by Joanne Fluke
She watched as the lady picked up her bill, hurried to the cash register near the door, and paid for her breakfast. The obvious conclusion was that the money left on the counter was a tip. She noticed the amount of the tip and decided that she’d tip the same amount when she left. That way the waitress would have no reason to remember her.
* * *
Hannah stopped reading and frowned. “Essie’s story is in the third person, but it’s still very realistic. It’s almost as if it happened to someone she knew.”
“Maybe it happened to Essie, herself.” Michelle looked excited at the prospect.
“It didn’t happen to Essie,” Delores said.
“How do you know?” Lisa asked.
“I talked to Essie while I was waiting for you girls to arrive and I told her that we’d found her notebooks. I apologized for starting to read the first one, and I said that if it was something personal, we’d stop reading immediately and bring them all to her in the hospital.”
“What did she say?” Hannah asked.
“She said that they weren’t personal at all, that she’d toyed with the idea of writing a novel and someone had told her to write about something she knew. She’d already written the first part about the girl in New York so she decided to have her go to Minnesota because she lived in Minnesota and knew what it was like. Essie said she even set part of the book in a fictional small town and based that town on Lake Eden.”
“We’re going to hear about Lake Eden in Essie’s book?” Michelle asked.
“That’s what Essie told me.”
“I can hardly wait!” Lisa exclaimed. “This is really exciting. I’ve never read a book that was set in Lake Eden before.”
“A fictional Lake Eden,” Delores reminded her. “It may not be the same as our Lake Eden today.”
“Did Essie ever type up her manuscript and send her novel to a publisher?” Hannah asked Delores.
“No, Essie said she got stuck partway through when she couldn’t decide what she should write next. That’s why she quit writing in the notebooks.”
“So she just gave up?” Michelle asked, looking disappointed.
“That’s what she said. Do you want to stop reading since Essie’s story isn’t finished?”
“No!” Hannah was the first to give her opinion. “I want to read everything that Essie wrote.”
“Me too,” Lisa agreed.
Michelle gave a nod. “I’d like to go on, too.”
“Then it’s settled because so would I,” Delores told them. “How about another piece of peach pie, girls? I’ll put on more coffee, Michelle can get out the clean dessert plates and forks, Hannah can divide the rest of the pie, and Lisa can put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of each piece.”
ANYTIME PEACH PIE
Preheat oven to 425 (four-hundred twenty-five) degrees F., rack in the middle position.
2 nine-inch frozen pie crusts (or use your favorite pie crust recipe for a 2-crust pie)
2 cans (29 ounces net weight each) sliced peaches
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ cup white (granulated) sugar
3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 Tablespoons (¼ stick, cup) cold, salted butter
Hannah’s 1st Note: If you’re using frozen pie crusts, leave one in the disposable pan to thaw on the counter and tip the other one upside down over a lightly floured surface, either wax paper or a bread board. Lift up one side of the disposable pan and try gently to pry it out all in one piece. If you can’t do that, just leave it upside down on the wax paper or breadboard to thaw. You will use the upside-down crust later as the top crust of your pie.
Open the cans of sliced peaches and drain them in a strainer. Pat them dry with a paper towel and place them in a large mixing bowl.
Sprinkle the sliced peaches with the lemon juice.
Wash your hands and toss the peach slices with the lemon juice using your impeccably clean hands.
Mix the granulated sugar, all-purpose flour, and ground cinnamon together in a small bowl. (Use a fork from your silverware drawer to do this.)
Sprinkle the sugar, flour, and cinnamon mixture over the top of the sliced peaches.
Again, use your impeccably clean hands to mix the dry mixture with the sliced peaches.
Place the pastry-lined bottom crust on a drip pan, either a foil-lined cookie sheet with sides or a disposable drip pan that’s large enough to contain any liquid that might spill out of your pie when it bakes.
Place the sliced peaches in your pastry-lined pie pan.
If you used frozen pie crusts, check the second crust to see if it has thawed. If the disposable pie pan is still sitting on top of the crust, gently lift it to see if the crust has come loose and fallen down to the floured surface. If it hasn’t, very carefully pry it loose, dust the top of the crust with a little more flour, and use a rolling pin to repair any tears and flatten it out into a smooth, round shape.
Cut the cold, salted butter into 5 to 8 slices and arrange the slices on top of the sliced peaches as evenly as you can.
Spread the top piecrust over the top of the pie, and tuck it under the bottom crust. If your top crust is not large enough to tuck under the bottom crust, spread it out until it covers the bottom crust and use the tines of a fork from your silverware drawer to press the top crust into the bottom crust, sealing it into place. Cut off any excess crust with a sharp knife or a kitchen scissors.
Use a sharp knife to cut slits in the top crust to vent the steam that will escape as you bake your pie.
Tear off narrow strips of aluminum foil to cover the edges of your crust to keep it from browning too much when it bakes.
Bake your peach pie at 425 degrees F. for 20 minutes and then remove the foil strips from the crust.
Bake for an additional 15 to 25 minutes or until the juice from the peaches begins to bubble up through the slits you cut in the top crust and the crust is a rich golden brown.
To serve, cut in wedges and top with sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
Yield: 6 to 8 pieces depending on individual appetites.
Hannah’s 2nd Note: If you invite Mother to your house for dessert, you’d better bake two Anytime Peach Pies!
Chapter Seven
When Hannah woke up early the next morning, she realized that she was smiling. Her dream had been filled with visions of people sitting at tables in her coffee shop and bakery, munching on her cookies and drinking coffee. It had been a lovely dream and she fervently hoped that her dream would turn out to be prophetic. Today was a big day. They had an appointment with Al Percy at Lake Eden Realty to look at the bakery rental.
It didn’t take long for Hannah to shower and dress, and she was downstairs in the kitchen, pouring her first cup of coffee, at a quarter to seven in the morning. She’d just taken her first sip of the bracing brew when her mother appeared in the doorway.
“Oh, good! You’re up early and you made coffee!” Delores said, taking a cup from the cabinet and pouring coffee for herself. “Good morning, dear,” she said as she pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. “Today’s a big day for us. I’m really excited about this.”
“I know, and so am I.”
“Well, we’ll find out everything we need to know at nine when Al takes us over to the bakery. It’s a good location, dear. Veronica and Alex did very well there.”
“All the town kids from Jordan High used to go in there after school,” Hannah told her. “I know because I used to stand in line to buy loaves of their cinnamon raisin bread for Dad.”
“Remember how he used to want it slathered with butter and toasted?” Delores asked her.
“I remember. He said that the more butter the better and he used to have it for breakfast every morning.”
Delores laughed. “And dip it in his egg yolks. Sometimes he’d drip yolk on one of his nice clean shirts.”
“And you’d make him take it off and eat the rest o
f his breakfast without it. Then you’d rinse out the egg yolk and run upstairs to get another clean shirt for him to wear to work.” Hannah drained her coffee cup and got up from her chair to get more. She didn’t really want more coffee yet, but she didn’t want her mother to notice the tears that had been gathering in her eyes.
“More coffee, Mother?” she asked, bringing the carafe to the table.
“Yes, please.” Delores held out her cup so that Hannah could fill it. “This is going to be fun, isn’t it, dear?”
“Yes,” Hannah answered quickly. “Do you think we should take along a tape measure and a notebook?”
“That’s a good idea. You’d better do the measuring, dear. Your father used to tease me by saying that if I measured a board three times, I’d get three different measurements.”
Hannah remembered. She’d gone down into the basement of the hardware store with her father once and he’d shown her the three-tiered shelf that Delores had attempted to build for her houseplants. It leaned to one side like the Tower of Pisa, and any plants that her mother had placed on the top would have slid off on the floor.
“Dad told me about that,” Hannah said, not mentioning that she’d seen the actual proof of her mother’s measuring skills. “Don’t worry, Mother. I’ll measure and you can take notes.”
* * *
“Hello, Delores, Hannah,” Al Percy greeted them as they stepped into the real estate office. “Are you ready to take a look at the bakery?”
“We’re ready,” Delores told him. “I imagine it’s pretty cold over there.”
“Not really. They turned the thermostat down to a maintenance level, but they didn’t shut off the gas or the electricity. The renter will have to take over the utilities, but that’s a simple matter of switching it over when the rental agreement is signed.”
“Then we can test the appliances to see if they still work?” Hannah asked him.
“Of course. They knew that no one who was going to buy a bakery would make an offer without checking out the appliances. And the same goes for a rental.” Al got up from his desk chair, slipped into his parka, and clamped his winter hat on his head. “Come with me, ladies. I’ll show you around the place and you can see if it’s what you want.”
There were snowbanks on either side of Main Street where the snowplow had driven through. The front blade had shoveled hard-packed snow to the side as it plowed, and the banks on either side were over two feet high. Hannah hopped over the one in front of the realty office, ran across the street to the other side, and hopped over the one in front of the bakery.
There was a large plate-glass window at the front of the building and Hannah peered in. There wasn’t much to see except two bare walls and a third lined with display cases. There was a door at the back and Hannah had been in the bakery enough times to know that it led to the kitchen in the back of the building.
It took longer for Delores and Al to cross the street because they were walking down the shoveled sidewalk to cross at the corner. Hannah spent that time imagining what she would do with the front room if the bakery were hers. She knew it would be the coffee shop and she decided that she would need a counter on one wall with seating in front of it for her customers and a long shelf on the wall with a mirror behind it to showcase the large glass cookie jars she would use to display her daily cookie offerings. She wouldn’t need all of the display cases, and she made a mental note to ask if there was a place she could store them. If she had those in storage, there would be room for more tables and chairs in her coffee shop.
“Are you planning what you want to do with the front room?” Delores asked her.
Hannah turned around to see that her mother had arrived with Al Percy. “Yes, that’s exactly what I was doing,” she admitted. “I don’t remember ever seeing the kitchen and I can hardly wait to see the rest of the space.”
“That’s easy,” Al said, stepping up to unlock the door. He pushed it open, flicked on the lights, and said, “Just follow me and I’ll show you around.”
As Hannah walked through the main room, she realized that it was bigger than she’d initially thought. She might keep one of the display cases, but she could move it to the space between the window and the front door. Then she could put shelves on the side that were deep enough to contain take-out bakery boxes and containers for coffee. The cash register, which the owners had left, could sit on top of the display case with a stool behind it.
Al led the way to the door that led to the kitchen. Hannah hadn’t really noticed its construction when she’d been in the bakery as a customer, but it was a swinging door and there was a diamond-shaped pane of glass at slightly above shoulder level so the person who was leaving the kitchen could see if anyone in the coffee shop was coming in. Al held the door open and Hannah walked through with Delores.
“Oh, my!” Delores exclaimed, walking over to the huge oven. “You could roast a whole side of beef in here.”
“Not really,” Al told her, opening the door so that she could see the shelves inside. “It’s a gas oven, Delores, and the shelves revolve inside so that the cookies, or pies, or loaves of bread get the same exposure to heat from the top and the bottom.”
“That’s very clever,” Delores commented, and then she turned and pointed. “What’s the door over there, Al?”
“The pantry. Come with me and I’ll show you.”
Hannah and Delores followed Al to the huge walk-in pantry. The walls were lined with shelves and there was plenty of room for large bags of flour and sugar.
“Very impressive,” Delores said. “How about a bathroom? I assume there’s one off the kitchen?”
“Right here.” Al opened another door and led them into a small bathroom with a shower cubicle. “There are two more in the main room, just down the hallway that runs along the inside wall. Alex and Veronica put that in when they started serving coffee and pastries.” Al pulled out a drawer under the long countertop that was built against one wall. “Veronica saved all the instruction manuals for the appliances and they’re in a folder in this drawer. She also wrote out a list of repairmen and their phone numbers in case the person who rented the bakery needed it.”
“She was very organized,” Hannah commented, itching to get her hands on the manual describing how to operate the oven.
“Come this way and I’ll show you the walk-in cooler,” Al told them, leading the way to a large steel door. He opened it and flicked on the lights. “Veronica and Alex didn’t leave this on, but I tried it just last week and it cools down fast.”
Hannah pictured the shelves filled with dairy products and bowls of cookie dough waiting to be baked. Essentially, the walk-in cooler was a giant refrigerator and she was eager to start mixing up cookie dough to see how long it would take to chill.
“I can hardly wait to try out that oven,” Hannah confessed when they emerged from the cooler. “It’ll bake dozens of cookies at once, and it’s a real time saver.”
Delores smiled at her. “You’ll need dozens of cookies when you open your coffee shop. You and the girls can use the oven right now to get ready for Essie’s Christmas Ball.”
“I heard about that,” Al told her. “And if you hadn’t called me, Delores, I would have called you. Is there anything that I can do to help with that?”
“I’m sure there is, and thank you for the offer. Let me think about what needs to be done, and . . .” Delores stopped speaking and began to smile. “Yes! You can help me with something that’s critically important to the project!”
“What is it?”
“You have someone who inspects houses before you list them, don’t you, Al?”
“Of course. I don’t want to list anything that needs a lot of repair unless I advertise it as a fixer-upper. I wouldn’t be in business for long if I did that.”
“That’s what Andrea told me. She said the house they bought was inspected by a very nice man and he was someone you’d used for years.”
“That’s right. He’s no
t only nice, he’s reliable. He comes when I call him, and he’s never failed to catch a serious flaw.”
“Then I need your expertise and your inspector’s expertise to go over part of the old Albion Hotel with me. We’re going to try to restore the ballroom to its former grandeur and it’s on the second floor. I’m going to try to get the old elevator in working order, but it’s quite small and I know some people will choose to use the staircase. That’s where you and your inspector come in. I need to know exactly what’s wrong with the staircase so that we can fix it.”
“Of course you do, and I’ll be happy to help you with that.”
“Do you think you can talk your inspector into assessing the hotel for a modest fee?”
Al laughed. “I think I can do better than that, Delores. I’m almost sure that I can talk him into doing it for free. Once he hears about Essie, he’ll want to help us.”
“Wonderful! We’ll take it.”
Al looked slightly puzzled. “You’ll take my inspector’s help?”
“That, too,” Delores said with a laugh, “but I was really talking about the bakery rental.” She turned to Hannah. “You want it, don’t you, dear?”
“Yes, but how much is it?”
“You let me worry about that. Is there anything you want to ask Al before I make a firm commitment?”
“There probably is, but I can’t think of anything right now.”
“All right then. As your father used to say, It’s in the bag. I wonder where that old saying came from.”
“That depends on who you ask,” Hannah told her. “The version I like is that shortly after the turn of the last century, the New York Giants baseball team was on a winning streak and someone carried the ball bag back to the locker room before the game was over because everyone on the team believed that they’d win the game.”
“That’s interesting,” Al said. “My father used that phrase, too.” He turned to Delores. “I’ll get the paperwork in order for Hannah’s rental. Could you two stop by tomorrow morning around ten to finalize everything?”
