In Hot Fudge And Cold Blood

by A. R. Winters

  “I think we’ve got more important things to think about than your boyfriend.”

  “He’s a police officer! A detective!”

  “Oh, right.”

  “And he’s not my boyfriend! Not officially, anyway. Not yet.”

  “I don’t think this is the time or the place to talk about your love life, dear. Not with,” she wriggled her fingers above the fudgy body, “this here.”

  Sometimes I hate my mom. Other times, I’m merely annoyed by her.

  “I’m going to call him to tell him about this.”

  “Oh. Do you think that’s a good idea?” Mom was frowning and shaking her head.

  “We have to, Mom. Someone’s dead. We have to call the police.”

  Mom kept shaking her head at me, slowly, with something like exasperation.

  “She’s dead now anyway. Why don’t we just leave it?”

  “What!?”

  “It’s going to look bad for me, isn’t it? Me finding the body, when Sandra had been… you know… whatever it was she was doing. Trying to seduce Donovan.”

  Kiwi flew off my shoulder onto the stove, and tilted his head at me.

  “No!” I shook my head at the bird emphatically.

  “What in magic’s name possessed you to bring your animal to a murder scene?”

  I put my hands on my hips and gave Mom the nastiest scowl I could muster.

  “I did not deliberately bring Kiwi to a murder scene. We were coming here to buy fudge!”

  “Well, I don’t think you’ll be buying any fudge now, dear.”

  “Clearly. I’m going to call Jack now, and I don’t want to hear another word of complaint.”

  Mom listened.

  I could tell she listened, because she did the exact opposite of what I asked her.

  “But Aria, don’t you think it would be better if we just left it? If someone else found the body, we wouldn’t have to waste all that police time interviewing me. We would basically be misleading them, wouldn’t we? I’d look like a suspect, they’d have to investigate me, and it would just slow them down from finding the real killer.”

  “Mom! We are not going to do that. No way. And what if you do know something? Something that you don’t know that you know. They might get it out of you in the interview!”

  “I don’t know anything, so they can’t.”

  Every muscle on her face attempted a deep frown, but I didn’t care. Kiwi gave another squawk and hovered his head over the pot of fudge, ready to take a bite of the dessert.

  “No! Bad parrot! Come back here!”

  With another squawk of lament, Kiwi flapped across the room to land back on my shoulder.

  “And anyway, Mom, we don’t know she even was killed. Maybe she died of natural causes.”

  Mom raised her eyebrows at me in pleased surprise. “Good point.”

  We both stared at the body of the woman face down in fudge.

  “She could have had a heart attack and fallen in,” said Mom.

  “Or maybe she tripped, banged her head on the side of the pan, and then drowned in the fudge while she was unconscious.”

  Mom gave a thoughtful hmm.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The police can work it out. I’m calling Jack. Now.”

  “Fine,” said Mom in a tone that registered just about every emotion except ‘fine.’

  I pulled out my phone and called the man I’d just been on a date with. While the phone was ringing, I almost hung up. He’ll think I’m really into him when he sees I’m calling him right after the date, and I didn’t want to dash his hopes like that.

  “Aria!” he answered with barely concealed pleasure on the second ring.

  “Hi, Jack—”

  “Would you like to get a coffee? I think I left you a bit too suddenly.”

  “No, I—”

  “Sorry!” he said in an almost panicked voice. “I thought you might—”

  Mom was looking at me with a smirk.

  “Jack, I found a body. A dead body.”

  “Another one?”

  Chapter 6

  We stood awkwardly in the kitchen while we waited for the police to arrive. I wanted to pull out the chairs from the kitchen table to sit down, but the whole house was probably a crime scene. Don’t touch anything is what Jack had said on the phone.

  So, we stood.

  “I can’t believe you wouldn’t protect your own mother,” said Mom with a sniff and a frown.

  “It’s not a matter of protection, Mom. It’s about doing the right thing.”

  “Framing your mother for murder is doing the right thing, is it?”

  I could feel my face growing red and my hands balling into fists. If she weren’t my mother… this wouldn’t even be an issue. Stay calm, Aria.

  “No one’s framing anyone. Jack will be here soon and he’ll figure it all out. You won’t get in trouble, Mom.” I was tempted to add ‘unless you murdered her,’ but Mom was worked up enough already. The woman was many things, but I didn’t actually believe her to be a killer.

  Kiwi began emitting a wailing noise.

  “What’s the matter with him?” asked Mom.

  I snickered.

  Kiwi continued as we heard a squeal of tires outside.

  “It’s a police siren,” I said. “Well, Kiwi’s impersonation of one. He must have heard them pulling up outside.”

  “More like a wailing infant. You should get rid of that thing, Aria. Get a cat or something more normal.”

  I just shook my head. There was a banging at the front door followed by the sounds of heavy footsteps. Kiwi stopped his police siren sound and we waited patiently in the kitchen.

  “Aria,” said Jack as he entered the room. He paused, looking around to take in a view of the kitchen. I suppose it must have looked like quite the scene. Me, with a parrot on my shoulder, Mom dolled up like she was my age instead of her own, and Sandra face-down in the pot of fudge, dead as a doornail. Uncharacteristically of when my mother and I were together, neither of us was the center of attention.

  “Goodness. If it hadn’t been you that called me, this would have looked very bad,” said Jack as he slowly paced around the body. “I’m going to have to ask you both some questions.”

  “Fudge!” shrieked Kiwi, making me almost jump.

  “But not you, little guy,” said Jack to my shoulder.

  Jack took turns interviewing me and Mom, questioning us both about what we'd found and why we were in the murder victim's kitchen in the first place.

  Hours earlier, Jack and I had been talking in a friendly, almost romantic way while we enjoyed our Italian meal.

  Then he interviewed me as a possible murder suspect.

  Talk about emotional whiplash.

  I couldn't blame him; it was his job, after all. And I did find the murder victim, or at least I was the first to find her after Mom anyway, but still, it left a bad taste in the mouth. No one likes it when their almost-boyfriend starts asking them whether they murdered a woman in cold blood and hot fudge.

  While Jack was talking to Mom, Kiwi started whispering my ear when he thought no one was paying attention.

  "Look in the fridge!" he cried in an urgent whisper.

  "Why? The police will do that, I'm sure."

  He banged his little head against mine.

  "Not for clues. For fudge!"

  "Ki! Face it: we're not getting any fudge tonight. And we're not getting any of Sandra's fudge ever again!"

  He banged his head against mine again in frustration, treated me to a close-range angry squawk in my ear, and fluttered off before I could tell him not to. Although I wasn't a trained police officer, I knew enough to know that they didn't like parrots interfering in crime scenes.

  "Aria," said Mom with a cold tone and an even cooler look in her eyes. "I've spoken to Jack and, of course, I could tell them nothing more than the obvious. It's your turn now. I mentioned that there was no good reason for you to be here. It just slipped out."


  I rolled my eyes at her.

  "Thanks, Mom. Being a customer of the woman's business is no good reason? And hunting her down because she's been getting familiar with your boyfriend is a good reason I suppose? Funny—”

  "Aria?" said Jack, gently squeezing my elbow. "Do you have a moment?"

  Leaving my conversation with my mother hanging without another word, I followed Jack to a corner of the kitchen.

  "So..." he said to me, his eyes warm and kind.

  I couldn't help but smile in response.

  "Hi, again."

  “Can you tell me what exactly it was you were doing here?"

  I bit my lip and nodded, and began to explain to Jack that I was here because of my parrot.

  "I know you're very close with Kiwi, but it does seem a little bit, you know..."

  "What?"

  "Eccentric."

  "Eccentric? What do you mean?" I asked with a frown.

  "Well. You were walking down the street when your escaped parrot flew out of nowhere and demanded you go buy fudge. It was almost dark, and it was foggy and—"

  "It wasn't foggy then," I said. "The fog came later, when we were already on our way here." Because I made it foggy is what I didn't add. Jack’s understanding of my witchiness ends at burning sage in my shop and maybe doing a tarot reading for fun—not manipulating the weather.

  "That’s the honest truth?"

  I nodded. "You saw! You were with me!"

  He nodded. "Yes, I was. And lucky for you. If I hadn't been with you, it would have been a pretty unlikely story, don't you think?"

  I shrugged. "You know what they say. Truth is stranger than fiction."

  Jack nodded.

  "That may be true, but with murder victims, it usually isn't. The simplest explanation is usually the real one—it's the husband or wife if it's at home, and if it's out in the world, it's normally someone they had an altercation with just moments before. This type of situation is very unusual."

  We both looked across the room to where Sandra was still head down in the pan of fudge. Policemen were taking photos of her and someone had laid out some plastic sheeting, presumably to reduce the mess when they eventually took her out of there.

  "I don't really know what to tell you, Jack. This is as odd a situation for me as it is for you."

  "I understand. Could you just go through it all, point by point? Tell me exactly what you saw and when, from the moment we parted?"

  “Of course.”

  I did as he requested and watched as he carefully wrote down everything I told him. I had to 'trim' one part of the story. Aside from mentioning my part in conjuring the fog, I told him every little thing I could think of.

  And except for talking to Kiwi, too. I didn't want him thinking I was crazy.

  Jack spent even longer with me than he did with Mom. I was pretty sure that this was because of our almost-relationship, because I certainly didn't have any more to say about what had happened than Mom did.

  "Aria, dear," said Mom, tapping my arm and giving me an unnatural motherly smile just as Jack was wrapping things up.

  Uh-oh. Why's she being so nice?

  "Yes?"

  "Your animal flew off down there. I don't know what he's up to," she said raising her eyebrows at me.

  "Right. Sorry, Jack. I’d better go make sure Kiwi isn't causing any mischief. Is there anything else?"

  Jack shook his head at me, but turned his gaze back to Mom.

  "Actually, I have a couple of questions for the senior Ms. Whitmore, if that's okay?"

  Inwardly I beamed, but outwardly I only allowed a small smile to cross my lips. Senior Whitmore indeed. Mom would love that.

  Leaving the police, the fudgy corpse, and my mom to carry on, I left the crime scene and headed down the hall.

  "Ki!" I called. "Kiwi?"

  Silence.

  Not complete silence, of course. The police officers were as noisy as you'd expect in the kitchen. But there was a definite silence from the direction of Kiwi.

  As my familiar, I can sense where he is when I need to, and I could tell he was just down the hall in a room off to the right. A room with its door open just the tiniest crack.

  I followed his trail and gently pushed the door open. It opened silently with well-oiled hinges.

  "Kiwi!" I said in an urgent whisper.

  The room was clearly a dining room, but the large mahogany dining table had been pushed right up against the large window which ran along the far side of the room, and which had been lifted open an inch or two. On top of the table were several large trays of fudge, which had been left to cool by the draft from the window.

  But fudge wasn't the only thing on the table. Kiwi was standing right next to a pan of the sweet confection, head occasionally bobbing down into it, while he stared at something else in front of the tray.

  "What's that? And what are you doing?" I said in an urgent but low voice. I didn't want the police in the kitchen to hear.

  "Fudge," said Kiwi before bobbing his head down for another beakful. "Scpeburk,” or something like it, is what he said right after.

  Almost running, I hurried across the room to stand over him.

  "It's a scrapbook!" I said.

  "That's what I said." He bobbed his head down again into the fudge.

  I peered down at the book. It was much like the one Sarah had been working on earlier: a big thick book filled with blank pages, most of which had been adorned with various scraps of paper and other sundry pieces. The page Kiwi was staring at was labeled “Basic Cream Fudge” and on it was stuck a faded, yellowed recipe card, handwritten in an old-fashioned flowing cursive script.

  "You can't be in here!" I said.

  "Aria!" called a voice from outside, down the hall. It was Jack.

  "Why?" said Kiwi.

  "You can't! It's not... you can't eat evidence! And you're touching the book! And—"

  I cut myself off because I didn't have time for that. Panicking, I did something stupid. Or clever, depending on your perspective.

  As Kiwi is my familiar, he's able to boost my magical abilities, which can be handy in a crisis—like being found tampering with evidence.

  I quickly muttered some magic words under my breath and waved a hand over Kiwi. There was no way we were going to get the fudge cleaned off him in time so I did the only thing I could: I made him invisible.

  Casting such a draining spell in a rush, with my gestures imprecise and my mind a scattered mess, had a few unintended side-effects. Not only did Kiwi disappear, but so did the scrapbook he was resting a talon on, and the tray of fudge his head was buried in.

  "Ah, Aria."

  I turned to see Jack and gave him an embarrassed smile.

  "I was just looking for the bathroom," I said.

  "Really?" he asked, not sounding convinced. His eyes scanned the room, which, even from the entranceway, clearly looked nothing like a bathroom.

  "Err, yes. And then I saw this and I wondered what it was."

  "I see."

  "It's fudge," I said.

  "Yes, it is. Aria, as this whole house is a crime scene, we can't have people wandering around. We have to search the entire premises, check for evidence or clues left behind by the killer. All of that."

  "I’d better get out of your hair then," I said, quickly hurrying across the room.

  “You should probably head home, now yes. Where's Kiwi?"

  "Oh. He’s…” I waved my hands around. "Outside, I think. Don't worry about him. I'll find him outside."

  Jack gave me a suspicious look.

  "Bye, Jack!" I said, giving him a friendly squeeze on the arm. The romance of our date earlier in the evening had mostly disappeared, unfortunately.

  "Do you need a ride home? I could get an officer to—"

  I was shaking my head as I said my final "No, no, that's fine," and scurried out of the room and out of the front door of the house.

  "Whew," I said to myself dramatically when I stepped outside.r />
  "I'll see you tomorrow, dear," said Mom in my ear.

  I jumped, startled. 'Lurking in the shadows' sounds bad, but it was basically what Mom had been doing.

  "See you tomorrow," I said in return.

  Chapter 7

  The next morning, Sarah arrived an hour after Blue Moon Bridal had officially opened its doors.

  "Am I late?" she asked as the door closed behind her with a tinkle of the bell. She reflexively handed me one of the paper coffee cups from the Black Cat Café as she entered.

  "Well, you were supposed to be here yesterday, so you're about twenty-four hours late." I checked the wooden clock on the wall. "And it's ten o'clock, and you should have been here at nine. So make that twenty-five hours.”

  "Oh, I'm getting better, aren't I?" said Sarah with such an innocent smile that I couldn't help but give a warm one in response. She was ditzy and strange and invariably late, but she was also one of the sweetest and most kind-hearted people I knew, which is why she’s my dearest friend.

  "I heard you had an interesting evening," said Sarah, raising her eyebrows at me.

  My cheeks blushed at the thought of my meal with Jack.

  "It was," I admitted. "We had the most wonderful meal, and we were having a lovely walk when Kiwi interrupted us and ruined it."

  When I was saying the final few words, I glared up at the bookcase, where Kiwi was sitting. He raised his wings to cover his face, as if to hide from the daggers I was glaring at him.

  "Eh?" said Sarah.

  "What?" I asked.

  "Priscilla said you found a dead body. That there was a murder and you and your mother found the body!"

  "Oh!" Oops. "That. Yes, that happened too," I said with a nod of confirmation.

  "Interesting," said Sarah, tapping her chin with a purple-painted manicured nail. "Very interesting."

  "It was an unforgettable evening."

  "Because of the date, or because of the dead body?"

  "The date! I mean—the body!" I held my coffee cup up to my mouth, flustered, while I composed myself. I took a sip, and tried again. "That is to say… I had a nice meal, but then everything after that was awful."

  Sarah nodded in understanding. "Yin and yang. Light and dark. Black and white. An evening of contrasts."