Judy Hogan

Fatality at Angelika's Eatery Judy Hogan

Angelika's Eatery in Riverdell (a fictional town based loosely on Pittsboro) is a favorite lunch place for activists and small sustainable farmers. One of them, Fred Ainsworth, who owns 500 acres, has started a commune arrangement, and ten farmers have joined and put down their money for a piece of the property, when Fred is found dead in the restaurant. Penny has been coming in each week to bake her healthy sweet breads for Angelika. She and her friend Sammie, and the woman detective, Lilly, lead detective in the Shagbark Sheriff's Department, work on solving Fred's death. To complicate matters, they learn from Fred's banker that he spent all the farmers' money to pay back taxes. In the N. C. legislature there is a movement, led by the banker, to legalize fracking for the state. Their Shagbark representative Rick Clegg is leading the fight against allowing fracking. The farmers also learn that Fred had sold the fracking rights on his large farm to a fracking company. Penny and her husband Kenneth are now living in a small black community in the nearby village of New Springs in a green home designed and built for them by their neighbor Arnold, who lost the most money when Fred died penniless, and he is suspected of the murder. The three women, Penny, Sammie, and Lilly, calling themselves the Cahoots, take on the solving of this murder and interview all the farmers who lost their money and are quite upset and angry. Lilly is eight months pregnant, which worries all the men, including her husband, the Sheriff.