Murder at the Tremont House (A Blue Plate Cafe Mystery) by Judy Alter Page B

potato thinly and fry those slices until they’re golden brown. It takes patience. And I’d explain that the same technique for the trout could be used for the bass that men caught locally, provided they cleaned their fish for their wives to cook. Printed recipes, with suggestions for side dishes would accompany each lesson—and I’d incorporate Gram’s old dictum that you had to have something green on your plate at every meal. No turnip greens, because of my horror of them since my grandmother died after eating greens tainted with digitalis and because these ladies knew how to cook greens. But maybe a spinach casserole.
    To my surprise, we go t twelve ladies within three days and had a waiting list. And the first one to register? Sara Jo Cavanaugh. I was so surprised I asked her why she registered one day when I ran into her at The Tremont House. I was there for a planning session.
    “ Sorry, but I didn’t think you’d be the domestic type,” I said. “Hope you’re not offended.”
    “ Not at all, and you’re right. But what better way to get to know the ladies of the town? I’ll send my portion home with Donna and go on eating veggies and fruit and yogurt.”
    She ’d been in town three weeks, and she’d signed up for a six-week course. I was dismayed.
    Mrs. Reverend Baxter was indeed one of the ones who signed up, as I expected, but I was surprised that Miss Tilly signed up. “It will give me meals for two nights,” she explained. “I do get so tired of cooking for myself. And I’ll enjoy the fellowship.”
    We didn ’t tell either of them that Sara Jo had signed up.
    There were others, some of whom I didn ’t know well. Bonnie Smith, mother of that high school boy Cary who’d been teased in the café, was on the list, and so was Barbara Wallace, who now managed Joanie Millican’s old dress shop, with, I must say, considerably less panache.
    To my amazement, Carolyn Grimes called from Crandall and said, “Chester can find himself another 911 dispatcher once a week. I need to get out and among some ladies who aren’t from Crandall.” I laughed and said I’d be delighted to see her.
    Two sisters from Canton registered, and the rest were a blur to me, though I was sure I ’d recognize most of them from the café. From their addresses, they lived nearby—one or two actually in Wheeler and I couldn’t believe I’d missed them, one from Van, two from Martin’s Mills. Donna knew the two from Wheeler but dismissed them as “old biddies.”
    “ Donna,” I said sternly, “you got us into this, and you’re going to have to go into it with the attitude that every one of these ladies is your best friend.”
    She glared at me.
    Meanwhile, Sara Jo kept a low profile, so low it scared me.
    ****
    The cooking lessons weren’t scheduled to begin for a week when a totally different trauma erupted in our lives, unconnected to Sara Jo. Or was it?
    Donna flew into the café a little after three one afternoon, hair flying, eyes red, mood—frantic was the only word for it. I prepared myself for one of Donna ’s tragedies that were minor disturbances to the rest of us, but this time I was wrong.
    “ Ava!” she shouted. “She wasn’t at school when I went to pick them up. Nobody has seen her. Kate, do something! Find my child.”
    I ’d be lying if I didn’t say fear clutched my heart. I had to steady myself by holding on to a chair. When I could move, I put my arms around Donna. “Slow down, Sis. Let me help. When did anyone last see her?”
    “ She has gym the last period of the day—that damn basketball practice she loves so much, and the coach said she was there today. She was in her classes all day until then. It’s like she just vanished into thin air.”

You can ’t help it. The worst scenarios go through your mind. A predator had grabbed her—she was fourteen, on the edge of womanhood, ripe for a pedophile. Oh, hell, what did I know about pedophiles? The calmest solution that came to me