“Sure thing. I have to make another candy bar pie. People are going nuts for it.”
Beatrice fetched cream cheese from the industrial-sized fridge. “Can’t go wrong with peanut butter cups, M&Ms, and Rolos stuffed into a blondie. Pretty much no-fail.”
Once the cupcakes had cooled, Beatrice iced the tops with the help of a pastry bag and placed them on a tray. She took a photo of their handiwork and uploaded it to the Cozy Cat Café’s Instagram account. Posting photos always brought in a rush of customers who were dying for an excuse to get away from their desks.
Finished with her social media duties, she took the cupcakes out to the display case. Lucky was stalking around the café aimlessly—it was kind of odd to see one black cat moving amid all the stock-still ones. Hamish and Petunia were nowhere in sight, which meant they were probably holed up in the window seat in her office being a perfect pair of lovebirds. Ugh love. Who needed it when you had cupcakes?
Beatrice slotted the tray into place and went around to the other side to admire Zoe’s creations. The two of them had had a lot of fun coming up with new Halloween treat ideas. There were always a couple of tried-and-true classics but Beatrice liked to mix it up and keeps things interesting for both Zoe and the customers.
Some of her favorites included the glistening rows of Oreo bat truffles, puffy white ghost meringues, eerie black poison toffee apples, and cute spider peanut butter chocolate cookies. Beatrice couldn’t resist taking her smartphone out of her pocket and angling for another photo.
“You’ll get too much glare if you shoot through the case,” said a honey-warm voice over her shoulder.
Beatrice was confused, thinking it was Matthew. Instead, she saw someone a bit shorter and squarer—Gerald Pine, the owner of her favorite watering hole The Ashbrook Grape. He was more of a hands-off type of owner and spent most of his time in Bar Harbor.
Beatrice hadn’t seen him in a while. He had short tousled hair and the kind of sly smile you see on Richard Gere. Why had she not remembered that?
“Hi Gerald, fancy seeing you.”
He smiled, revealing a dazzling row of white teeth. Beatrice fumbled with her phone and almost dropped it.
“Thought I’d stay for a week, enjoy the Halloween festivities. I was just strolling by when I caught the most delightful whiff of … something. Then I remembered what an excellent cup of coffee you make here.”
“Well heck, let me get you one, Gerald. To go or stay?”
“To stay, but only if you’ll join me.”
Beatrice smiled nervously. She was distracted by the sight of a woman walking in front of her store. Ash brown hair, long legs. Joan. She glanced into the café and, spotting Beatrice, she looked straight ahead and walked faster.
In that moment, Beatrice knew what she had to do. Joan had managed to get a date with Matthew. Now she had to land her own. She dashed into the kitchen.
“Zoe, I have a potential victim. A date victim. He’s probably the only eligible man within fifty miles and I have to bag him.”
The dark-haired chef turned around, pastry bag of icing suspended in the air. “But we already went on Facebook for like five hours and found no one.”
“I know, but we overlooked our most eligible part-time bachelor: Gerald Pine.”
Zoe gasped and slapped her glove-covered hands to her mouth. “Yes, Beatrice, yes! He is a total silver fox.”
“A silver what? Never mind, just fix me so I don’t look a complete mess. How’s my hair?”
“Boring. And you look like you stepped out of an L.L. Bean catalogue, but we can’t change that right now.”
Zoe dragged Beatrice to the employee washroom. She pulled all the pins out of her boss’s hair, combed it out and sprayed so much hairspray they could hardly breathe. Then she added a dab of lipstick.
“Go get ‘em tiger!” Zoe hissed as Beatrice hustled out to make Gerald’s coffee.
Gerald looked faintly amused as Beatrice returned with their coffee—probably because she looked so different. He was sitting on a blue divan against the wall. Lucky was on his lap, purring up a storm, while Petunia sat next to him to receive pats. Even Hamish was rubbing his head against Gerald’s shoe.
“Wow, they’re never like this,” Beatrice said. She set the coffee on the table in front of them and then perched on the divan. “Lucky sure, but the other two are usually more aloof with people they don’t know. Did you wash your clothes in catnip?”
Gerald laughed. “Nope. Cats always like me, though I’m never sure why. Beatrice I have to tell you, this café is so marvellous. You’ve done wonders with the decor. And I can’t stop looking at all the treats. How’s business? Good, I bet.”
“Sure is. I can barely keep on top of things. With all the tourists coming out to see the fall colors it’s been a madhouse. Once the snow settles in, things should quiet down. It’s always that way.”
He nodded. “I hear you. Thank goodness I have quite a few regulars at The Grape—they tide me through the winter.”
Beatrice patted Petunia’s downy head. She blinked her big china blue eyes at her owner and then turned back to gaze lovingly at Gerald. “Well, you’ll be happy to know I’m one of those regulars. I’m there every chance I get—not as often as I’d like, though.”
Zoe came out then, bearing a plate of heart-shaped shortbread cookies. She smiled widely at Gerald. “Thought you might want something to snack on.”
Beatrice grabbed a cookie and tore at it anxiously. Where on earth had Zoe found heart-shaped cookies? They must have been in the freezer. But Gerald didn’t seem to notice the shortbread’s obvious romantic message.
“Well, you must be gearing up for the Halloween fair,” he said, chewing amiably. “Your latte creation is always one of the most anticipated items.”
“Ugh. To tell you the truth, I’ve been so busy I haven’t come up with an idea yet.”
Gerald scratched Petunia’s head absently. “Well, salted caramel is all the rage these days. You haven’t done that before, right?”
“In my desserts yes, but not my drinks.” She snapped her fingers, startling the cats. “I’ve got it! A salted caramel mocha latte! I’ll finish it off with whipped cream and a sprinkling of our salted caramel toffee. Maybe I could even add crumbled brownies…” Beatrice’s imagination began to race.
Gerald smiled at her enthusiasm. “Listen Bee, why don’t we talk food sometime? We’re not direct competitors after all and it’d be good to bounce around new ideas with someone who knows the business. What do you say?”
YES! said the voice inside Beatrice’s head. A thousand times yes!
“I’ll have to check my schedule,” she said, taking a quick sip of her coffee. “I think I could make that work.”
4
The rest of the afternoon passed in a flash. Beatrice holed up in her office. She was supposed to be paying bills but instead she found herself staring into space, patting the cats.
Hamish especially loved all the extra attention. He liked to think he was still the number one cat since he’d been there first. He jumped up in her lap and butted his head against her arm, begging for the special treats he knew were locked away in his owner’s desk.
“Look at you being so affectionate,” Beatrice said, popping a treat into his mouth. “You’ve been so wrapped up with Petunia that Lucky and I have missed you.” She caught Lucky glaring at her from his perch on the back of the sofa. “Well, Lucky expresses it in a funny way.”
She kissed his tawny head. The black points of fur on the ends of his ears stuck straight up as he happily crunched away at his treat. “Would you like to have a daddy too? How about that?”
Hamish abruptly stopped chewing and narrowed his eyes at her.
“Well, maybe not,” Beatrice conceded.
Her cell rang. It was Matthew, her ex-husband and best friend. Since they’d divorced in their early twenties, Matthew had re-married and then been widowed. Since that time they’d become fast friends, strangely enough.
“Hey, what’s going on?” she said.
“Nothing much. Just finished work. I’ve been texting you all afternoon—where’ve you been? You haven’t forgotten we’re supposed to go to the pumpkin carving competition tonight, have you?”
Pumpkin carving…what? “That’s tonight? For some reason I thought it was next week.”
“No scatterbrains. Don’t say you can’t. We always go together.”
A little glow lit up in Beatrice’s heart. It was one of their joint rituals, like hosting a Halloween party for all their friends. “Of course I can go. I’m just a bit scattered after that bomb blew up in front of my car this morning.”
There was a pause on the other line. “Bomb? Beatrice, what bomb are you talking about?”
She knew that when he called her “Beatrice” not “Bee” he was serious.
“Listen, I’ll tell you all about it when you pick me up. Is five o’clock good? See you then.” She promptly hung up the phone before Matthew could ask any more questions. She didn’t want to worry him with the details of her latest case.
The rest of the afternoon flew by. Beatrice finished paying all the bills and managed to update the café website with photos of their new baked goods.
She looked guiltily at her inbox where a new proposal from the Ashbrook Business Association had been sitting forever. As a senior member, she was charged with reviewing and approving all paperwork but she was often behind in her duties. This proposal concerned a new, revamped Christmas market to be held in December. Frank, the BA president, had been waiting on her for days—or was it weeks?
Well, forget Christmas. First Beatrice had to get through Halloween. And also, not get killed by bombs in the process.
“Bee, stop hanging up on me. It’s worse when you do because I worry more.”
Beatrice swivelled around slowly to see Matthew leaning against the doorframe. He’d changed out of his ranger uniform (he worked at the nearby White Mountain National Forest) into more casual jeans and a tweed blazer. He was taller and leaner than Gerald with a full head of silver wavy hair and sharp blue eyes that noticed everything.
The cats had already run over to greet him and were intently sniffing his pant leg.
“I know, I know. It’s just the sort of thing that needs to be explained in person,” Beatrice said. “Listen, why don’t I rustle us up an early dinner and we can chat with full stomachs?”
Ten minutes in the kitchen gave Beatrice enough time to figure out how to explain the bomb to Matthew without raising too much alarm. She brought out two bowls of carrot-ginger soup with toasted rye bread and set them on their favorite table by the window.
Unfortunately, Matthew interrupted her prepared speech. “You know, I was thinking a lot today how around Halloween this kind of stuff always happens. Maybe not as dramatic as a bomb. But I remember last year that Ryan Jackson’s whole house was spray painted red: walls, doors, windows. I think Frank Harpswell, your BA president, he reported that his mailbox was spray painted and totally destroyed, too. This wasn’t just a bunch of bored kids goofing off. It was deliberate.”
“The sheriff thinks so too,” Beatrice said. She blew on a spoonful of soup. “In fact, he has a whole file of these pranks. But with everything that happened with Bernie, he’s got his hands full. So, the case’s mine to solve.”
Beatrice expected Matthew to scold her. She knew he didn’t like her getting mixed up in dangerous situations.
Instead, he threw her a total curveball by smiling and saying, “Congrats! Your very own case.”
They talked for a bit, between slurps of soup, about the different pranks in the file and where Beatrice should start. They both agreed that asking around at the pumpkin carving competition might be a good start. Surely someone had to have a clue what these pranks were all about?
As they finished their meal, Beatrice wiped her lips with a cloth napkin. Something was bothering her and she had talk to Matthew about it.
“Matt, you don’t think Joan blames me, uh, that you won’t take her out on a second date?”
He stopped chewing his rye toast for a moment, blinking. “What? Where did you get such an idea? I didn’t say anything about you, just that I thought we weren’t compatible.”
“Okay then, well why did she walk by the café earlier today and instead of waving like she usually does, she looked away, and walked on like her life depended on it?”
Matthew sighed. “Alright, I guess you’re right. Though I still don’t get why she blames you. Do you want me to talk to her?”
“No, no don’t do that. I don’t want to make it a bigger issue that it already is. I hope she’ll come around after a bit.”
After dinner, the two humans and three cats walked over to the church together. Every year, the church held a charity pumpkin-carving contest. You had to pay to enter or buy tickets to vote on your favorite creations, with all proceeds going towards buying supplies for the church’s soup kitchen.
She and Matthew always entered as a team. They never won, or even placed, but it was still tons of fun. Since Beatrice didn’t have any children of her own, and Matthew’s (from his second wife) had grown up and moved away, this was a fun way to join the Halloween festivities with other neighborhood families.
The church basement was humming with activity. It was a homely space with low ceilings and squashed aboveground windows but it was always neat and clean, with a cute kid’s corner painted in bright colors. The organizers had set up tables in rows and laid newspaper over them. Carving tools were at the ready.
Bridget Miller, the mayor’s former secretary, who, as far as Beatrice could tell, was effectively now running the town on her own, took Matthew’s registration card. She was wearing her usual loud floral prints, high heels, and loads of makeup, though it didn’t disguise the dark circles under her eyes.”
“All paid up, are you? Great. Your spot is going to be number twenty-three over by that window.”
“Thanks Bridge. How are you holding up, anyway?”
The woman’s eyes misted over. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about Bernie. The media are trying to paint him like some kind of devil. I just feel sad for his sake, and for Nancy’s.”
Nancy Sullivan was Bernie’s former wife. Beatrice squeezed her hand. “Well, you call me if you need anyone to talk to, okay?”
Then Matthew was at her elbow whispering to her, “I’m just telling you this to prepare you: Abigail Freedman is seated right next to us.”
Beatrice’s eyes opened wide. “The organizers know we go together like oil and vinegar! Why would they do that?”
“Maybe it was someone’s idea of a joke? C’mon, let’s try to be as dignified about this as possible.”
Keeping her head held high, Beatrice eyed her nemesis out of the corner of her eye. As the owner of the Purple Lilac Café, Abigail was direct competition. This wouldn’t have bothered Beatrice if they’d been friendly but Abigail repeatedly stole recipe ideas from her and treated her with nothing but disdain.
Once at their station, Abigail turned towards them, a tight smile on her lips. She wore her usual heavy black plastic glasses. They stood out severely against her rail-thin frame.
“My, my, who do we have here?” she trilled. “The judges must have thought you were slacking off too much last year, Beatrice. Had to put you next to a real worker bee to get you motivated.”
“I’m just here to have fun. It’s not about winning, it’s about making money for the soup kitchen.”
Abigail picked up her carving knife and twirled it in her fingers aimlessly. “Well, if you’re not fussed about winning, I’m happy to do it for you.”
“She’s using reverse psychology on you,” Matthew whispered in Beatrice’s ear. “Don’t let her rile you up.”
But there was nothing that got Beatrice going more than a little competition. She whipped out her smartphone and turned to Pinterest for ideas. Seconds later, she’d found the perfect idea—an entire scene wi
th a cat, a moon, and tombstones in the background. It was intricate but she was a pastry chef. She’d made cakes way more elaborate than this.
How hard could it be?
“Okay Matthew, how do you feel about re-creating this?” she asked, handing him her phone.
His eyes bulged and then he let go some good-natured guffaws. “Uh it’s nice but haven’t you forgotten that last year all we did was a cat face? And even that went badly? You accidentally cut out one of its eyeballs and the mouth was so crooked it looked positively diabolical.”
Beatrice sighed. “I believe we can do this, Matt. We just need to go slow and steady. And maybe get the cats to distract Abigail.”
She bent down, picked up Petunia and softly whispered in her ear. Petunia’s doll-like face remained completely impassive but as soon as Beatrice put her down, she promptly trotted over to Abigail’s post and began to watch her intently.
“Alright everyone, take your stations,” boomed Reggie Miller, the head of the church volunteer committee. “We’re beginning right now. You have an hour to complete your carving and after that time, voting and judging will begin.”
Matthew did the tough work of sawing off the top and gutting the pumpkin while Beatrice drew an outline with marker. As it turned out, there were a lot of fine details and she ended up simplifying the design a fair bit. The pair of them stood back and observed their handiwork.
“Well, it’s something…” Matthew said.
Beatrice burst into laughter. “If by ‘something’ you mean the design looks like the squiggles of a third grader, sure. How are we ever supposed to carve this mess?”
They snuck a look over at Abigail, who was up to her elbows in pumpkin guts and intently carving away at what looked to be an image of Elsa from the popular Disney movie Frozen.
“Bold move,” Matthew said. “She’s going for a real crowd pleaser this year.”
Abigail was making real progress, but she wasn’t doing it quickly—Petunia had seen to that. She batted a carving tool off the table so it clattered to the floor, then jumped up and began to arch her back against the woman’s arms, staring up at her adoringly with her patented “I know you can’t resist me, so don’t even try” look.
The Purrfect Halloween Prank: A Beatrice Young Cozy Cat Mystery (Beatrice Young Cozy Cat Mysteries Book 4) Page 2