Cream Puff Murder (Hannah Swensen, #11)(56)

The broccoli was good. It would have been even better with cheese sauce, but dieters couldn’t be choosers. Kathy Purvis, a member of Ronni’s Slim and Trim class, had told Hannah that if she shut her eyes and used her imagination, she could make plain baked chicken taste like filet mignon with burgundy mushroom sauce.

Hannah shut her eyes and tried it. She thought of a succulent filet, so tender she could cut it with a butter knife, so perfectly grilled that the center was still the deep, dark red that she loved. As she chewed the tender beef, the mushrooms would provide a slight resistance to the teeth, and the flavor of good wine paired with the silky, buttery richness of the sauce would form a marriage that would linger long after the morsel was gone.

It was poetic, but it didn’t work. It was still plain chicken. No amount of imagery could make it what it was not. It looked like chicken, it tasted like chicken, and it was silly to pretend that it wasn’t chicken.

“How is your chicken, dear?” Delores asked, smiling at Hannah across the table.

“It’s wonderful, Mother,” Hannah said, not untruthfully. Does a chicken by any other imagining taste the same? Of course it does! Even Shakespeare knew that. But a person can take only so much chicken, and Hannah figured that she was chickened out.

It seemed to take forever before the plates were removed and the bread basket, an item she’d been ignoring for close to an hour, had gone off on the busboy’s tray. Even the plate of butter had disappeared, and it wasn’t a moment too soon. Hannah had spent the past thirty minutes squelching the urge to stab one of the perfectly square pieces of butter and pop it into her mouth.

“Coffee all around?” Delores asked, and everyone nodded. It was a silly question to ask a bunch of Minnesotans who couldn’t remember ending a meal with any other beverage.

When everyone had been served coffee, Delores called for the dessert cart, and Hannah noticed that Norman had a word with their waitress. She was almost certain that meant her special dessert was about to arrive. Of course she’d enjoy it. She’d have to be dead not to enjoy dessert. But enjoyment came at a price, and Hannah knew that guilt and regret would set in immediately after she swallowed the last bite.

The dessert cart arrived with little fanfare. It didn’t need any bells and whistles. The desserts spoke for themselves on their glass plates and attractive bowls. Three different flavors of crème br?lée, four multilayered cakes, several pies, two choices of puddings, an array of pastries, and various flavors of sorbets and ice creams.

Hannah waited until her mother, her sisters, and Carrie had made their choices. Then Norman nodded at their waitress, and she lifted the cover on six lovely parfait glasses filled with layers of colors that shimmered and caught the light from the candle at the center of the table. The top of each dessert was decorated with three perfect raspberries, and Hannah wondered where Sally had found them this time of year.

“For you.” The waitress set one parfait glass in front of Hannah and another in front of Norman. “Sally hopes you’ll enjoy this special parfait. She said to tell you to please drop by the kitchen after dessert to tell her how you liked it.”

Hannah picked up her spoon to taste the concoction that Norman and Sally had wrought. But she couldn’t resist asking, “How many calories? Do you know?”

“Yes,” Norman gave her a big smile. “Twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five?!” Hannah couldn’t believe her ears. Perhaps he’d said something else and she’d heard what she wanted to hear. “Did you say twenty-five as in five less than thirty?”

“Yes. Sally calls it Guilt-Free Parfait, and it would be less without the raspberries, but she thought they were a nice touch.”

“They are a nice touch. I’m going to save them for last.”

With that said, Hannah removed the berries and stared down at the brightly colored parfait. There were three layers. The top was red, the middle was green, and the bottom was yellow. But she couldn’t think of any ingredients that would add up to only twenty-five calories. What was it? Plastic? She dipped her spoon in cautiously and raised a bite of the ruby-colored top layer to her lips.

“Raspberry,” she said, immediately recognizing the flavor of one of her favorite berries. “It’s raspberry and…something else.”

“What does the something else taste like?” Norman asked.

“I’m not sure, but it makes my tongue tingle. I like that. It’s fun. What is it?”

“Sugar-free raspberry Jell-O and soda water.”

“So that’s the fizzy part.” Hannah dug down with her spoon to taste the green second layer. “Lime?”

“Lime with Diet 7 Up. Try the third layer. That’s my favorite.”

Hannah excavated to the third layer, the sparkling yellow one. “Sugar-free lemon Jell-O,” she guessed after she’d tasted it. “But there’s something else, something tingly and zingy.”

“It’s diet ginger ale,” Norman told her. “Sally thought the ginger taste would go well with the lemon.”

“Sally’s right. It does.” Hannah spooned up another bite of her dessert. It was dessert. She felt she was ending her meal with a parfait loaded with yummy calories, but she wasn’t. “Are you sure that this is less than twenty-five calories?”

Norman nodded. “Sally and I figured it out.”