Read Online The Proof is in the Pudding by Melinda Wells - Free Book Online Page B

slender, their fingers bright with pink nail polish onto which pink glitter had been sprinkled.
    Long enthusiastically led the applause for Tina as she took a bow.
    When the clapping died down, Long said, “As you can see, the check has been partly made out. There’s the bank, the date, and the amount: one hundred thousand dollars. All that has to be filled in is the name of the charity selected by the winning celebrity, and my signature. Then, thanks to one of the stars here, some good cause is going to get a fabulous surprise tonight.”
    Keith Ingram had moved next to me. “And what do we judges get? Nothing but indigestion from a bellyful of amateur cooking.”
    Turning away because I couldn’t stand to look at him, I glanced across the ballroom to where Eileen was standing with her mother.
    She was staring at Keith Ingram with a degree of hatred that I wouldn’t have thought possible in this gentle girl who had lived with me for most of her life.

9

    We were one hour into the ninety-minute cooking competition. Up to this point, according to the instructions we’d received in the hotel manager’s office, we three judges had been free to move about as we liked, watching the progress being made at the twenty separate stoves in whatever order we wished.
    The ballroom had been divided into five sections, with the stoves placed in groupings of four per sector, with the sectors numbered one through five. Paths six feet wide, marked by velvet ropes attached to brass stands, outlined the walkways through which the judges and members of the audience could stroll. The sectors were numbered to make it easier for the people attending to find their favorite celebrities. A program sheet with the locations diagrammed had been handed to each patron who entered the ballroom.
    During the last half hour before time would be called and the celebrities—finished or not—had to present their dishes, all three judges were supposed to move along the quadrants of stoves together, carefully examining the dishes that were being prepared.
    Sector One was at the end of the ballroom closest to the shallow stage. Sectors Two and Three formed the row on the west side of the room, with Sectors Four and Five comprising the row on the east side. If I described the layout to Nicholas on the phone later, I’d tell him to picture a torso with a head and two outstretched arms. Sector One would be the torso’s head—just below the stage—with Two and Three being the extended right arm and Four and Five being the left extended arm. Those reaching arms pointed toward the wide, double-door entrance to the ballroom. A uniformed security guard—not one of the two who had come charging in to confront John—had been posted there to make sure that anyone who tried to enter the event had a ticket to it.
    Ingram, Yvette, and I had worked our way through the crowd to stand beside Sector Four, on the left side of the ballroom, halfway between the stage at one end and Sector Five. Dozens of people swarmed about, which sometimes made it difficult for us judges to keep moving. I didn’t mind, because having a lot of people around made it easier for me to avoid looking at Keith Ingram.
    Wolf Wheeler, a comic movie actor in Sector One, was attracting attention to his workstation by tossing several eggs higher and higher and catching them to keep the airborne rotation going. At first his antics irritated me because I was sure he was going to drop the eggs and I hate to see food wasted, but then I realized he was a really skilled juggler performing an amazing routine. I watched him for a minute, and wished it could have been longer, but I was supposed to be concentrating on what the stars in Sector Four were creating. I pulled my attention away from him and went back to acting like a judge.
    The celebrities in this quartet of stoves were three actors and an author. Francine Ames, whose dark-haired beauty had been compared to young Elizabeth Taylor’s, had starred