“Nothing too incriminating here,” I said to myself. “And no clues as to where she’s gone either.”
If the bedroom wasn’t going to help, then perhaps another room would: her workshop.
It wasn’t a workshop full of hammers and saws and drills and the like—it was a magic workshop and it was located in the basement of the house.
I left Mom’s bedroom and went to the kitchen, where the door to the basement was located. It was still ajar, as if someone had left it in a hurry. Or they were just untidy. It could have been either, in Mom’s case.
The light switch was located right at the top of the stairs, so I flicked it on and made my way down to what was literally her witch’s den.
The third step down creaked just as it was supposed to, and so did the seventh. It was designed that way to stop people from sneaking up on her when she was immersed in crafting a spell.
“Hello?” I called again, pointlessly.
Of course there was no answer.
The room was divided into three parts with head-height partitions from an office supply store. The first section was a kind of vestibule and storage area. Behind it, through a little opening in the partition on the right-hand side was her main ‘workspace’ for performing spells, and behind that in the final section was her magical library.
She kept all this stuff in the basement because, by its nature, a lot of magical accouterments are kind of ugly, or at least don’t match Mom’s taste in home decor.
When I got to the bottom of the stairs my eye was first caught by her large dragon-eye box. It was sitting on top of a worktable against the left-hand side of the room, and its lid was fully open, leaning against the wall.
The dragon-eye box was where Mom kept all of her most valuable and powerful magical artifacts. And unless she was actually working on something, the box was kept locked with both a key and a magical spell.
The fact that the box had been left open sent my hackles up. The outside of the box was decorated with tiny fragments of mother-of-pearl, all arranged in a mosaic to create the image of a giant dragon’s eye. Presumably, the maker couldn’t actually find a genuine dragon’s eye; they’re quite hard to get a hold of these days.
As I stepped toward it, the inside was revealed too. It was notable for two reasons. Firstly, it was lined with gorgeous royal purple velvet. Anything dropped into the box would land with the gentlest of thuds, almost silently. It was the kind of material that you could happily sit and stroke like it was a cat, and I couldn’t help but take a moment to do so.
But the other reason the interior of the box was notable was unique to today, and the reason was this: it was completely empty.
It should never be completely empty. You took things out of it when you needed them, and you’d never need, for example, a hickory wand and an ebony one at the same time. No, it was filled with different tools for different purposes, and you wouldn’t ever need them all at once.
Unless...
With a shake of my head, I pulled the lid of the box forward and then let it drop down. The box closed with a soft thud and then a click as the lock automatically engaged.
Moving on, I was going to look deeper in, to see what else I could find of interest.
Passing around the partition, I reached the main part of Mom’s witch’s den. The actual workshop itself.
“What in magic’s name...”
The workshop was a mess. The center of it was dominated by a massive mahogany table. There was usually a large crystal ball right in the middle of the table, but it was gone.
The table itself had several black burn marks on it that I was fairly certain hadn’t been there before, and at the end of the table was a large book and a big plastic container of something.
Stepping around the edge of the table I made my way to the book. It was open, so using my finger to mark the page I lifted it up by the cover to see what it was.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
On the front of the book, was a drawing of what looked like a large ink bottle, except instead of a label reading ‘Ink’ there was a picture of a skull and crossbones. Above it, in large capital letters was the title: The Murderer’s Guide to Poisons.
That couldn’t be real, could it? I flicked through the book to the introduction.
Crime writers and their fans have been fascinated by poisons as long as they have been putting pen to paper and eyes to pages. From the stories of ancient Greek philosophers meeting their fate with hemlock to modern poisonings with polonium tea, humans have been fascinated with poison since time immemorial…
The writer went on to explain that he’d put the book together as a kind of companion for anyone who was interested in common poisons, particularly people who loved television mystery shows or read mystery books.
It was some small relief to me that the book wasn’t literally what it said on the cover, but not much.
Why would Mom be consulting a book about poisons?
Next to the book, the big plastic tub was still sitting menacingly. Well, as menacingly as a plastic container can look. The label on the front read: Strychnine.
“Strychnine, strychnine, strychnine,” I said to myself, trying to think. I’d heard of that before but I couldn’t quite remember where. It didn’t take a genius though to figure out what it might be.
I lifted my finger to open the poison book back to the page it had been at when I entered.
Yep. Sure enough, it was a chapter titled, unsurprisingly, “Strychnine.”
Skimming through it I gathered the important facts. It was, indeed, a poison, and a relatively common one, its most common usage being the killing of rats. The book also went on to explain how it had been used to kill people too, how it was possible to build up an immunity to it, and how some people even consumed it deliberately in a show of religious faith which not infrequently led to serious illness and even death.
“Well, this is just great,” I said to myself.
Not only had Mom been in the murder victim’s house, but there was now also some very convincing circumstantial evidence that she had poisoned Sandra.
I shut the book and left it on the table. I didn’t exactly want to walk out of the house with a big tub of poison and a book on poisoning people. I was about ninety-five percent certain that Mom hadn’t actually poisoned Sandra, but this was going to look very incriminating. Clearly, someone wanted to blame my mother for the murder. But who?
And if the police got a warrant to search her house, they’d probably jump to the most obvious conclusion too. I couldn’t let that happen.
The third section of Mom’s basement just about topped everything off.
As I stepped around to the library area I was greeted with massive disarray. Her books were in their proper places—the shelves were neatly filled with various reference books and magical tomes, spines out, lined up just as they should have been.
Her reading chair and coffee table were also in their correct places, and the fireplace that made the whole room cozy was also exactly as it should have been.
What wasn’t normal, though, was the dozens of books scattered across the floor and piled up along the wall. Dozens of hard-backed books of various sizes that I had never seen before.
They weren’t Mom’s books.
There was a large black book right by my feet, so I picked it up. On the front, in what appeared to be handwritten text made with a gold glitter pen, were the words: Emily’s Scrapbook.
I dropped it onto the chair and picked up another. Sandy’s Special Memories. And another Billie’s Treasure-trove of Scrap.
Every book I picked up had something similar on the front. They were all scrapbooks, and all belonged to different people, presumably from Sequoia Bay.
It looked like Mom had a massive collection of scrapbooks. In fact, by the looks of things, she must have had just about every scrapbook in Sequoia Bay down in her basement.
“Oh, Mom, what have you gotten yourself into...”
I had already reached the stairs when I thought of something. Turning, I quickly hurried back to Mom’s little library and began to search through all the scrapbooks. It didn’t take too long to find what I was looking for.
“Aha!”
I pulled out the large, thick tome that was dedicated to the life and memory of Sandra the fudge maker—Sarah’s scrapbook that she’d been working on for the last couple of weeks.
It seemed Mom had collected just about every scrapbook in town. But most of them had been left here when she fled. In fact, all of them, except one, I’d wager.
Although it wasn’t a confirmation, I checked each of the scrapbooks in turn to make sure I was right. Sure enough, Sandra’s book with all of her recipes was indeed the only one not in Mom’s basement.
I wasn’t yet quite sure what was going on, but I had a few ideas. Grabbing Sarah’s book to take with me, I left the basement and hurried back outside.
As soon as I was back in my car, my phone began to ring.
“Why now?” I said to myself.
It was Jack.
“Hello?” I said, trying not to pant.
“Aria. Are you okay? You sound a bit... breathless.”
“Oh, fine, fine. Just been up and down the stairs too many times.”
“I wanted to tell you personally, before you heard it on the news.”
Uh-oh.
“We still haven’t been able to track down your mother, and, well...”
“What?”
“I’m sorry to say, but we’ve been forced to put out a warrant for her arrest.”
I sighed into the phone. Great.
“Do you know where she is, Aria?”
“Nope. I wish I did, I really do. I’ve got questions for her as well.”
“Well, if you do see her...”
“I know, I know. I’ll get her to turn herself in.”
“Thanks, Aria. And by the way, just in case you wonder what’s going on, we’ve got a warrant to search her house as well. So don’t be alarmed if you see police cars outside her house.”
I gulped. Great. They were going to find everything. Probably just about all the evidence they needed to convict her, in fact.
“What’s brought all this on?”
“I shouldn’t say...”
“But it’s me, so you will.”
“I... well okay, but please, keep this to yourself for now. The lab results came back from Sandra’s fudge. It seems it was absolutely filled with rat poison.”
“Strychnine?”
“Yes, exactly. How did you know that?”
“Just a lucky guess. It’s one of the most common rat poisons.”
“Is it?” Jack sounded surprised.
“Oh, yes. I guess I spent too much time watching police procedurals on television.”
There was a long pause before he spoke again. “If you do hear anything, let me know. Take care, Aria.”
“You too. Thanks, Jack.”
Now what was I going to do?
Chapter 21
It was with relief that I returned to my shop: a little space of my own, cut off from the outside world. A little sanctuary of calm.
That was one of the good things about bridal shops—they weren’t too hectic. About once a month or so we’d get a bride who brought a whole gang of noisy screeching bridesmaids with her, but usually things were relatively peaceful in my line of work.
I pushed the front door open, the bell went ding! and I went...
“What in the name...”
“Oh, Aria! Thank goodness you’re here! It’s a disaster!”
It was a disaster. She was right about that. The whole place was a mess. The armchairs had been moved away from the wall and their cushions yanked off the seats, every mannequin had been moved from its position and their dresses lifted up and thrown over their heads. It looked like the entire contents of the cupboards and drawers behind the counter had been emptied out and dumped on top.
“What’s happened? It looks like we were robbed!”
“We were! Oh, we were robbed!” said Sarah, running at me and flinging her arms around me in a hug.
“This isn’t about your scrapbook, is it?”
Sarah’s eyes went wide.
“It is! You knew! As soon as you came in, you could tell it was missing, couldn’t you? We’re like twins.”
“Not exactly...”
“What are we going to do? I’ve looked through the whole shop but I can’t find it!” Sarah released me from her hug and started to flounce around, sobbing dramatically.
“Well, I think we’re going to have to have to tidy up in a minute. But don’t worry about the scrapbook. I have it in my car. I’ll get it in a minute. It was the strangest thing…”
I explained to her what I’d discovered while we worked on tidying up the shop.
“It looks bad for your mom, doesn’t it?” said Sarah with a furrowed brow as she attempted to force a cushion back into its proper spot on the armchair.
“It sure does. I think someone’s trying to frame her.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What we are going to do is clear her name—and expose the real killer.”
Sarah let out a dismayed sigh. “But we don’t know who the real killer is, do we?”
I gave her a mischievous grin. “Actually, I’ve got an idea. Did you find any fudge recipes?”
“Sure did. I’ve got one with a five-star rating that’s supposed to be the best in the world.”
“Then that should do the trick. I’ve got to go upstairs for a little bit. Can you try and get everything back in order?”
Sarah looked around the shop, shaking her head. “But it’s such a mess.”
I raised my eyebrows at her.
“… But that’s no problem. I’ll have everything shipshape in no time.”
“I’ll be back down soon.”
“Oh, before you go, this came for you. Someone slid it under the door.”
Sarah handed me a small, plain white envelope. Curiously, I opened it up. Inside was a newspaper cutting from a small local paper in Washington state. There was a photo of Sandra with another couple, and just a caption underneath. It read: “Local Couple Fudging Happy at County Fair Win.”
“Well, isn’t that interesting?”
Upstairs, it was even worse than I had feared. Kiwi had been hard at work searching for the scrapbook he had purloined from Sandra, and he had left no stone, or indeed chair, cupboard, drawer, book, or item of clothing unturned.
“I can’t find it anywhere!” he said with an angry shriek as soon as I opened the door.
I surveyed the devastation. It was as if a small cyclone had whipped through my apartment. I suppose, in a way, it had.
“I don’t think you’ll find it here.” I stepped over a pile of clothes that hadn’t been by the door earlier. “It’s gone.”
“Gone!” he screeched dramatically, following it up with a wail that sounded like a screeching cat.
“But I’m pretty sure I knew who took it.”
“Who? Tell me so I can punish them!”
I grinned at the little feathered devil. “Mom.”
“She’s the worst.” He literally hopped up and down with anger as he said it. “She tried to murder me, and now she’s robbed me.”
Bending down to pick up some of the clothes, I met Kiwi at eye level. “To be fair, you kind of stole that scrapbook yourself.”
“Did not. She was already dead, and everyone knows you can’t steal from the dead.”
“Do they? I’ve never heard that before.”
“Oh yes. You have to be living to have something stolen from you. That’s probably why your mother tried to kill me, so she could take the scrapbook!”
With a hand covering my mouth to stifle my laughter, I began to walk around the apartment to figure out
how long it would take me to get everything back in order. At least a couple of hours, I calculated.
“Do you think you can tidy some of this up? I’ve got some things to do.”
“Me? With what? My hands?” asked Kiwi, flapping his wings as a demonstration that he did not, in fact, have hands.
I glared down at him.
“If you can make a mess, then you can clean one up, Kiwi. If there’s anything too heavy for you, I’ll get it later, but I expect you to do the bulk of it.”
He shook his tiny head at me.
“But I’m just a poor little parrot.” He raised up one wing feebly. “Look how weak I am.”
“Well, if you’re that weak, then obviously there’s something wrong with your diet. I’ll throw out all the cheese puffs, ban you from any fudge we might come across, and put you on a strict diet of insects and vegetables. How does that sound?”
Kiwi stood up as straight as he could, snatched up a scarf with his talons, and burst into the air, dropping it onto one of the clothes hooks by the door in the flash of an eye.
“I must be stronger than I thought,” he said as he landed back down on the floor next to the rest of the heap of clothes.
“Funny, that.”
Leaving him to it, I went back downstairs and into the stockroom to use the old computer I kept there. I had some work to do if my little plan was going to come together. I smiled at the screen as I began to type:
Sarah’s…
Half an hour later, I was grinning triumphantly as I emerged from the back room holding a sheaf of papers I had printed off.
Sarah had made decent headway in cleaning up. The initial mess hadn’t been as bad as it looked. Either that or Sarah was a way better tidier-upper than I’d given her credit for.
“What have you got there?” she asked me as she finished fluffing a cushion.
“This is the key part to our plan,” I said with a smile I hoped was mysterious.
“Do I get to be part of it? You usually do all the fun stuff on your own.” There was an air of accusation in her tone.
In Hot Fudge And Cold Blood Page 14