“Mingle and munch?” Hannah repeated, making a face. “That sounds positively inane. I wonder what sort of appetizers they served in the fifties.”

“I’ll call Marge. The library’s got a section of old cookbooks. She can look it up for us.”

“Good idea,” Hannah said, heading for the pantry to see what supplies they’d need to buy for mingle-and-munch time at the nineteen-fifties house.

Searching the pantry didn’t take long, and neither did going through the walk-in cooler. When she came back out to the coffee shop again, Hannah found Lisa just hanging up the phone.

“I’ve got three,” Lisa said, holding up one of Hannah’s steno pads. “What do you think of celery sticks stuffed with peanut butter? Everybody served it at parties back then.”

“Okay. We’ve got plenty of peanut butter, but we don’t have celery. Put that down on our shopping list. One of us will have to make a quick trip to the Red Owl.”

“I’ll go,” Lisa said, “I’ll just call Florence and give her a heads-up, so she’ll let me in the back.”

While Lisa called Florence, Hannah took the notebook and looked at the other appetizers Lisa had listed. There was something that sounded interesting using olives, crackers, and cream cheese tinted with food dye. They could certainly make those. And there was no reason why they couldn’t take the stuffed celery idea and run with it. They could make a second type stuffed with flavored cream cheese, and a third stuffed with Mike’s Busy Day Pâté. All three would look nice on a platter.

The last appetizer was the most difficult and it all had to do with the timing. The ingredients were simple enough, just cream cheese mixed with minced onions and a little mayonnaise. The mixture was spread on crackers and the crackers were broiled just before serving so that the cream cheese would puff up. Hannah was sure they could handle that. Delores and Carrie had a toaster oven in their upstairs break room. All it would take was someone to man the toaster oven and they could have hot appetizers at the scene.

“So what’s on my grocery list,” Lisa asked.

Hannah explained about the three kinds of stuffed celery they could make, and then she read the list she’d made. “Celery, mayonnaise, horseradish, crackers, dried onions, braunschweiger, flavored cream cheese, and a can of tuna.”

“Okay.” Lisa took the list and headed for the back door, but she turned before she got there. “What’s the tuna for?”

“Moishe.”

“Because

?”

“He didn’t scratch Andrea.”

“I see,” Lisa said. “I guess I’d better pick up a can of salmon, too.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because he didn’t scratch me, either!”

CREAM CHEESE PUFFS