"You tried to ruin her village!" Nina yelled.
The camera guys hovered around like flies.
"She hit me!" Hartleigh yelled again. I hoped I wouldn't be thrown out for assault. I was starting to regret striking Hartleigh.
"This is uncalled for!" Dana said as she and Anastasia came over. Anastasia was trying not to laugh.
"This isn't funny," Dana snapped at her. "You three need to cool it. Stay at your own stations."
Hartleigh stomped away.
"Chloe, change, shower, then fix whatever's wrong with your village, and let's go. Are you all almost done? I want this judged, and then one of you is gone," Dana said. "If we weren't making so much money off of this show, I would just end it all right now."
When I returned from toweling off the worst of the frosting, I was able to cover up the little red splatter marks on my town. Nina and Hartleigh put the finishing touches on their gingerbread creations, and I poured my sauces into their holders.
Then it was time to see who the finalists would be.
54
Jack
When I met with the engineer I had assigned to the faulty piper investigation, he pulled out another piper. Then he unscrewed part of the holder for the liquid, gouged parts of the seal, filled it with frosting, plugged it in, and pressurized it. I heard it vibrate slightly, then it exploded.
"This wasn't a product failure," he said. "Someone tampered with it. I was suspicious when I saw the seal. I thought maybe the broken glass had messed with it, but this seems to mimic what happened."
"Sure looks like it," I said, inspecting the machine.
"Who would tamper with the piper?" the engineer asked. "They're pretty pricy just to destroy it like that."
I knew exactly who. Hartleigh.
I had a few more hours until it was time to return to the tower and judge the competition, but I returned early to talk to Dana. Hartleigh had to be removed from the competition. She probably had messed with the fryer too. The engineers were still working on it. It wasn't one of our products, so they had to do more research.
But in my gut, I knew the answer.
"Thank goodness you're here," Dana said. "We're moving the judging up early. I can't take these women anymore."
"I need to talk to you about something," I told her.
"Tell me after you judge," she said, prodding me into the studio.
Chloe presented first. She had a pleasant demeanor, but I could tell something was bothering her.
"It's almost too pretty to eat," Anu said, inspecting Chloe's gingerbread village.
"I'll eat it," Nick replied and broke off a piece of a roof. I did the same. The gingerbread was the same spicy, slightly sweet taste I remembered.
"I love what you did with the sauce," Anu said to Chloe.
"I see you used the new Platinum Provisions snow-maker attachment," I said, pointing to the snow.
"That's such a great product," Nick added, scooping up some of the fluffy icing with a piece of gingerbread. He held it up to the camera. "Do you see that consistency? It still is moist, but it's almost whipped. This is a really a great way to pull out interesting textures from icing, which tends to be fairly one-dimensional in texture. Great job!"
While Chloe had made a whole village, Nina had made a very intricate Victorian house.
"It's like an architectural model," Anu marveled. "This is very high-precision work. I'm very impressed." Nina's Victorian gingerbread house had a little garden, too, and delicate sugar fencing.
"How did you make this lacework of the hard caramel so intricate?" Anu asked.
