Behind Chocolate Bars Read Online Free Page B

outskirts, close to the highway, but still technically part of West Riverdale.
    After a fitful night of sleep, rolling over several times to grab my phone and see if anyone was sharing anything new, I’d abandoned my morning run in favor of another cup of coffee before heading into Chocolates and Chapters.
    The police were keeping a tight lid on the details, not allowing neighbors or the press anywhere close to the crime scene. I was sure that Reese Everhard, owner of the town newspaper, was gnashing her teeth about that. She’d decided long ago that lurid headlines like
Are Drones Spying on YOU?
and
Keep Your Children Safe from Predators on Halloween!
were the best way to bring readers to her newspaper website. She’d probably been pacing at the crime scene tape,badgering the young officers assigned to watchdog duty. From past experience, I knew that woman would stop at nothing to increase her viewership.
    I even stooped to reading Reese’s news blog. The headline was
Murder Streak Strikes Fear in West Riverdale
with a photo of the small crowd around the police station. Then she went for broke.
Once again, someone was viciously murdered in our sleepy little town of West Riverdale, Maryland. Just hours ago, the battered body of Faith Monette, a resident of Frederick, was found in an abandoned building in the defunct Green Meadow Estates.
    Is the killer living among us?
    Even though I knew Reese dramatized anything and everything, her words made me uneasy as I drove to the store.
    Monday was usually the best day of the week, when I put aside all of my worries and focused on the chocolate plans for the next seven days, including the new flavors I would create. I juggled making enough to meet the demands of my regular customers—like my hotel and gift basket clients, or like Tonya, who bought exactly six Green Apple Indulgences every Tuesday—with bringing back seasonal favorites—like pumpkin, which everyone fell in love with in late September and discarded like a summer romance in early December. And of course I introduced other recipes to see if I could create new favorites for my customers.
    I stood in my storeroom and inhaled the scent of my supplies, which never failed to inspire me. The mellow cocoa fragrance of Felchlin milk chocolate and the sharper bite of their dark chocolate, both from Switzerland and the base of all of my truffles. The nuts and dried fruits thatadded flavor and texture. The spices with the right amount of magic to bring them all together. I’d learned long ago that no amount of talent could make up for low-quality ingredients, and I used only the best.
    Then I realized that Dylan hadn’t arrived yet. He was never late for our early-morning sessions, which continued to surprise me. When I was that age, nothing could’ve gotten me out of bed before I absolutely had to. And he was supposed to bring pumpkin seeds to incorporate into new recipes.
    I waited a few minutes and then went into action. Dylan would just have to miss the fun.
    For some reason, I was drawn to bitter flavors today. Dark chocolate, licorice and coffee, with a little sour lemon thrown in. Not all together of course. I went into mad-scientist mode, pulling out my recipe binders and spreading out all kinds of ingredients on my counter.
    I quickly chopped up the dark chocolate tabs and added cups of them to the double boiler. I was going to push the envelope today, which meant I needed a lot of tempered chocolate to work with, because some of my experiments might not be successful. As the first batch of dark chocolate melted, I stirred, releasing the intense notes of coffee and nuts, and even a hint of citrus into the air.
    Maybe the bitter flavors meant I was feeling a little unsettled. A murder in town could do that to a person.
    It took me far too long to shut off my mind and lose myself in my ingredients. But eventually the beauty of making chocolate—the action of mixing and pouring the