Free A Catered Thanksgiving by Isis Crawford

that—but Bernie was right. No oyster stuffing. Or so it would appear. Frankly, she didn’t want to get close enough to find out.
    â€œMaybe, there isn’t any stuffing,” Libby conceded. “But so what?”
    â€œWell, then, where did the stuffing go?”
    â€œWho cares?”
    Bernie rolled her eyes. “You should care. Our insurance will care.”
    â€œMaybe it got atomized,” Libby suggested. “Maybe the explosion turned it into tiny particles that we can’t see.”
    Bernie waved her hand around the kitchen. “Nothing else did.”
    Libby put her hands on her hips. “So, Bernie, exactly what are you saying?” she demanded.
    Bernie rocked back and forth on the heels of her boots. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
    â€œNot to me.”
    â€œI’m saying that someone took the stuffing out.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo think about it, Libby.”
    â€œI am.”
    â€œThink harder.”
    â€œI hate when you do this.”
    â€œYou need to pull yourself together,” Bernie told her.
    Libby had to admit that was true. She chewed on her lip while she thought, but she couldn’t focus on anything. She was too rattled to think. She took a couple of deep breaths. That didn’t work. No. What she needed was a piece of chocolate. Which she’d had the foresight to pack. Actually, she never left home without it. Who knew when a chocolate emergency might arise? Some people had tranquilizers. She had chocolate.
    After she’d eaten a couple of Lindt’s extra dark truffles and taken a couple more deep breaths, she began to understand what Bernie had been saying. “I get it,” she said. “Someone took the stuffing out and replaced it with an explosive device. And that’s why the turkey was breast side up. Because whoever did it was in a hurry and they put the turkey back in the pan wrong.”
    Bernie nodded her approval. “Exactly.” Then she had another idea. “Or they might have substituted an already roasted turkey, which they’d jerry-rigged with a bomb, for ours,” she posited. “Smell that?” she asked.
    Libby sniffed. “Now that you mention it, yes.” She’d smelled it to begin with, but with everything going on, it just hadn’t come to the fore of her consciousness.
    â€œThat’s gunpowder,” Bernie said. “That’s what they use in fireworks.”
    Libby offered a truffle to Bernie, who took it—a mark of how upset she was. Then Libby took one, too. In her opinion, sisters never let sisters eat chocolate truffles alone. For a moment, both women stood there, allowing the chocolate to melt on their tongues and coat their mouths.
    â€œWhoever did it must have done it when we were in the dining room, setting the table,” Libby finally said.
    â€œHad to have been,” Bernie agreed. “We were in the kitchen the rest of the time.”
    Now that the shock was wearing off, Libby was indignant. “We could have been killed,” she said.
    â€œIndeed, we could have. Although,” Bernie said thoughtfully, “it was tapping the pop-up button that set the device off.”
    â€œMaybe we were the targets,” Libby said.
    â€œNo,” Bernie said. “I think Field was.”
    â€œAre you sure?”
    â€œOf course I’m not sure,” Bernie said. “But first of all, I can’t think of any reason why anyone here would want to kill us, and secondly, neither one of us would have tapped that button. Think about it. It’s not something people usually do.”
    Libby made a clicking sound with her tongue. “I wonder if that’s something that Field usually did.”
    â€œYes, it was,” Bernie said, remembering a conversation she’d had with Perceval. “It was one of Monty’s foibles.”
    â€œFoibles?”
    â€œShtick.”
    Libby absentmindedly reorganized the