“I think our first guests are arriving,” Grace called from the French doors. “Didn’t you want to set out the door prizes?”
The gingerbread houses! Julian and I bolted for the kitchen. We nabbed the cellophane-wrapped cakes and walked carefully to the Roundhouse entrance. Grace had pulled a table over to the door, and even managed to round up a basket for the tickets.
Just in the nick of time, as it happened. Plodding up the steps was Louise Munsinger, the new president of the Aspen Meadow Garden Club. Louise, in her early seventies, had lost none of her vitality. Her wrinkled, rectangular face was topped with hair dyed jet-black. She wore it pulled back severely from her forehead and tied in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her bulldog frown and blocklike body encased in a long sable coat
