Here is a free sample of Chocolate Eclairvoyant for your reading pleasure!
Chapter 1
Harold watched Erin take the tray of eclairs out of the oven. The tops were golden brown and they had puffed out perfectly. Erin handled the tray gently, hoping they wouldn’t collapse the instant she put them down or they started to cool. She was hopeful that she had the balance of ingredients right this time and that they would hold their shape so she could fill and glaze them without making a big mess.
The results were always delicious, even if they didn’t look good, but she wanted them to look good. She wanted the gluten-free eclairs to be practically indistinguishable from the traditional eclairs made by the pastry chefs in French patisseries for generations.
She knew how it should work in theory, the way that the moisture content of the choux should make the pastries puff up. And the first few attempts had puffed, but they had not stayed that way for long.
“Do you think it will work?” Harold asked eagerly. “They look great!”
“Fingers crossed,” Erin told him. She hoped that if she cooled them slowly, they would have the chance to “set” before the pastry cooled too much and they would maintain their shape.
“At least we know they’ll taste good!” Vic, Erin’s young baking assistant contributed, as she placed spoonfuls of cookie dough on a baking sheet on the adjacent counter in the kitchen of Auntie Clem’s Bakery.
“Yeah,” Harold agreed. “I almost hope they don’t work because the failures taste so good.”
“You’re not going to be able to keep up with the failures,” Erin said. “Even if you share them with your family and fill your freezer!”
“I can try,” Harold declared, thrusting out his stomach and patting it. He had the long, lanky frame of an adolescent, and being a celiac, he was on the skinny side to begin with. At least with Erin moving into Bald Eagle Falls and opening Auntie Clem’s Bakery, a bakery devoted exclusively to gluten-free baking, he now had a wide variety of delicious baked goods to choose from.
Before Auntie Clem’s, there hadn’t been many gluten-free options for celiacs in the county. A few prepackaged breads and cookies on the grocery store shelves. One or two stores in the city that brought in a wider variety of goods at shockingly high prices. Or else what mothers could make at home. Modern moms were busy with a lot of outside commitments. They couldn’t all spend time slaving over the oven, trying to learn the baffling array of new ingredients and techniques necessary to master gluten-free baking. Especially if their kids also had to be dairy-free or had other allergens, which, luckily, Harold did not.
“How did the custard taste?” Erin asked, going over to the fridge to ensure it was ready for her once the eclairs had completely cooled.
Harold grinned. “What makes you think I tasted it?”
Erin and Vic both laughed. “Because you always taste it,” Erin chuckled. She pushed a few locks of dark hair that had escaped her bobby pins back into place and washed her hands. Her hair was too short to keep pulled back into a sleek ponytail like Vic’s fine blond hair, and she suspected that even if it were long enough, it would still refuse to stay corralled by the elastic.
At the jingle of bells from the front of the bakery, Erin and Vic both left the kitchen to enter the storefront area and serve their next customer. Vic stood behind the till and Erin behind the display case, ready for the next sale.
But instead of a customer, it was Frank Grayson, delivering the day’s mail.
“Oh, hi, Frank,” Erin greeted, giving him a warm smile. “How’s it going?”
“A real pretty day out there,” Frank told her, using his forearm to wipe a bead of sweat that trickled down from his temple. “Perfect day for a picnic.”
He handed over a thick wad of mail, wrapped neatly with a couple of rubber bands.
“Couple new catalogs in there,” he observed, knowing how Erin loved to pore over the baking supplies and equipment catalogs to see what she could pick up for a good price, drooling over the more expensive equipment she could not afford, and fantasizing about how it could transform the bakery.
“Thank you!”
“Y’all have a nice day,” he told them, and turned to continue to the next store on his route, the Book Nook. He allowed a group of women to enter the bakery, nodding and holding the door open like a gentleman before going on.
Erin nodded to the group, including Mrs. Peach, her next-door neighbor, and Betty Thompson, two seniors who used walkers. Edna, a woman who worked at the library with Betty, was with them, as well as a couple of younger women Erin didn’t know well but who occasionally came for the ladies’ tea on Sunday.
“We are going to take a few minutes,” Betty warned. Erin knew it was true. Betty always took a long time to look over the offerings in the display case, ask her questions about the ingredients or how they were prepared, and finally decide what to buy.
The other women might make their choices faster, but they would wait for Betty to figure out what she wanted first. There was a sort of “order of seniority” that the customers followed. Erin didn’t always follow what gave one person priority over another, she just went with the flow.
Erin took the rubber bands off of the mail and shuffled through it quickly, handing a couple of note cards over to Vic. There had been a lot more mail since word of Willie’s death had gotten out. A lot of condolence cards, flower deliveries, casseroles, and myriad other sympathies expressed with small-town charm. For once, people seemed to have put aside their judgments about Vic being transgender and were just treating her as they would any other woman.
What was left was primarily bills, flyers, and catalogs. Erin turned to take them to her office to review later. Vic flapped one of the cards at her. “This one is addressed to you.”
Erin took it back and looked at it. She had just assumed all the personal notes and cards would be for Vic and hadn’t looked at the addressee name. But her name was neatly written on the envelope.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t even notice.” Curious, she slid her thumb under the corner of the flap to tear it open.
She unfolded the crisp stationery and looked at the sentences penned inside with a frown.
“What does it say?” Vic asked, reading something in Erin’s expression.
Erin read the words aloud slowly as if saying them precisely would make them make sense.
A recipe long forgotten stirs trouble anew— Vengeance and blood will soon ensue. Tread carefully, I see danger brew!
Chapter 2
What?” Vic’s eyes were wide with alarm.
Erin looked back down at the neat loops of the handwritten note.
“What is this?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. That’s really weird,” Vic said, shaking her head. “Where did it come from?”
Erin turned the envelope over, but there was no return address. She looked for a postmark, but of course, everything was machine-processed now, and the barcode meant nothing to her.
“I don’t know. Maybe Frank knows.”
“Who would send such a thing?” Mrs. Peach asked.
It wasn’t until then that Erin realized she had read the letter aloud in front of customers. She had been so stunned by the contents of the letter that she had not even thought about them. She had just fastened on to the little verse and read it to Vic without regard to the other people within earshot.
“Oh!” She folded the letter along the original fold lines. “I’m sure it’s just a prank. Someone having a bit of fun.”
“That didn’t sound like a joke,” Betty argued. “It sounded like a threat.”
“No, not a threat,” Edna disagreed. “It said ‘I see,’ like it is a prediction or vision. That isn’t a threat.”
“No one can see the future,” Mrs. Peach pointed out. “Someone is trying to make trouble.”
“Or it is a prank,” Erin repeated. “Sometimes people just make things up, try to get people excited.”
“They obviously want to stir things up,” Vic agreed. “I mean… it says so right in the verse.”
Erin looked back down at it, giving a little laugh. “I guess it does,” she agreed. “I don’t think this is anything to worry about. Just someone playing a game.”
“It’s not very funny,” Betty said. “It’s in very poor taste.”
“Yes,” Erin agreed. She tucked it into her apron pocket. “And I’m sorry I read it out. I wasn’t thinking. Did you decide what you wanted to buy?” She directed her gaze to the food inside the display case, hoping to distract everyone from the letter. “Those chocolate chunk cookies are fresh from the oven.”
Betty was still scowling about the letter and did not look at the chocolate chunk cookies. Mrs. Peach tried to help.
“Oh, those look very good,” she agreed. “Now, what about these? Butterscotch bars? I don’t think I’ve had those before.”
“They are delicious,” Erin obliged. “Melt in your mouth. I highly recommend them. They have a shortbread crust, and if there’s one thing about gluten-free flours, they make great shortbread.”
“They sound wonderful,” Mrs. Peach agreed. “Do you want some of those, Betty?”
“I want to know who sent that letter. Sending a letter like that is a dangerous thing!”
“Dangerous?” Erin echoed.
“You could incite a panic. People are very impressionable.”
Erin thought that “dangerous” was probably a stretch. It might concern some people, but they would quickly see that it was just a made-up prediction.
“What if it really is a vision?” Edna asked. “You can’t deny that there are fortune-tellers who can catch glimpses of the future.”
“It is not a vision,” Betty told her sharply. She was determined to shut down this suggestion. “There is no such thing as clairvoyance.”
Edna drew herself up to her full height, which, due to her age, was not great. She stood as tall as her permanently hunched spine would allow, making herself as imposing and authoritative as she could.
“‘There shall not be found among you anyone who… practices divination or tells fortunes,’” she quoted. “Why would that warning be in the Bible if there was no such thing as clairvoyance?”
“It means no one should claim to have clairvoyance,” Betty shot back. “Not that seeing the future is a real thing.”
“That’s not what it says,” Edna disagreed. “There is real clairvoyance, and we are warned against practicing it or having people among us to practice it.”
“I don’t think we need to worry that a grievance over an old recipe is going to cause bloodshed,” Erin said lightly, putting as much humor into her voice as she could. Never mind the recipe book that had recently caused them so much trouble. Or the muffins that had brought death into her sphere more than once. “Now, what can I get you ladies?”
Edna, Betty, and Mrs. Peach eyed each other, but no one stepped forward to continue the argument. Erin nodded, hoping that would be the end of it. She was kicking herself for having read the note aloud without thinking. After all that had happened in Bald Eagle Falls, she should have known better.
“Those butterscotch bars are mighty tasty,” Vic prodded.
“I don’t know,” Betty said, unwilling to give up the conversation yet. “I think we need to be concerned about this threat. Maybe you should call the police, dear.”
Erin smiled. “I will take it up with Officer Piper. I’m sure he’ll have some good advice on it.”
Betty’s scowl softened slightly. “He is a fine young man.”
“Yes, he is,” Erin agreed. “And I’ll be sure to tell him you said so.”
Betty giggled at that, sounding more like a teen girl than the mature woman she was.
“Everybody loves Officer Handsome,” Vic teased.
“Well, he’s my Officer Handsome, so everyone else had better just look and not touch.”
Vic and Betty chuckled about this. Erin felt that the tension had broken and things would be okay now. The ladies would forget about the letter and its strange prediction, and her faux pas in reading it aloud in front of the customers would be forgiven.
Sometimes, Erin thought she was doing a pretty good job navigating the Bald Eagle Falls social environment. She was getting better at predicting what things would be acceptable or unacceptable to the church ladies. What things were just “not done” in the South. What people expected from her.
And sometimes, she felt like she was still out of her depth, flailing around and trying to stay afloat while people pelted her with more unhelpful rules rather than helping her find her way safely back to shore.
Betty made her selections, and Erin breathed a sigh of relief as she paid for her order and headed for the door. Edna and Mrs. Peach placed their orders without any further comment on the letter’s predictions. Once they were on their way with their baking, Erin felt like she was safely ashore again.
She smiled tentatively at the women still waiting to be served. Both were regulars, but not usually inclined to visit or say anything other than make a few comments on the weather or Erin’s latest new creations in the display case.
“What can I do for you today?” Erin asked Tara Waldon.
Tara was older than Erin, but not as old as Edna and Mrs. Peach. Erin suspected she was around sixty. She had long dark hair and a penchant for bold, bright colors. She looked into the display case, a frown on her face. She glanced at Vic at the cash register, and spoke to Erin in a low voice.
“I really don’t think it is appropriate for you to joke around and act so silly, especially about your boyfriend, when she has just lost hers.”
Erin caught her breath and tried to figure out what to say to this. As far as the rest of Bald Eagle Falls was concerned, Vic’s partner, Willie Andrews, who had recently taken up leadership of a local crime family, the Dyson clan, had been assassinated by factions within the clan.
What they didn’t know was that the so-called assassination had just been a sham, set up by Willie and a few loyal friends, as a way for Willie to get out of the clan. Willie would remain dead in the eyes of the Bald Eagle Falls residents until Willie felt that Nelson Dyson’s leadership of the syndicate was secure and he could afford for it to be known that he had actually left the clan.
So, for the time being, Erin and her best friend and employee had to continue the act that Willie was dead and Vic was deep in mourning.
“Oh…” Erin swallowed. “I’m sorry, Vic. I didn’t mean to… make you feel bad.”
“You are a nice girl. You should be more careful,” Tara told her firmly. “Be more sensitive to her feelings.”
Erin nodded her agreement. Vic tried to find a way to move Tara past the topic. “I was joking around too,” she said, “It wasn’t Erin being insensitive. Sometimes… you just have to laugh. You need something to pull you out of your funk. When my maw-maw died, we went home and put on the silliest, most slapstick movie we could find. It was just the only way to move on.”
Tara shook her head, but didn’t tell Vic that there was something wrong with her if she was able to laugh about things after her romantic partner was killed. But Erin had the distinct feeling she was thinking it.
“Everyone mourns differently,” Vic declared. “I just… want to go on as normal. Sitting around at home isn’t going to do anything for me. I need to work. To keep my hands and mind busy with other things. I don’t want to just sit at home thinking about Willie all the time.”
Especially since Willie was hiding out at Vic’s place, and if Vic spent all day there, they got on each other’s nerves. It was easier to just follow their regular routine and leave Willie to entertain himself as he had while he’d been going through chelation therapy.
Tara sniffed and turned her attention to the display case. “Well, I do think you are not being very sensitive to your friend’s needs,” she told Erin. “She shouldn’t have to feel like she has to come to work and put on a brave face for everyone.”
Erin opened her mouth to object, then changed her mind. She nodded solemnly. “Yes, you’re right,” she agreed. “We’ll need to sit down and have a talk about this. I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
Tara looked at her for a moment longer, then nodded. “Good,” she pronounced. “Now, then… I think I will go with a loaf of multigrain, six dinner rolls, and a pizza shell. And maybe… a half dozen of the butterscotch bars.”
“Great.” Erin gathered the items and put them into boxes or bags. “And thank you for your advice.”
When both women had been served and left the bakery, Erin turned to Vic, shaking her head.
“Am I ever glad that you are not mourning Willie. I don’t know if I could handle it.”
“You did pretty good while we both thought he was dead.”
But Erin had been a wreck before Willie had shown up, revealing that he was, in fact, still alive. She couldn’t stop crying, set off by seeing her best friend in such pain. She had wanted to hold her, to make her feel better when there was nothing she could do to take away the pain or make it better.
“Don’t worry about Tara,” Vic said. “Mary Lou said she used to do family dispute mediation. So she is always meddling in other people’s relationships, thinking she needs to fix them.”
“Really? That would be a tough job.”
Vic nodded. “No kidding. I like helping other people out, but couples or family counseling… I don’t think I could handle that.”
“Was that true about when your maw-maw died?”
Vic nodded. “Yeah, sure. Sometimes, the only way to stop crying is by laughing. She wouldn’t have wanted us sitting around weeping over her. She would have been drinking, cracking jokes, and getting the grandkids together for a game of poker.”
Erin laughed. “She must have been some woman.”
“She was!” Vic agreed. “And I want to grow up to be just like her.”
I hope you enjoyed this sample of
Chocolate Eclairvoyant
By P.D. Workman
