Chapter 11

  I got back home before the third round was due to begin. I wonder if the bakers are going to have to actually make something themselves and not have the producers of the contest doing the bulk of the work. We’ll see. I went back to the vantage point I had for the prior round, I could see both the cast and the crew. I didn’t consider the crew as serious suspects. Possibly for the sabotage, but really killing one of the contestants is just going to either cancel the job, or cut a day off of the schedule. If they have some personal beef with Niall, why is Niall lying about it after a murder attempt.

  There is still the possibility that the retired professor took the drug himself, when he started to feel an overdose coming on, he injected himself with the epi pen to save himself. I need to find out what subject Niall taught and where.

  Amy walked up behind me as I was ruminating on this topic.

  “Hi Amy, someone is to be booted after this round? Can you tell me who it’s likely to be? Even if they are leaving the show, I’d like to interview them to see if they are saboteurs. Who is doing really well?”

  “Jovana is the lowest right now, so she is most likely to go home. But they aren’t doing the Boot Off until the start of day two round one. This whole system they have going on is so convoluted and confusing. Anyways D2R1 is when the boot off occurs, then we’ll continue with another round of baking. Supposedly the reasoning for waiting is so the judges can confer and come to a decision together, but Roberta hasn’t scheduled any time for that to happen.”

  “Who’s doing well?”

  “Grace has two tens so far and is in the lead. I think maybe the mayor has a bit of a crush on her. I can’t think of another reason because no one has had a chance to shine with these stupid challenges. Niall is in second place, he got two nines from Roberta. Again I have no idea how these judges are coming up with these scores. Maybe he is bribing Roberta?”

  “Yes Amy, that is a possibility, he might be saying that if he doesn’t continue in the contest, he will sue her production company for allowing him to be hurt. Or maybe she has a crush on him, just like the mayor. It’s also possible Grace is bribing the mayor, in order to do well in the contest. But knowing the mayor, I have to assume that he has a crush, and believes he has a real shot at a woman clearly out of his league. Who’s in third so far?”

  “Danyl, but again, I have no idea what this is based on, he had exactly the same bakes as all the others. Maybe my fellow judges just want to vary their votes. Roberta gave Danyl high scores in round one but low in round two, the mayor did the same but reversed the order.”

  Then the director called for places and Amy had to take her seat at the judges table. The mayor joined her at the opposite end of the table. Amy has to change into a new dress every day, I wonder if the mayor is planning on wearing that tuxedo every day? Roberta was back to the center stage. She was pacing then stopping, then shifting from side to side, then back to pacing again. Is she worried that she has to boot someone off of the show? Knowing her I thought she’d be looking forward to that part.

  “Now we are going to begin our third and most challenging round for week one of the Superb Lake Placid Bake Off. After this round, one of the bakers will be booted off the show. Bakers you don’t want that to be you do you?”

  She paused, waiting for their reply, but obviously no one had informed the bakers this was going to be an interactive introduction. So only a few of the bakers appeared to have mumbled, no. But instead of cutting and fixing the intro, they just plodded on. Maybe the director planned on ‘fixing it in post’, I can’t believe they will leave it that way when it streams. So Roberta just plowed on.

  “Our challenge is an American favorite and very tricky to make. For this round our bakers will be tackling the sugar cookie. Your ingredients are in front of you bakers. First you need to preheat the oven to three hundred and twenty five degrees. Then line your cookie trays with parchment paper.”

  She paused to let the bakers catch up.

  “Next in your glass bowl, add one cup of room temperature butter, next add in two thirds cup of sugar. Using your handheld electric mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until combined, that’s called creaming for our audience at home. When that is smooth add in two cups and one tablespoon of flour and blend. Finally add in one teaspoon of vanilla and blend it well.”

  Roberta paused again. I’m not a baker, but I could have done as well as any of the contestants with detailed instructions like these.

  “Then after blending the dough, pinch off a bit and press it with your fingers. It should come together very easily and be soft, buttery, and smooth. If it feels crumbly at all, keep kneading it a little.”

  Roberta waited for the bakers to catch up. This wasn’t a competition on baking, this was a third grade home economics course on how to bake sugar cookies, with the ‘teacher’ Roberta coaching each of the students on exactly what the next step is. It’s a masterclass in how the person who has the best listening skills can bake a cookie. But I see a few of the bakers are actually ahead of the narration, as they also have a fully typed out recipe. So Roberta’s narration would only be for those who can’t read and the viewers at home. Who if they are watching this must not be able to read, otherwise they would have found a good book to get lost in instead of this insipid nonsense

  “Using your cookie scoop, scoop out balls of dough, then knead and roll in the palms of your hands until they feel soft and smooth. Then roll the balls in the remaining three tablespoons of sugar until lightly coated, transfer to the baking sheets two inches apart. Employing the bottom of a measuring cup, press down on the balls to flatten. Sprinkle them with some nonpareils.”

  Again she pauses for some of the bakers to catch up, some are all done and waiting for permission to start baking, I can only assume.

  “Bake for 14-16 minutes or until just slightly golden around the edges and on the bottom. After they are done, take them out of the oven but leave them on the cookie tray for at least ten minutes before moving to a cooling rack.”

  Then Roberta went to her judge’s seat between Amy and the mayor. The cameras kept rolling as they roved from one oven to the next, giving the viewer a glance at what they looked like while baking. After about five minutes of this the director called cut, the two camera persons came back to the front of the tent. While everyone waited for the ten minutes or so needed to finish baking the cookies. The tent was beginning to smell good. This must be good for business at the bakery. The audience after standing here smelling the baked goods would be more likely to stop at the bakery on the way home. I know I was tempted to go over and get some sugar cookies of my own.

  I noticed that the crowd that we had attracted had grown from the earlier segment they had filmed. I’d need to stop by Urge to see how Phoebe and Pappy were doing. Then I remembered that Roberta had paid them a thousand dollars to deliver the champagne on Friday, so even if they didn’t make a lot of book sales they’d still go home with a thousand dollars at the end of the ten days. When the ten minutes were up the director called places and Roberta resumed her position in the center of the tent.

  “Alright Baker’s time is up, please bring your plated cookies up to the judges table to be scored.”

  The director called cut, and Roberta sat down again. The director called action and the bakers began a line. Grace was at the front of the line holding her plate of cookies. Roberta, Amy and the mayor each took a cookie and then bit down. Scrawling a number onto their score sheets. Nobody said a word. Why didn’t the director have the judges interact with the bakers? I know they will add music and maybe audio commentary before streaming, but seeing the judges' reactions to each of the bakers would have more impact.

  After the last baker had doled out his three cookies and returned to their station the director called cut. Then added that the next segment would begin at five pm. I was making my way to Jovana’s station to ask her to speak with me when she grabbed her plate of cookies and walked out to the crowd of spectators. I followed. The crew had put up a rope perimeter to hold back the audience from appearing in shots. I asked the director, why keep the crowd back. They told me it had to do with continuity. They didn’t want the TV audience to see members of the crowd disappear. If the crowd walks off that gives the viewer a cue, that they should walk off as well. Which of course means changing the channel. It made a weird sort of sense, people are sheep, they see one person doing something they want to do it too.

  Suddenly eleven and twelve year old girls are interested in a skin regime, after watching one TicToc video after another, made by other girls their age about skin care regimes. Yet another great American marketing scam. The girl making the video gets free cosmetics, then tells the world how great they are. Because if she says they are crap, that’s the end of free cosmetics. So the products are great and now I’m fulfilled, because I have these products. But only until I see the next video of the even more awesome thing that is sure to make my life complete.

  Jovana got to the rope line and kissed a woman on the other side and then handed out sugar cookies to the people standing around her. The producers were stupid to be voting this woman off, she was like marketing their show for them. I looked around, none of the other bakers were sharing with the crowd. In fact I watched as Niall dumped his batch of cookies into the trash. Had he made a mistake, were they really that bad? Jovana gave the woman another peck on the lips and turned back towards the tent, with her empty plate.

  I met up with the large woman just as she was reentering the tent.

  “Hello, Jovana, I’m Laura. I was hoping that we could have a chat. Do you think that we could do it now, before your next segment starts filming?”

  “Sure Laura, that would be fine.”

  “Would you rather sit on the dock or come inside for some tea?”

  “Honestly, I’d love to sit on your dock, it’s such a beautiful spot.”

  So we walked down to the dock, I’d left the lawn chairs set up there from my interview with Danyl. Once we were situated, Jovana staring out at Mirror lake, I turned toward the back of our house where I could watch Jovana’s reactions to my questions and her answers. She gazed out at the lake at first unfocused than sharpening. She seemed genuinely happy to be here. When I asked her my first question, her gaze drifted from the water and made eye contact with me that never wavered the whole time that we spoke.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Jovana, how long have you been baking?”

  “I started baking as a little girl, my ma left my dad and I, so he had to do everything. In order to be the perfect dad, he ordered book after book and tried to learn how to do the stuff I was interested in. He learned to draw, when he saw how much I enjoyed drawing. But he didn’t try to change or refine my drawing, he didn’t explain perspective and color theory he just let me have fun and joined in. But if I did ask how he made a horse that looked so much like a real horse in comparison to my barrel bodied horse with stick legs and feet. He’d take his time and show me step by step just what to do. But he also told me that he quite liked my horse and thought it’d be a good thing if horses had feet, especially for the sneaker manufacturers. One day we were watching TV and I think it was a commercial or maybe it was a show. There was a scene where a little girl was baking with her mother and grandmother. I must have looked wistful because dad asked if I wanted to bake some cookies? We went to the store and bought those refrigerator cookies, chocolate chips. We didn’t preheat so the first tray came out raw, so we put them back in and burnt them. But the next tray they came out perfect, or as perfect as premade dough can be anyway.”

  “How did you hear about the bake off?”

  “Defne heard about it and forced me to sign up. She wants to get me out of my shell, those were her exact words. I love my job, I travel all over for free but when I’m not working, I like to be home, preferably in the kitchen. But I don’t want to trap Def in my bubble so I gave it a shot. I’m not much of a people person.”

  “That is not true, Jovana. After the interviews in the opening segment, you were by far my favorite contestant. And just before coming out here to the dock, I watched you handing out cookies to the crowd. If I ran this contest you’d be the brand ambassador. Did you know any of the other bakers before the welcome party?”

  “No, we all met for the first time when we loaded into the limos. We could have walked in the time it took to load into the limo and then get out again."

  “I thought exactly the same thing. I think Roberta just wanted the limo for dramatic effect for the TV audience. Had you met Roberta or Bobby before the contest?”

  “No, I met them at the interview for the show and then everything has been with physical mail or email since then.”

  “On Friday night did you see any bees flying around before people were stung?”

  “No not at all, and I haven’t seen any since then either. Which is weird right?”

  “Yeah I thought the same thing. Honestly I never recall seeing any bees around here, but it’s not like I spend a lot of time out on the grounds I’m usually in the store, still I’m in and out all the time. You’d think I’d see the lone bee buzzing around sometimes. But two out at night, very weird indeed. Do you think the challenges have been fair so far?”

  This was the first time she broke eye contact and her eyes went back to the lake before saying. “I thoroughly enjoyed my time here and I’m glad that I signed up.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Her eyes snapped back, before she grimaced, “I’m sorry, I was just trying out that line, I have to try and sell it to Def. She’s going to be so disappointed that I got sent home in the first round.”

  I wondered why she thought she was going home, it’s what Amy told me confidentially but was someone else talking about like the mayor or Roberta?

  “Why do you think you are being sent home in the first round and tell me honestly what you think of the challenges, this is between you and me neither Roberta, your wife or anyone else will hear about.”

  “Niall told me, I was going home, he saw the score sheet and said I was dead last. The challenges themselves have been a little too easy. I don’t see how we can stand out from one another when you have a bread machine making the bread instead of the baker. The next one, it didn’t matter how bad you did after every part. Because they gave us a pre-made one after each round. How can you even score something like that? The last challenge was the best of the three, it was really easy but at least each of us had to do the work ourselves all the way through so it was the most fair. But it still didn’t give any baker a chance to shine.”

  “I agree, these kinds of shows should celebrate creativity, not stifle it. But I feel kind of ashamed that I didn’t think about giving away the bakes to the crowd.”

  Jovana laughed, “Don’t feel ashamed, that wasn’t what the plan was. I was just bringing it out to my wife, I wanted her to see that I had tried my best. I didn’t want her to think that I had thrown the competition just because I wanted to be at home.”

  I was starting to get mad, not at Jovana, no, at Roberta’s stupid contest. It was totally unfair. Those scores for the first two rounds should be thrown out and only the last round where people actually had to do the baking themselves and why is there so much coaching going on.

  “If you did win, did you and your wife decide what to do with the money if you had won?”

  “Yes, Def wants to have a child and if we win, I want to save the money for college if she wants to go?”

  “How do you know that you’d have a girl?”

  “We want to adopt and I’ve read it’s harder for girls who have been in the foster care system to get adopted. As someone who was abandoned I want to make a family with someone who really needs us.”

  This woman was not the attempted murderer, no one who wants to open their home to a foster child could be evil. I was going to go talk to Amy to see if there wasn’t something we could do to make Roberta and the mayor see that those first two rounds were unfair. But Roberta wouldn’t give a hoot, for fair. I need to think up a reason that will make her change her mind. As far as the mayor goes, I could remind him that his wife is in my bookclub, and she wouldn’t be happy to hear that her husband was infatuated with a very young and very pretty contestant. That’s not really a card that I want to play.

  “Jovana, thank you so much for speaking with me, I won’t take up any more of your time. But I’m really hoping that you are wrong about going home. I really am. I have to run inside and check on the store, feel free to invite your wife down to sit on the dock until your segment begins.”

  I thought that I might find Amy inside checking on her supper, I know she was making spare ribs and sauerkraut in the slow cookers. I went in through the back door as it was the shortest route from the dock, then up the back stairs. Amy was in the kitchen.

  “Hey Amy, is Jovana still going home?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so, it’s a shame too, she made one of the best cookies. I gave her an eight, it was the highest score I handed out in the game.”

  “I think Roberta is making a mistake sending her home, do you think if I could convince Roberta to change her vote on one of the rounds that would be enough?”

  “No, I don’t think it would, sorry , Laura.”

  “Who would go home if only the last round where the contestants actually assembled, mixed and baked the sugar cookies was the basis for week one?”

  “Surprisingly, it would be Nora Fischer. The five time blue ribbon winning pie maker. But shouldn’t you be downstairs helping out in the store? It was packed with customers when I came up here to check on dinner.”

  “Thanks Amy, I better get downstairs.” I hustled down the front stairs into the store and Amy wasn’t kidding, all three of my staff were behind the counter each waiting their turn to use the single register. We had never been this busy before. I grabbed a pair of romances and a credit card from a customer and got in line to check out. This wasn’t going to work, too many people in line for just one register

  So after I waited on my first customer, I went analog. I ran in the stock room and got an old cash box. Then when Lucy opened the register to make change I took a variety of bills and coins and put them in the cash box. I then went to the other end of the counter and told Lis to come help me after she was done with her customer. Then yelled out to the crowd, I could help the next cash only customer. When Lis came over I had her write down the books we were selling so they could come off inventory later. While I took the customers' money and made change. It’s just like riding a bicycle, making change in your head then counting back the change to a customer. I hadn’t done it this way in years and years, but I still got it baby!

  I only hope that Phoebe and Pappy are doing this well. I couldn’t believe that reality TV fans actually read fiction. I’d have to do something nice for the girls after this bake off is over. It took about thirty minutes but the four of us finally waited on the last customer waiting to pay. There were still plenty of customers browsing the shelves but for now the three young women could handle it on their own.

  “Lucy, if it gets busy like that again, just call me on my cell and I’ll come right back in. Don’t hesitate, I don’t want you girls killing yourselves.”

  “Laura, it was only the past hour where it got really busy, the rest of the day, just the two of us back here were plenty. They must have all come in when the production took a break.”

  “Yeah, they did, about an hour and a half ago. Well, call me if you need me and put that cash box in my bedroom until you cash out, okay?”

  “Yep, we got this, Laura. You might want to check on Phoebe and Pappy.”

  The bus was packed with customers, but more than that, Urge was packed with fans. I kept seeing flashes going off in the bus as customers took pictures of the artwork that adorned the bus's ceiling. I had to cut the line to get onto the bus, explaining to the irritated customer that I was an employee and just checking on the staff. We had stuffed the open top shelf with any food or entertainment related books and I could definitely see large holes in the inventory.

  “Pappy, is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Not me, you can check with Phoebe but this is fun. If you talk to Willow, tell her to check out the hashtag Willowsdad.”