Page 87 of The Bitter Heir and the Beauty

“A letter to my mother, but I was also going to pick a few recipes to test for the new menu. Antoine is excited. Any suggestions?”

Maddock flips through the pages and says, “I’m a big fan of the flapjacks. What’s this say?”

“Eloise jotted notes in the margin, let me see.” I angle the old cookbook for a better look.

“It’s backward.”

“I think that’s because it was written on the backside and the lead from the pencil made a mark,” I say, inspecting it.

I’ve gotten used to Eloise’s handwriting and read the words on the back of the page with the apple tart recipe and recall the connection between the cookbook contents and Hogan’s gravestone riddle—that got put on the back burner, so to speak, with all the drama going on recently. “‘Take one from apple but none from tart.’ That’s part of the riddle from Tickle’s gravestone.”

“Why would that be in here?”

“I still haven’t puzzled that out.” With a shrug, I add, “Maybe Hogan left riddles for Eloise.”

“In her cookbook?” He flips the pages and stops at the recipe for liver pate, then stabs the reverse side of the paper. “Look! ‘Find one in liver but not in heart.’

I tilt my head in question and we scramble to find the roast recipe. On the reverse side of the page is the last part.

Maddock reads, “‘The last you’ll discover in giant as well as ghost but never, ever in a roast.’”

“It makes as much sense as it ever has.”

Maddock flips to a new page in my notebook where I am writing a letter to Mama. He transcribes the keywords from each of the riddles:Apple, Tart, Liver, Heart, Ghost, and Roast.

He doesn’t move for the next three hours. Because of the legal issues related to the estate, we’ve been staying at Pigs in a Blanket, thanks to Thelma’s hospitality, but we have dinner in the restaurant tonight because Maddock won’t draw his eyes away from the paper.

But when I all but beg him to come home since it’s let, he hasn’t solved it.

It’s not yet daybreak and Leonie is still fast asleep, a heavy thud from the bedroom upstairs wakes me up. Footfalls approach down the hall. A soft rap comes from the door.

“It’s me,” Maddock whispers.

“Thelma said no funny business,” I whisper back through the crack in the door.

“There’s nothing funny about this. I figured out the riddle. The clues had me removing letters.”

“You mean you solved it?”

“One word. Very familiar. Restaurant.”

“Yes, Maddock. But I don’t have to be there for almost three hours. A gal needs her beauty rest.”

“NO, I mean the answer to the riddle is restaurant.”

I straighten. Oh. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. I tried every combination of the letters. There’s no such thing as aRaunattresor aSerttanuar,at least not in English.”

I laugh softly. “You are in Hogwash, but you’re right about that.”

“Next question, what restaurants have been here since Hogan was alive?”

“The Penny Gamble and the Laughing Gator Grille.”

“Technically, the Penny Gamble is a soda fountain. Wait. Did you say the Laughing Gator Grille?”

“Yes, it had been in the Guidry family for three generations—started as a grilled gator meat shack. George and Lucille updated it, but not the menu. Which I’d like to have the energy to do today so—” A yawn finishes my sentence.

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