A Catered Christmas Read online

  AS DEAD AS A CHRISTMAS GOOSE

  Even with the door to the room open and the venting fan on, Bernie could still smell the faint odor of gas lingering in the air.

  “It’s off,” Eric Royal said to her. “I already checked.”

  Bernie nodded absentmindedly. She’d figured as much. Otherwise they wouldn’t be in here now. They’d be outside in the fresh air waiting for the emergency crews to come. She was suddenly aware that Libby was standing right next to her and that her complexion was a definite shade of lime green.

  Her sister pointed to Hortense’s body splayed out on the floor. Bernie studied Hortense for a moment. She was wearing a Santa Claus suit just like she said she would. Silk, Bernie judged, and tailored to within an inch of its life.

  “That could have been me,” Libby said.

  Bernie turned and looked at her. Libby was wringing her hands.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I almost opened the oven,” Libby explained. “I wanted to.”

  It wasn’t the explosion that had killed Hortense, Bernie reflected. Or at least not directly. No. The coup de grâce had been the piece of glass that was currently sticking out of Hortense’s throat …

  Books by Isis Crawford

  A CATERED MURDER

  A CATERED WEDDING

  A CATERED CHRISTMAS

  A CATERED VALENTINE’S DAY

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  A Mystery with Recipes

  A CATERED

  CHRISTMAS

  ISIS CRAWFORD

  Longely is an imaginary community, as are all its inhabitants. Any resemblance to people either living or dead is pure coincidence.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  850 Third Avenue

  New York, NY 10022

  Copyright © 2005 by Isis Crawford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  All Kensington titles, imprints and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, educational or institutional use.

  Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 850 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10022. Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  First Hardcover Printing: October 2005

  First Paperback Printing: October 2006

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  AS DEAD AS A CHRISTMAS GOOSE

  Books by Isis Crawford

  Christmas Eve Menu

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 1

  For Sarah and Peter Saulson,

  for being good friends.

  Christmas Eve Menu

  Pumpkin bisque

  Freshly baked Parker House rolls

  Capon with apple and apricot stuffing

  Brussels sprouts with chestnuts

  Green beans with toasted pine nuts

  Potatoes lyonnaise

  Buche de noel

  Assorted cookies

  Coconut and peppermint ice cream with

  chocolate sauce

  Irish coffee

  Chapter 1

  Libby looked around the TV studio. She just knew she was going to hate being on TV; she was going to hate being on the Hortense Calabash Show; she was going to hate being in this stupid contest; but most of all, she was going to hate being away from the store at Christmas time.

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” she blurted.

  Bernie considered the remark for a second. Then she pointed to her pink suede wedges. “Well, don’t do it on these. I just got them.”

  “You’re a veritable fountain of compassion,” Libby told her sister as she gestured toward one of the TV cameras on the set.

  “You’ll be fine,” Bernie said. “Just think of these as your friends.”

  “They may be your friends,” Libby retorted, “but they’re certainly not mine.”

  “Getting a little snappish, are we?”

  Libby began biting her cuticle, realized what she was doing, and stopped herself. “Anyway, I have nothing to wear.”

  “What’s wrong with the tweed skirt and fitted pale blue blouse we bought down in the city last week?” her sister asked.

  Another mistake, Libby reflected. Now she’d have to tell Bernie she’d returned them. She took a deep breath and let it out. “I took them back. They were too tight.” She took another deep breath while she watched her sister roll her eyes. “Well, they were,” Libby said in what she realized was a defensive tone of voice as she looked at Bernie standing there in her burgundy leather pants and hot pink V-neck sweater. It wasn’t Bernie’s fault she didn’t understand, Libby reminded herself. She’d always been the thin one.

  “They made me feel like a sausage.”

  “No, what you’re wearing makes you look like a sausage. I keep telling you, loose clothes make people look fatter, not thinner. And anyway, you’re not that fat.”

  “That fat?” Libby squeaked. “That’s a little bit like saying I’m not that ugly.”

  “I’m not doing this.”

  “What’s this?”

  Bernie ignored her and gestured to the black pants and shirt Libby was wearing. “At least don’t wear black on camera.”

  “I’m not going to,” Libby said, even though she had been planning to. She felt more comfortable in it. It made her feel invisible. “I’m wearing my brown pants and yellow shirt.” When Bernie didn’t say anything, she added, “I’m sorry. I just think that spending two hundred dollars on a blouse is a little much.”

  “Two hundred and ten dollars to be exact,” Bernie said absentmindedly as Libby watched her look around the studio. “And it was a Krista Larson for heaven’s sake.”

  “So what?”

  “It made you look great, that’s what.”

  Libby watched Bernie walk over to one of the sinks and turn on the faucet. Nothing came out. She walked over to the second sink and tried that faucet. Water poured into the sink, but it didn’t go down. It was clogged.

  “Good,” Libby said.

  Maybe they wouldn’t have to tape after all. Maybe she and Bernie could go back to the store, and she could finish the batch of Christmas cookies she was in the middle of decorating. After all, they couldn’t cook if things in the kitchen didn’t work.

  She was sighing with relief when Bernie put her hands on her shoulders and said, “
Look, let’s forget about the clothes. Let’s forget about everything. Let’s just concentrate on winning.”

  Libby took a step back. “We’re not going to win.”

  Bernie dropped her hands to her sides. “Why shouldn’t we win?” she countered. “We have as good a shot at it as anyone else.”

  And that interchange, Libby decided, pretty much defined the difference between herself and her sister.

  “I think I need a cookie,” Libby said.

  “Or a stiff drink,” Bernie observed.

  “A cookie.” And Libby started rummaging around in her backpack for one of the chocolate chip ginger cookies she’d made earlier in the day. Given the circumstances, what was another pound or two? She took a bite. The cookie was good, but not good enough. Usually chocolate did it for her, but it didn’t seem to be working today. Maybe Bernie was right. Maybe she needed a drink. Something like a Long Island iced tea. Or a large bottle of Pinot Noir. Or a tranq.

  Libby took another bite of her cookie anyway as she contemplated what was in store for her and Bernie this evening. It was no big deal. Why should she be nervous? There’d just be thousands of people out there watching her cook. What was the problem with that? Just because she probably wouldn’t be able to get any words past her vocal chords because they would be constricted in terror.

  And so what if she dropped say … a chicken … on the floor, or burned it, or it didn’t cook all the way through? What then? The great Julia had done things like that all the time on her television show. But, Libby told herself, she wasn’t Julia Child. And Julia didn’t have the Heavenly Housewife, aka Hortense Calabash, of the Hortense Calabash Show critiquing her food.

  Not that Julia would have stood for Hortense’s nonsense. Julia would have bashed Hortense over the head with a frozen leg of lamb or a Christmas goose if she ever pulled any of her stunts on her. Just the thought of that made Libby smile. But Libby knew she’d never raise a strand of spaghetti to Hortense, let alone a blunt instrument. Ever.

  Libby took a third bite of her cookie. As she swallowed, she could almost see the slight flare of Hortense’s thin nostrils, the miniscule lifting of one of her eyebrows when she didn’t like something. What had she said to Rudolfo, the chef from Mesmerize, after she’d tasted the pâté he’d made? Wasn’t it something along the lines of, “My, what an interesting group of ingredients you’ve chosen to use. This tastes rather like a mix between raw eggplant and liver I once sampled in Uzbekistan.”

  Libby had never seen a man turn white with anger before. He’d spluttered, but no sounds had come out. Needless to say, Mesmerize had gone out of business two weeks later. A week after that, Libby had heard through the caterer’s grapevine that the pâté had actually been fine. Hortense had just needed a little something to boost her ratings that week. No wonder Rudolfo had sent her a chocolate cake filled with a mixture of ganache and pureed hog intestines as a thank you for being on her show.

  Or how about the time there’d been that woman on the show demonstrating one of the recipes from her new cookbook on how to use a pressure cooker, and Hortense had taken a bite of the stew she’d prepared and said, “My this is tasty"—then came the dramatic pause, never a good sign—"if you’re partial to the kind of canned stew they sell in the supermarket.”

  And another career had bit the dust. Libby shuddered as she finished her cookie. What if Hortense said something like that to her about something she and Bernie made? And while it was true that her store, A Little Taste of Heaven, had a loyal and devoted clientele, people were fickle. They tended to believe what they heard on TV.

  “What do you think she’s going to give us?” Libby asked Bernie.

  The surprise-ingredient thing was probably the worst part of the whole contest deal as far as Libby was concerned. She spent hours and hours planning out her menus, and here she and Bernie were being asked to cook a whole Christmas dinner with some strange ingredient that Hortense was going to give them in an hour. Then if they won the first round, they’d have to do it again and again.

  “A boar’s head,” Bernie replied. “She’s going to give us a boar’s head.”

  “Be serious,” Libby said.

  “I am. Boar’s heads were the most popular item associated with medieval Christmas feasts.” Bernie paused for a moment. “Although they didn’t have Christmas foods the way we think of them. Well, that’s not entirely true. They did have plum pudding and mincemeat pies.”

  Libby sighed. Her sister was full of more information than you’d ever want to know.

  “I wish there was a way we could find out,” she mused.

  “You and everyone else on the show.”

  Of which there were seven. Actually, five if you didn’t count her and Bernie. Five caterers. Libby rubbed her forehead. She never watched reality shows on TV as a matter of principle and now she was going to be on one!

  “Of course, we could always sneak into the cooler and take a look,” Bernie said. “I bet they have the ingredients stored in there.”

  Libby ignored her. It was bad enough they were in the studio.

  “This sucks,” she said instead. “At least Bree could have given us three or four months notice instead of letting us know at the last minute she’d booked us on here.”

  “Back to the weight thing are we?” Bernie asked.

  “Not at all,” Libby retorted, even though she was. If she had had even two months notice, she would have gone to Weight Watchers or Atkins or booked a cruise to Antarctica. Or Siberia.

  Libby shut her eyes. She could picture Bree Nottingham, real estate agent extraordinaire, breezing into her store the day she’d made her announcement. Even though it had been cold and gray, she’d been dressed in pink, the color of the moment according to Bernie: pink tweed Chanel suit, pink slingback heels, pink Chanel purse.

  “You’re so lucky to have this opportunity,” Bree had trilled after she’d explained to Libby what she’d done. “I had to fight to get you on the show, but I said, ‘Hortense, we have to use some of our local talent. It’s only fair.'”

  Lucky was not the word Libby would have used.

  “Maybe I could come down with typhoid or bubonic plague.”

  Bernie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It would probably be bad for business.”

  “Worse than me on television?”

  Bernie shook her head. “Get a grip.”

  “But I’m not a competitive person.” Libby moaned.

  “You are now,” her sister said.

  “You sound like Dad.”

  “I am like Dad.”

  “I know.”

  Libby reflected that her dad was extremely excited that she was going to be on the show. So was her boyfriend, Marvin, for that matter. In fact, that’s all her father or Marvin had been talking about for the last three days.

  “The whole world will be watching,” Marvin had told Libby, a comment that had sent her straight to the freezer for some homemade coconut ice cream.

  As Libby looked around the set again, she wondered who the hell had a television studio built onto the back of their house anyway? Hortense Calabash, doyenne of the cooking channel, queen of sauces, and resident of Longely, that’s who. Libby couldn’t even use the excuse that she and Bernie were too busy in the store this time of year to take the time out to do this.

  “Hortense’s house is only fifteen minutes away,” Libby remembered Bree Nottingham telling her.

  Like she was some kind of moron. Of course Libby knew how far away Hortense’s mansion was. They lived in the same town for heaven’s sake. Not that she ever saw her. They didn’t exactly move in the same social set, which was fine with Libby. But then everyone in the world knew where Hortense’s house was. Okay. They had known a couple of years ago. According to the latest polls, her popularity was being eclipsed by a show on cooking caveman style. But it was still pretty popular.

  “We’ve been friends since camp,” Bree had chirped.

  “Good for you,” Libby h
ad wanted to say to Bree. That woman had been the bane of her existence since the fourth grade.

  “I should kill her,” Libby observed. “I’d be doing the universe a favor.”

  Bernie raised an eyebrow. A well-manicured one, Libby couldn’t help noticing. Maybe she should get hers done too. Before tonight. But the thought of having someone put hot wax on her eyebrows and then ripping the hair out made Libby shudder.

  “Hortense?” Bernie asked as Libby was contemplating what the wax thing would feel like on other parts of her anatomy. “What would her legion of crazed fans do? How would they know what to cook or how to serve it?”

  Libby frowned. “No,” she said. “I meant I want to kill Bree Nottingham for making us do this.”

  “She didn’t make you,” Bernie pointed out in her most reasonable—albeit irritating—tone of voice.

  “Not in the literal sense, no,” Libby conceded. But when the social arbiter of Longely tells you to jump, and you’re in the catering business, you ask what hoop she has in mind.

  “Well then. There you go,” Bernie said. “Anyway,” she continued, “this will be good exposure for the store.”

  “A Little Taste of Heaven doesn’t need any more exposure,” Libby replied. “We’ve got more customers than we can handle as it is.”

  “Not if you hired on more staff,” Bernie pointed out.

  “We don’t have the room.”

  “We could expand,” Bernie replied.

  “That would mean moving,” Libby said.

  “And we’re fine where we are,” Bernie finished for her.

  “Well, we are,” Libby retorted as she watched Bernie saunter over to the sink.

  She and her sister had had the “moving discussion” at least once a week for the past year. But Libby was holding fast to her convictions. She knew too many other places that had been doing well until they expanded. What Bernie didn’t seem to be able to grasp was the amount of planning that the kind of expansion Bernie was talking about would involve.

  But then her sister had always been like that. Diving headlong into something seemed to work for her, Libby thought to herself. She didn’t know how, but it did. It was like Bernie’s shoes. How she could walk, let alone work, in them was something that Libby had never been able to fathom.