Éclair and Present Danger Read Online Free PDF Page A

every cookbook she could find. In her teens, she’d pushed aside those same cookbooks to experiment with her own flavors and tastes, techniques and presentation.
    Soon, blue ribbons for her pies and cakes at the county fair segued into money prizes and inclusion in several dessert-specific cookbooks and magazines. By the time she was done with college, her destiny was all but certain. A few stints in various bakeries elsewhere in the state eventually led her, and the money she’d managed to sock aside in a drawer, to Silver Lake and her very own bakery, Delectable Delights.
    She reached for the row of canisters beside the sink, measured out two cups of flour, and sifted it into a large mixing bowl. When the flour was as fine as dust, she added salt, shortening, and cold water. With clean hands, she mixed the dough until it was ready to be rolled out across a lightly floured board and then transferred to a waiting pie dish.
    In a different bowl, she mixed sugar, cornstarch, salt, and cinnamon, and sprinkled it over the blueberries Mr. Nelson had picked for her the previous day. Quickly, she scooped the blueberry mixture into the crust, dotted it with butter, and then latticed it with strips of remaining dough.
    As she worked, she could feel the day’s tension slipping away and the rational side of her brain engaging.
    If she had money, she could take a class at the community college. If she had money, she could remain in the two-family house she shared with Mr. Nelson. If she had money, she could—
    The ambulance!
    Winnie slid the pie onto the top rack of the oven and shut the door. Once the timer was set, she crossed to the opposite side of the kitchen and her purse. A quick search of the unzipped center compartment yielded the phone number of her one and only chance to stay afloat.
    Granted she had no idea how much money she could get for a 1960 ambulance, but she had an interested buyer in Master Sergeant Hottie, er—she peered at his handwritten note—
Greg Stevens
. And thanks to the Internet, she could access the approximate value of just about anything under the sun.
    Fifty minutes later, she had an asking price for the ambulance in her head and a freshly baked blueberry pie sitting atop her kitchen counter. Buoyed by her accomplishments, she carried the dirty bowls and measuring cups to the sink, turned on the tap, and looked out the window at her next-door neighbor’s still-lit home.
    As she watched, she could just make out Bridget’s stout frame as it paced back and forth behind a too-sheer parlor curtain. A glance at the oven clock confirmed what she already knew to be true. Bridget was scared—scared to go to sleep, and scared to take her eyes off the doors and windows that separated her from a killer who, in the elderly woman’s eyes, had already preyed on one comrade in age.
    Winnie turned off the water, shooed a not-so-happy Lovey back into the cat carrier, retrieved the still-warm pie from the cooling rack, and made her way out of her apartment, down the stairs, and out into the night. Slowly, carefully, she picked her way across the yard that separated her two-family Victorian from Bridget’s single-family home and knocked softly on the parlor window. “Bridget . . . it’s me, Winnie.”
    The back door swept inward just long enough for Bridget to reach onto the top stoop and pull Winnie inside. “Is everything all right? Did the killer come back? Did he get Parker?”
    She set the cage down, shifted the pie to her now-empty hand, and released Lovey with the other. “Everything is fine, Bridget. You need to get some sleep. It’s one o’clock in the morning.”
    â€œI have a horrible case of amnesia,” Bridget said, bringing her hand to her head with award-winning theatrics.
    â€œWhen did that start?”
    â€œAn hour ago.” Bridget pointed at Winnie’s hands as Lovey wound her tail around the woman’s