Free A Crossword to Die For by Nero Blanc Page B

Rosco descended the stairs gathering spilled paperwork. For good measure, the puppy began to munch a particularly chewy morsel lined with green and white and dotted with a good deal of ink. She added a teasing growl to her act.
    â€œCome on, Kit. I’ve got to get back to the office … Come on, girl … Drop it …” Rosco sighed, bent down, and coaxed the damp paper from the dog’s mouth. Then he stared at the still-legible lettering. His first instinct was to phone Belle immediately. His second thought was, No, let her enjoy her lunch in peace .
    Belle spooned up another piece of tomato aspic. Sara had been correct. It was delicious—and what’s more, it seemed the supreme “comfort food.” Tomato aspic was a dish served solely in grandmotherly houses.
    â€œThank you, Emma,” Belle said as the woman Sara referred to as her “upstairs maid—and full-time keeper of the castle” poured another glass of iced tea from a silver pitcher bespeckled with droplets of frost.
    The year, Belle decided, could have been any one prior to World War II. Not that she’d been around to witness such luxuries as formal luncheons served in stately, family dining rooms, but Sara had; and her sense of what was proper and fitting had obviously been learned at an early age. Tomato aspic served on a chilled glass plate, luncheon-sized linen napkins as opposed to the towel-sized damask ones reserved for dinner. An “upstairs maid” when, in truth, Sara’s ancestral home, White Caps, had only a single housekeeper. Belle briefly wondered how Emma put up with her mistress’s old-fashioned foibles, but then she realized how close the two women were in age. Each held the long-dead past in loving esteem.
    â€œMiss Belle.” A round porcelain serving dish specially constructed to hold deviled eggs was proffered.
    Belle beamed at Emma.
    â€œGo ahead, my dear,” said Sara. “Take as many as you wish. Take two … I jest, of course. Those were the words my paternal grandmother used to say when she passed around a box of bonbons … ‘Take as many as you wish, Sara, child. Take two.’” Sara’s intensely blue eyes grew misty with nostalgia. “Why do you suppose a lady old enough to be a great-grandmother would miss her own grandmother? It makes no sense. If she were still among the living, the woman would be at least one hundred forty …” A sound like a tiny sigh escaped Sara’s stalwart frame. “At any rate, Belle, eat your fill. Emma will be deeply discouraged if you pass up her concoction. It was she who suggested we serve your favorite comestible. Wasn’t it, Emma?”
    â€œYes, madam.”
    Good will, like an electrical current, flowed between White Caps’ two elderly denizens.
    Belle helped herself to not two or three or even four, but five deviled eggs, then proceeded to nibble her way through each delicious one.
    â€œNow, tell me again, dear, about your father’s boat, and Mr. Horace Llewellen.”
    But before Belle could commence, Sara, in typical fashion, reverted to her earlier topic. “My grandmother also used to admonish me with the adage that the greatest personal attribute was courage. Because if one did not possess courage, one could not cleave to any other emotion …” Again, she shifted tack with a wistful: “I’d like to meet this Woody character. He sounds quite intriguing.”
    â€œFrom the hasty retreat he beat when he learned of my father’s death, I don’t imagine that’s in the cards.”
    â€œAh, for the vagabond life! Before my brother, Hal, ran for the Senate, he ‘flirted’ with the notion of such a romantic existence. Allegedly, he was a member of the diplomatic corps at the time. That’s what he told everyone, at any rate. However, it was perfectly obvious that he had connections to the Central Intelligence Agency, or the OSS, as