A Crossworder's Delight Read Online Free PDF

goodies here. This was a place for discussion, consultation, and savoring possibilities. Should the caramels be covered with milk or dark chocolate? Would raspberry cream be preferable to butter-vanilla or nougat as a filling? Should the truffle have a mocha center or hazelnut or perhaps a hint of pistachio? Or what about hand-dipped fruit? Or cordial cherries spun in a chocolate skin? And that was just for starters.
    There was also the aroma, which Belle considered wildly seductive. Why the men and women making and selling the sweets didn’t each weigh four hundred pounds was anybody’s guess. But there they were already bustling about: the three women and two men arranging the newest batch of treats in mouth-watering trays were not only not overweight, they seemed ageless; they could have been in their thirties or grandmothers of grandfathers of sixty plus. Maybe Legendary had discovered a new dietary fad.
    â€œGood morning, Mr. Liebig,” was Belle’s warm but slightly embarrassed reply to his “Good afternoon.” How did you respond to what was clearly a mistake without making the other person feel awkward?
    She needn’t have worried. Old Karl Liebig had already forgotten her and turned his concentration to the glass case that sat atop the central counter, repositioning a dish of hand-decorated peppermints as if he were rearranging a display of gemstones.
    His son, “Young Karl,” walked up the steps from the lower-level cooking and cooling rooms at that moment. Now nearing sixty, he’d been called Young Karl since the day he’d been born and doubtless would be long after his father was gone. This was Newcastle, after all, where memories outlasted one brief generation, and where patrons of the city’s various businesses remembered visiting the city’s shops with their own parents—or even their grandparents. If Stanley Hatch of Hatch’s Hardware still found patrons who referred to him as “Old Mr. Hatch’s grandson,” then the current owner and manager of Legendary Chocolates didn’t stand a chance of taking over his dad’s name—at least for those in the fifty-and-up category. Belle, however, was in her thirties. To her, Mr. Liebig’s son was simply Karl.
    â€œâ€™Morning, Belle,” he said. “I thought you’d be up at the inn with Sisters-in-Stitches.… I’m just finishing work on the chocolate village scene we’re contributing to this year’s holiday decor … dark, white, and milk: houses, people, and all. We even made molds of barns and buckboards and livestock. We can do that kind of thing fairly simply with polycarbonates. In my dad’s time, we would have needed tin or steel.… The trees we’re going to do in shortbread with cookie cutters and decorate them with greens sprinkles and white frosting for snow.”
    â€œI can smell the results,” Belle said. “Or I can smell something fabulous.… Actually, I’m here because of a book I found yesterday. It’s a cookbook, and it contains dessert recipes that are chocolate-based.” She retrieved the slim volume from her purse. “Mitchell Marz couldn’t remember where he’d found it, but I thought you might have records dating from the period, and that maybe—” Even as Belle said the words, she realized how foolish they sounded. A handwritten book by an anonymous author, circa 1944 to ’46 and it wasn’t even certain the other person came from Newcastle or even Massachusetts.
    â€œAnd that maybe?” Karl prompted.
    Belle’s brow crinkled. “I know it’s a long shot—a very long shot—but do your records list any of your clients’ personal information: adults’ or kids’ birthdays or anniversaries—dates when they might have ordered something special? In other words, is there any way I might find a clue as to the person who created this volume?