happy helping her bestselling mystery-novelist husband, Cooper, dip his toes into social media—reluctantly. Cooper claims to hate the platforms, barely understands them, and definitely isn’t posting online.
So why does Mallory discover a secret account already promoting his work… and teasing an exclusive Christmas story he swears he never wrote?
As the mysterious @CooperBeckAuthor gains followers, Mallory digs deeper—and uncovers photos and videos of her husband that even she has never seen. Someone knows Cooper far better than they should. And when the clues lead uncomfortably close to home, Mallory realizes this isn’t just a harmless holiday prank.
With Christmas approaching and the truth hiding in plain sight, Mallory must untangle a digital deception before it turns into something far more dangerous.
Perfect for fans of cozy mysteries with holiday charm, clever twists, and lovable characters, Mystery of the Holiday Hustle is a short prequel novella to the Mallory Beck Cozy Culinary Capers—ideal for new readers or longtime fans who want to see how it all began.
🎄📱 Download now and uncover Mallory’s very first mystery!
Find the eBook and large print paperback at Books2Read.com/holidayhustle.
Also in this series:
Excerpt from Chapter One:
The day I got married, I thought I would never find a reason to doubt my blissfully-perfect new husband, Cooper. We’d fallen in love almost instantly. He was tall, dark, and hunky, as well as a multi-published bestselling novelist before we’d even left university. He even adored the most unlovable of pets!
This would be our first Christmas as a married couple, our first Christmas sharing a house we could decorate together, and I had a new skip in my step as I hurried up our front walkway, smiling at the twinkle lights surrounding our door and the glimpses of the decorated tree poking through our living room curtains.
I checked the mailbox and sighed when it was empty. I’d spent many an hour retweeting and reposting a social media contest Cooper’s favorite author, Arthur Rolly, had been holding. Unknown to Cooper, I’d won an advanced signed copy of Arthur’s upcoming novel Breathless. After I’d blathered on to Mr. Rolly about how much Cooper loved his writing and how much I wanted to get the prized book in time for Christmas, he’d gone and sent it without a tracking number. Now all I could do was cross my fingers and hope it wouldn’t get delayed with the holiday influx of mail. And check our mailbox daily before Cooper got home.
I sighed again and slid my key into the lock. I didn’t have much time. Between my culinary class at the university and my shift at Baby Bistro, I had just long enough to shower, change, and catch the bus back to campus.
As I waited for the shower to come up to temperature, I clicked on my phone and checked Cooper’s Twitter account.
Cooper wasn’t much for social media, never had been. He thought all that sort of thing was fleeting and useless, and he had never listened when I suggested that, as a public person of interest, he should at least secure his usernames on all the various platforms. At the urging of his publisher, he finally listened. Of course, by the time he heeded our advice, @cooperbeck, @cooperbeckauthor, @cooperbeckmysteryauthor, as well as @cooperbeck1-through-189 were all taken.
We had settled on @cooperbeckwhodunit. It wasn’t ideal, but his publisher suggested if he worked hard, he’d find a following in no time.
That was the thing about my talented husband, though. After a lifetime of most things coming easily to him, he didn’t seem to know how to work hard.
Even though I was completing my last year of culinary school, plus cooking five nights a week at Baby Bistro, I did as any doting wife-who-knew-the-social-media-ropes-better-than-her-husband would. I’d gotten his Twitter account warmed up with some tantalizing tweets about his new novel, along with a dozen hashtags.
Besides, I figured if he learned too much about social media too quickly, he might find out about his Christmas gift.
He had five new notifications since I’d gotten in the door.
It was fun—and a little exciting—pretending to be Cooper and conversing with fans online. His Twitter following had quickly ballooned into five digits. On my social media accounts combined, I had a little over three hundred friends and followers, all of whom I knew personally. It took next to no thought to post a pic of a particularly tempting entrée at Baby Bistro or an update about the time and mood of my awakening that day. With my own accounts, there was never any pressure to post something amazing or even interesting. Cooper’s interactions often made my face warm as though I were the famous person whose very presence online brought a certain buzz and excitement. Each of his posts took more thought, but the need to puzzle out the most buzz-worthy types of posts left me energized.
Tidbits of crime scene research were popular, and because I had been helping as Cooper’s research assistant, that fell at least somewhat under my umbrella of knowledge. Photos of our cat, Hunch, were also popular, but those came a lot easier to Cooper—the favored owner of our bristly cat.
I made sure to like or respond to every reply that indicated excitement for an upcoming book release or enjoyment of one of Cooper’s already-released novels or short stories. These mindless interactions took up little of my time. Once in a while, there had been a question that required a little more thought.
I ignored the ones that asked, “Are you single?” But today, when I checked in on Cooper’s increasingly-busy Twitter account, I saw this message from @TimothyReads22: <Is this you too? I already follow you at @cooperbeckauthor>
It made me wonder if there really was another author named Cooper Beck.
When I finished my shower, I was still thinking about the commonality of Cooper’s name as I rushed through the living room, said goodbye to Hunch, who was sleeping on the couch and barely spared me one open eye, and headed out the front door. The question kept my attention as I rode the bus toward Baby Bistro. I skimmed all the book retailers and Goodreads and even LibraryThing, but all I could find was my Cooper Beck.
I looked out the bus window. It had snowed again this afternoon, so everything was pretty and white, but it was already getting dark at not even four o’clock. I loved Christmas, but I wasn’t a fan of the short daylight hours of winter.
I responded to the tweet to tell @TimothyReads22: <This is my official Twitter account. I’m glad you found me!>
I was already at my stop when my curiosity got the best of me, and I searched “@cooperbeckauthor” with one hand, grabbing my bag with the other, and raced off the bus. I hated being late, and I was already cutting it close, but I stopped in place on the sidewalk busy with holiday shoppers when the Twitter account in question loaded onto my phone.
The latest tweet said: <There’s a new chapter in my Christmas novel posted! Sign up now to read my new holiday mystery, exclusive to subscribers!> This was followed by the hashtags #readitnow, #cooperbeckfans, and a link that read “cooperbeckforseriousfansonly.com”.
A second later, a new response popped up from @TimothyReads 22: <Great! Interesting new serialized novel, BTW. It’s really different!>
I furrowed my brow toward my phone as a woman knocked into me with her shopping bag and then apologized. Caught up in Cooper’s Twitter response, I barely responded. Cooper was working on a novel—he always was—but while I had no idea if it was holiday-themed, his draft was months away from being ready for public eyes. He wouldn’t even let me read it at this stage. Besides that, there was no way he was out there in the Webiverse tweeting these sorts of things behind my back.
Was there?
But if not my Cooper Beck, who?
His publisher?
But they had specifically asked Cooper to get active on social media. They said that part was his responsibility.
I couldn’t make sense of it, but when Corinne, one of Baby Bistro’s waitresses, swept by me and said, “Ha, I’m going to beat you for once!” I blinked and remembered the time.
I was officially late.
Corinne arrived late for almost every shift, ready with a different excuse. Her alarm hadn’t gone off or she’d lost her phone or her boyfriend forgot to pick her up. Getting to work on time—and more importantly, before Corinne, so as not to end up grouped with her endless list of excuses—was of paramount importance to me.
But she was right. She had beaten me today. I sighed as I swept through the door behind her. Jonas, the manager, quickly adjusted his scowl from being aimed toward Corinne to being aimed toward me. The grimace was a contrast to the peppy holly-jolly Christmas music in the background.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I said and then clamped my mouth shut before I could blame my lateness on Pennsylvania’s unreliable bus system. That would definitely earn me the “Corinne Category” label, which came along with Jonas’s constant criticism and scrutinizing. I raced past him toward the kitchen, grabbing an apron from the shelf on my way.
Jonas wasn’t the kindest boss in the world. In fact, Baby Bistro had a reputation for staff turnover, mostly because of his cantankerous attitude. With Corinne’s lateness, combined with the way she babbled to anybody and everybody on shift, I was surprised she had lasted three months.
But I needed this job. Chef Paul was willing to give me a reference just as soon as a sous-chef job opening came up at one of the bigger university restaurants.
My hope dwindled for getting out of this misstep unscathed, though, when Jonas followed me to the breakroom, where I quickly discarded my coat, and into the kitchen.
“We don’t need lackadaisical loafers around my kitchen, Mallory.” His voice boomed right beside my ear. I cringed and wrapped my apron around my waist, and then tried to get away from him, rushing across to the cutting counter. But he followed me, unwilling to let up. “Rory’s been here for half an hour, doing your job, I might add.”
Jonas motioned across the kitchen to where Rory—a new hire just out of high school with no formal training—stood stirring the soup stock over the stove. Her dark brown ponytail sat high on her head. She wasn’t wearing a hairnet again—something Chef Paul had admonished her for more than once. I couldn’t see her lasting long.
The soup stock wasn’t my job, even if the finishing of the soup was, and Rory’s shift started earlier than mine, but I bit down on my lip and only nodded. Arguing with Jonas never ended well, especially when he was already in a mood.
“It won’t happen again,” I said to him, and then I turned on my heel toward the industrial sink to wash my hands.
By the time I returned to the cutting counter, thankfully, Jonas had found something else to bark about in the front of the restaurant. His angry voice echoed through the swing doors, which was my only clue that the dinner rush had yet to arrive.
A good thing, too. Jonas was right—I should have been here earlier, and truth be told, he should pay for me to come in even earlier so the soup had plenty of time to deepen its flavors, but I’ve never argued that particular point because there was no way I’d make it here any sooner from class.
With one hand, I assembled vegetables that had been plunked onto my counter for dicing, organizing my knives, peelers, and spatulas with the other. As I did this, I read the paper list of specialty menu items taped to the wall in front of me.
I sighed when my eyes settled on the minestrone with swiss chard soup.
Chef Paul was talented, certainly, but not terribly imaginative. I’d made this soup three times last week. The fish special for tonight was a pan-fried tilapia with lemon butter. It would probably be well-seasoned and tasty, and I’d do everything in my power to plate it in a way that would entice surrounding patrons, but I always wished that Baby Bistro would eventually be known for adventurous and memorable dishes, not simply adequately flavorful ones.
Because of my lateness, there was no time to waste, so I prepped the dill sprigs for the fish first and set them aside for later. Then I got busy with tearing the swiss chard and dicing up two types of onion for the soup. Once I had those on the grill and their sweet aroma filled the kitchen, I chopped romaine, cabbage, carrots, and kale for our three regular salads: Caesar, a creamy coleslaw, and kale with apples and walnuts. When Chef Paul was feeling especially motivated, he also offered a special salad of the day. Having not seen our chef yet today, I could tell simply by my list that he wasn’t particularly motivated.
I transferred the onion chunks from the grill to the simmering vegetable stock and told Rory, “I can take over now. Why don’t you ask Chef Paul what he wants you on next?”
She bounced away, swinging her non-hairnetted ponytail right over the soup as she went.
While slicing up the Honeycrisp apple chunks for the kale salad, I glanced at my simmering soup with a sudden idea. Swiss chard, in my opinion, made the minestrone on the bitter side.
I scooped a little minestrone into a side bowl, added two small apple chunks, gave them a minute to come up to temperature while I finished assembling the kale salad, and then grabbed for a spoon.
One day, I’d be the chef of my own kitchen and I swore, for about the eight-hundredth time, that I wouldn’t get complacent.
I leaned back against the metal prep counter and closed my eyes as the flavor of the soup hit my taste buds. The sweet bite of the apple was exactly what the soup needed.
After the one taste test, I wasn’t thinking logically. Sometimes this happened to me in culinary classes when I was suddenly overcome and strayed from an assigned recipe. It felt as though it wasn’t at all by my own volition. My hands seemed to work independently of my brain.
And an instant later, I had dumped my entire cutting board full of Honeycrisp apple chunks right into the simmering soup.
A sudden loud curse interrupted my train of thought, and I dropped the soup spoon with a clank, right onto the ceramic floor.
Chef Paul.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing? There are no apples in my minestrone!”
I swallowed hard. Chef Paul wasn’t usually one for accepting other people’s ideas. He stood at five-six, barely taller than me, stocky and bald, but bellowed like he was eight feet tall. The reason I’d lasted nearly two years at my job here was because I knew how to humble myself and take direction.
Most of the time, anyway.
“Oh, right,” I said, mostly stalling as I tried to decide if it would be better to play stupid or inventive. Or should I offer to quickly strain the apples out before they leaked too much of their offensive flavor into his precious soup?
He shook his head. “You’re going to have to dump the whole thing and start over. Let’s hope the first round of patrons coming in from the cold isn’t interested in warming up with soup. Rory!” he yelled. I wondered where she’d disappeared to. Likely vaping in the back alley.
The second Chef Paul found her, he’d have her starting a new pot of stock. I took in a calming breath and decided to jump in with both feet. Inventive. “But, I mean, Honeycrisp apples might not be so bad in here.”
I reached for a spoon. I knew better than to insubordinately suggest he take a sip. Everyone who worked in the kitchen was regularly grabbing for fresh spoons, loading them with whatever they were cooking at the time, and holding them up to Chef Paul or someone else nearby for a second opinion. I hoped that if I went through the motion, he might take the spoon and stick it into his mouth before he thought better of it.
I babbled on, trying to distract him as I dug the spoon into the brothy soup. “I guess I was busy with the kale salad, you know, and I had to stir the soup. Sometimes when you get busy with more than one thing…” I passed him the full spoon, making sure to include an apple chunk, and held my breath. He slipped it into his mouth. “I’m really sorry,” I babbled on. “And if you think I should start from scratch, I—”
He held up a hand to stop my word deluge. He swished the soup in his mouth. Tilted his head. Finally, a nod.
“It’s fine for tonight,” he grumbled, and then spun on his heel and headed for the grill.
It wasn’t a glowing compliment, but from Chef Paul, being allowed to serve anything that wasn’t his specific creation was more than a feat. He moved back and forth from the grill to the side counters where he kept his supplies, agitated energy radiating off him.
“Anything I can do to help?” I asked quietly, more like a subliminal message than an actual question. I had no idea if he was upset by something at the restaurant or maybe it had something to do with his wife or five-year-old son at home.
At first, Chef Paul only grunted, and I figured he either hadn’t heard me or didn’t think my subliminal message warranted a response, but then he grumbled, “Jonas wants a Christmas menu for next week. I hate Christmas.”
I, for one, loved Christmas, but I knew when my boss needed some camaraderie. “I know what you mean. This music is driving me nuts, and we still have almost two weeks to go.”
Chef Paul let out something between a huff and a sigh, but his agitated energy was subsiding. I could feel it. All he needed was someone to commiserate with.
“Hey, you know, with those Honeycrisp apples in the minestrone, all you’d have to do is add a little cinnamon, and you could call it a Cinnamon Apple Christmas Minestrone.”
Chef Paul furrowed his brow at me and then returned to his julienne bell peppers on the grill. I thought it had been another case of my unstoppable, not to mention unwanted, creative nature taking over, but only a second later, Chef Paul grabbed a small bowl from under the counter, scooped a ladle full of soup into it, and headed for the spice rack.
I watched for a reaction as he added a sprinkle of cinnamon, tasted it, and then added a little more. He grabbed for the sea salt, sprinkled some in, and with his next taste, he nodded.
He didn’t come right out and say he liked my idea, but I was beaming for the whole evening after that. The day quickly transitioned from “calm before the storm” to “storm,” as it always did on Friday nights. Chef Paul whisked back and forth from the kitchen to the tiny office where he planned his menus and ordered supplies, and he shot even me a half-smile once.
He barked out orders to move this, and cut that, and get the brisket out of the oven, but as the evening passed, it seemed more like he was playing the angry chef than actually being one. When he called out for a kale salad, I had another idea. I quickly plated one and passed that, along with a small bowl of cranberries, over to him.
He looked confused. I tilted my head and raised my eyebrows.
“With a little feta, it could look quite festive,” I told him. “Just a thought.” With no response, I swung back around and continued about my business, but I hoped I might find my two suggestions on next week’s menu.
By the time we had finished with the dinner rush and cleaned the kitchen, I was pooped. I had a text from Cooper and a voicemail from my dad. I’d listen to Dad’s message later. His and my sister, Leslie’s, messages could sometimes prattle on for fifteen or twenty minutes. Cooper, as usual, was just checking in.
<How’s the night? Anything interesting on the menu?>
I texted back. <Maybe. Maybe even one of mine. ☺ How’s the writing?>
I did my best not to distract Cooper on my nights off, but he didn’t hide the fact that he usually got far more accomplished when my job took me out of the house for the evening.
<Really! That’s great, Mal! I can’t wait to hear all about it.>
Tonight, apparently the distractions were someone else’s fault.
<Monia’s asking for an updated bio with a little more pizzazz for an interview she’s pitching. Pizzazz-on-demand is harder than it sounds. :/>
That actually sounded like something I could help with—although not through texting and certainly not when I was this exhausted. But speaking of Monia, his agent, a sudden thought occurred to me as I dropped my apron into the laundry bin and grabbed for my coat.
<Hey, Monia hasn’t started up a social media account on your behalf, has she?>
The three dots appeared, and I waited him out while he answered.
<Are you kidding? She doesn’t even keep up on her own. It’s the one thing we agree on.>
This wasn’t exactly true. While Cooper disagreed with Monia about everything from appropriate royalty advances to what books worked best as comparisons to Cooper Beck novels, he generally didn’t put up a fuss. I often wondered how Cooper could write such great conflict when in real life he was so conflict-averse.
But if Monia hadn’t tweeted about some secret new story, who had?
I could have asked Cooper outright. I probably should have. It wasn’t as if I thought he was keeping some big literary secret from me. But maybe a small part of me did suspect just that because without much mental process around it, I texted back, <Sorry, gotta go or I’ll miss my bus> and then clicked out of my texting icon.
I said goodbye to Chef Paul and Rory, and even Jonas, before heading out the front door and into the cold midnight air. As I wrapped my scarf tighter around my neck, I headed for the bus stop and pulled up my dad’s voicemail message.
As expected, he prattled on for a full fifteen minutes about the leak in his bathroom and how his landlord was trying to get him to pay for it. I shivered as I listened in the cold and waited for my late bus. I continued to listen as I boarded the bus and took a seat.
I didn’t really listen to his words, though. I listened to his tone, and his tone, as usual, told me there were many little untruths mixed into his story, all to spin it in his favor.
It didn’t matter. It wasn’t as though I could talk to his manager and get him out of paying for bathroom repairs, and Dad knew that. Telling stories in which he’d been wronged was just the way he operated.
When his lengthy story finally ended, I navigated away from the phone app, needing something—anything—else to focus on. I opened Twitter and brought up @CooperBeckAuthor’s account again. His last tweet still directed me to a link with a new secret story.
I had to investigate.
Holding my breath, I clicked the link. Seconds later, a snazzy website with a float-in banner loaded and then faded through several promo photos of Cooper, ones I had seen many times on everything from his publisher’s website to book jackets, but then one I didn’t recognize. It captured Cooper laughing and looked like it was outdoors somewhere, maybe at a park or somewhere outside the city. It didn’t look like it had been taken by a professional photographer, and I had to wait for the rotation of all the other promo shots before it appeared again so I could study it.
Before it came around again, there was a video clip, this one of Cooper reading animatedly from a book. No sound accompanied the clip, but the background looked like one of the classrooms in the creative writing department. Cooper had shorter hair than I’d ever seen him with, almost a buzz cut to his curly black hair, and so I guessed this was taken before we had met.
I clicked and held my thumb on the screen, hoping it would keep the video playing so I could study it, but instead, it navigated me to a professional-looking sign-in screen. The complicated and flashy website couldn’t have been constructed by my Cooper. Certainly not without help, anyway.
A space for a username appeared, followed by one for a password. Underneath that were two buttons: LOGIN and REGISTER.
I couldn’t click on the LOGIN option, so I did the only other thing available to me on the page. I clicked REGISTER.
Another flashy page loaded onto my phone. This one didn’t include any photos of Cooper, but it did explain more about this strange locked-up website.
Shhhhh…
For serious fans only!
Sign up now for only $9.97 per month and you’ll be privy to my new secret serialized novel, not available anywhere else online or in bookstores.
Sign up now and you’ll receive a brand new chapter, fresh off my laptop, every single week!
Sign up now! This story will disappear after Christmas. You won’t be disappointed!
This was followed by two buttons: one for credit cards and the other for PayPal.
None of it sounded like Cooper. If anything, Cooper avoided acting salesy about his writing at all costs. It was one of the reasons he had hesitated to get involved in social media.
I furrowed my brow, but unfortunately, I didn’t have another second to think about it. The bus had pulled up against the curb, and I was about to miss my stop.
By the time I got home, Cooper was asleep on the couch with Hunch on his stomach. No doubt, Hunch had been sleeping soundly only moments ago, but with my key in the lock warning him, his ears had pricked up and his tail thumped back and forth against Cooper’s legs by the time I got inside.
It was enough to wake Cooper, and for once, I was thankful for that cranky feline. At least I hadn’t had to shake Cooper awake because I did need to talk to him.
“Hey, honey,” I said, leaning down to give him a kiss. We’d been married for almost six months, dating for a year before that, but the traditional greeting still made me feel like I was playing house, rather than living it.
He smiled up at me, but didn’t move to make room on the couch, likely for fear of upsetting his cat’s important world. “What time is it?”
I checked my watch and told him. I smelled like cooked grease and sweat, but I didn’t care. I sat beside him on the floor. “Hey, listen, I have to ask you something.” I pulled out my phone and had the same website loaded within seconds. I hesitated, reminding myself for about the millionth time that Cooper wasn’t like my dad and I could trust him not to keep things from me.
I held the screen out to Cooper so he could read it. He blinked a few times, still waking up. He’d left one light on across the room, but it had a yellow glow and lit up the room less than my bright phone screen did.
He blinked a few more times. “I don’t get it. Is this something you want to sign up for?”
I furrowed my brow at him. When he handed back my phone, completely unconcerned, I noticed this particular web page didn’t mention his name anywhere. No wonder he didn’t understand.
I navigated back to the Twitter page so I could show him the whole sequence, but by the time I got there, he had gathered up his blanket and cat and headed for the bedroom. “Can we talk about this in the morning, Mal? I’m beat.”
The one good part about this was that he was clearly clueless and didn’t recognize the sign-in page. I had a habit of being overly suspicious. It was likely a result of growing up with a shady dad who liked to “spin” things, as he called it. I called it lying. Ever since then, I always unconsciously braced myself for disappointment and betrayal. I rolled my eyes at my stupid suspicions, thinking Cooper could have been running some big network of online sales, without me even knowing about it.
Hunch would have a better chance of doing that.