Murder on Parade Read Online Free Page B

variation.

    Alex and I split the dough into two bowls and did one with chocolate for him and one with lemon for me and Blue (dogs shouldn’t have chocolate. The cats don’t care either way because they can’t taste sweet and ignore dessert, but Blue likes her cookies).
    By this time, Alex was kind of a mess and I think regretting his refusal to wear one of grandma’s embroidered aprons. Since the cookies would be a while resting in the fridge, I decided he needed some immediate chocolate dessert to keep his energy and spirits high, so I got out one of my favorite chocolate cheat recipes.

    Chocolate Faux Bundt Cupcakes:
     
    1 box chocolate cake mix (if you feel ambitious, use your favorite chocolate cake recipe)
    1/3 C sugar
    1 egg
    1 tsp salt
    8 oz cream cheese (not ‘lite’)
    1 six oz. package chocolate chips (get good ones that aren’t all wax)
     
    Preheat oven to 350*. Cream the cream cheese, sugar, egg and salt. Add chocolate chips. Mix cake mix as instructed. Fill cupcake tins 2/3 full and add a tablespoon of cream cheese mixture to each cupcake. Bake at 350* for 20 to 25 minutes. Makes approximately 40 .

    The morning had crept toward noon and the air was rich with the smells of baking, which leaked into the yard when I took Blue out to answer nature’s call. Blue is fastidious and it took her a moment to find a private spot behind the privet hedge. So I wasn’t surprised when we heard a knock on the door a short time later and I found my dad on the porch, taking off his cross-country skis. Dad has a kind of sixth sense about when I am baking especially with chocolate.
    “I was just checking on the animals at the fairgrounds and had to leave the van downtown. Everyone is just fine— even the chickens,” Dad said with satisfaction. I would have known his location from the wisps of straw in his hair and that all was well because he wasn’t still at the stables holding some ailing animal’s hoof or paw. And speaking of ailing hoofs, I was glad he had come on skis and not Old Luke. On his last visit, Luke had been insulted at my suggestion he wait outside while Dad and I had dinner and had chewed the top rail of my fence. “I smelled something heavenly as I turned onto your street. You’ve been making almond crescents, haven’t you? Is it too much to hope that you have some coffee and almond cookies for your father?”
    “Of course not,” I said, taking his coat and hanging it on the wrought iron hooks by the door where it could drip onto a festive rubber-backed rug. “We just won’t mention it to Mom.”
    “I certainly won’t,” Dad agreed and we shared a smile. He gave me a quick hug and then went to build a fire. Alex and I hadn’t needed one, being near the stove, but I didn’t mind having one. A fire is always cheerful on a cold day.
    “The house looks lovely,” Dad added, giving Blue a pat and then waving at Alex who was mixing up icing with muscular zeal.
    “Thanks. The cats had fun helping with the decorations. They especially love the lights.” They love anything that resembles string and drags across the floor.
    Dad was right about the house. My taste does not run to plastic reindeer on the roof. Or anything on the roof since I get dizzy when I am up a ladder and don’t have a death wish. But I do like to decorate in more restrained ways. Exterior displays are a gift we give our neighbors, so I had hung a giant wreath on the door— made from greens I had collected and I still had the sap stains and holly wounds on my hands to prove it. There were flameless candles in the living room window that worked on a timer so I didn’t need to worry about them. I loved coming home just after dusk and finding them guttering on the sill. Dad had contributed some suet and seed balls hung with red bows to the bare apricot tree in the south corner which the birds were enjoying.
    Inside I have a Christmas tree—a small one with plastic ornaments on the bottom and glass on the top. Really, you