TURKEY TROT TROUBLE (PAPERBACK)

Beep, beep, beep!

Angela Atkinson cringed as she made a mad dash from her office into the kitchen. Her eyes grew wide as she caught sight of the swirl of smoke billowing from the oven.

Oh crap, not again!

Ruff McPaw, her best friend and dog-in-crime, barked and growled at the oven, but she gently shooed him away as she made a grab for the oven mitts.

“Careful, boy. I don’t want you to get burned!”

What are you making in there, anyway?

Ruff tilted his head to the side and gave her a long look. She made sure he was at the other side of the kitchen before opening the oven. Almost immediately, a dark, dense smoke cloud blanketed the kitchen. Angela coughed and sputtered as it snaked its way into her throat, her eyes burning as her vision swam.

“No. No, no, no!” She waved away as much smoke as she could. Thankfully, the windows were already open from her last two failed attempts. Now three. Wasn’t the third time supposed to be the charm? She suppressed a groan as enough of the air cleared for her to assess the damage, only to see the entire top of the pie had been burnt to a crisp.

Not again.

She set it on the counter and threw the pads down. Her mother was the baker of the family, but she wanted to at least get a simple pumpkin pie right. Just then, Angela heard the front door open and her boyfriend, David Pemberley, made his way in. “Angie? Is everything Oka-Oh!” He had made a beeline for the kitchen as soon as he saw the wispy smoke tendrils wafting in. His gaze dropped to the now charcoal-colored pie, and he offered her a sympathetic smile.

“Maybe we can just scrape off the top?”

Angela mustered a chuckle and gave him a half-hearted, closed-lipped grin. “Yeah, right.”

David came over and dug out a knife, slicing longways into the edge of the pie. He scraped away the blackened pieces to reveal the middle which, surprisingly, was still a pleasant hue of fall orange and didn’t smell entirely inedible. David winked, took a fork out from the silverware drawer, and dipped it in for a quick taste.

Angela watched with bated breath as he chewed and swallowed, then suppressed a laugh when he licked his lips and pinched his thumb and forefinger together in an OK sign.

“See? Delicious. Here, try some.” He dipped the fork into the filling and offered it to her. She reluctantly let him slide it into her mouth and was pleasantly surprised when it did, in fact, still taste like pumpkin.

“Huh.”

David grinned. “See? Perfectly fine to bring over to your parents for dinner.”

Angela laughed as she glanced down at the pastry again, which now had a sizable crater in the middle as though it were a deflated soufflé.

“Yeah, well, only if they don’t mind half-eaten pie.” She nudged David’s shoulder playfully as she once again carried the pie to the trash. Angela’s heart buoyed slightly when Ruff trotted over and peered over the top of the counter, eying the ruined pastry like it was a tasty treat. She laughed and pushed it away from him.

“Trust me, Ruff,” she said ruefully, “you don’t want this.”

I beg to differ.

His gaze followed it as she slid it into the trashcan, and he whimpered softly when she closed the lid.

“Three pies down. A million more to go.”

Groaning, she rested her chin on her hand when she made her way back to the counter, and David wrapped his arms around her waist, gently kissing her cheek. “You still have three weeks before Thanksgiving. I know you can get it in time.”

Angela let out a long sigh as she pushed her hair out of her face. “I hope so. That was supposed to be a dry run.” Every year, the Atkinson clan took turns bringing dessert, and Angela was determined to knock their socks off, especially since her mother’s recent diagnosis of early onset dementia. She wanted to make sure this was a holiday none of them would ever forget.

“Look on the bright side,” David said. “At least it’s only one dessert, and not an entire meal.” He gestured to the TV which was blaring from the living room, showcasing another commercial for Griffith’s Great Gobbler Cook-Off.

“And don’t miss tonight’s special episode, broadcasting live from Griffith’s hometown of Hummings Hollow. We’ll be meeting all the contestants and talking about Griffith’s legacy for the past ten years.”

“That’s true.” She shook her head. Angela didn’t care how much prize money was on the line. Nothing would get her to compete with that many chefs in front of that many people on live television.

“I still can’t believe that the mayor was able to convince him to shoot here,” David mused as the commercial flipped over to another advertisement for the latest upcoming Black Friday sale.

Angela nodded. “I know, but apparently Griffith and the mayor are old friends.” Angela was never one to care too much for cooking shows, not until she started learning how to bake from her best friend Michelle Blackfoot, who ran the local Hummings Hollow Gazette. “From what Michelle told me, they are going to broadcast the interviews live, but the rest of the episodes would be filmed starting on the following Sunday. Five courses and five rounds of the competition, with one contestant eliminated each time. Each round would be edited down into forty-five-minute segments, and they would all be aired in succession for an epic season over the week of Thanksgiving.”

Ruff barked, drawing her attention back to the trashcan, which was now teaming with under-baked, over-baked, and burnt pies. “Besides, even if I wanted to take part in the competition, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t make it past the qualifying rounds.”

David suppressed a chuckle and headed to the pantry to grab a new trash bag.

“Don’t worry about it. You still have plenty of time.” He opened the lid, tied the bag into a knot and held it out of the border collie’s reach. “I’m just gonna throw this out and then we can go to the store before we head to your parents. Maybe if we’re lucky, they’ll still have some of those pecan cinnamon twists your mom likes.”

Angela smiled and held Ruff back by a scrap of his collar as David made his way to the front door, dropping the trash bag in the outdoor trashcan they kept on the curb.

As she added a new trash bag to the trashcan, she couldn’t help but laugh as Ruff stood on his hind legs and stuck his nose over the rim of the trashcan, as if he wanted to make sure he found every crumb.

David ventured back inside, and Angela gently nudged Ruff down until he was on all four paws. “Don’t worry, boy. I’m sure you’ll get plenty of food with mom and dad tonight.”

“Oh, I didn’t get to ask earlier.” Angela turned to David as she grabbed her keys to her SUV. “How are the girls doing?”

David gave a rueful chuckle as he glanced at the chicken coop on the far side of the farm just to the left of the house. “Eggatha is fine, protective, and bossy, as always. Pepe keeps trying to get close to her, and she wants nothing to do with him. I think he’s a little affronted, considering she had his babies and all.”

Angela laughed. That sounded like her little hen. Around the farm, Eggatha was the boss, and she was going to make sure everyone knew it. When she first had the chicks a few months back. Angela made the mistake of thinking her antics would calm down once the babies were born, but they had only gotten that much more complicated. It seemed her decision to name her little hen after a famous mystery author was finally coming back to bite her.

“On the bright side, Indy hasn’t made any escape attempts, at least not this morning.” David smirked, and Angela sighed. The little chick had quickly made a name for herself as the escape artist of the farm, so it was only appropriate to name her after one of the most famous explorers in cinematic history.

“Well, that’s good at least.” Now that she was fully grown, she was nearly twice the size of her mother. Angela was beginning to think they were going to need a higher wire fence on the enclosure if they were ever going to keep track of her. Thankfully, her sister, Christi, had instead inherited her father’s slightly more cautious spirit. “Hopefully, the three of them will behave while we’re gone.”

They approached the car and Angela yanked the back door open and gestured for Ruff to jump in. He didn’t hesitate, timing his vault perfectly with David sliding into the passenger side.

Just before Angela could round the car and climb into the driver’s seat, a distinct and somewhat foreign sound caught her attention.

Gobble, Gobble, Gobble!

What in the world?