Catering sisters Bernie and Libby Simmons wade into a Celtic knot of malice and mayhem when a St. Patrick's celebration goes terribly wrong. Isis Crawford was born in Egypt to parents who were in the diplomatic corps. When she was five, her family returned to the States, where her mother opened a restaurant in Upper Westchester County and her father became a university professor. Since then Isis has combined her parents’ love of food and travel by running a catering service as well as penning numerous travel-related articles about places ranging from Omsk to Paraguay. Married, with twin boys, she presently resides in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, where she is working on the next Bernie and Libby culinary mystery. Readers can visit her website at www.isiscrawford.com. A CATERED ST. PATRICK'S DAY By ISIS CRAWFORD KENSINGTON BOOKS Copyright © 2012 Isis Crawford All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-7582-4740-7 Chapter One It was a little after nine o'clock in the morning and Bernie and Libby Simmons were rolling out pie dough in the kitchen of their shop, A Little Taste of Heaven, when the call came in. Ironically, they had just been congratulating themselves on how peaceful everything had been in the last four months. There'd been no crimes committed in Longely—at least none that they'd been called on to investigate—the shop was running smoothly, no strategic piece of equipment had broken, their staff was showing up on time and were not exhibiting the usual drama to which they were prone, and the shop's sales figures were more than respectable. In fact, it looked as if they could get a new delivery vehicle soon. "It's almost boring," Bernie had told her sister as she went over to the cooler and took another portion of dough out. Their dough had so much butter in it that it had to be refrigerated until it was ready to be rolled. Libby sprinkled a little more flour on the counter and flipped the piece of dough she was working onto its other side. "As Mom would have said, `Bite your tongue.'" Bernie rolled her eyes and brushed a speck of flour off the black silk shirt she was wearing. She made it a point of honor to cook in clothes that she would wear outside the kitchen, unlike her sister, who preferred jeans, sweats, and T-shirts. "What's wrong with saying that?" Libby demanded, noting her sister's expression. "I didn't say anything was wrong with saying that," Bernie protested with mock sincerity. "You rolled your eyes. It's the same thing." "I just think it's a silly expression. I thought so when Mom used to say it and I think so now. It's like believing that knocking on wood will bring you good luck and walking under a ladder will bring you bad luck." Libby gave the dough on the counter two more outward strokes with her rolling pin before slipping her rolling pin under the perfect circle she'd created and transferring the dough to the pie pan. She allowed herself a moment to admire her handiwork before speaking. "You mean that's not true?" she asked her sister as she crimped the pie's edges. Bernie closed the cooler door, put the dough she'd retrieved on the table, and gave it a couple of good whacks with her rolling pin to soften it up. "You're kidding, right?" "No, I'm not," Libby said even though she had been. She was in a crabby mood and got a certain amount of satisfaction out of pushing her sister's buttons. "It's a superstition." "Well, sometimes there are reasons for superstitions," Libby pointed out. "Walking under a ladder isn't the smartest thing to do—something could drop on your head. And that thing about breaking a mirror bringing seven years bad luck ..." Libby's voice trailed off. She'd lost her train of thought. Damn. She hated when that happened. Bernie peeled the wax paper off the dough. "And why is that?" "I forget," Libby confessed. Then, as she moved the salt aside to make more room on the table, she remembered. "Because mirrors used to be very expensive. Like salt." For some reason, today's shop feature, four-leaf-clover-shaped sugar cookies with green icing in honor of Saint Patrick's Day, sprang into Bernie's mind. "What about four-leaf clovers? Why are those good luck?" "Because they're rare and rare connotes valuable," Libby said. "They could just as easily be bad luck. Unusual is not necessarily good," Bernie mused. "Now if that were true," she said, thinking of all the cookies they'd baked and the cupcakes they'd decorated with four-leaf clovers, "we'd be out a fair chunk of change. No one would buy them." Libby put her rolling pin down and went to pour herself another cup of coffee. It was an organic Guatemalan light roast. When she'd told her dad that was what she was giving him this morning, he'd snorted and said, "What happened to a plain old cup of joe?" And maybe he was right. After all, Starbucks had switched to Pike Place. Maybe she and her sister should try and find a signature brand of coffee to sell in the shop.