by Shéa MacLeod
Chester snatched the card from my fingers. “You shouldn’t be reading that,” he said sternly.
“And you shouldn’t have delivered the wrong flowers,” I retorted.
His cheeks turned pink. “Again, I’m truly sorry.”
“You should be.” And with that I swooped up my bouquet of irises and sailed out of the shop.
“COME ON, VIOLA,” THE mayor wheedled. “When are you serving the pudding?” He eyed the dessert display with greedy eyes. Even smartly dressed in a black suit and green and red tie, he looked like a child ready to sneak into the cookie jar.
I’d set out the platters earlier, each on an ascending tier. They were white with gold trim and the golden-brown puddings were surrounded by a neat crown of holly. The green and red were a perfect foil for the rich desserts. Beneath and on either side spread green and gold plates piled with Bakeology cookies: from Sandy’s famous gingerbread people with their white icing faces to embossed German springerles that smelled faintly of anise. Russian tea cakes, peppermint meringues, chocolate dipped shortbread, and rum balls rounded out the display. I’d made it my business to sample each one as I set out the trays. The meringues were my favorite. I think.
“In a minute,” I assured the mayor. “People are still enjoying their appetizers.” In addition to the table of sweet treats, black-and-white clad wait staff circled among the guests with trays of savories: bacon wrapped stuffed dates, mini baked brie bites, tiny quiches, and even fried macaroni balls.
He pouted, but I ignored him. Honestly, how the man had ever become mayor was beyond me. Half the time it was like working with a naughty two-year-old.
I snagged a dirty stack of plates off the display table and carried them into the kitchen so they could be washed later. Cheryl was hiding behind the giant coffee pot, a half-eaten sugar cookie in one hand.
“What are you doing?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. Cheryl wasn’t generally one to hide from socializing. Nor was she one to allow cookie crumbs to dribble down the front of her form-hugging black dress.
She sighed and set down the uneaten portion of cookie before swiping crumbs from her front. “Duke is here.”
I frowned as I stuffed the dirty dishes into the dishwasher. “Duke?”
“Duke Westin. We dated for, like, ages.” She pointed to the open pass-through. I’d left it open so I could keep an eye on things.
I stepped closer and peered out. The only man I could see was the photographer that had come down from Portland to help our local journalist cover the shindig. Though why Portland cared about a party in Astoria was beyond me. Unless they figured our guests of honor were newsworthy.
“I don’t see anyone except the photographer.”
“Exactly,” she moaned.
“Oh.” I took a closer look. He certainly wasn’t hard on the eyes. He had one of those well-defined, strong boned faces with slightly exotic eyes and a mane of dark hair carefully tucked back in a queue. While everyone else was dressed formally, he wore faded jeans, work boots, and a flannel shirt. What did he think he was, a lumberjack? Several women, including one of our guests of honor, were crowded around him vying for attention and flirting outrageously. He looked amused.
“You dated him? Not bad.” I eyed Cheryl who was nervously twisting her sapphire necklace. “What’s wrong with him?” Cheryl had a broken picker when it came to men. She’d once gone out with a man who claimed to be a Navy SEAL. In actuality he was a dirty, rotten liar and a con artist to boot. He was presently residing at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan. Served him right.
She sighed. “Nothing, I guess. We were just young. I mean, I haven’t seen him since high school.”
“You dated in high school?”
She snatched up the cookie and took another bite as if to fortify herself. “Junior and senior year. And then he went off to a college back East and I got a creative writing scholarship for a summer program out of the local university. We just lost touch. I had no idea he was working in Portland.”
“How interesting.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” she said tartly, polishing off the sugar cookie. “I have no interest in dating. Especially not some womanizer.”
“It’s hardly fair to call him a womanizer when you haven’t seen him in years.” I glanced back at the photographer surrounded by women. Then again... “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’re here to do a job. Right?”
Cheryl nodded firmly. “Right.”
“The mayor wants us to serve the pudding.” I bustled toward the giant fridge. “I’ll heat up the hard sauces.” I’d made four kinds of hard sauce: bourbon, whisky, and rum. Plus a non-alcoholic version of the sauce using fake rum flavor. Something for everyone.
“The coffee is almost done.”
I nodded. Everything was going smoothly.
As I warmed up the sauces and Cheryl got the coffee ready, we chatted about the guests. “What do you think of the new journalist at the Astoria Gazette?” I asked. “What’s her name? Ashley something? She seems kind of young.” I’d yet to meet her, but I’d seen her running around town. She’d been far too high-energy and driven for a small-town paper and I’d wondered what her end game was.
“And annoying,” Cheryl said as she poured half and half into a large cut glass pitcher and dumped raw sugar into a matching bowl. “Ashley Jennings. She followed me in here and started peppering me with questions that had nothing to do with the party. I finally threw her out.”
“What sort of questions?”
“Just stupid stuff,” Cheryl mumbled as she loaded up the coffee cart.
She was sidestepping. “Come on. Spill.”
She grimaced. “I think she has a crush on Duke, and clearly she knows we dated. Although Ashley doesn’t seem to realize it was a million years ago.”
“He probably told her.”
Cheryl frowned. “Why would he do that?”
“In my experience, men like to tell new love interests all about their prowess with old love interests. How attractive or successful those women were, as if it somehow boosts their own attractiveness and makes them more interesting to the new women in their lives.”
Cheryl shook her head. “Well, that’s just dumb. I don’t want to hear about past girlfriends. Who does? I mean, I know they exist. I’m not an idiot, but I just don’t want to hear about it.”
“Hey, you’re preaching to the choir. Stuff like that makes me wonder if the dude isn’t over the old girlfriend.”
“No kidding.” She made a sour face and I winced. The last idiot she dated had just that problem. And he’d dumped her to go back to his old girlfriend. It was still a sore subject. “Does Lucas do that?”
“Nope.” It was one of the things I liked about him. He didn’t seem to dwell on the past.
“Lucky.”
I guess I was. “Maybe Ashley was being nosey. Part of her job description, I guess.” I set the sauces on a silver tray.
“I guess.” Cheryl didn’t seem convinced. “Let’s get these people served their pudding.”
“You bet.”
We carried the coffee and sauces out to the dessert table, and I waved the mayor over. Beaming from ear to ear, he made a long-winded speech that no one listened to. Everyone’s eyes were glued on the mounds of cookies and the very pretty Christmas puddings. I couldn’t help a little surge of pride at the attention my puddings were getting.
Once the mayor was done talking, Ashley Jennings popped up. “Hey, let’s get some pictures of you ladies and the mayor with the puddings. And then some of you serving the pudding. Should be interesting.” She gave us a perky smile, dimples flashing in both cheeks. She was dressed in a shocking short burgundy dress paired with sparkly silver shoes. Her honey colored hair was piled into an artfully messy updo. She was nearly half our age and annoyingly pretty. No wonder Cheryl was miffed. It was hard for a woman over forty to compete with that. Not that I’d ever tried, mind you. I’d never been the pretty, perky type and I wasn’t about to start now.<
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“What's she doing in a place like this? Astoria isn’t exactly a hotbed of newsworthy tales,” I mumbled as Cheryl and I posed for the camera with puddings in hand, the mayor standing next to me with the third pudding, light bouncing off his balding head.
“Who knows,” Cheryl whispered back. “People do weird things for strange reasons.”
She wasn’t wrong about that.
Finally, Duke was done snapping pictures and Cheryl and I were able to start serving pudding. Ashley snapped up the first piece followed quickly by the mayor. The mayor expressed delight at the rich, moist cake, which pleased me to no end. After all, it was my family recipe and I took a certain pride in it. Ashley, on the other hand, held it like a prop, not ever taking a bite. I tried really hard not to visualize choking her.
We’d nearly served everyone at the party when the guests of honor came through the line. Petula LeMar was first. Her golden blonde bob shone beneath the twinkle lights giving the impression of youth, though I knew her to be well past sixty. “This looks delicious. Did you make it?”
I assured her I did.
“Oh, it’s just like something out of one of my novels.” Her pudgy, be-ringed hands fluttered over the plate of pudding. “The rich Duke serves Christmas pudding at his holiday party. Then smears the sauce all over his mistress and licks it off.” She giggled wildly as she piled extra pudding and hard sauce on her dainty plate. Petula was known for her Regency erotic romances. There may have been one or two on my e-reader.
“Isn’t sauce smearing a bit tame for you, dear?” A snarky voice spoke from behind Petula’s ample figure.
Petula turned to face her verbal attacker, and I realized it was the other guest of honor: Venus Alton. Venus was as slender as Petula was plump and wrote tales that were as modern as Petula’s were historical. I imagined that instead of smearing rum sauce, Venus’s hero would smear hummus or something.
“I didn’t see you there, Venus. You really should try this pudding.” Petula eyed the other woman’s spare figure and angular features. She looked every one of her sixty plus years with her gray hair and lack of makeup “You could use some curves.”
Venus sniffed scornfully. “And maybe you should leave off it before the floorboards give way.”
For two people who had supposedly made up, they sure weren’t being very nice. Clearly Petula hadn’t received the flowers yet. Hopefully once she did, they could smooth things over. Until then, I needed them to not scratch each other’s eyes out.
I could see a battle royal brewing, so I cut them off by frantically waving Duke over. As he sauntered across the room, it didn’t escape my notice that Cheryl’s eyes remained glued to his figure. And a rather nice figure it was. “Ladies, would you be so kind as to pose for a picture? I want everyone to see how wonderful the party is and what amazing guests attended. This party is to support the library, you know.”
With a few grumbles, the two women posed with their plates of pudding. I hoped desperately the camera couldn’t pick up how much they clearly hated each other. Photos taken, the two women went their separate ways without incident, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thanks, Duke,” I said, giving him a warm smile.
He winked. “Anytime. Just call.” Then he sauntered off ignoring Cheryl’s glare and my eye roll. Outrageous flirt.
“That was close. I thought they were going to get into a brawl right in the middle of the mayor’s party.” Cheryl picked up an empty cookie plate and replaced it with a full one.
“No kidding. It would have given the poor man a heart attack.” I grabbed a second empty platter and followed her to the kitchen to get more cookies. I hadn’t had time to eat yet and despite taste testing every type of cookie in the joint, I was starving. Hopefully there’d be some pudding left.
We were headed back to the dessert table with loaded trays when someone cried out. I wondered if the two authors had gotten into it, but it sounded more distressed than angry. Worried, I searched the crowd and noticed several people looking decidedly green around the gills. Some were clutching their stomachs while others rushed off for the restrooms.
A middle-aged woman I didn’t recognize hurried up to me. “What’s wrong?” I asked before she could open her mouth.
“Call an ambulance,” she cried. “Someone’s poisoned the mayor!”
Chapter 3
Enter Batman
There is nothing like the chaos of a society party gone awry. Somewhere a woman was screaming hysterically. As if that ever helped anything. A man in a gray suit darted for the nearest garbage can and regurgitated the party food I’d sweated over. People were moaning and crying and carrying on and the stench of illness permeated the ballroom of the Masonic Lodge like a specter. Emergency Medical Technicians moved among the party goers checking vitals and deciding who needed to be loaded into the ambulances and carted to the hospital. Their white shirts stood out starkly among the dark suits and colorful dresses. All the while Duke was running around snapping pictures. I guess whatever had gotten to the rest of the party hadn’t affected him.
The mayor had been the first sent to the hospital. The entire time he’d moaned and carried on about being poisoned. I was pretty sure he’d survive. It also explained how the poison theory had erupted so quickly, although it was pretty obvious since half the party was puking into the garbage bins.
Ashley Jennings trotted up to me, eyes wide and tone accusatory. Her perky blonde ponytail swung behind her and was it just me or was there a little more cleavage showing at the top of her red V-neck sweater? “What’s going on? Did you put something in the food?”
I stared at her for a moment trying to resist grinding my teeth. My Spanx were too tight for this nonsense. “Now why would I do that?”
“Viola is very proud of her cooking. She’d never do something like this,” Cheryl piped up, as if I’d be more worried about spoiling the food than killing someone. I shot her a glare which she ignored.
Duke sidled up to us, camera in hand. I noticed that while he didn’t say a word, his eyes never strayed from Cheryl. She ignored him completely.
“Is it true the mayor is dead?” Another woman appeared from behind Ashley, her elegant bun askew and beads of perspiration dotting her upper lip. I vaguely recognized her but wasn’t sure from where.
“The mayor is fine,” I snapped. “Well, his stomach is a bit upset, but the EMTs said he’d be fine.” I whirled back to Ashley. “And there’s nothing wrong with my food. I made it all myself.”
“Except the cookies,” Cheryl mumbled.
I sighed. “Except those. But I’m pretty sure the bakery wouldn’t go around selling bad cookies. I mean, can cookies even go bad?”
“They go stale,” said the woman I sort of recognized. We all stared at her and she gave a slight shrug. “Well, they do.”
Ashely made a huff of annoyance. “You’re telling me the mayor is ill? And all these other people? Sounds like food poisoning to me.” She gave me a smug look which I wanted desperately to wipe off her face. Preferably with my fist.
I gave her a saccharine smile. “Why don’t you wait until we discover the facts before you go pointing fingers?”
Ashley’s smug look grew smugger. Good grief, she was annoying. “Oh, I think I’ve got plenty for a story now.” She strode off, snapping her fingers at Duke as she went. I glared at her, but she never turned around.
Duke gave Cheryl a quirky half smile that turned him from attractive to insanely hot. “See you around, Cheryl.”
She stared at him. “Not if I see you first.”
His smile widened before he turned around to follow Ashley. Interesting.
“Oh, no,” said Cheryl, “you don’t suppose she’s going to put this in the paper, do you?”
“Of course she is,” said the woman I sort of recognized, her fingers straying to toy with her ruby colored necklace. “It’s what bloodsuckers like her do.” Something caught her attention. “Oh, dear. My husband wants to go. It was
a nice party, dear.” She patted my hand. “Well, mostly.”
I sighed as the woman trotted off, heels clicking on the hardwood floor. “Great. Now everyone is going to think I poisoned the mayor.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Cheryl said. “You’re a writer, not a cook. It’s not like people will stop buying your books because you used bad eggs.”
“I did not use bad eggs. Or anything else bad. No one should have gotten food poisoning. This is...strange.” I frowned. “I tasted everything as I cooked. And I had a couple of cookies from the bakery.” Well, more than a couple, but I didn’t feel like I needed to mention that. “If there was something wrong with the food, I should be sick, too. Maybe it was the champagne or something?”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Cheryl nodded toward the entrance. “Here comes Bat.”
Through the double doors strode a tall man with salt and pepper hair and piercing brown eyes. Yes, I know “piercing” usually applies to blue eyes but trust me on this. He was handsome in a rugged, square jawed sort of way, and dressed professionally in a gray suit, white button-down shirt, and his signature blue and yellow striped tie. He cut through the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea.
“What’s he doing here?” I muttered. “No one’s dead.” At least I hoped they weren’t.
Detective James “Bat” Battersea was the local homicide detective and the bane of my existence. Okay, maybe that was putting it too harshly. He just liked to get in the way of me solving crimes. And he got so touchy when I tried to help him.
They called him “Bat” not just because of his last name, but also because he’d been a star baseball player back in high school. I thought the name suited him. He could be just about as subtle as a baseball bat when the mood struck him.
“He doesn’t just investigate homicides, you know.” Cheryl crossed her arms and shot the detective an annoyed look, which he either didn’t see or didn’t acknowledge. There’d been a slight flirtation between them recently, though it hadn’t gotten anywhere. “Astoria is small so he has to pull double duty.”
