1 Chocolate Worth Dying For Read Online Free PDF Page A

the kitchen but there was only so much one person could do in a day. For now that would have to be enough.
    She returned home exhausted, with more questions than answers. Was there something to Bernice's words? As much as she'd scoffed at Bernice's claims there'd been more than one unscrupulous developer who'd gone beyond the law to get what they wanted. Was there a side to Ron she didn't know about?

Chapter Four
    "I'll take the chocolate fountain and river parts out first and start setting it up. You can finish packing the van and come out after."
    Maxine looked anything but certain as she handed Heath the keys to her smart car. She had a hard time believing he'd even fit in it. But she knew it was the only way they were going to be able to transport and set everything up in time for the party. And apparently she was wrong. Heath folded himself into the smart car as if it were made for him. Although there was absolutely no extra space whatsoever.
    Show-time. She'd had to hire two people to help with the preparation and get Jane in to look after the shop while they were gone. Even so she'd been working pretty well non-stop for the last two days. She had everything from chocolate flowers in pink, purple, yellow and orange, bushes made from chocolate covered fruits and chocolate trees with meringue blossoms. The meringues in a variety of colours had been cheerfully supplied by a meringue shop down the street.
    Heath had gone to town creating a series of bugs which included everything from butterflies and ladybugs to a caterpillar smoking a pipe. The latter he'd perched on an orange spotted mushroom.
    She wasn't at all sure about it. "He looks positively stoned. It's just not appropriate," she started to say but Heath cut her off.
    "Did you read Alice in Wonderland? Or a lot of the classic fairy tales. Really the only explanation for some of them was a stoned author," Heath had said grinning. "Sides, I don't think the kids there will have a clue what it's about."
    Maybe not but she was sticking the mushrooms in the back so that they wouldn't be noticed.
    Ally, a friend of Heath's who'd gone to cooking school with him made chocolate benches for her along with some marzipan dogs and a striped orange cat. She herself spent hours figuring out the best way to make a grass 'turf' out of green chocolate.
    "White chocolate isn't actually chocolate," Marcus had said. Another cooking school graduate he'd given her a lesson in the difference between white chocolate and true chocolate. "It doesn't actually contain any chocolate liquor you know – just cocoa butter, sugar, milk solids, vanilla and lecithin. Some doesn't even have cocoa butter, they use vegetable fat instead for the cheaper brands." He wrinkled his nose up is disgust.
    "Maybe not but most people consider white chocolate, chocolate. And it makes it possible to do green grass and coloured flowers," she'd said. "That's chocolate enough for me." She sensed she'd offended his puritan pride. She didn't care. She felt fairly certain Tracey Vandemeer didn't care so much about whether something was technically chocolate or not. She wanted a Willy Wonka theme for her party and was paying her a great deal of money for it. That was good enough for Maxine.
    As Marcus and Ally helped lift in one last container filled with chocolate creations along with a cake designed to look like the Willy Wonka chocolate factory she couldn't help wondering about the claims Bernice had made. She just couldn't see either Ron or Tracy doing anything to run the old lady off. And if this party was anything to go by they weren't having any money troubles.
    When she'd mentioned running into Bernice, Tracey had scoffed at the old lady's accusations.
    "Whatever were you doing out there? It's true they were buying up land in order to make their project even bigger but Ron was more than fair with Bernice.
    He offered her above market value and even offered to get her a place in an assisted living facility at a