A Catered Valentine's Day by Isis Crawford

Author:Isis Crawford
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: mystery, recipes, holiday, cozy, women sleuths
ISBN: 9780758206909
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2008-01-01T04:20:48+00:00

Chapter 18

L ibby looked around R.J.’s. The bar was jammed. She sighed. What were all these people doing here? This was Tuesday.

“The place shouldn’t be this packed,” she said to Marvin as they wended their way to the other end where Bernie and Rob were sitting.

If she’d known it was going to be this crowded she never would have agreed to come. She really didn’t like noisy, crowded places, especially after an extremely busy day.

“It’s the dart league,” Marvin explained. “Tuesday night is tournament night.”

“It’s never been tournament night before.”

“This is something new.”

Libby grunted as she pushed by someone. He turned around. It was Tim Conner.

“Hey,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here. You have to quit following me around.”

Libby couldn’t help smiling. She had to admit that he did have a nice way about him, even if tomorrow morning he was about to begin replacing their exhaust fan, something that was going to make an incredible mess. How she and the rest of the kitchen crew were going to work around it she had yet to figure out.

It would be nice if they could close down, but that wasn’t even close to being possible. But she was going to have to reschedule making the chocolate ruffles for Mrs. Spiegel’s chocolate ruffle raspberry cake. She couldn’t risk having specks of dust fall into the pan. She’d just have to do the ruffles tonight when she got home.

It was a long and tedious job. First she had to chop the chocolate and melt it. Then she had to heat the cookie sheets and pour the melted chocolate on them. After that she spread the chocolate over the pans and stuck them in the cooler and waited for the chocolate to harden.

Only then could she make the ruffles, which were hard to do. She had to hold the knife blade just so and sweep it in an arc while she gathered the other ends of the chocolate with her free hand, after which they went into the cooler to harden again.

Much as she liked to eat chocolate, she really didn’t like cooking with it. It was…what had Bernie called it? Capricious. A drop of water in the pan and all the chocolate could seize up.

Libby sighed again. So much for washing her clothes. That would have to wait until tomorrow. Which was not good. Right now she was down to her old stretched-out black pants and her gray sweater with the frayed cuffs. Bernie called it her street person look, and while the clothes weren’t that bad, even Libby had to admit they weren’t things of beauty. She was hoping that there was something else in her closet when she became aware that Tim Conner was speaking to her.

“Ready for tomorrow?” he asked.

Libby realized she was looking at his chest and averted her eyes. “Not yet. But we will be. How come I’ve never seen you here before?”

“That’s because I’m usually at Dafney’s Place.”

Dafney’s was across town.

“So what are you doing here?”

Tim Conner’s smile got bigger.

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