Tragic Magic (34 page)

Pulse the sour cream, butter, and brown sugar together in a food processor until smooth. Slather on top of hot Mystery Muffins!

Preheat the oven to 250°. Beat the eggs well, then add the sugar and cocoa powder and beat to incorporate. Beat in the evaporated milk, melted butter, and vanilla. Pour the mixture into the 9
“
unbaked pie shell and bake for 45 minutes. Let the pie cool before serving.

Preheat the oven to 350°. Heat the oil in a large skillet, then sauté the onion for 4 minutes. Add the red pepper flakes and sizzle for 30 seconds. Add the shrimp and sauté for 2 minutes. Stir in the diced tomatoes and salt to taste and cook the mixture for another 2 minutes. Transfer the shrimp mixture to a baking dish and bake for 10 minutes. Sprinkle the grated Parmesan on top of the shrimp and bake for an additional 2 to 3 minutes until golden and bubbly.

Preheat the oven to 350°. Cut each biscuit into quarters. In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Now dip each biscuit piece in melted butter and roll it in the sugar mixture. Layer half the pieces in a 10-inch fluted tube pan and sprinkle with half of the nuts. Repeat to form a second layer on top. Pour maple syrup over the entire top. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Immediately invert the Monkey Bread onto a serving plate.

Preheat the oven to 400°. Mix the sugar and butter together until creamy, then add the beaten egg and mix well. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon. Stir together, then add to the creamed mixture. Mix well, adding in the coffee, a little at a time. Combine the raisins, nuts, and vanilla, then fold into the batter. Drop cookies onto a greased baking sheet. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes.

Pour the milk into one bowl, and mix the flour, grated Parmesan, and salt and pepper to taste in another bowl. Dip the chicken breasts in the milk, then dredge them in the flour-and-cheese mixture. Heat the olive oil and 2 Tbsp. of the butter in a skillet and fry the chicken breasts over medium heat until golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Remove the chicken and keep warm. Add the chicken stock and lemon juice to the skillet and heat over medium heat, stirring and reducing the liquid by half. Whisk in the remaining butter, then add the chicken and reheat for 1 minute. Place the chicken breasts on a plate, pour the sauce over them, and sprinkle with the parsley.

Split the French loaves and toast them lightly under the broiler. Spread the bottom halves with mayonnaise, then layer with the shredded lettuce, roast beef, cheese, tomato, and gravy. Add the top half of the loaves and serve. Serves 2 to 4, depending on how hungry you are!

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour and sugar. In a separate bowl, combine the egg, wine, and cooking oil. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and beat until smooth. Dip the strawberries in the batter and deep-fry, a small batch at a time, in 2 inches of hot oil for approximately 2 minutes. Remove and drain on paper towels. While still warm, roll the strawberries in powdered or granulated sugar.

Mix the ingredients together in a blender at high speed until firm. Pour into a frosty stemmed glass and enjoy!

I
T might have been Kindred Spirit Days in Elmwood Park, but Suzanne Dietz wasn’t exactly feeling the spirit. Shifting from one moccasined foot to the other, stuck behind a table selling slices of soggy pineapple cake, hard-as-a-rock fudge, and gooped-up cherry pies for the Library Committee’s fund-raiser, Suzanne would have much preferred to be back at her own place, the Cackleberry Club.

Closing her eyes against the intrusion of laughing clowns, frenetic jugglers, and accordion music, she imagined herself bustling about in her own cozy café this Sunday afternoon. If brunch ran late, as it often did, she’d be juggling plates of eggs Florentine, huevos rancheros, Slumbering Volcanoes, and towering omelets stuffed with gooey, molten Gruyère cheese.

Eggs, of course, were the morning specialty at the Cackleberry Club. But lunch was delectably creative, too, with specials like drunken pecan chicken, brown sugar meatloaf, and frozen lemonade pie. And Suzanne also laid out a pretty
snappy afternoon tea that could probably tempt even the most proper English lady.

“We ought to be selling our own cakes and muffins and scones,” Petra murmured, as if reading Suzanne’s mind. Petra was the second partner and principal baker and chef at the Cackleberry Club. “I don’t know how we got roped into this. Trying to be do-gooders, I suppose. I thought we’d be selling books!”

“Me, too,” said Suzanne as she brushed back shoulder-length silver blond hair and gazed with keen blue eyes at the morose selection of baked goods. “Ours would certainly be better quality. Unfortunately, this stuff is . . .” She glanced around to make sure one of the pie makers, a glum-looking little woman named Agnes, wasn’t in earshot. “ . . . beyond pathetic.”

“I’m terrified folks will think these baked goods are from the Cackleberry Club,” Petra murmured in hushed tones. Brown-eyed and square-jawed, Petra was big-boned and bighearted. She was known to show up at the front door of a new neighbor with casserole in hand, owned an overweight Russian Blue cat named Rasputin, and had mastered the art of trout fishing.

“Heaven forbid,” said Suzanne, pushing up the sleeves of her denim shirt and letting loose a slight shudder. The Cackleberry Club was her baby and she considered herself a stickler for quality control.

“Just look at us,” said Petra with a giggle, “we’re two volunteers who are really curmudgeons at heart.” In fact, they weren’t curmudgeons at all. Suzanne, Petra, and their friend, Toni—the third partner in the troika that ran the Cackleberry Club—were just mature women who didn’t give a rat’s backside about what people thought or said about them. Now that they were on the high side of forty, careening toward fifty, they spoke their minds and lived their lives with grace and fortitude, without dwelling on past actions or feelings of remorse. For some reason, this somewhat pragmatic
midlife philosophy led to better mental health and left them all feeling strangely liberated.

“We’re on our own now,” Suzanne had told Petra some six months ago. “Free to blaze our own trail; free to make our own mistakes.” Suzanne’s husband had just passed away and, a few months earlier, Petra’s husband, Donny, had gone into the Center City nursing home. But even as Alzheimer’s had robbed Donny’s mind, it had ignited Petra’s spunk and determination.

As a final coup de grâce
,
Toni’s slightly younger juvenile delinquent husband, Junior, had up and left her for a bar waitress with a head full of hot pink extensions.

That’s when a merciful God had smiled down, taken pity, aligned the planets, and helped set gentle plans in motion for the Cackleberry Club to be—excuse the pun—hatched.

The Cackleberry Club, a whitewashed, rehabbed Spur station out on Highway 65, was a kitschy, quirky place. With a decent kitchen installed, battered wooden tables and chairs put in place, and legions of antique salt and pepper shakers and ceramic chickens arranged on shelves, a delightful little café with a tangle of wild roses out front had emerged.

Because there were a couple of extra rooms for sprawling, it became readily apparent that a Book Nook might bring in extra business. So cases of books, mostly mysteries, romances, and children’s books, had been ordered and neatly arranged on shelves. Petra, who was a knitting and quilting freak, decreed there was also room for a Knitting Nest in an adjacent room. Colorful skeins of yarn and hundreds of knitting needles were carefully displayed, along with towering stacks of quilt squares. And once rump-sprung armchairs were liberated from attics, draped with woolly afghans, and arranged in a cozy semicircle, customers felt more than welcome to sit and stay awhile.

In a relatively short time, a few months to be exact, the Cackleberry Club had emerged as the crazy quilt apex for
food, books, knitting, quilting, and good old-fashioned female bonding that drew fans not just from Kindred but from all over the tri-county area.

Petra nudged Suzanne with an elbow. “Look. Mayor Mobley’s squeezed in a little campaigning.”

Suzanne gazed past the face-painting booth and the funnel-cake wagon to watch their pudgy mayor swagger along, glad-handing folks and slapping oversized campaign buttons into their palms. “What a slimeball,” she muttered to herself. Though Kindred was a picture-postcard little town with historic brick buildings and well-kept homes skirted by towering bluffs and remnants of a hardwood forest, their mayor, as top elected official, left something to be desired. Suzanne always had the niggling feeling that Mayor Mobley was just this side of legitimate. And that various permits, licenses, and easements could be more easily obtained by greasing his sticky palms.

“Ozzie never came back for his pie,” observed Petra, looking at the paltry few that had been reserved. Ozzie Driesden was the local funeral director as well as a civic booster. Of course, what funeral director wasn’t a civic booster? They all wanted to win friends and influence people for that final trip to the great beyond.

“Hmm?” murmured Suzanne, still keeping a watchful eye on the swaggering Mayor Mobley.

“Ozzie bought a cherry pie earlier, but hasn’t been back to pick it up.”

“Tell you what,” said Suzanne, frantic to ditch out. “I’ll run the pie over to Ozzie, and you pull out your squishy black magic marker and slash prices on all this stuff. Hopefully, it’ll magically fly off the table so we can boogie on out of here.”

“Deal,” said Petra, as Suzanne snatched up Ozzie’s pie. “But I think I’m going to slip a few ginger-spice cupcakes to that poor fellow sitting by the picnic tables. He looks like he hasn’t had anything to eat in a week.”

“Better taste them first,” warned Suzanne. “You wouldn’t want to kill him.”

Delighted to be done with the bake sale, Suzanne set off down Front Street, finally able to relax and enjoy the afternoon. What little was left of it, anyway.

An orange September sun hung low in the sky, but the faint rays were still warm and relaxing on her back. A lingering lazy-day feeling before the crispness of autumn took hold.

In fact, Suzanne was casting admiring glances at fire maples and daydreaming about riding her horse across a sunny hillside of blazing sumac when she pushed open the front door of the Driesden and Draper Funeral Home.

That’s when the day’s warmth and Suzanne’s good humor suddenly came to a crashing halt.

The mingled aromas of overripe flowers, chill air, and . . . what else? . . . chemicals? . . . jarred her mind and assaulted her sensibilities.

Suzanne wrinkled her nose and set her jaw firmly. Well, of course it’s going to smell funny, she told herself, taking a few tentative steps into the entryway. It’s a funeral home. There’s always going to be . . . chemicals.

She shook her head as a shiver oozed its way down her spine. When Walter had died, they’d held his visitation right here, in this very funeral place.

Squaring her shoulders, Suzanne crossed the whisper-soft celadon green carpet and called out, “Ozzie?” in what she hoped was a confident and slightly authoritative voice.

She waited a few moments, keeping company with a grandfather clock, a wooden podium reserved for guest books, and a small brocade fainting couch that had a small table with a box of Kleenex snugged up next to it. Sighing, Suzanne decided it was time to be a little more proactive.