Barbecue & Brooms (A Southern Charms Cozy Mystery Book 4)

by Bella Falls

“But me team—” Lucky protested.

  “Will be fine without you tonight,” interrupted my grandmother.

  Dash stepped forward. “So will mine. Georgia has to do most of the work anyway, so I can help you with Lucky, Doc, and then I can stay with him afterwards to make sure he’s okay.”

  His willingness to help surprised me. “Why?” The question burst out of my mouth before I thought better of it.

  The shifter stroked his beard, bringing attention to his scarred face. “Because I’m well acquainted with taking care of injuries.”

  “Begging your most gracious pardon.” Horatio joined us. “But I have taken the liberty and contacted my fair Juniper. She has arrived with great expedience, and is willing to open a pathway to wherever you may need to take our most unfortunate friend.”

  Nana contemplated the offer. “After the warning we got from that IMP agent about using the fairy path too often, I’m not too keen on taking her up on her offer.” She paused and then sighed in resignation. “Then again, I’ve been deep in talks with a most interested party of representatives from both the regional council and our friends in Charleston.” She wrinkled her brow at the mere mention of them.

  “Spies, you mean?” I hated the political fight my grandmother was in the middle of, shouldering most of the battles herself.

  Nana harrumphed in agitation. “Some of them are legitimately attending because they enjoy barbecue and broom racing. But there are some key people here with whom I’d rather not arouse suspicion. Horatio, would you please fetch your lady friend to assist us?”

  Dash raised his hand and waited for my grandmother to call on him. “If you don’t mind, ma’am, I’ll head on to Doc’s office on my own. I’ll meet you there,” he addressed the doctor.

  “Ye need not come at all. I appreciate the sentiment. ” Lucky stuck out his hand.

  Dash shook it, but stood his ground. “No, you need someone looking out for you tonight, and nobody will be suspicious if I disappear. Plus, I’ve traveled the fairy path. It doesn’t particularly care for my kind.” His eyes darted to me.

  It didn’t take much to remember the time he carried me through the path to Nana’s house and how much he struggled to stay on it. More conflicting emotions reared their ugly heads inside me, but in the company I was keeping, I didn’t have time to wrestle with them.

  “I just need to let my brother and the Whitaker sisters know where I’m headed. Charli, I’ll bring you back the clipboard you left with Georgia, and then I’ll join you at Doc’s,” Dash finished, nodding at the leprechaun.

  Doc pulled out his spell phone. “I’ll call Queenie and have her prep an exam room.”

  Nana’s watchful gaze bore into me, and I kept my head down, inspecting the tops of my shoes. Call me a coward, but my grandmother always saw too much. There were definitely some things I didn’t want her prying into.

  Mason kept a lookout to make sure no curious straggler found us. After Juniper joined us, she opened a door with a blue-green tint on the edges of it, and we watched Lucky and Doc walk through. The fairy followed behind them to make sure they made it without any problems at my grandmother’s request.

  Dash rushed back with my clipboard in tow. He tilted his head to the side, silently asking me to step away from the others.

  Despite risking Mason’s displeasure, I wanted the brief privacy. “Thank you for getting this for me.” I took the clipboard from him.

  “Georgia promised she didn’t look through it although she couldn’t vouch for her sister. Charli, I want a chance to talk to you. A real chance with just you and me. Do you think you might be able to find time this weekend?” His low voice held a lot of emotions despite his attempt to hold them back.

  “I want to talk to you, too,” I admitted. “There are things to say on both our ends, I would guess.”

  Dash’s eyes lifted to look at Mason. “It seems that there may be. Just text me when you’re ready.”

  Oh, the irony in his request. My natural snark bubbled to the surface, but pointing out his lack of use of his spell phone over the past few months wouldn’t move us forward. “I will.”

  His hand moved as if to take mine, but he clenched it into a fist instead. “See you soon.”

  My heart ached to watch him walk away, and I acknowledged the automatic fear that he might not return that flipped my stomach. With a breath, I tried to convince myself I was being silly and that I could see him again in the morning.

  Ready to face the firing squad, I rejoined my grandmother and Mason only to find her grilling him. “So nobody can nail down the exact time Lucky disappeared?” she asked.

  “We have an approximate timeline, but his loss of memory doesn’t help.” Mason took out his notepad and wrote down some things.

  Nana acknowledged my presence with a sharp question. “And how long did it take you to find him?”

  I bit my lip. “I didn’t. Dash and Mason did. Well, Mason’s detective instincts did.”

  Her eyebrows raised. “You didn’t do anything to help?”

  “She tried, Ms. Goodwin.” The detective jumped to my defense a little too fast, and he grimaced at his mistake.

  “I’ve told you before to call me Vivian, Detective.”

  Uh-oh. Her syrupy tone meant nothing good was about to happen. I looked about, praying someone would come interrupt us. Our attempts at secrecy were working too darn well.

  “Now, explain to me exactly how you found Lucky.” Nana held Mason and I in her gaze. No amount of hemming or hawing would get us out of doing exactly what she asked.

  After I gave her a brief description, she made the detective recount his perspective. When he tried to describe how his gut knew where to look, he faltered. “I’m just glad we found him when we did.”

  Nana shrugged. “It’s more than probable the fool drank too much of his own beer and stumbled out there on his own, bumping his head in the process. But the possibility that someone attacked him still exists, so I won’t dismiss it. Detective, I appreciate you keeping this matter to yourself for the moment.”

  “Even from Big Willie?” Mason did nothing to hide his displeasure at the request.

  “Definitely from him. For the moment. Trust me on this, the quieter we can keep the matter, the better it will be for our futures. Please.” Nana’s many talents included making a request sound like an order that couldn’t be defied.

  “I’ll agree not to say anything to the sheriff for tonight. Tomorrow, I want to try harder to figure out what happened,” conceded Mason. “Charli, are you ready to go back to your place?”

  Nana hooked her right arm through mine. “My granddaughter is going to give me the pleasure of her company for a little while longer, Detective. I’ll make sure she makes it home quite safely, thank you.” With a curt nod, she dismissed the detective. “Come along, Birdy, you and I need to have a discussion away from prying eyes or ears.”

  I mouthed, “Help,” at Mason, but he raised his hands in the air in defeat. We both knew there was nothing either one of us could do.

  My grandmother dragged me a few feet from where we were standing and stopped so suddenly, I lurched forward. Flourishing her fingers, she cast a bubble around us.

  “Seriously, Nana? A sound-proof spell?” My stomach churned with nerves, and I knew for sure I would never be prepared for the barrage of questions about to be aimed at me.

  “What did Mason mean by you tried?” she started with.

  So, deep end of the pool first. “I did what I always do. You know finding people is my biggest struggle.”

  “I do, but the detective made it sound like you tried…and failed.”

  I kicked a rock on the ground with the toe of my shoe. “I did. When I cast my spell, I literally couldn’t find any thread of connection.” Recalling the incident and lack of what normally happened, it made me feel empty.

  Nana glared at me for a second, and then cleared her throat and cheered up. “Okay,” she chimed.

  “Okay?”
/>
  “Yes. Okay.” Her lips curled into a smile as sweet as iced tea.

  Pixie poop, it was worse than I thought. I hoped for her to release the spell but braced for maximum impact when it remained hovering around us.

  “So tell me, Birdy, what’s been going on between you and the detective.” She batted her eyes at me.

  Now she’d filled the pool I was barely treading water in with sharks. I blinked back at her. “We’ve been hanging out together just the same as we have these past few months.”

  “And that’s all?” Nana placed an impatient hand on her hip. “Nothing more than just being together. Nothing of note at all.”

  The more the woman picked at me, the more I wanted to clam up. “Nope. Nothing to tell,” I lied and prepared to redirect a shark at her. “And since you’ve been so kind as to inquire about my relationship, perhaps I could ask you the same thing?”

  She blinked in innocence. “You want to know if I’ve been doing anything with the detective?”

  The woman was too savvy for her own good. “No, not with Mason. How about a certain retired racer who moved to Honeysuckle Hollow not too long ago? Anything about you two you’d like to share with me?”

  Caught by surprise, Nana’s interrogation faltered. With immediate haste, she burst the spelled bubble around us. “Nope. Glad we had this chat.”

  I smiled in triumph. “Me, too.”

  “You need me to find someone to take you home?”

  “No, I can make it on my own,” I assured her.

  “Good. Talk to you tomorrow, Charlotte.” Nana scuttled away from me like the guilty person she was.

  I clutched my stomach, giving in to shaking laughter at her avoidance and use of my real name. My turning tables on her must have really thrown her off balance. The celebration in my unexpected victory stopped with a gasp when I connected the dots. If I had avoided telling her about the kiss between Mason and me, then that meant that she and Billy Ray…nope. A whole bucketful of nope’s existed down that pathway of thinking.

  “Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew.” I wiped my hands down my front as if I needed to clean them off.

  Trudging back to say my goodbyes to Lucky’s team, I let them know discreetly where he was before taking all the registrations and names to the administration tent and dropping them off. Every few seconds, I shivered in disgust as my brain couldn’t stop thinking about Nana and Billy Ray. Nothing but nightmares waited for me back home and for the rest of the night.

  Chapter Seven

  The sweet scent of baked goods wafted up the stairs, waking me up from only a few hours of decent sleep. When I’d gotten back home last night, I was surprised by an impromptu pajama party thrown by my closest girlfriends. With everything that had happened at the event site, it had slipped my mind they were staying with me.

  The door to my room creaked open, and two heads popped through the entrance. With a smile and a stifled giggle, I pulled the quilt over my head.

  “Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,” Lavender sang.

  Lily snorted. “Come on, Charli. We let you sleep as late as possible and did all the work for breakfast.”

  I lowered the quilt and found Lavender’s head twisting to look up at her cousin’s face. “You so did not do any of the work in the kitchen.”

  “I laid the table,” Lily countered.

  “Ooh, like that took a whole lot of effort.” Lavender stuck her tongue out at her cousin.

  I tossed a pillow at the two of them. “Where’s the snooze button for this bickering alarm?”

  Lily took my comment as an invitation to enter my bedroom. She whipped the pillow right back at me. “You know, if you let Mason or Dash see you looking like that when you wake up, you might not have a man problem.”

  “I do not have a man problem.” My hands flew to my hair, feeling the chaos of tangles. With a groan, I got out of bed, approached my two friends with a smirk, and waited for them to move out of the way. “I just have one who kissed me and one who hasn’t yet told me where he’s been for months.”

  Lily waved a hand in front of her face. “Phew, you definitely have a bad breath problem. Go brush your teeth, girl.”

  “I was already headed that way.” I marched past them and closed the bathroom door, shutting them out in the hallway.

  The wooden barrier muffled Lavender’s voice. “If she brushes her teeth, the orange juice will taste funny.”

  “If she doesn’t brush her teeth, we might all die before we get to eat,” joked Lily.

  “I heard that,” I yelled at both of the cousins.

  When I got downstairs, my mouth watered at the delectable smells. No doubt Alison Kate had been having fun in my kitchen making some tasty goodies. I rubbed my hands together and followed the cacophony of voices into the dining room.

  A spread that could rival Nana’s awaited me, as did three smiling faces. My stomach growled, and I took inventory of a quiche that looked too perfect to eat, fluffy biscuits piled high on a platter, a tray of gooey cinnamon rolls dripping with icing, muffins with big chunks of berries nestled in a basket, and a large plate loaded with greasy bacon.

  Without a word, I rushed over and hugged my baker friend tight. Letting her go, I got down on one knee and held her hand. “Alison Kate Johnston, will you marry me?”

  We all laughed, and my friend gazed down at me with sheer joy in her eyes. “While I love you and you’re one of my bestest friends in the world, I have to say no.”

  I pushed my bottom lip out in a mock pout and got off the floor. “Why?”

  Alison Kate held up the back of her left hand and wiggled her fingers at me, pointing at the decent-sized rock that sat on her finger. “Because my man already put a ring on it.”

  I shrugged. “Fair enough, I won’t fight for you. But I think Lee should lend you to me once a month to make sure I’m well-fed.”

  We all took a place at the table and began passing our plates around so those closest to the dishes could serve up the goodies. I put a little scoop of eggs on a plate and slid it under the table where Peaches rubbed against my legs, begging for food.

  “Speaking of your being engaged,” Lavender said while licking the frosting from her lips, “when are you gonna come in and start choosing your flowers?”

  Alison Kate stopped mid-bite of a piece of bacon. “I know, I’m way behind on things. But the bakery’s been incredibly busy these days with more and more people coming to Honeysuckle, especially on the weekends. Also, Lee’s been a little…”

  The rest of us stopped eating and waited for her to finish her thought. We’d all talked about it amongst our group, but none of us wanted to say anything directly to our most sensitive friend. Ever since coming back from making his deal with the spell phones and starting his own spellcasting consulting company in an old barn he’d renovated with the money he’d made, Lee had talked more about the exciting new ideas he and a few new employees were coming up with and spent less time cherishing his fiancée.

  “You could come out with me today,” I suggested, going back to eating to try and take away some of the tension in the room. “I’m sure Lee will want to show off the work he’s doing with Billy Ray’s equipment.”

  A dark shadow of doubt passed over my friend’s face, but Alison Kate shook off her concern with a sigh and finished her slice of bacon. “I know he loves racing, too. I just hope he loves me a little bit more.”

  Lily’s chair scraped on the floor as she pushed herself away from the table. She approached Alison Kate and threw her arms around our friend’s neck.

  “He does love you. He’s just got a lot more going on in his life.” She planted a kiss on Alison Kate’s cheek. “But you just say the word, and I promise that all of us girls will hex him so hard he confirms a date then and there.”

  Our friend sniffed back the tears that threatened to spill and patted Lily’s arm, letting her go back to her seat. “I know I’m being silly.” She looked around the table at all of us. “And I haven’t even asked you gi
rls to be my bridesmaids yet.”

  The front door slammed shut and Blythe yelled out her greetings. Without saying anything else, she picked up a plate and reached over in front of me, snagging the largest cinnamon roll. She took a massive bite and chewed on it while we all stared at her.

  “Y’all, it’s been a heckuva morning, and it’s not even past ten yet,” she explained, taking another big mouthful. When she finally noticed the heavy silence, she stopped. “What?”

  “We were just about to accept being Alison Kate’s bridesmaids,” I stated in a calm but very purposeful tone.

  “Oh-h-h, sorry. Sure, I’m up for it.” Blythe reached across me again and grabbed a piece of bacon.

  Alison Kate giggled. “It’s fine, y’all. I promise I won’t make you wear anything too poofy or ridiculous. Blythe, tell us what has your feathers ruffled.”

  Our busy friend regaled us with her troubles of making sure guests were situated in the volunteered houses across Honeysuckle. She assured the two Blackwood cousins that the group staying in their place was perfectly lovely. But there had already been more than a few calls to handle small problems this morning.

  “There’s a gang of male witches I’m not so fond of. Turns out a couple of them are staying at the Turner place, but a bigger and more unpleasant part of their group are sleeping in an RV out at the event site. But that didn’t stop them from coming into town and doing a little damage in the backyard.” Blythe stopped long enough to gulp down her entire glass of fresh orange juice.

  “You should delegate to someone else,” I suggested. “You can’t take on something that big all by yourself.”

  Blythe nodded. “I’m way ahead of you. I’d ask Eveline to help, but she’s been wanting to spend time with Raif’s barbecue team. I suspect the newest member and master of the grill has piqued her interest.”

  “Who’re you going to ask?” Lily buttered her biscuit, missing Blythe’s innocent smile aimed in her direction.

  “Hello, friend. Would you mind helping me manage the housing situation for the weekend?” Blythe blinked her eyes at Lily.