Read Fete Worse Than Death (9781101595138) for Free Online

to judge Homemade Pies because you haven’t been in town long enough for anyone to hold anything against you.”
    “Don’t do it,” Dina muttered. “The losers will ride you out of town on a rail.”
    “Wait, wait, wait.” Clare wasn’t a pretty woman, but she had distinctive features, and when she chose, a true air of command—a necessity in her job as director of La Bonne Goute Culinary Academy. “Carol Ann Spinoza? Marge Schmidt? Adela Henry? They all enter the Homemade Pies competition?”
    “Berry and fruit division,” Quill said. Using her thumb, she smudged the shadow under the Meg-figure’s chin, then closed her sketch pad and slipped it under her rocking chair. “In the years before you came to take over the academy, we always got a chef from Syracuse to judge the pies. We always recommended that they beat feet out of town before the results were announced.”
    Meg waved her pencil in the air. “Clare’ll be fine.”
    “I’m not doing it,” Clare said firmly. “Sophie will judge it. Not me. Put that down in the notes, Dina, judge for the Homemade Pies, berry and fruit division, is Sophie Kilcannon. She’s the new fruits and vegetables,” she said in response to Meg’s questioning look, “I recruited her out of Miami and she’s starting this week. Nice kid. Eager to learn, which is good, since she’s not quite up to snuff in a couple of areas.”
    “I hope she’s good at self-defense,” Dina muttered under her breath. “Okay, Sophie it is. Pie judge.”
    Quill got to her feet. “Is that it? You guys settle all the food judging items? The Chamber meeting started ten minutes ago, and I promised to hand the assignments over to Adela today. The fete’s two weeks away, and she’s already antsy. If I don’t give her a list, she’ll have my head on a plate.”
    Meg ran her hands through her short dark hair, which made it stand up in spikes. “I think so. Good enough for a first cut, anyway.”
    “What do you mean, a first cut?” Clare demanded. “We’ve spent more than an hour picking just the right judge for the preserves, and the quick breads, and the pickles and everything else. We’re the best experts in a five-county area, if I do say so myself. Who’s going to second-guess us?”
    “Adela,” Quill said. “The whole fete is Adela’s baby from start to finish. She’s organized it for thirty years—maybe more than that. She’s terrific at it, too.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m late for the chamber meeting. Does somebody have the list written up so that I can take it with me? You do, Dina? Thanks. I’ll see you all later.”
    Dina followed her out the swinging doors to the dining room. “Do you want your messages before you go into the meeting?”
    Quill paused to rearrange the small bouquet of Pink Lady roses at table twenty-six, partly because one of the roses drooped unattractively, but mostly so she could stand and appreciate the room. She’d given up on the wall-to-wall carpeting (something she should have done long before) and restored the narrow-plank pine flooring. Then she’d replaced the tabletops, which had required tablecloths, with natural stone instead of wood. The project cost as much as the annual budget of a small African country, but the Inn had done well over the past three years, and she was glad they’d spent the money. The dining room featured floor-to-ceiling windows that faced thefalls outside. The wood floors, the shale tabletops, and the cut-stone walls made it seem as if the falls and the Inn were a warm and natural part of each other.
    Dina waved a fistful of pink While You Were Out messages in the air. “Hey, Boss? You want to take a look at these?”
    Quill dabbed impatiently at the curl over her left ear. She didn’t want to take a look at a thing. She wanted to finish the sketch she’d started of her sister and Clare. She wanted to go up and take Jack down to the Hemlock River so they could play in the summer sunshine. Anything