Free Final Fondue (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) by Maya Corrigan

the police. The woman was a stranger, right? The police aren’t accusing you or your grandfather, right? You have no skin in this game.”
    Unless the strangler had been after her skin. Val checked her watch. Time to load the coolers with the food. “When can I expect to see you at the festival?”
    “We hope to finish the theater sets by noon. I’ll stop by the booth after that.”
    If she gave him a mission, he’d be more likely to show up on schedule. “Would you bring some big bags of ice with you? We have enough for the food coolers, but I don’t want to run out of ice for drinks.”
    “Okay. See you later.”
    Val tucked her phone in her jeans pocket and noticed a bulging plastic grocery bag next to the trash bin. The club’s cleaning team came through every night to remove trash. So where had this bag come from? She picked it up, heard glass clinking, and checked the inside. It was full of baby food jars, all of them open and recapped. Some were half-filled with pinkish-grayish contents, others nearly empty except for orange or purple stuff clinging to the jars’ insides.
    Bethany zoomed over and took the bag from her. “Don’t throw those away, Val. I’m going to take the jars home, wash them, and use them in my classroom for crayons and crafts.”
    Where had the jars come from? “Was anyone feeding babies in the café when you arrived? Sextuplets maybe? There are a dozen baby food jars here.”
    “Fourteen, actually.”
    “You counted them?”
    “You bet I did. That was my breakfast. I have another fourteen jars for lunch. I’m on the baby food diet.”
    At least Val had heard of the diets Bethany had previous tried. Not this one. “Two months ago you were on the caveman diet. You’ve leapfrogged millennia since then. Now you’re eating food that didn’t exist until the twentieth century.”
    “The baby food is only for breakfast and lunch. Then I get to eat a light dinner of food I can chew.”
    Val took another look at her friend’s outfit. Whether consciously or not, Bethany had picked out clothes that matched her diet. When eating like a cave man, she’d worn animal prints. Now on the baby food diet, she was wearing pastel frocks with smocking.
    “After two meals of baby food, you’ll be ravenously hungry and eat a heavy meal.” Val wouldn’t be surprised if the baby food diet resulted in weight gain. Bethany would look ten pounds slimmer in solid colors and simple styles, but Val wouldn’t dare comment on anyone’s wardrobe. Her own consisted mostly of black, white, beige, and the blue of jeans.
    “Don’t try to talk me out of this diet. I’m having a hard enough time with it. I now know why babies spit out their food. The meat is gross and the vegetables aren’t a lot better. At least the strained fruit isn’t bad, especially the applesauce.”
    This diet made even less sense than her previous one. Val would bet it wouldn’t last any longer than the usual Bethany diet, five days tops. “Changing the subject to food for people with teeth, we need to load up this stuff for the festival.”
    * * *
    The festival food booths were set up in the town parking lot, each one under a ten-foot-square canopy. The canopies lined a broad walking space for festival visitors. Val backed up her car to the booth. A popcorn vendor’s machine two booths away permeated the air with a chemically enhanced butter fragrance that would entice some people and repel others.
    With Bethany’s help, Val set up the booth with a long table at the front for serving customers, two folding chairs and a card table farther back, and coolers along the sides. An oilcloth table covering with a fall motif—yellow, orange, and red leaves on a green background—added a warm note to the stark booth. Val set out flyers for the festival events and discount coupons for the café at the club.
    From ten until eleven, they had few customers, which gave them time to organize the booth for the influx of lunch eaters who