Hushed Up--Myrtle Clover Mystery #15

Chapter Six

The next morning, Myrtle rose rather late—past four o'clock. She hurried to the window to see if the newspaper was there. Spotting it, she rushed outside to make sure her story was on the front page. It was. Sloan had even found a photo in his archives of Lillian's flower shop to accompany it. And Wanda's horoscopes made it in too, of course. In Sloan's eyes, that was possibly the more important piece to include.

Myrtle carefully set the paper on the kitchen table, where her story could be easily seen. Then she pulled out one of her old cookbooks and searched for soufflés in the index.

"Miles was wrong," she muttered to herself. "Just basic stuff in these things. Butter, eggs, flour, milk, salt, nutmeg." She paused. There were quite a lot of eggs in this particular recipe. She checked her fridge. She'd simply have to be a couple of eggs short.

Myrtle glanced at the recipe again. What on earth was comtè cheese? "This recipe is no good," she murmured. She walked into the living room to pull up another recipe off the internet. But she found the internet was surprisingly unobliging. It prompted her to use gruyère cheese or grated parmesan. She was pretty sure she had emptied the can of parmesan the last time she'd had spaghetti. Myrtle strode back into the kitchen and looked in the fridge. It appeared she only had a loaf of processed cheese. Velveeta would have to do.

Fifteen minutes later, Myrtle remembered that not only was she to prepare breakfast for Lt. Perkins, she was also supposed to concoct a casserole for Lillian's son. And perhaps her daughter. The nice thing about casseroles was that you could sort of make them up as you went along.

"Let's see. A protein, a vegetable, and a carb. And cream of something soup," muttered Myrtle. The only problem was the only protein she had was solid as a rock in her freezer. Red and she had just gone to the store, but apparently they'd picked up all the wrong things. She snapped her fingers. She had all those cans of tuna in the pantry. She pulled out a few of them and then considered the vegetable. The frozen chopped spinach packets in the freezer would be messy and maybe watery once they defrosted. But if she put extra carbs in the casserole, it should absorb the excess liquid.

Her mind made up, Myrtle pulled the spinach out of the freezer. There was really nothing to cooking. She didn't understand why people struggled so much with it. When it came to the carb for the casserole, however, she discovered she had only a few uncooked spaghetti noodles and about a quarter cup of rice. The store wasn't close to being open yet, and Miles would likely fuss if she called him this early to borrow something. Myrtle frowned and then opened her freezer. There she found a bag of French fries, the really skinny kind. Figuring a carb was a carb, she heated up the oven to cook them. They could line the bottom of the dish.

The only problem, Myrtle decided later, was that she had too many things cooking at once. The milk for the soufflé, which was supposed to be steaming, was boiling instead. The French fries had gotten quite crisp while Myrtle had been attending to whisking flour into the over-hot milk. She realized in the middle of the whisking process that she'd been intended to whisk the flour into some melted butter and the milk was supposed to stay separate until later. The frozen spinach appeared to want to stay frozen at all costs and was not cooperating whatsoever in the melting process in the microwave.

She must have lost track of time because she was surprised when there was a knock at the door. She hurried over and let Miles in.

"You're a little early, aren't you?" she asked as she hurried back to the kitchen.

"Only by twenty minutes. You wanted me to be unobtrusive with my donation for the breakfast, remember?" He lay a bag down on the kitchen table that appeared to be overflowing with bread.

"That's quite a lot of bread," said Myrtle. "There are only three of us, remember?"

Miles said, "I figured too much was better than not having enough." He took a seat at the kitchen table and then looked over at the stove with trepidation. "What's going on over there?"