Killer Crab Cakes (33 page)

 

 

 

 

In large bowl combine the flour, sugar, and salt and mix well. Cut the butter up in ¼-inch pieces and scatter over the dry ingredients. Toss to mix. Using your fingers, two knives, or a pastry blender, rub or cut the butter into the flour until it is broken into small pea-size pieces. Sprinkle half of the water. Toss with a fork to dampen the mixture. Add the remaining water in two stages. Continue tossing the mixture until it seems packable. If it’s still too dry, add 1 teaspoon of cold water at a time until the dough is the desired consistency, working in the water with your fingertips. Using your hands, pack the dough into a ball. Then flatten into a disk, wrap with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes to 1 hour before rolling. Try not to handle dough too much.

¼ cup butter
2 squares (1 ounce each) unsweetened chocolate
1½ cups sugar
1 tablespoon flour
pinch of salt
½ cup milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 unbaked 9-inch butter pastry shell
1 pound washed, hulled, and halved strawberries

 

 

Melt butter with chocolate either in saucepan, or microwave in small bowl. In mixing bowl, combine chocolate and butter mixture with sugar, flour, salt, milk, eggs, and vanilla; beat with electric mixer at medium speed until well mixed. Pour filling into prepared pastry shell; bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 40 to 45 minutes, until set. Cool. Arrange halved strawberries on top of pie.

 

4 tablespoons butter
⅛ cup cocoa powder
⅓ cup sugar
1 tablespoon milk

 

In small saucepan melt butter. Add cocoa, sugar, and milk, stirring constantly. Bring to a good boil for one minute. Drizzle the warm fudge sauce over the strawberries.

 

R
ockport and Fulton are real towns on the Texas Gulf Coast, and they’re every bit as charming, picturesque, and friendly as I’ve tried to describe them in this novel. I’ve taken a few minor liberties with the geography of the area for dramatic purposes, and none of the characters in this book are based on any real people who reside there. The SeaFair, including the Just Desserts competition, takes place at Rockport Harbor every fall, and if you ever find yourself in the area at that time of year, I highly recommend that you pay it a visit. But really, any time of year is a great time to visit these wonderful towns.

Livia J. Washburn
has been a professional writer for more than twenty years. She received the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award and the American Mystery Award for her first mystery,
Wild Night
, written under her maiden name, L. J. Washburn, and was nominated for a Spur Award by the Western Writers of America for a novel written with her husband, James Reasoner. She lives in a small town in Texas with her husband, two daughters, and two dogs. Her Web site is at
www.liviawash-burn.com
, and you can e-mail her at [email protected]

O
ne thing you never forgot about being a parent, Phyllis Newsom thought, is the feeling of helplessness that comes over you when your child is sick. Of course, Bobby was her grandson, not her son, but that didn’t matter. He felt miserable, and she had done everything she could to make him feel better, but he still sobbed in pain as she held him and carried him back and forth across the living room of her house, trying to calm him down.

“It’ll be all right, Bobby,” she told the four-year-old. “Don’t worry. Everything will be just fine. You’ll be all well soon.”

Not soon enough to suit her, though. The pediatrician had said that it might be a week or more before Bobby’s ear infection cleared up. And it would have to heal on its own, because this wasn’t like the old days when doctors prescribed antibiotics for such ailments. Phyllis remembered giving her son, Mike, the wonderful pink liquid when he was little and came down with something like this. That stuff seemed to cure anything.

Now the doctors claimed that it really didn’t, and Phyllis supposed that they ought to know what they were talking about. They were doctors, after all. But she missed being able to feel like she was accomplishing something, like she was helping her child get well sooner.

Ah, well. She sighed and held Bobby closer, letting him rest his head on her shoulder. She was wearing a nice thick robe over her pajamas, so she supposed it almost felt like a pillow to him.

The sound of footsteps made her glance toward the stairs. Sam Fletcher’s long legs came into view, followed by the rest of his lanky form. He was dressed in pajamas, robe, and slippers, too, although his were a nice manly brown rather than the purple of Phyllis’s nightclothes.

“Thought I heard the little one carryin’ on,” Sam said as he came from the foyer into the living room.

“I’m sorry, Sam. He just can’t rest comfortably with his ear hurting that way. I gave him some pain reliever like the doctor said, but . . .”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I reckon it must hurt, all right.” He held out his arms. “Here, let me hold him for a while.”

Phyllis hesitated. Not because she didn’t trust Sam, of course. In the nearly two and a half years that he had rented a room in her house here in Weatherford, Texas, she had grown to know him very well. He was both strong and gentle—just the sort of man who wouldn’t think twice about offering to comfort a sick child. But Bobby was her responsibility, not his.

“It’s the middle of the night,” she told Sam. “You should be sleeping. I’ll be all right.”

A smile spread across Sam’s rugged face. “Shoot, I wasn’t asleep anyway. Seems like the older I get, the less easy it is for me to sleep. I was on the computer lookin’ at YouTube. You know they got clips on there from all the TV shows I used to watch back in the fifties? I haven’t seen George Burns and Gracie Allen in a long time.”

Phyllis couldn’t help but smile back at him. They were roughly the same age, in their late sixties, and it wasn’t unusual for either of them to discover something new and wonderful on the Internet that most younger people had probably known about for years.

“I’ll have to check that out,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t mind . . . ?”

Sam motioned with his fingers to indicate that she should give Bobby to him.

“Well, all right.” She handed the whimpering youngster over.

Bobby immediately threw his arms around Sam’s neck and buried his face against the man’s shoulder. His sobs began to subside.

“I think I’m jealous,” Phyllis said with a laugh. “He appears to like you more than he does me.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. He just senses that we’re kindred spirits.”

Phyllis raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Normally, I sleep like a baby, too. I kick and fret all night.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Phyllis said as she arched an eyebrow.

Sam chuckled as he started walking slowly back and forth across the living room. Bobby quieted even more. Within a few minutes, he appeared to be sound asleep.

Sam looked at the boy, then grinned at Phyllis. “Say good night, Gracie,” he whispered.

“Good night, Gracie,” she responded. She held her arms out. “I’ll put him in bed.”

“No, I got him. We start passin’ him around like a football, he’s liable to wake up again.”

Sam left the living room and started carefully up the stairs. A couple of days earlier, when Bobby had come to stay with Phyllis, Sam and Mike had climbed up in the attic of the old house and brought down the crib Mike had slept in twenty-odd years earlier. Bobby had complained that he wasn’t a baby and shouldn’t have to sleep in a crib, but that was really the only place Phyllis had for him to sleep. They had compromised by leaving the sides down when they put the crib in Phyllis’s bedroom.

She was in the kitchen brewing some herbal tea when Sam came back downstairs. “Figured I’d find you in here,” he said.

“Did he keep on sleeping?”

“Like a rock. I reckon that medicine finally caught up with him and made him conk out.”

“You want some tea?”

“Is it made from flowers and stuff?”

“Well, I’m not going to drink regular tea at this time of night. I never would get to sleep.”

“All right, sure. I guess I don’t need anything else keepin’ me awake, either.”

Phyllis poured the tea when it was ready, and they sat down on opposite sides of the kitchen table. She sipped from her cup, then said, “I wish Bobby had been able to go to California with Mike and Sarah. This may well be Bud’s last Thanksgiving.”

“That’s Sarah’s dad?”

“Yes.”

“At least she’s gettin’ to spend this time with him.”

“Yes, and that’s a blessing.”

Phyllis thought about her daughter-in-law. She knew from experience how terrible it was to have to face the impending end of a loved one’s life. She had lost her husband, Kenny, a number of years earlier. And Sam had gone through the same thing when cancer claimed his wife. But Phyllis also knew that the last days spent together could be some of the most precious of all, easing the passing of the one who had to leave and creating memories that those left behind would carry with them for the rest of
their
days.

So when Bobby had come down with the ear infection the day before Mike and Sarah were supposed to leave to spend a week in California with Sarah’s parents and the doctor told them they couldn’t take him on the airplane, Phyllis hadn’t hesitated. She had urged them to make the trip and leave Bobby with her. “I’d love the chance to spend that much time with him,” she had told her son and daughter-in-law. “That way you can make your trip without having to worry about him.”

“Oh, I’ll worry about him,” Sarah had said, and Phyllis knew exactly what she meant. Worrying was a parent’s permanent job. Mike was a grown man, and not a day went by that Phyllis didn’t spend some of the time wondering where he was and what he was doing and worrying about whether he was all right.

The fact that Mike was a deputy in the Parker County Sheriff’s Department didn’t make things any easier. But Phyllis knew she would have worried about him no matter what he did for a living.

Phyllis realized that she’d been sitting there quietly, musing over the events of the past few days, without saying a word. Sam had been silent, too. Yet she didn’t feel the least bit awkward or uncomfortable because of the silence, and from the looks of him, neither did Sam. It had been a good thing when she’d had a vacancy open up in the house a couple of years earlier, she thought. Her old superintendent, Dolly Williamson, had suggested that she rent the room to Sam, and even though there had been some rough patches at first, caused by having a man in a house full of retired female teachers, it hadn’t taken long for Sam to become a member of the family.

And that was the way she thought of him and Carolyn Wilbarger and Eve Turner, the other retired teachers who lived here with her. They were all family now.

“This tea’s not bad,” Sam said. “Bein’ a good Texan, though, I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to drinkin’ any kind of tea without a bunch of ice cubes in it.”

Before Phyllis could say anything to that, a key rattled in the lock of the back door.

She and Sam looked at each other in puzzlement. Who in the world could be coming in at this hour? It was after midnight, and anyway, no one had a key to her house except the people who lived here and Mike. Carolyn and Eve were upstairs asleep, and Mike was in California. . . .

Phyllis felt a little twinge of apprehension. Maybe someone was actually trying to break in. They could be attempting to pick the lock. But would a burglar do that when the lights in the kitchen were on and someone was obviously in here?

Sam was on his feet, facing the door. He had braved danger to protect Phyllis in the past, and she wasn’t surprised that he would do it again. She wouldn’t let him do that alone, though. She stood up as well and started looking around for some sort of weapon.

The door swung open, and Carolyn said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb anybody.”

Sam, bless his heart, didn’t miss a beat. He crossed his arms, frowned at Carolyn, and said, “Young lady, do you have any idea what time it is?”

Carolyn looked flabbergasted for a second, but then she glared as she closed the door and said, “I don’t need any sass from you, Sam Fletcher. I’m tired.”