by Morgana Best
“Thanks,” Stevens said at the door with a smile that showed every tooth she had. The male cop had already headed out the door, and wasted no time climbing behind the wheel of the police vehicle parked at the curb in front of the cake shop. Another good sign for potential customers, I thought sarcastically.
By the time I locked the door behind them, we were officially ten minutes past closing time.
“So it was something that shows up in rat poison,” Thyme said after the door was locked.
I nodded. “But old rat poison, right? That’s the way she made it sound. Like it was something that wasn’t in rat poisons made today.”
Thyme tapped her chin. “Clever of you to catch that,” she said. “Maybe whatever it was, was too dangerous. They took it off the market.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“If we could find out what it could be, that could help us out with this spell. I have to set parameters, and if we had a smaller list, it would go faster.”
“Well then, let’s check it out,” I said, leading the way to the back room. There was a small table in the room in the far corner, next to the rear door which led out to the alley that ran behind the shop, and contained a dumpster. On the table was an older model computer, but the internet was good, and I hadn’t seen the need to update.
I sat in a metal folding chair and Thyme leaned forward next to me, her hands palm down on the table.
“Where do we start?” I asked, already googling ‘old rat poisons’ before Thyme had a chance to answer. “Thyme?” I said, as she was staring off at the far wall.
“You know, I’ve just remembered something,” she said. “Brant came to the shop once, not too long before your aunt died, and he was complaining that his hair was falling out. Doesn’t arsenic cause hair to fall out? Probably other poisons do, too.”
I shrugged and typed in, ‘Poisons that cause hair loss’.
We spent a few minutes going through the search results, and Thyme took notes. After ten or so minutes, we had a list of poisons known to cause hair loss: arsenic, boric acid, thallium, meadow saffron, and lead. These could all lead to hair loss if introduced regularly to the body.
“Now we have to cross check to see if any of these things were in old rat poison,” I said. My next search, ‘old rat poison ingredients,’ was a good guess, because in only a few minutes of searching a couple different pages we had the list narrowed down from five to three. Arsenic, thallium, and lead had all once been used in rat poison, but had all been banned in the last few decades.
Thyme scribbled out the poisons that hadn’t made the cut. “Okay, that helps a lot,” she said as the two of us sat back down on the floor, and she set up the spell once more.
She laid out the herbs. “Althea,” she said, “for truth. Calamus root and licorice root for compulsion.”
She set down the candle and then lighted it with a silver lighter. She then reached to her neck and pulled up a piece of clear quartz that hung from a gold chain. She tugged the chain over her head and held it up for me to see.
“You need to get yourself one of these, girl,” Thyme said. “It’s a pendulum. I use it a lot.”
“What does it do?” I asked.
“I’ll write the names of the three poisons and the pendulum will swing over the poison that killed Brant McCallum.”
I clasped my hands together with delight. “Well, we can do that to find out his killer!” I exclaimed. “We can write the names of all the suspects on pieces of paper, and the pendulum can tell us who the murderer was.”
Thyme shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. It would be great if it did. I know all the suspects.”
“So?” I was puzzled.
“Thinking gets in the way,” she said. “I know the suspects personally, so I’m attached to the outcome, even if subconsciously. If I have any information, the pendulum will be influenced.”
I pulled a long face, trying to take it all in.
“I’ll show you how it works,” Thyme said, and she took up the notebook again. She wrote down the three poisons on a separate sheet of paper for each and then tore them out. She placed them at the three equal points around the candle. She then took the quartz and held it by the end of the chain. She let it dangle over the flame of the candle. Slowly, it began to rock.
I thought Thyme must have been moving it on purpose, but as I watched her hand, I realized she wasn’t moving at all. Her fingers were as still as a statue. The crystal was moving on its own. The rocking became more like a circle, growing wider.
Suddenly, the quartz swung in the direction of one piece of paper, and then hovered over it. I leaned forward to read the page. Written in Thyme’s loopy, large scrawl was one word, ‘thallium’.
“There you go,” Thyme said, smiling as she flicked her wrist and the chain fell. She stood up, picked up a silver candle snuffer, and then used it to extinguish the flame. Smoke, gray and thick, curled up from the wick. Thyme took the candle and put it back in the box, and then gathered up the herbs.
“So now we know what killed Brant,” I said.
Chapter 21
I stood in the back room, staring with horror at the cupcakes. Thyme was busy out front in the show room. I thought that was a silly name for the front of the cake store. It made me think of a car lot, but Thyme was so used to calling it that. I didn’t think I could get her to change now. Even if I could, I didn’t have an alternate name for it.
Thyme had left me alone in the kitchen to take a batch of cupcakes out of the oven, and to put the icing on an already cooked batch of cupcakes.
I hurried to the oven when the timer sounded. I tugged on two oven mitts and reached in with both hands, pulling out a hot pan of cupcakes. I left them on top of the oven to cool. I slipped off the oven mitts and turned my attention to the cooling rack laden with cakes on the counter.
Thyme had set everything out that I would need, in a few different stations. There was a mixing station and a decorating station, with everything ready to go in the order it would be needed.
The cooling rack held red velvet cupcakes, and I regarded them with fear. It was time for the icing. Despite the fact that Thyme and Ruprecht had told me over and over again that my problem was simply with fire, and that in turn meant that I would be a talented kitchen witch once I could control the fire, the thought of anything to do with baking filled me with trepidation, if not outright horror.
With Thyme’s words that coloring icing was one of the easiest tasks in the kitchen ringing in my ears, I got right to it. Thyme had earlier demonstrated a very neat looking red and white swirl icing, so I would need to color some of the icing red. She had put a line of the red icing and a line of plain white icing in a pastry bag. When she squeezed the tip and piped the icing high on the cupcake, it came out in a swirl.
I put some of the white icing into a smaller bowl and set it on the counter. There was a line of food coloring up on the small shelf above the counter, and I reached for the red. As I did, my hand brushed a smaller bottle. It tipped over and the small rubber cork fell out and into the icing bowl. Before I could react, the contents of the bottle had emptied into the icing.
“Shoot,” I said. The material from the bottle smelled strongly of strawberries, and I figured that was exactly what it was. Red strawberry flavoring. There simply wasn’t enough icing made to start over, and judging by the muffled voices I heard out on the show floor, there wasn’t enough time to make a whole new batch. I used a spatula to get the cork out of the icing.
A few minutes later, the icing was mixed and in the pastry bag. I took some time to pipe the icing onto the red velvet cupcakes, and then I took the tray and hurried out to the counter. Thyme was busy serving. She was used to this, and she was in her element. I knew Thyme would be happier if she could make everything in the back forever, but she also knew that I had to start somewhere. That is why she had put me where I would do the least damage. Or so she thought.
I was mixing the icing for the dou
ble chocolate chip cupcakes when I heard Thyme calling my name. I thought I detected a note of panic in her voice, so I stopped what I was doing and rushed out into the show room.
There were two customers. I recognized the first, a regular customer. She was in her fifties, had a sharp face with a nose like a hawk’s beak, and was the principal at the local Catholic school. She was very proper, and rather uptight. That’s why I found it quite odd that the woman had taken off one of her thick tan stockings and was now twirling it over her head.
As I watched, the woman let the stocking sail toward the other person in the shop. This was also a regular customer, Mr. Reynolds, a man of around sixty with a big fat nose that was always so red it looked like a tomato. He’d obviously had severe acne as a kid, evident by the pock marks on both his cheeks. His eyes were beady and small, and his teeth yellow and crooked. He had never been married, and likely never would be. His attitude was even worse than his looks.
The stocking landed on his shoulder, and he picked it off with a look of disgust. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, lady, but you need to stop,” he said.
“I’ll stop when you love me!” the woman shouted.
“Mrs. Clutterbuck, are you all right?” Thyme asked.
“I’m perfect,” the woman answered in a shrill voice. “My prayers have been answered! I’ve never seen a man more perfect for me!”
“If this is some kind of joke, it needs to stop!” Mr. Reynolds said.
I turned to Thyme. “What’s happening?”
“You’re watching it!” Thyme said. “She ordered a cupcake, had one bite, and then she hugged Mr. Reynolds. Then she took off her stocking and threw it at him.”
“Yes, I saw that part,” I said. “I couldn’t miss it.”
“Tell me you love me!” she wailed.
Mr. Reynolds backed away. “I don’t even know your name!”
“And I don’t know yours!” Mrs. Clutterbuck said. “Mine is Claudia. Do you like it? Oh, learning about someone, the first part of new love, I adore it. I adore you! Please, tell me your name! Tell me everything about you; I have to know!”
The woman flung herself forward, and slid her arms around the man.
He looked like he needed help. “I only wanted a cupcake! What kind of place are you running here?” he asked.
Thyme took me by the arm. “Did you put anything in these cupcakes?” she whispered. “She had a red velvet cupcake.”
I blanched. “I dropped some strawberry flavoring into it.”
“Oh no,” Thyme said, shaking her head.
“It wasn’t strawberry flavoring, was it?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. A little brown bottle with a black rubber stopper?”
“Yes.”
“It was a love potion,” Thyme said.
I looked over at Mr. Reynolds. He had his arm up to protect his face as Claudia Clutterbuck tried to press her lips to his.
“I’ll have to whip up an antidote. She bit into it, and fell in love with the first man she saw. It takes months to wear off, so I have to reverse it. I’m sorry. I didn’t clean up like I should have. That should have never been out.”
I wasn’t sure why Thyme even had a love potion, and then for an amusing minute I thought about what I could do with a vial of the stuff, but as Thyme went through the swinging door to the back, Mr. Reynolds brought me out of my thoughts and back to the situation.
“I would like to leave!” he said firmly to Mrs. Clutterbuck, who was blocking the exit.
“Take me with you. Tell me your name!” Claudia Clutterbuck said, before she peppered Mr. Reynolds’s cheek with kisses.
“It’s Franklin!” the man screamed as he finally pushed the woman away. She was already going back for him when I ran around the counter and put my hands on Mrs. Clutterbuck’s arms.
“Quick, go!” I yelled, and Mr. Reynolds nodded and hurried for the door.
“No! My love! Franklin! What wonderful times we’ll have!” Mrs. Clutterbuck screamed, but when the man disappeared out the door, she burst into tears and practically fell down. The only thing keeping her from crumpling to the floor was my arm. “You sent him away! My love! We were to be married!”
“I don’t think he proposed, exactly,” I said.
The older woman sighed sharply. “Well, we were to be engaged at some later date. I just know it!”
I nodded and patted the woman’s head as she cried more. “Well, you know, they say true love can conquer anything,” she said. “So a little time apart, that’ll be nothing.” She appeared to perk up. She got to her feet, but I kept a hand on her, in case she tried to tear out of the door after the man she suddenly loved. “I love him more than anything. Have you ever loved anyone?”
I thought it best to humor her. “I thought I did.”
“Who was your first? Franklin wasn’t my first love, but he was my greatest, so I guess we broke that mold.”
“The first boy I had a crush on was named Ean Jackson,” I said. “We went to high school together.”
“Ah,” Claudia sighed as she clasped her hands together, as if she were praying. “Young love!”
“Not exactly. He didn’t feel the same about me.”
“You should have told him how you felt!” the older woman said. “Think of what your life could have been. You never know. One little question, and things end up different.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I said. Five minutes ago I hadn’t even known that a love potion was real. It was just another thing in the long list of witch-related facts I had no trouble accepting these days. Thyme had said ‘love potion’, and I had gone right along with it. It was strange.
Thyme came through the swinging door and held up a small vial. She motioned me over. “She needs to drink this,” she said. “Where’s the guy?”
“He ran when he could.”
“I would have, too.”
I grinned and took the vial. I turned to Mrs. Clutterbuck. “You should have a drink of this,” I said.
“No, I couldn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t feel thirsty. I feel nothing but the fiery love I have for Franklin. Oh, my Franklin, when will I see his face again?”
“Franklin told me he loves women to drink this,” I said, saying the first thing that came into my head.
“Really?” Mrs. Clutterbuck said as her brow quirked. She stepped forward and snatched up the vial. She tilted her head back and swallowed the contents in one gulp.
The change was immediate. The woman seemed to calm, seemed to become herself as soon as the liquid was down her throat. She shook her head softly. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Where am I?”
“The cake store,” I said, “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I just feel odd. What happened? Why do I feel like this?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“You had a bit of a spell,” Thyme said, and she smirked at me. “You should be okay now. Would you like some water?”
“Yes, please,” the principal said. “My throat is a bit dry, and my heart is beating so fast. It feels strange.”
“It’s all passed now,” I said, going to the counter and taking the cup of water from Thyme. I handed it to Mrs. Clutterbuck and watched her down it.
“I just have one more question,” Claudia Clutterbuck said.
Thyme and I looked at each another. I wasn’t sure what the woman was going to say. I wasn’t sure if she remembered anything. She seemed not to, but I steeled myself for the question anyway.
“Yes?” I asked, tentatively.
“Why is my right leg colder than the left?”
Chapter 22
I sighed as I stood behind the counter of the cake shop. I was staring at the door. It hadn’t been opened in hours. In fact, the last person who had opened it was Thyme, when she arrived at work in the morning.
“People still think we killed Brant. I’m sure they think we did it accidentally, but still…” Thyme said, coming through the swing
ing door to stand next to me at the counter.
I shook my head. “We’ll figure it out. We just need to figure out how to get the people back into this place.”
Thyme nodded. “We just need to prove it wasn’t us.”
“You’re right,” I said. “And we’re trying, but all we’ve found out so far is that one politician likes to wear dresses, and that Melanie digs up secret boxes.”
Thyme laughed. “So what’s our next step?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I didn’t know what we could do now. We had followed all four of our suspects, and been unable to find out anything about them that would indicate they had murdered Brant. For the most part, they all seemed relatively normal.
In fact, both of us had began to wonder if we were on the wrong track altogether. Maybe there was someone we had missed, a suspect we weren’t even considering. A man like Brant had made a lot of people mad, so surely there was someone else out there. Thyme and I had discussed that fact the previous day.
Thyme brought something else up, as we stood behind the counter. “What if it wasn’t meant for Brant?”
I didn’t understand. I turned and looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“Just, what if Brant got poisoned, but he wasn’t supposed to?”
“You think it was some crazed person trying to kill at random? But if that’s the case, I don’t know how we could ever prove it, so I think we should just focus on our four. Plus if it was a homicidal maniac, they surely would’ve killed again.”
Thyme bit her fingernail. “I suppose you’re right. Well, what do you want to do now? We can call Ruprecht and Mint, do some more recon.”
I laughed. “You and that ‘recon’ word,” I said. “No, I think we can stick together today, me and you.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“You ever heard of dumpster diving?”
Thyme laughed and nodded. “I have, and I don’t think I’m going to enjoy today.”