Free Death of a Christmas Caterer by Lee Hollis Page B

phone.
    â€œBuilding’s okay—just some burning food in the oven. Fire’s already out. But you better get down here, Chief, because we found a body.”
    Hayley’s heart skipped a beat.
    â€œThere wasn’t enough smoke for him to die of inhalation. I’m guessing he was dead before the food started burning. Heart attack, maybe? Who knows? I’ll let you do your job and decide what happened to him.”
    Hayley knew the answer, but she had to ask anyway. “Is it Garth Rawlings?”
    â€œHe was facedown when we found him, so I can’t be sure,” Captain Kendrick said. “All I can tell you is he was wearing a white apron and a chef’s hat.”

    Island Food & Spirits by Hayley Powell
    Every year around the holidays I always wax nostalgic and recall memories of Christmas past. That was certainly the case the other night when I was turning off the lights on the Christmas tree. I thought about an incident that happened years ago when I was still married and my kids were very small. It was early December and my then-husband, Danny, announced that the family was going to drive to Gilley’s Christmas Tree Farm, outside of town, to pick out our Christmas tree. The kids screamed with delight. I could only manage a low groan. It’s not that I didn’t want a tree. It was the agony of us having to choose one. Or should I say, Danny choosing one. He always insisted on having the perfect tree to show off to the neighbors, and every year it had to be bigger and better than the previous tree.
    The prior year he had picked a tree that he swore would fit in our living room. However, after three tries of trying to shove it through the door, he was forced to trim half its branches and saw off the bottom four times in order to get it to fit into the tree stand and not hit the ceiling.
    There was no getting out of Danny’s tree trip. So the next morning, after filling my Crock-Pot with one of our favorite Christmas stews for our supper that night, we bundled up the excited kids and packed them into the car and embarked on the hour ride to Gilley’s while singing Christmas carols at the top of our lungs.
    Sounds like the idyllic beginning of a fun family road trip holiday adventure? Well, it was—for about the first five minutes. That’s roughly the attention span my kids have singing Christmas carols. Especially since they didn’t really know the words to any yet. The singing in the backseat quickly devolved into whining: “Are we there yet?” “I’m hungry!” Plus the perennial favorite, “I’ve got to pee!”
    Danny started grumbling from the driver’s seat that he had asked everyone to use the bathroom before leaving the house so he wouldn’t have to stop until we arrived at our destination. The angry sound of their father’s voice immediately caused the kids to cry, which just got Danny even more frustrated. He pulled into the Hulls Cove General Store and huffily unloaded the kids from the car so they could use the restroom and grab a snack. It’s normal to make pit stops on any road trip, but the Hulls Cove General Store is only ten minutes from our house!
    Finally, after returning the chocolate reindeer, which Dustin didn’t seem to think he had to pay for, we were back on the road. Danny said if he heard any more complaining, he would turn the car around and we would go straight home with no Christmas tree.
    Of course this was met with more tears and crying. I was silently praying he would make good on his threat so we could skip this grueling tradition of searching for the perfect tree in the woods on a farm in the bitter cold with whiny children. I yearned for the day when Danny would be too tired and we could just drive over to the True Value hardware store and purchase a tree right from the lot next door, run by the local Boy Scout troop. But as we crossed the Trenton Bridge, I knew that was just a