Sweet Somethings (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the refrigerator. Inside, a large bowl of salad,
covered in plastic wrap, had another note on it. “Had to run out, don’t wait on
me.” Cute. They texted each other so much these days that a handwritten note
felt something like an old-fashioned love letter.
    She set the salad bowl on the
countertop and scooped half of it onto a dinner plate, added her favorite poppy
seed dressing and settled on the couch in the great room. The earlier
conversation with Rupert reminded her of something and she picked up the remote
control and switched on the TV. She could record an episode or two of Killer Chef to find out what the fuss
was all about.
    As it turned out, according to the
guide, one of the channels was running a marathon and Sam got her first look at
Bentley Day the moment she clicked over to it. The diminutive man in kitchen
whites and a tall chef’s hat stood in the middle of a high-end kitchen full of
stainless steel and oversized kettles, with piles of colorful vegetables strewn
about the work surfaces. With a deep tan, possibly enhanced by makeup, and
shaggy blond hair he certainly fit the part of some rugged outbacker. He
boosted the image even further as soon as he opened his mouth, spewing a rant
of four-letter demands at the three young cooks in white hats who stared back
at him with varying degrees of animosity. Did the man not worry that all of
them held large knives as he berated them?
    Sam stared in fascination.
Apparently the goal of the show was for each of the contestants to prepare an
outrageously complicated meal, while having their chopping and dicing
techniques critiqued by Bentley-the-expert. As he hovered over them, they shot
evil looks toward him and toward each other.
    At a commercial break halfway
through, Sam set her salad aside and called Rupert.
    “Seriously? This Bentley Day
person is obnoxious and foul-mouthed. We can’t have him at the chocolate
festival. We’re hopelessly small-town polite here. He’d never fit in.”
    “Samantha, dear, all that stuff on
TV is scripted. The accent, the language . . . it’s all written down and he’s
merely acting the part.”
    “Yeah, but if the point is to
bring a celebrity chef here as one of our judges, won’t people expect him to be
the same character they see on his show?”
    “We’ll write him a script that
leaves out the f-words, okay? With the Aussie accent and wearing his Killer Chef white coat, he’ll still be a
big hit. Besides, I’ve already gotten his mother to tell him that he will do this.”
    “If you say so . . .” Sam didn’t
even try to keep the skepticism out of her voice.
    “Trust me, dear heart.”
    He hung up and she went back to
the show. Muting the volume helped some, and the segment where a food fight
began in the kitchen only moments before the dishes were to be judged actually
added enough tension to keep her eyes firmly on the screen. When the next
episode began, Sam turned off the set. She knew how this worked. If she watched
three of them she would begin to feel for one of the contestants—probably the
young girl who seemed so browbeaten by Bentley—then in another episode or two
this girl would become the villain as she took up gossiping about her competition.
Eventually, one would begin to emerge as the ‘nice’ one and—ooh, surprise—by
the end of the season that person would be the winner and everyone in the land
would end up happy. Really. She’d watched Kelly sucker in for way too many of
these setups.
    She called Rupert again as she
walked into the kitchen. “In addition to striking our celebrity’s colorful
language, please be sure that he understands there are to be no food fights and
no pretending to get sick on any of the entries. He has to behave himself,
start to finish.”
    She put her dinner plate into the
dishwasher.
    Rupert started to say he would
handle it but Sam found herself distracted by the sound of tires on gravel out
front. A moment later the front door opened, closed sharply,