Round Robin by Joseph Flynn Page B

could sell it here.”
    “Nancy, huh?”
    Mimi knew Nancy’s opinion of the deli’s food and calibrated her opinion of Robin’s sister accordingly. Even so, Mimi had caught a whiff of the strudel.
    “May I?” she asked.
    What could Robin say?
    “Just one,” she said.
    “Oh, sure.”
    With predatory speed, Mimi unerringly seized the largest slice, easily three times the size of the amount Nancy had consumed.
    Robin watched her chew ... saw the smile form on her lips ... saw the gleam enter her eyes ... saw the shiver run through her. Head-to-toe. Mimi looked so blissful and relaxed ... well, Robin couldn’t help but think that Mimi had just had an orgasm.
    Then the thought hit her: What if Manfred hadn’t put air freshener in the strudel, but had put something else? Who knew what kind of chemicals somebody who’d worked for the CIA might have on hand? She’d read that the nation’s intelligence agencies had experimented with LSD. How was she to know they didn’t have some kind of aphrodisiac in their medicine chest?
    Mimi reached for another piece but Robin grabbed her wrist.
    She shook her finger. “One’s all you get.”
    Mimi didn’t say a word, just looked woeful until Robin let her go. Then, looking over Robin’s shoulder, Mimi’s eyes grew large and round with amazement. Robin quickly turned to look, but there was nothing there. The door was still locked. They weren’t even open for business yet.
    Robin knew before she turned back that she’d been had. Mimi was ten feet away with a slice of strudel in each hand.
    “Ha-ha,” Mimi said. “There’s still a trick or two I can teach you.”
    Then Mimi headed off to the kitchen savoring each bite of her stolen strudel, “Mmmm-ing” all the way.
    Robin muttered, “Hope your insurance is paid up.”
     
    In the event of food poisoning, Robin had intended to dispose of Manfred’s note and the can of air freshener and lay the blame for the whole thing on him. Until her recent moment of paranoia, she hadn’t actually thought he’d put anything into the strudel that would rise above the level of a prank, say adding Ex-Lax to fudge cake.
    But the strudel was the hit of the breakfast rush. Nobody got sick and everybody enjoyed the heck out of it. Robin couldn’t remember how many hands she’d had to slap when people came back for seconds. Including Mimi, who’d come back several times for fourths.
    Knowing she was tempting fate, Robin ate the last piece herself.
    It was the best damn strudel she’d ever tasted — every bit as good as it smelled — and she could have had the whole plate for herself!
    Worse, she had to admit that sauerkraut-slurping golem had put one over on her good.
    Mimi came over one last time and when she saw that the strudel was gone her face fell so far it was comic. But then her jaw firmed quickly and a look of diamond-hard determination glistened in her eyes.
    “Robin, I want four trays of this strudel every morning.”
    “And how many for the deli?” Robin asked.
    “Okay, six trays then.”
    “I’d like to help, Mimi, but I didn’t bake it.”
    “But you said you did.”
    “I said it was homemade.”
    It took Mimi a second.
    “Your new German?”
    Robin nodded.
    “I don’t care,” Mimi said. “You tell him I’ve got a business proposition for him.”
     
    In the lull between breakfast and lunch, Robin told Mimi how she intended to deal with Tone and his cameraman. The taste of the strudel lingering in her memory and on her taste buds, Mimi wanted to stay in Robin’s good graces. So she offered some suggestions as to how the plan might be improved. Instead of waiting for Tone to arrive before calling Nancy, Mimi would have one of her oldest customers, who also worked at Tone’s TV station, give the deli a call the moment Tone and his accomplice walked out the door. That’d give them the jump on the idiot.
    “What’s the other idea?” Robin asked.
    Mimi said, “You may be too young to remember but a very