Read Online If It Bleeds by Linda L. Richards - Free Book Online

address near Granville Island, then hung up before I could respond.
    I did a final check of my email, adjusted my schedule and headed out the door.
    Giggling Gourmet operated out of a brightly painted reclaimed brick building near the public market. I pushed the bright orange door open on a lime-green reception area with a purple ceiling. A rug in front of the empty reception desk was the color of milk chocolate. A lamp was a vibrant lilac that cast a purplish glow over the yellow walls. But not the ceiling, of course, since that was purple already.
    Industry awards were hung on the wall, so despite the goofy name, Giggling Gourmet knew what it was about. If I stood very still and listened very hard, I could hear it. Giggling. If that wasn’t enough of an invitation, the wonderful food smells were. I followed the sounds and smells to the kitchen.
    As goofy as the reception area and the name were, the kitchen was all business. Surgically clean stainless steel from bottom to top. Half a dozen young women were involved in various stages of food prep. And, of course, giggling. The giggling died when they noticed me standing there. And then: “Nicole!” It was a chorus from three of the six voices. I guess I’ll never get any closer to feeling like a pop star.
    Wiping hands on aprons, they mobbed me. And I guess in their world, I was a celebrity. I was someone who had the power to make a good business better. If only I would slide a word in here, a photo there. You couldn’t buy the kind of advertising I could dole out with a single nod. That’s a big responsibility. I don’t take it lightly.
    I saw a tall blond with long legs and a delicate pot belly under a smeared apron wipe her hands harder than the others, then extend one of them to me.
    â€œHi, Nicole,” she said, smiling. “I’m Terese. We spoke on the phone.” And then, “Back to it, ladies. The food for the Zimmerman batmitzvah isn’t going to walk there on its own.”
    At her words, the little crowd dispersed throughout the kitchen, but none of them were out of earshot. Terese led me over to the station where she’d been working. A vat of tasty-looking chicken in a cream sauce stood next to pastry casings.
    â€œI really have to finish this vol-au-vent,” she explained. “But we can talk. We talk all the time.”
    â€œWe do,” chimed in the girl working nearest us, a half dozen piercings in her left ear. “We talk nonstop!” She was chopping madly—carrots, onions, celery—and dropping bits into a huge pot while she talked.
    â€œOn the phone, you said you had questions,” Terese said, expertly stuffing the pastry shells.
    â€œI’m covering the death of Steve Marsh,” I explained. I was the gossip columnist. I understood the question in her look. I decided not to reply to it.
    â€œI spoke with someone from the paper this morning. Buzz somebody.”
    â€œBrent?” I asked. “Brent Hartigan?”
    â€œI think so,” she said. “I didn’t have much time for him. We were getting ready for a lunch thing.”
    â€œOn the phone,” I said. It wasn’t a question. She would have made time if she’d seen him. Probably wouldn’t have forgotten his name either. Brent is that hot.
    â€œRight,” she said, still stuffing. “I’m sorry, but there wasn’t anything to tell him. I was there the whole time—”
    â€œSo was I,” a voice chimed in behind me.
    â€œMe too,” said another from across the room.
    â€œâ€”but I didn’t see anything.”
    â€œWe couldn’t, could we?” said someone across the room. I looked over at a faunlike girl who didn’t look big enough to manage the Dutch oven she was moving across the room. “A lot of people. A big-deal event.”
    Terese nodded agreement. “Big, big deal. We’ve done bigger parties, of course. But they pulled all the