Dial M for Mousse

by Laura Bradford

  Winnie crossed to the baking cabinet and quickly located the various ingredients she needed for Mr. Nelson’s surprise. “If it makes him happy, Bridget, what difference does it make? Besides, he’s only had two lessons. I don’t think he’s going to be trying to saw anyone in half just yet.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, dear.”

  Chapter 31

  Winnie lowered herself onto her folding chair and pointed at the RESERVED sign stretched across the pair of seats on the opposite side of Renee’s. “Since when do a magician and his assistant sit down during the show?” she whispered.

  “They don’t.” Renee double- and triple-checked the settings on her point-and-shoot camera and then smiled up at the makeshift stage (aka Winnie’s front porch) and the table Mr. Nelson had cleared of his latest chess game in preparation for his first performance. “I wasn’t supposed to peek, but I couldn’t help it. Mr. Nelson has Ty in a cape and top hat. I have no idea where he got it, but it looks positively adorable on him.”

  Winnie leaned around Renee to get a better look at the sign, but other than the one word—RESERVED—there was nothing. “Okay, weird . . .”

  “I don’t know why you’re so surprised, dear.” Bridget crossed and uncrossed her ankles only to cross them once again. “We are talking about Parker, are we not? When does he do anything exactly the way you expect?”

  Winnie stopped herself mid-nod out of respect to Mr. Nelson while trying hard not to anger her next-door neighbor in the process. It was a tightrope act for sure, but she’d gotten fairly good at it over the past two years. “I just don’t understand where those two chairs came from. I put out three—one for me, one for you, and one for proud mamma over here.”

  The slam of a car door stole her focus from the pair of empty chairs and shifted it, instead, to two male figures headed in their direction. “Who on earth is—”

  “Oooh, Master Sergeant Hottie is here.” Bridget dug her elbow into Winnie’s side and followed it up with a Lovey-like hiss in her ear. “Quick, dear! Move one of those chairs next to me!”

  She guided the woman’s elbow away from her rib cage and stood. “Greg, hi! I didn’t know Mr. Nelson . . .” The words floated away like the last of the day’s natural light and she steadied herself against the edge of her chair. “Y-you’re Todd, aren’t you? From the retreat center. The magician.”

  “I am.” Todd extended his hand to hers and then did the same with first Renee, and then Bridget. “Parker invited me to come check out his show, and Greg here was nice enough to play chauffeur so I could come. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Winnie was pretty sure she responded with something appropriate to the conversation, but she wasn’t entirely sure. Because try as she could to envision the man standing in front of her as a drug dealer, something just didn’t mesh. Then again, when your world was primarily made up of baked goods and people over seventy, how would she know one way or the other?

  “Winnie?”

  The sound of her name snapped her back to the moment and the handsome, yet familiar face studying her as Bridget’s voice yammered on to her left. “Parker was very specific about where he wanted Winnie to sit for his show. And as the chairs are arranged right now, Renee is front and center, not Winnie. However, if you move your chair over here to my other side, Gregory, Winnie will be where she promised to be.”

  “You good with that, Winnie?” Greg asked, eyeing her curiously.

  “Uh, yeah, sure . . .”

  She tried to shake the fog that seemed to roll in the moment she saw Todd, but when she wasn’t sure what was causing it, she wasn’t sure how to make it stop.

  Fortunately for her, the moment Greg’s chair touched down in its new location, Ty appeared on the porch with his hands stretched wide. “Ladies and gentleman and”—his smile widened—“Mom . . . I’m proud to present the amazing Mr. Nelson!”

  Ty waited for their applause to die down and then, with a grin eerily similar to his mother’s when a bag of chips was opened, pointed toward the front door and the top hat–wearing man now caning his way onto the porch with an even bigger smile on his face.

  And, just like that, whatever fog Todd had ushered in with his arrival faded as Winnie focused on her special friend.

  “Tonight, I will surprise you, amaze you, and leave you wondering what’s real, and what’s not,” Mr. Nelson said. “So sit back and enjoy.”

  Stepping behind the table, he took off his hat, handed it to Ty, and asked the boy to inspect it closely. Ty obliged and then, at Todd’s silent prompting, showed it to the audience before placing it back atop the tablecloth.

  Then, placing a black cloth across the top of the hat, Mr. Nelson stepped back and accepted his wand from Ty. “Abracadabra, alakazam!”

  “Abracadabra?” Bridget whispered. “Oh, please . . .”

  “Shhh . . .” Winnie and Greg whispered in unison.

  After a moment, Mr. Nelson placed a hand over his mouth and whispered (not so quietly) to Ty to remove the cloth. When the cloth was gone, Mr. Nelson reached into the hat and pulled out . . . an egg.

  Winnie looked from Mr. Nelson, to the egg, and back again, the surprise she felt mirrored on the elderly man’s face.

  “It worked,” he whispered (not so quietly) to Ty.

  A soft laugh from two chairs over pulled her attention off the duo on the porch and fixed it, instead, on Todd, the man’s smile reigniting her own as she joined in the applause.

  With each subsequent drape of the cloth and each new flick of the wand, new things appeared inside the hat—a rook from Mr. Nelson’s chessboard, a crumpled napkin, and even a grape. Each new trick was met with applause from the audience and stunned surprise from Mr. Nelson and his assistant.

  After the sixth or seventh time, Mr. Nelson whispered (for real, this time) something in Ty’s ear. Then, while Ty inched his way closer to the table, Mr. Nelson clapped his hands together. “If you think you have seen it all, you haven’t.” Draping the black square across the top of the hat once again, Mr. Nelson shielded his eyes from the glare of the porch light and looked out at the chairs. “Winnie Girl? This one is for you.”

  He held the wand over the cloth-draped hat and, once again, said his magic words. “Abracadabra, alakazam. Who needs a bunny when you can have a . . . Lovey!”

  With a flick of his wrist, off came the black cloth. Only instead of a smile, Mr. Nelson’s shoulders sank.

  “Try it again, Mr. Nelson,” Ty urged.

  Shrugging, the man covered the hat a second time, waved his wand, and said the magic words. “Abracadabra, alakazam. Who needs a bunny when you can have—”

  “Meow . . .”

  Lovey ran out from underneath the tablecloth and then stopped to lick her hindquarters.

  Ty broke the ensuing silence by gesturing toward the floor and yelling, “Ta-da!”

  Again Todd’s soft laugh peppered the air just before he led the latest round of applause. Mr. Nelson blinked, looked from Lovey to the hat and back again, and then placed the hat back on his head and held it in place as he bowed.

  When the applause subsided, Mr. Nelson pointed to a clear plastic cup on the left side of his table and asked Renee to join him on the porch. Renee, in turn, shoved the camera into Winnie’s hand and ran up the steps.

  Ty handed his mother the cup and asked her to tell the audience what was inside.

  “It appears to be water.”

  “It is water, Mom,” Ty said, covering his mouth with his hand. “You can even take a sip if you want.”

  Renee just smiled.

  “You can take a sip, Mom,” Ty whispered.

  “Oh. Good. I’m a little thirsty.” Renee lifted the glass to her mouth and took a quick sip.

  “Now, tell the audience what your very favorite color is.”

  Renee smiled out at Winnie. “Yellow.”

>   “Yellow?” Ty echoed. “I thought it was pink. All girls like pink.”

  “I like yellow.”

  Ty’s face fell. “Can you just say it’s pink for now?”

  “Oh. Sure. My favorite color is pink.”

  “Pink it is!” With one hand on his cane and the other in his pocket, Mr. Nelson caned his way over to Renee. Pulling his hand from his pocket, he placed it on her shoulder, while directing her gaze toward a passing car. When all eyes returned to Renee, she was staring down at her cup, a look of wonder on her face. “It’s—it’s pink! My water is pink! H-how did you do that? I was holding it the whole time!”

  “Magic, Ms. Ballentine.”

  Magic . . .

  “Wait. Magic?” Winnie heard Greg’s distinctive applause peppered by a slightly more reluctant version from Bridget, but it paled against the sudden, yet equally distinctive thumping in her ears.

  “I was holding it the whole time.”

  Yet, somehow, someway, when no one was paying attention, Mr. Nelson had managed to slip something into Renee’s drink that altered its color . . .

  A trick he learned from—

  “It was you!” Bridget struggled to her feet and pointed at the man staring up at Mr. Nelson from the other end of the row. “You killed her!”

  Winnie stood up so fast, her chair toppled over backward against the trunk of the pin oak. “Greg, call the cops. Tell them we have Sally Dearfield’s killer.”

  “Sally Dearfield’s killer?” Mr. Nelson looked left and then right, confusion guiding his attention back to Winnie and Bridget. “Where?”

  “Right there.” She pointed at Todd, who was now staring back at her in stunned confusion. “That trick he taught you . . . that’s how he poisoned Sally’s tea!”

  Greg handed his phone to Bridget, crossed in front of Winnie, and pulled Todd up and out of his seat. “You, my friend, are in a whole lot of trouble.”

  “Stop right there!” Mr. Nelson stamped the porch floor with the end of his cane and, when all eyes were firmly on his, he stamped it again. “Todd didn’t teach me that trick! The mime did!”

  • • •

  Somehow, Winnie managed to convince Greg to hold off calling the cops until they were on the retreat grounds. And she’d managed to pull that off only by allowing him to come along. The occupants in Greg’s backseat, however, were another story all on their own.

  Bridget, of course, had made the case that she’d been part of the investigation from the start—a claim Winnie had been unable to refute.

  Mr. Nelson had chosen to go the sympathy route, pointing to all the times he’d wanted to help only to be pushed off to the side like unwanted trash (his words). The fact that he identified the killer (accidentally, of course) and made sure to reference that time and time again, didn’t hurt his cause. It also didn’t hurt that Greg had taken a shine toward the former (and somewhat crusty) navy man.

  Lovey, too, had made the cut because, well, she wasn’t about giving Winnie choices.

  And Todd, well, he needed a ride back to the retreat center . . .

  It was ludicrous really. But then again, so was the guilt she felt over having to leave Renee behind on account of it being a school night for Ty.

  “Renee just texted,” Bridget announced from her spot behind Greg. “She wants to know if you might consider putting her on something called FaceTime so she can be part of this?”

  “Uh, no. I plan to be a little too busy for that.”

  “I can do it, dear.”

  Winnie met Greg’s eye across the center console and then looked back at the road, the turn for the retreat center now no more than fifty feet ahead. “No, Bridget. You’re going to wait in the car with Greg and everyone else.”

  Greg stopped in the middle of the road.

  “The turn is up there,” Winnie said, pointing just ahead and to the left.

  “I know where it is, Winnie. I also know I’m not waiting in the car while you accuse this dude of killing someone. That wasn’t part of the deal when I agreed to bring you out here, remember?”

  “Okay, okay.” The car lurched forward as Winnie addressed the man seated next to Bridget. “I have to admit I’m a little surprised that you’re as gung ho about George’s impending arrest as you seem to be, Todd. Surely you have to know your secret is going to come out.”

  Todd exhaled against his palm and then let it drift back down to his lap. “If it does, it does. I just can’t sit idly by while someone uses magic for evil.”

  “But you’re looking at jail time, too.”

  “Jail time?” he echoed. “Where’d you get that?”

  “Selling drugs is illegal, Mr. Ritter.”

  He stared at Bridget. “Selling drugs? I’m not selling drugs!”

  “I saw a bag of it in your top hat earlier today,” Bridget insisted.

  The horror on Todd’s face was undeniable. “That’s impossible!”

  And then she knew. George had planted the drugs. To cover his own tracks. Assuming she was right, though, Todd still had to have a secret he didn’t want getting out . . .

  “So what did Sally have on you?” she asked as Greg’s car made its way around the last of the known ruts and headed toward the line of cabins.

  “I sold a trick that belonged to another magician.”

  Mr. Nelson shook himself out of his late-evening fog. “But you said that’s against the magician’s code.”

  “Because it is,” Todd said.

  “You said that could get you ousted from the world of magic.”

  “Because it can, and it likely will. But this—what George did with magic . . . it can’t go unchecked, Parker. Not now, not ever.”

  Silence fell over the backseat as Winnie pointed to George’s cabin. “It’s the last one, over there.”

  Greg pulled alongside the curb, shifted the car into park, and dialed the Silver Lake Police Department. When the phone began to ring, he relayed the necessary details to the dispatcher as the pieces of the puzzle that had been there all along returned for an encore.

  “If she’d known how little I’d been making before I got here, she could have saved herself the postage stamp she used to entice me up here in the first place . . .”

  “Shock, fear, relief, opportunity. Take your pick. They all applied . . .”

  “Sally’s death put me back in the driver’s seat . . .”

  “I can’t believe I was so blind. So quick to believe he’d been forthright because he had nothing to hide,” Winnie said aloud. “But in reality, he’d been forthright because he had everything to hide. And I bought into it.”

  “We have him now, dear. That’s all that matters.”

  Bridget was right. Still, she couldn’t help but feel as if she should have figured it out sooner. Maybe even when he first told her about his—

  “According to the note they found next to her body, she simply couldn’t bear to live without him . . .”

  She sucked in a breath as her heart began to race. “Greg? If Sally had been alone and a suicide note had been left by her body, would it have automatically been ruled as that? Especially if she were going through all sorts of family problems?”

  “If we saw no reason to think otherwise, sure. Why?”

  “Because I’m not so sure Sally is the only person George Watkins killed.” Winnie shook her head and then turned again to Greg, the phone now back in his pocket. “Are we good to go?”

  “We’re good to go.”

  She met him on the walkway leading up to George’s cabin as the whir of sirens kicked up in the distance. When they reached the door, she knocked, the sound of his footsteps, juxtaposed against the strengthening wails of the approaching police cars, impossible to miss.

  The door swung open and George stepped out, his smile at the sight of Winnie slipping behind an emotio
nless mask as Greg stepped into view.

  “Do you hear that, George?” She pointed toward the road and the comeuppance that was no more than a half mile away. “They’re coming for you.”

  Chapter 32

  Renee perused the selection of chocolate-covered strawberries, helped herself to the one with the best strawberry-to-chocolate ratio, and then pointed it at Winnie. “You do realize my son is even more in love with you than ever now, right?”

  “Ty? In love with me?” Winnie arranged the donuts across the center of the platter and then stepped back to inspect her creation. “Why?”

  “Not only do you make the”—Renee widened her eyes in a near-perfect mimic of her son—“coolest desserts ever . . . and have the coolest cat ever . . . and live on the coolest street ever, now you’re apparently a real-life superhero, too.”

  “Wait. Ty thinks Serenity Lane is the coolest street ever?”

  At Renee’s nod, Winnie pumped her hand in the air in celebration. “Yes, my work here is done.” She dropped her hand back down to the counter, rearranged the cinnamon sugar donuts against the white powdered donuts and then reached for the napkins she’d bought specifically for the occasion—even if it was a day late. “Though, between you and me, I don’t get his fascination with me.”

  “I do.”

  Jay’s arms snaked around her midsection and pulled her close, his breath against the back of her head sending shivers of excitement along every nerve ending in her body.

  “Does he know yet?” Jay asked. “About the donuts?”

  “He’s about to.” She snuck a peek toward the living room and smiled at the sight of Mr. Nelson on the couch with Lovey in his lap and Caroline at his side. Her housemate was trying desperately to make the teenager smile, and thanks to his newfound ability in magic and the coin he’d managed to locate behind her ear, he was actually succeeding a little.

  “I’m sorry about the interview. I can only imagine how much that must have hurt Caroline.”

  “So you saw it, then?” he asked.