A Christmas Wedding to Die For by Pat Amsden

Author:Pat Amsden
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: mystery, holiday, cozy, women sleuths
Publisher: Pat Amsden
Published: 2013-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

With people bloated from an excess of good cheer and Christmas feasts Au Chocolat was slow on Boxing Day with few people stopping in for a treat before hitting the sales.

The few that were tended to stick to straight coffee or some other beverage. At one time that would have upset Maxine. Not today when she, herself, was going light on the chocolate. Plus it gave her time to show her mother and Walt around her 'operation' as Walt was in the habit of calling it.

"So, this is the shop," she said now, gesturing around with her hands. "It's usually busier but..." she shrugged.

"It's a beautiful location," her mother said. "Who wouldn't want to sit here and enjoy a small treat before shopping? And the shop itself is gorgeous. It must've cost a fortune to decorate."

Maxine smiled, pleased with her mother's comments. "Most of it was myself and some friends with lots of elbow grease. I wanted a clean, modern look, with a touch of old world charm. And with the harbor right there...."

"It's a beautiful location," Walt said appreciatively.

"And in summer it's in the path of everyone coming over from the Clipper or the Anacortes ferry-to say nothing of cruise ships. But you must be paying a fortune for the lease."

"Not as much as you'd think," Maxine said carefully, "It is high though. We need traffic to keep going. And because the chocolate making part of it is upstairs we save on having to keep staff going for each location. Today for instance everyone will be working but mainly in the kitchen making cakes and other orders we've got for this week as well as more chocolates to re-stock the store."

"If the rest of your chocolate truffles and chocolates are as good as the ones I've had business won't be any trouble," Walt said, rubbing his stomach appreciatively.

"Oh Walt, just be careful you don't overdo it," her mother said, a touch of worry crossing her face. "You know what the doctor said..."

Maxine looked concerned. "Is there anything I should know about?"

"No," Walt said quickly.

"His doctor's just concerned that his blood sugar is on the high side," her mother said.

"You should've said," Maxine said, mortified. "We do have sugar-free chocolate you know. And I have diabetic customers who swear by it."

"I like the real chocolate," Walt growled. "And as long as I'm careful about it the doctor said it wasn't a problem.

Maxine knew when not to push a subject. Clearly this was a sore issue for Walt so she led them upstairs quickly. Heath was busy tempering a large pot of chocolate.

"Hi," he said as he measured the temperature with a thermometer. "It's close."

Walt appeared fascinated so she told them a little about the tempering process.

"Chocolate has to be tempered to produce a professional appearance and 'snap'. To do that it needs to be heated up to approximately 85 degrees. That's what Heath is doing right now. Bigger operations use automatically controlled tempering machines. They're super expensive and you don't have as much control over the finished product.

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