Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Mattie felt her cheeks getting warm again, but she told herself it was heat rising from the oven which was now preheating.
“All right,” she said, smiling. “Well, let’s get started on that dough. I need to finish creaming the butter and sugar and then I’m going to put my pecans in the food processor and blitz them down to meal.”
But when she and Grath walked back across to her table, she found that the neat little food processor her mother had brought for her to use was gone.
NINETEEN
GRATH
“Where is it? Where can it be?” Madeline was truly distressed as she looked for the missing piece of equipment. “It was just here a minute ago!” she exclaimed.
Grath shot a look at table number 10, where Amanda Hutchinson was working, but the blonde female had her head down and was doing something to what looked like a prepackaged roll of dough she had pulled out of a voluminous handbag. She had spread fine white flour all over her table and was industriously rolling it out with a long wooden instrument. The colorful wrappers from the dough, she had carefully deposited in the small trashcan beside her table.
Grath wanted to go look under the tablecloth of table ten, but he didn’t know if he would be allowed—though he strongly suspected Amanda was the culprit in the case of the missing equipment.
The female at table eight, on the other side of Madeline, was also working on her cookie dough. She had curly black hair and smooth brown skin and wore a sympathetic look on her face.
“Did you see where my food processor went?” Madeline asked her.
The female shook her head.
“Sorry, I was concentrating on my own stuff. I’d loan you mine if I had one.” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly.
“Amanda?” Madeline asked, turning in the other direction. “Do you know where my food processor went?”
“You probably forgot to bring it,” Amanda said, not looking up from the prepackaged dough she was rolling out. “And how would I know where it went, anyway?”
Madeline had an expression of pure frustration on her face and Grath wanted desperately to wipe it away.
“What does the processor do again?” he asked. “Is it the equipment you use to grind the nuts into meal?”
“Exactly.” Madeline sighed in frustration. “Without it, there’s no way I can grind the nuts fine enough.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Do you have something I can grind them in?” he asked.
“Oh, uh…” Madeline looked around and then her face brightened. “Thank goodness Mom thinks of everything! Here we go—a rolling pin! Now just let me dump them into a Ziploc bag…”
She dumped the halved pecans into a plastic bag and pressed the air out of it before sealing it.
“Here you go,” she told Grath, lying the bag flat on the table in front of him and handing him the wooden object she’d called a “rolling pin.” “Start rolling that over the nuts to break them down.” She looked uncertain. “I just hope you can grind them fine enough.”
“Leave it to me,” Grath told her. Bending over the table, he began grinding with all his might, pulverizing the brown nuts to a fine, white meal in no time.
As he worked, Madeline got back to making the dough, whipping the butter and sugar together in the mixer until it was light and fluffy. She added a dash of something called “banilla” which smelled extremely sweet and fragrant and then reached for a bowl and some measuring cups.
“All right,” he heard her mutter. “Now for the dry ingredients…” She scooped out some flour from a large white paper bag and dumped it into the bowl. Then she reached for something else…but frowned when her seeking hand didn’t find it. “Hey! Where’s my powdered sugar?” she demanded.
“Is something else missing?” Grath paused his grinding to ask, frowning.
“My powdered sugar!” Madeline threw up her hands. “I can’t make my pecan sandy snowballs without my powdered sugar—I need it for the dough and to roll the cookies in afterwards!”
Just then one of the judges—the one that Madeline had told him used to be her teacher—came by their table.
“Excuse me—just coming around to check on everyone,” she said briskly. “Half an hour has elapsed and you have one hour left. Is everything here all right Ms. Porter?”
“No, it is not all right,” Grath growled, before Madeline could say anything. “Both the processor of food and the sugar that is powdered to a fine white dust have gone missing from Madeline’s table.”
The stern female judge frowned at him.
“Excuse me—what?” she asked.
“My food processor and my powdered sugar—they were both here and now they’re gone,” Madeline explained. “I don’t care about the food processor—I’ve got that handled.” She nodded at the bag full of nut meal which Grath had ground. “But I can’t do without my powdered sugar!”