A Catered Wedding (30 page)

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Authors: Isis Crawford

BOOK: A Catered Wedding
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As picturesque Longley, New York, gets ready to ring in the holiday season, caterers Bernadette and Libby Simmons are coping with their busiest time of year. If that's not enough to make them run around like crazed elves, they're recruited for a cooking show contest that pits celebrity chefs against each other—and gives rise to murder . . .
 
Visions of sugar plums are most decidedly
not
dancing in Libby's head, especially since she and her sister are set to appear on
The Hortense Calabash Cooking Show
. The premise is to give six professional caterers random ingredients and have them whip up a holiday meal. Libby knows that cooking under pressure is not her forte—plus, the camera adds ten pounds! She'll look like a stuffed Christmas goose.
The icing on the fruitcake is that Hortense Calabash is a grinch of year-round proportions. And the other contestants are some of the most demanding—and difficult—chefs in the business. But, as Bernie points out: the show will be great (and, more importantly, free) publicity for their store,
A Taste of Heaven
.
Bernie and Libby are thrown into the mix as arguments and accusations simmer on the set. Holiday spirit has left the building—and leaves a body—when Hortense, all dressed up as Santa Claus for the opening sequence, is killed by an exploding oven. It's soon clear that Hortense's demise was far from accidental.
Now as Bernie and Libby stir up the past, they open up a king-sized can of motives. Each contestant had a previous run-in with the horrible Hortense, who engaged in blackmail, rumor-mongering, and illicit affairs at every turn . . . but which chef couldn't stand the heat? With the holiday rush in full swing and a killer still on the loose, the caterers of Christmas present have no choice but to wrap up the mystery before their geese are well and fully cooked . . .
 
 
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
A Catered Christmas
coming next month in hardcover!
 
L
ibby 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, and 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 vee-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. 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 cords 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, a.k.a. Hortense Calabash of
The Hortense Calabash Cooking 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 minuscule 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 pate 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 pate 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 form 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 stew they sell in the supermarket in cans.” 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 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 feats.” 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 then 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 she 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 sling-back 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 then 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 t 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 on to 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.

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