Sticks & Scones Read Online Free PDF

Wyatt merely grunted.
    Just after five-thirty, Jake was ensconced, but not happily, at Bill and Trudy Quincy’s house. Trudy had promised to take in the mail, monitor the cleanup and window repairs, and care for Scout the cat, who’d refused to leave his post under Julian’s bed. Arch and I tucked two suitcases into the back of the van Tom had bought me for Christmas. My chest felt like stone. I hated leaving our house.
    I filled a carton with my mixer, blender, favorite wooden spoons, and assorted culinary equipment. In our walk-in refrigerator, I’d already assembled the ingredients for the steak pies and chicken croquettes, plus their accompanying sauces. After transporting those boxes to my van, I packed up frozen containers of homemadechicken stock and frozen loaves of manchet bread—the sort eaten by Tudor royalty, Eliot Hyde had informed me—and fresh beans and field greens, along with almost-ripe dark Damson plums. Last, I packed two fragrant, freshly stewed chickens.
    A
chicken in every pot
, Herbert Hoover had promised, when speaking of the delights of the prosperous household. What would Hoover have said about being forced from one’s home, clutching the cooked birds in a box?

CHAPTER 3
    M y new van chugged the short distance to Main Street. There, darkened shop windows and ice-crusted pavement mirrored the gloomy glow from our town’s rustic street lamps. Exhaust-blackened heaps of snow clogged the gutters. A rusty van and what looked like an old BMW were parked across from the bank. Both had a forlorn look about them. I prayed that no homeless people were sleeping in those vehicles on this frigid morning. Not only did our small mountain town have no motels, it also possessed no shelters. The occasional homeless person who attempted to brave the winter at eight thousand feet above sea level usually gave up and hitchhiked to California.
    My tires crunched up to the icy curb. On the north side of the street, the Bank of Aspen Meadow’s digital numerals blinked that it was three below zero at thirty-eight minutes after five. Beside me, Arch scrunched down in his jacket. Heat poured from the humming engine while I stared up at the sky and tried to plan what to do next.
    Furry, impenetrable clouds obscured the stars. The light of the rising sun would not begin creeping over the mountains for nearly an hour. I tugged my hat down over my ears and struggled to work out the logistics of a predawn appearance at Hyde Castle.
    I’d first visited the Hydes during a freezing, mid-January fog. At the time, I’d been grateful for Sukie Hyde’s call. Ever since the unfortunate New Year’s party at the Lauder-dales’, I’d been low. When the police had refused to bring an assault case against me—Buddy had claimed I hit him when I tried to wrench little Patty away from him—the Lauderdales’ lawyer had begun calling me, threatening civil suits. Self-proclaimed friends of the Lauderdales had either snubbed me or scolded me for dragging the name of a longtime Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church and Elk Park Prep supporter through the mud. Forget
low.
Until Sukie called, my mood had been
subterranean.
    I’d known Sukie casually for the past two years, through Saint Luke’s. A widowed Swiss émigrée, she had married the reclusive Eliot Hyde a little over a year ago. Her call to me in January had been to announce that she and Eliot intended to turn his family castle into a retreat center for high-end corporate customers. They’d been remodeling the castle for months, and now Eliot was eager to move ahead with his plans for historic Elizabethan meals—meals that would eventually be served to conference clients. Was I interested?
    I practically choked saying,
You bet, yes, please, absolutely, I adore history and the food that goes with it!
    I was desperate for the booking; I was also curious to see the lavish work on the castle redo. Rumor had it that Eliot and Sukie had already spent several million dollars. Everyone