The real estate run of the pandemic years has been good to our heroine, Dessa Jones, who no longer has to struggle to sell houses in her part of New Jersey. With the increase in business, her boss, Tanya Risko, has decided to take on two new agents—both formerly of the high-flying Delbarton Estates agency. Anna Lee and Bella Mondavi are 20-somethings, with engaging personalities, who are already good friends with one another but whose sunny natures draw in most of their new co-workers as well. The sole holdout is Louella, the only other young woman their age at Risko Realty—though, even she is more hesitant than hostile.

Despite working in real estate, Dessa’s real passion is cooking. She’s surprised but pleased when Delbarton Estates hires her small catering side business to provide the food for a broker’s day, where a house that’s about to be put up for sale is opened exclusively for other industry professionals to view while making potentially valuable connections. Louella, who occasionally helps Dessa with her catering gigs, is immediately taken with Rosalie Davis, the chic stager who’s set up the open house to perfection. Rosalie already knows Anna and Bella from her prior work with Delbarton, but any bonhomie between the four is brought to a swift end when unexpected guests disrupt the proceedings, causing most of the young women to flee.

Dessa is able to see colorful “glimmers,” as she calls them, that give her an insight into other people’s hidden states of mind. What she sees at the broker’s day disturbs her. When local TV news reports a hit-and-run several days later, she instinctively knows that the victim was one of the four young women she’d so closely observed. Given how she’d previously promised Louella’s mother to look out for the younger woman, she’s terrified that her charge was the one fatally injured.

She’s relieved to eventually find Louella safe and sound but is heartbroken to learn that it was Anna who lost her life instead. Dessa’s favorite co-worker, Harley Wilde, is even more bereft, as he and Anna had been romantically involved. Grieving, he begs Dessa to accompany him to lay flowers at the roadside site where Anna was killed. What Dessa finds there confirms her suspicions that Anna’s death was no accident but was, indeed, cold-blooded murder.

As Dessa’s powers have grown, so too has her sense of responsibility. She was granted psychic abilities to help right wrongs, which means she can’t allow Anna’s killer to get away with murder. But who could have wanted Anna dead, and why? Unsure of where else to start, Dessa investigates Anna’s past and finds herself in several unexpected and often unpleasant situations. But it’s only when an old flame walks back into her life that her world turns upside down—with danger following close behind.

I love how Dessa is a middle-aged sleuth with plenty of experience and empathy when it comes to dealing with difficult and often-wounded people. While the murder mystery itself is fairly straightforward, her remarkable compassion in tandem with her burgeoning paranormal capabilities make for compelling reading.

There are two recipes included in the book, both for treats that Dessa whips up over the course of the narrative. I decided to try out this one:

Dessa’s Delightful Chocolate Chip Muffins

Ingredients

Nonstick cooking spray

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

2/4 cups sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ cup milk

1 lightly beaten egg

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions

Begin by buttering or spraying with nonstick cooking spray a 12-cup muffin tin.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Measure your dry ingredients–flour, sugar, baking powder, salt–and whisk together in a mixing bowl.

In a smaller bowl, measure the liquid ingredients–milk, butter, egg–and whisk them together, too.

Now easy-peasy (whatever that means), pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and mix until gently combined–not too much or you’ll overmix it. Then, fold in the chocolate chips.

Spoon the batter into the muffin tins and bake for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick poked in the center comes out clean.

This was the perfect excuse for me to break out my non-stick silicone muffin tray for the first time, even if I did lightly butter each of the cups just in case! The recipe itself is as easy-peasy as promised, though I do worry that I might have overmixed the batter just a little. This is also a great way to use up any extra chocolate chips or similar that you may have lying around. My kids absolutely loved these muffins, even as I appreciated how they weren’t too cloyingly sweet a treat.

Next week, we head north for a seafood feast while investigating the death of a spiteful patriarch. Do join me!

See also: Cooking the Books: A Questionable Character by Lorna Barrett