A Catered Christmas Cookie Exchange (A Mystery With Recipes) Read Free

tell Amber whom I was talking about. Her last thought was, Thank heavens I didn’t wear my stockings with the hole near the elastic. That would have been beyond mortifying.

Chapter 1
    B ernie was lifting a folding chair off the pile of chairs in front of her when Libby came running into the auditorium of the Longely Community Center.
    “You’ve come to help me set up the chairs, how sweet,” Bernie told her sister, who was supposed to have been there twenty minutes ago.
    “Forget the chairs,” Libby replied. “We have to go.”
    “Why?” Bernie asked. She and Libby were supposed to be setting up the extra chairs for tomorrow’s airing of Baking for Life, although why they weren’t taping the show from the Longely High School auditorium was something Bernie couldn’t begin to fathom. “Go where? What’s the matter?”
    “Amber’s Aunt Millie was just in a car accident.”
    “Jeez.” Bernie put down the chair she was holding. “Was it bad?”
    “Evidently bad enough,” Libby told her. “She’s in the hospital.”
    “So we have to go back to A Little Taste of Heaven?”
    “No. We have to go to the scene of the accident.”
    “Then who’s at the shop, if Amber isn’t?” Bernie asked, thoughts of customers not being waited on dancing in her head. “Besides Googie, that is?”
    Libby smiled apologetically. “George.”
    “George who?”
    “The George who is one of Googie’s friends.”
    Bernie raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Oh God. Shoot me now.” While Googie was a fairly responsible individual, having worked for them behind the counter for the last five years, his skateboarder friends were not.
    “It’ll be fine,” Libby told her.
    “You’ve got to be kidding me. It will not be fine.”
    “It could be worse, Bernie.”
    “Worse?” Bernie repeated “How?”
    “We could have Selma,” Libby pointed out.
    Bernie groaned. Selma had tried to steal eight hundred dollars from them in addition to breaking their mixer and hiding dirty pans in the cabinet.
    “After all,” Libby continued, “let’s not forget that George worked down at The Little Red Hen in Brooklyn last year, so he does have some idea of how to work in a bakeshop. You liked him, remember?”
    “I did?” Bernie asked.
    “Yeah. He filled in for Googie for a couple of days last year when Googie had the flu.”
    Bernie snapped her fingers. She was beginning to remember who Libby was talking about. “He’s the one with the stretchers in his ears and the shaved head, right?”
    Libby nodded.
    Bernie felt slightly relieved. At least George could work the register and knew a croissant from a French macaroon. She sighed. “Libby, why do things like this always come at the worst possible time?”
    Libby didn’t argue. It was three weeks until Christmas, one of their busiest times of the year, and being guest judges on the baking show had put them squarely in the weeds, as her sister liked to say.
    Bernie reached up, took the elastic out of her hair, and redid her ponytail. “Not to be mean or anything,” she said when she was done, “but why do we have to go to the accident site? Isn’t this a police matter?”
    “Because Amber wants us to. She says the cookies are missing, and she thinks maybe someone caused Millie’s accident.”
    Bernie frowned. “What you said makes absolutely no sense. Could you be a little clearer?”
    Libby unbuttoned her sweater because it was hot inside the Longely Community Center. And then because it was her firm belief that she thought better after she’d eaten some chocolate, she reached into her jeans pocket, drew out two Hershey’s kisses, and unwrapped and ate them while she organized her thoughts. “Evidently,” she began when she was done, “Millie was coming here to the run-through with her cookies when she got into the accident.”
    “I knew that,” Bernie said. “All the members of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club are coming.”
    “Yes, indeedy. Anyway,” Libby