A Catered Fourth of July

 

A CATERED MURDER
A CATERED WEDDING
A CATERED CHRISTMAS
A CATERED VALENTINE'S DAY
A CATERED HALLOWEEN
A CATERED BIRTHDAY PARTY
A CATERED THANKSGIVING
A CATERED ST. PATRICK'S DAY
A CATERED CHRISTMAS COOKIE EXCHANGE
A CATERED FOURTH OF JULY

 

 

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

A Mystery with Recipes

KENSINGTON BOOKS

www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

To my family, who makes it all worthwhile.

I'd like to thank Lexie Baker, Amber Lough, and Mike Ruffo for their help and encouragement.

T
he person looked at the musket and smiled. It was going to be easy . . . as easy as apple pie, to coin a metaphor. Of course, since it was the Fourth of July the saying should be as easy as blueberry pie. Who knew it was going to be so simple?

Vengeance is mine saith the Lord
.
Or something like that. But not in this case
.
In this case, it's mine.

It was ridiculous to assume that God had time to deal with such nonsense. But the person had time . . . lots of time.

The truth was that Devlin definitely had it coming.

The man sowed discord wherever he went. He was a cancer in the community and cancers had to be burned or cut out before they spread, otherwise the whole body was in danger. Everyone knew that. The person was doing the community a favor.

The person put a handful of powder in the musket, rammed it down with a rod, then put a generous amount of shot in and repeated the process twice more just to be on the safe side. Doctoring an old-fashioned musket, or flintlock as it used to be called, was easy to do. A modern weapon would not have lent itself to similar treatment. The person would have had to have found an alternative method to accomplish the goal.

As the last bit of shot was put in the barrel, the person wondered whether to feel a tiny bit of remorse . . . or not. After a moment, the decision was made not to. After all, the person had tried to show Jack Devlin the error of his ways by making suggestions, albeit subtle ones to be sure. If Jack Devlin's heart had been open he would have seen the light instead of wallowing in his fleshpots. But he had laughed at the suggestions. Laughed! Well, Jack Devlin wouldn't be laughing soon. No indeedy.

He should have listened. He should have paid attention. Heaven only knows the person had attempted to educate him about the dangers of what he was doing. There comes a point in anyone's attempts at betterment when trying simply doesn't work anymore. Especially if being laughed at.

The person didn't impose beliefs on others and was satisfied the best had been done. Everyone had their own choices to make and Jack Devlin had made his. Karma really was a bitch.

Jack Devlin. He represented everything that was unclean. Unsavory. He was a home wrecker. He ruined people's lives. He didn't care what he did and to whom he did it. He thought he was above punishment and that he could charm his way out of any and every situation.

But that was not so. Jack Devlin was about to learn his lesson and it was going to be an expensive one. For him. The most expensive kind there was.

The person bent down, took a handful of dirt, and jammed it down the barrel of the musket for added insurance. When Devlin pulled the trigger the musket was going to blow up in his face.

The person sat back and contemplated the work completed, feeling quite pleased. The spectacle of the reenactment should be quite entertaining, not to mention edifying.

I
t was July fourth, twelve noon, and ninety-nine degrees in the shade at Highland Park in Longely. Bernie Simmons was wishing she was in the Arctic. Or the Antarctic. Or anyplace cold. Twenty straight days over ninety degrees was a little much even for a sun lover like herself.

If she had had wanted to live in Dallas she would have moved there instead of living in Westchester. Never mind that she was wearing the coolest dress she owned—a pink voile sundress with spaghetti straps she'd gotten on sale at Barney's—that she was downing bottles of water as if she was in the Sahara, or that all she had to do was set up the picnic she and her sister were catering in the gazebo.

Even with all that, she was still sweating like a pig, though that expression was a misnomer. “Pigs don't sweat,” she reminded herself as she looked at Hilda. That was the reason they were susceptible to heat stroke. Maybe it was good to sweat. In fact, she knew it was good to sweat. It was her body's way of cooling itself off. So what if it was? Why couldn't her body find a better way to cool itself down? Seriously. Her hair frizzed up. Her makeup ran. She looked like a mess. Of course, in Victorian times women never sweated. They glowed. Well, she was sure glowing.

It could be worse,
Bernie told herself as she fixed her ponytail.

She and Libby could be slaving over a hot grill.

But then, it was axiomatic that things could always be worse.

All she could do was thank God she and her sister had settled on a room temperature buffet instead of the usual hamburger and hot dog Fourth of July bacchanal. Bernie told herself to think positively. It didn't help. Every time she moved, she felt rivulets of sweat running down her back.

At least she hadn't put on any mascara. Thank God for that. Waterproof or not, it would be streaking down her cheeks, which was not the kind of look you wanted in the person who was serving your food. All she wanted to do was get back to her air-conditioned flat and take a nice, long, cold shower, but that wasn't going to happen; at least not until four o'clock, it wasn't. Thanks to her big sister and her promises, she and Libby were stuck there until the reenactment was over.

Ah, the reenactment. What was it her mother used to say? Something along the lines of “no good deed goes unpunished.”

Bernie looked at the banner proclaiming R
EENACTMENT OF
T
HE
B
ATTLE OF
M
EADOW
C
REEK
tied between two oak trees and sighed. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so hot. Or if there was a breeze. Or if they were getting paid.
Especially that.
But they weren't and there wasn't. Not even a breath of air. Bernie felt as if she was in a sauna and she hated saunas. She just hoped that Hilda didn't die of heat stroke.

“It's okay, Hilda,” Bernie reassured her, patting the pig's head. Her bristles tickled Bernie's palm.

Hilda didn't lift her snout.

Bernie figured it took too much effort. One thing was for sure, she definitely knew how Hilda felt.

“At least we're not out there.” Bernie gestured toward the meadow where eight unfortunate residents of Longely were getting ready to recreate the Revolutionary War Battle of Meadow Creek.

Actually, the incident, as Rick Evans had taken to calling it, had taken place in a bar called The Pitcher, and it hadn't really been a battle. It was more like a drunken brawl. A brawl that had involved five British soldiers, fifteen Longely townsmen, a large, cranky pig—hence Hilda, who was really a mini potbellied pig, but nothing is ever perfect—and several growlers of beer, the ownership of which had come under dispute.

Bernie wasn't sure about the pig's role in the proceedings and she strongly suspected that Rick Evans wasn't clear about it, either.

She also strongly suspected that the newly elected Longely councilman and the person responsible for the event, didn't really care. Like most politicians he never let facts hinder him . . . especially if they stood in the way of what he wanted to accomplish. He was a say-it-and-they-will-believe-it kind of guy. He was on record as saying that Longely needed to stop being a sleepy bedroom community and become a tourist destination on the Hudson River trail.

Why anyone would want to put Longely on the tourist map was lost on Bernie. She liked the town just the way it was, thank-you-very-much. Even though it would be good for her business, she didn't want to see the quaintness factor upped. The thought of bunches of day-trippers traipsing through the town, taking up her customers' parking spaces didn't exactly thrill her. She turned her gaze on a group of nine women standing near the rose garden.

The Deitrich Rose Garden was up on a hill enclosed by old weeping willows, making it a little difficult to see what was going on. Not that anything much ever was. Usually it was just the odd wedding or members of the rose society watering and weeding. Bernie blinked a bead of sweat out of her right eye and took a closer look.

Was that Juno Grisham, Whitney Peters, and Holly Roget up there? Were those wings they were wearing? Wings with glitter? Not that the glitter really mattered. After all, if you were going to wear wings, what was a little glitter?

Bernie squinted. It certainly looked that way. Or maybe the heat was making her hallucinate. Wasn't that the first sign of heat stroke? Then she remembered she'd seen a notice tacked to the library bulletin board inviting Wiccans from the three towns to gather at the Deitrich Rose Garden at eleven o'clock on July fourth to invoke a blessing and help with a manifestation, whatever that was.

So Holly, Juno, and Whitney were New Age witches. Who woulda thunk? Bernie laughed at the thought. Longely was not a hippie-dippy, New-Agey kind of place. If anything, it erred on the conservative side of the ledger.

Maybe not anymore. It would seem that things were just getting weirder and weirder in Longely. In a quiet, well-bred kind of way, of course. Pigs. Reenactments. Wicca. Her dad blamed the Internet, but she blamed the heat. Heat did strange things to people. She took some ice out of the ice chest the container of deviled eggs was sitting in and put the cubes on the floor for Hilda to eat. She didn't know if pigs were supposed to eat ice or not, but she figured it couldn't hurt on a day like this.

“At least there's some shade in the gazebo,” Bernie told Hilda.

Hilda snuffled and oinked and chewed on the cubes. They seemed to be perking her up. Bernie was just about to offer her an apple when Rick Evans came running up. His face was bright red, which went nicely with the redcoat uniform he was wearing. Beads of sweat ran down his chin.

“Have you seen Marvin?” Rick sounded out of breath. “I've been looking all over for him.”

Marvin was Libby's boyfriend and the reason they'd gotten involved in the little drama in the first place. Well, one of the reasons. As a small business owner, Bernie had found over the years that it was wise to be on good terms with the powers that be. Unfortunately Rick Evans was one of those.

“I think he's over by the tennis courts.”

Rick frowned. “Doing what?”

Bernie explained. “Libby is helping him into his costume. The coat is a little snug.”
A little
being a massive understatement.

“He should have taken care of that before.” Rick tapped his watch with a well-manicured fingernail. “We're supposed to start at twelve. It's five after. Everyone is waiting for him. No one knows what's going on. I should never have put him in charge.”

Bernie was inclined to agree. Managing group activities was not Marvin's strong point. On the other hand, the surrounding hillside wasn't exactly dotted with people waiting with breathless anticipation for the reenactment to begin. There was a handful at most, which was unusual. Normally, the park was crowded with couples and families and dog walkers. Aside from the Wiccans and the people there for the reenactment, it was empty. She figured it must be the heat that was keeping everyone away.

Even her father had begged off, preferring the air-conditioned comfort of their flat above their store, A Little Taste of Heaven. She and Bernie had made enough food for seventy-five people. So far, she'd counted twenty spectators. With the reenactors, that brought the total up to twenty-eight. Thirty-seven if one counted the Wiccans. Hopefully more people would show up. If they didn't, there sure were going to be lots of leftovers. Chicken salad was definitely going to be featured on tomorrow's menu.

“Maybe you should give people more time to get here,” she suggested to Rick.

“Twelve o'clock is twelve o'clock,” Rick grumped. “You'd think people would have more town spirit.”

“Well, it
is
almost one hundred degrees,” Bernie pointed out.

Rick didn't answer. He was too busy looking at the fairy circle up on the hill.

“Oh my God,” he cried, pointing. “Are those who I think they are?”

Bernie fanned herself with her hand. “Yup. They sure are.”

“What in heaven's name are they doing?”

“Some kind of Wiccan ritual.”

Rick wrinkled his nose. “Wiccan?”

“As in white witches.”

“You're kidding me.”

“Nope. I think they've been watching too much HBO.” Bernie smiled. “Hey, I have an idea. If this doesn't work out, maybe next year we can stage the Salem Witch trials.”

Rick glared at her. “Very funny. There was never anything like that here.”

“Well strictly speaking, there was never a Revolutionary War battle in this park, either,” Bernie said sweetly. “Let's face it. Witches are sexier. Maybe we'll get a bigger turnout.”

Rick's face got redder, if that was possible. He pointed to Hilda who had half hidden herself behind the coolers holding the food. “What's she doing here?” he demanded, abruptly changing the subject and going on the offensive.

Bernie thought he looked like a plum tomato on the point of bursting. “Sitting in the coolest spot she can find, I would imagine.”

“She shouldn't be here,” Rick protested. “It's a health hazard.”

“You've heard of a pig in a poke? This is a pig in a gazebo.”

Rick folded his arms across his chest. His double chin wobbled. “She shouldn't be here,” he repeated. “The Health Department would not approve.”

Bernie spotted two half-moons of perspiration under his arms. “The food isn't out yet. Anyway, they won't know unless someone tells them.”

Rick's voice rose. “And what if someone does?”

“I'll deny the whole thing.”

Rick pointed to himself. “What if they come to me and ask? As an elected official, what am I supposed to do?”

“That's easy. Do what elected officials always do. Lie.”

Rick clenched his fists. His eyes looked as if they were going to pop.

Bernie decided he actually resembled one of those fancy goldfish. “You do realize that Hilda could die if she's out in the sun for any length of time.” She pointed to the meadow. “Not to mention get a sunburn.”

“Pigs don't get sunburned.”

“Do you know that for sure?” she demanded. When Rick didn't answer, she said, “Just as I thought.”

“And you know this how?”

“Because I read it in a magazine,” she lied.

“Which one?” Rick challenged

“
Farmer's Way.
It was in the doctor's office,” she added by way of explanation before he could ask. “Somehow I don't think you'd like to be known as The Man Who Caused The Pig To Get Sunburned.”

Rick opened his mouth. Nothing came out. For a few seconds, he was rendered speechless. He finally growled, “Have it your way.”

“Thanks. I usually do.”
Except for today
.

Things weren't going her way at all. First, she hadn't been able to peel the hard-boiled eggs for the deviled eggs she and Libby were making because the eggs were too fresh. Then the watermelon for the feta and watermelon salad had been mushy and tasteless, so they'd run out to get another one. And last, Libby had burned the bottoms of half the batch of fried chicken she'd been making, forcing her to do it all over again. They couldn't find one of the coolers they'd needed to pack the food in, and as if that wasn't enough, Bernie was stuck in the park for the rest of the afternoon when she should be back at the shop making pies.

“If I see Marvin, I'll tell him you've been asking after him,” Bernie told Rick.

“You do that,” he said stiffly. Then he turned around and marched off.

As Bernie watched him go, she decided that like skinny jeans, breeches did not do men any favors, especially men who were fifty pounds overweight. Of course, they weren't so great on women, either.

As soon as Rick left, Hilda came out from behind the coolers and poked Bernie's leg with her snout. She gave Hilda the apple she'd been holding and started opening the cartons she and Libby had packed their supplies in.