A Box of Texas Chocolates

Enjoy this Anthology excerpt from one of the stories—“A Recipe to Die For” by Sally Love:
Gretchen Schultz inhaled the glorious aroma of her chocolate cakes. She slipped her hands into padded red-and-white gingham mitts and lifted a pan from the oversized oven. Every year just as she geared up for the Thanksgiving and Christmas season, the seige by the town’s women began. While she spent long hours baking Gretchen’s Chocolate Fantasy Cakes, and filling order after order from the most exclusive gourmet outlets in Texas, her so-called friends mounted an assault to steal her recipe.
Only a few positions of honor existed in the Texas Hill Country town of New Pilsen—Mayor, Sheriff, Banker, Lawyer, Preacher, Chocolate Queen. Gretchen had owned the Chocolate Queen title for decades. She began selling the cakes forty-seven years earlier, after her husband of four years died—crushed between two rail cars. The Chocolate Fantasy Cakes supplemented her meager widow’s pension.
She stored her prized ingredients in the pantry, in alphabetical order. Well, most of them. The ultra-secret one she hid in a Quaker Oats box.
The baker had turned off her telephone a week earlier to avoid call after predictable call. “I’ll scoot over and help you, Gretchen,” they’d say, the sing-song voices barely masking their true mission. Gretchen knew they would pry, wander through her small house chasing every clue for the secret to the moist, melt-in-your-mouth, orgasmic chocolate confections.
She updated the standing orders in the computer database—password protected—with the help of her constant companion purring in her lap.
Gretchen always had more orders than she could fill—even baking through the nights. She could pick and choose at whim who received her exclusive cakes. The small town snoops would have to buy theirs like the rest.
“Wake up, Flour. We’re in serious baking mode.”
Flour answered with her customary “ee-ee-ee.” Even as a kitten, Flour had never meowed like other cats. The vocalization could mean, “Hello,” “The mail is here,” “I’m hungry,” “I’m bored” or “Please scratch my chin.”
Gretchen nudged the cat out of her lap and hurried to the kitchen, brushing off pale hairs. She heard a knock at the back. The baker had ignored an earlier front doorbell. The women of her own generation had given up, but their spoiled daughters, the thirty-somethings, were rabid. “You need to leave a legacy,” they’d say. “With no children, publishing your recipe will make you immortal in the baking world.”
She had huffed at the clumsy ruses designed to filch her recipe, jerked her hands to generous hips and looked down her nose. “My cakes have already elevated me to that status.”
Gretchen pulled back the eyelet curtain with a finger, then let it fall. Opening the door a crack, she frowned at Josie—one of the irritating second generations, complete with fake smile.
“I’m driving to the grocery, may I pick up anything for you?”
“Don’t need a thing.” She pushed the door closed, nearly nipping Josie’s nose. How could she meet shipping deadlines with the constant interruptions? Did the woman really think she’d rattle off an ingredient list?
After supper and an hour of watching Criminal Minds, Gretchen glanced at the clock. As her customer list had grown, she switched to wholesale bulk ingredient suppliers. She ordered online and received shipments via UPS. But many of the town snoops assumed she bought everything at the local grocery. Only a few of her extra touches—flavorings such as the tablespoon of buttermilk she had added through the years— were ordinary grocery purchases. She delayed shopping at New Pilsen’s HEB until she knew most of the second-generation busybodies were home serving supper. Even then, she had to be careful.
List safely secured in her purse, the baker cased the HEB entrance for her two tormenters. All clear. Gretchen aimed for aisle nine—Baking Needs. She selected Baker’s semi-sweet chocolate squares, and the eight-ounce box of Carnation powdered milk, then hurried to the back corner of the store.
“May I help you?” Marian interrupted the restocking of house-brand yogurt cups to corner the baker at the refrigerated milk section. She homed in on Gretchen’s half-filled mini-basket like a human Geiger counter.
Gretchen sensed the stocker logging each item in memory. “No, thanks.” She forced a half-smile, then reached inside the refrigerator section for a pint of whipping cream and the half-gallon of buttermilk. All except the buttermilk were diversionary purchases she would donate to New Pilsen’s food pantry.
At checkout, even though Gretchen chose the staffed express register, Rose, tormenter number two, pushed the teenaged employee away, logged in her store password and swept each item over the scanner. Marian and Rose would compare notes later, each consumed with divining her recipe by compiling lists of possible ingredients.
For years her garden club had coaxed, “Everyone is participating in the bake sale and recipe swap.” Shamed, “It’s for the church cookbook.” Even threatened, “The garden club can rescind your membership.” She responded by resigning from the garden club and donating her cakes to select fundraisers. Who needed faux friends?
Each year the pressure intensified. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? How could she halt the incessant hounding?
* * * *
The next morning, Gretchen fed Flour her favorite breakfast—two tablespoons of Kozy Kitten, tuna flavored. After a final lick of the lips, the cat settled on a sunny windowsill. The baker slid another batch in the oven. She would have just enough time for the daily constitutional her internist prescribed. She slipped on walking shoes, then dropped the house keys into a pocket.
Two houses south, a neighbor stopped her. “Did you hear?” Mrs. Svboda said. “The most horrible accident! We activated the phone tree. I just left you a message.”
Gretchen gave her a questioning look. “What happened?”
“Marian! Marian fell!”
The baker grabbed Mrs. Svboda’s hand. “Is she in the hospital?”
“No,” the neighbor fished a tissue from the front of her blouse. “She…she’s dead.”
Gretchen gasped, hand to mouth. “Oh my stars! How?”
Mrs. Svboda blew her nose, stuffed the tissue in her overflowing cleavage. “She fell off a ladder in the HEB.”
Gretchen frowned. “The shelves aren’t that high.”
The neighbor shook her head. “Marian was building the Thanksgiving display, stacking twelve-packs of Coke. She leaned out too far and lost her balance. A twelve-pack landed on her head.”
The baker personally delivered one of her Chocolate Fantasy Cakes to the grieving family. She hoped she appeared appropriately bereaved for the persecutor who had, with her meddlesome partner, contaminated the last decade in New Pilsen. Gretchen wished she could’ve figured out a way to permanently deter Rose as well on her endless recipe quest.