Dead to the Last Drop Read Online Free PDF

appeared cobwebbed with shadows, but I avoided turning on any lights; and when a Metro DC police cruiser rolled down Wisconsin, I hid in the gloom until it slipped out of sight.
    While I had a perfect right to enter the business I managed, tonight I didn’t want witnesses. So I moved with extreme stealth until a noise on the second floor froze my feet.
    First came laughter. Then a few bright bars of jazz . . .
    Gardner and his bandmates must be having an after-hours jam session.
    Explaining to Gard what I was doing here would be uncomfortable, but it was far better than another shouting session with my hotheaded chef, who I prayed was long gone.
    Moving to DC seemed an exciting change, and I naively assumed that things would go swimmingly. They might have, too, except for one giant shark in the tank—a beady-eyed shark with a blond buzz cut, a juvenile smirk, and a great white jacket.
    It was Chef Tad Hopkins who pushed me to this new low in my management career—snooping around my own coffeehouse.
    I passed through the swinging kitchen doors, turned on the lights, and blinked against the fluorescent glare.
    I was now in forbidden territory.
    After our disagreement earlier, Hopkins barred me from his kitchen“for life.” There was little I could do about that banishment, or anything else I saw as wrong. As the loudmouth chef pointed out, he was under a two-year, ironclad contract, which included “complete control” of the kitchen and costly penalties if we “violated his terms.”
    The problem was: I didn’t hire the man, and I couldn’t fire him. That privilege belonged to our employer, Madame Blanche Dreyfus Allegro DuBois, who was presently far away from the fuss, in her New York penthouse.
    It wouldn’t be easy changing Madame’s opinion of this twenty-nine-year-old “prodigy” who she’d been tickled to “hook.” But if I could find evidence that Hopkins had violated his contract, then we could kick him outta here , and a better man could run the kitchen—namely, Luther Bell.
    Though Luther was the assistant chef, he was much older than Tad—not that chronological age was the issue. The problem with Tad Hopkins wasn’t age, it was his lack of maturity.
    Luther was a well-grounded gentleman who could stay calm and focused, even in the face of Tad’s tirades. Luther also possessed a kindness in his soul that everyone responded to, and that sweetness was reflected in his cooking.
    Like the passionate notes of jazz playing every night on our stage, each bite of Luther’s food seemed to carry the love of the man who prepared it.
    Sure, Chef Hopkins was talented. But ambition and ego had blinded him, and his loss of perspective had become toxic. This wasn’t a trait he’d revealed initially, which is how my kindly old employer had been fooled. The chef could be funny and charming when he needed to be; and for far too long, I believed I could penetrate his thick shark skin.
    That belief ended with our first argument of the day.
    Once I show Tad the evidence of his failed menu, he’ll change his tune!
    Or so I’d thought. But the hotshot chef didn’t see his menu as a failure. He blamed Gardner and me, claiming we weren’t attracting the right kind of clientele who would appreciate his cuisine.
    “What the Village Blend really needs is intelligent management and a highly paid publicity team,” he’d declared and named two of his friends for the job.
    Ready to strangle him, I not so gently pointed out that this was a club that showcased jazz, not a temple to one gourmet chef.
    My observation didn’t exactly help the situation, and the chef promptly barred me from his domain.
    But with Abby’s big debut coming up, I was determined to feature Luther’s down-home chalkboard specials on Saturday—our busiest night.
    So despite our nasty encounter that morning, I waited until late afternoon before pushing my way through the swinging doors of Tad Hopkins’s kitchen, for one more try at talking