The Cupcake Coven

by Ashlyn Chase

  “Can I help?”

  She swiveled toward him. “You know how to bake?”

  He chuckled. “Unfortunately, no. But I’m a quick learner.” He glanced around the kitchen. “Don’t you have any help?”

  She sighed. “No. I used to, but my assistant quit.”

  “And left you in the lurch? That wasn’t very nice.”

  “I wasn’t able to pay her what she was worth—and she got benefits at the supermarket bakery.”

  “Oh. That sucks.” He closed his eyes and took a big appreciative whiff. “I’ll bet their stuff doesn’t taste half as good as yours smells. I’d work for free if I could live in your store room and stuff my face a couple times a day.”

  Rebecca pictured him sleeping on sacks of flour and almost laughed. “Last night, you said you needed a job, right?”

  “I did. Are you wantin’ some help?”

  “Boy, do I. I can’t pay much, I’m afraid.”

  He smiled. “Well, I’m about as cheap as they come. I was kiddin’ about living here and eatin’ the profits. I just need to pay for my room at the flop house.”

  “The what?”

  “I guess it’s what y’all up here call a boarding house. A place to lay your head and share a bath with half a dozen guys, but you can rent week to week.”

  “That sounds awful!”

  “It ain’t too bad. It’s kind of like the bunkhouse at the ranch back home.”

  “You were a rancher?”

  He nodded proudly. “I’m the foreman, and I was being groomed—pardon the pun—to take over as ranch manager when the current one retires. I got a nice little cabin to myself, but I started out as a regular ranch hand when I was sixteen and still goin’ to school.”

  She set her hands on her slim apron-covered hips. “So what the heck are you doing here?”

  His gaze dropped to his feet, and he scuffed the already scratched linoleum with the toe of his boot. When he lifted his head, his eyes were a little glazed, like he was trying to hold back tears.

  “I wasn’t gonna tell ya, but it might be good to talk about it with someone other than cranky police detectives. I’m lookin’ for my sister. She was comin’ to New England to research our roots. I got one phone call sayin’ she made it here, then nothin’.”

  “Oh, my Goddess! How long has she been—um, gone?”

  “She’s been missing for three months. She was a senior at college in Austin and was just goin’ for a week over spring break. She was learnin’ about our family tree. At first, I thought she was probably just caught up in her research and gettin’ some leads that took her to different places, but she never answered any of my follow-up phone calls, e-mails, texts, nothin’. She’d never let me worry like that, and she wouldn’t miss her graduation, so somethin’ must be drastically wrong.”

  “And you already talked to the police…”

  “Yeah. But with her bein’ an adult and only one phone call sayin’ she was in Salem, Mass, they’re not knocking themselves out to find her.”

  “Are you sure she made it to New England?”

  “Yeah. They couldn’t trace the call from three months ago to an exact spot, but they narrowed it to the Salem area, so she definitely made it to New England—although one cop said she might’a been callin’ from Narnia.”

  Rebecca noticed his accent had become thicker. Maybe talking about home and family brought it on, or maybe he just didn’t bother to hide it when he was upset. At any rate, she couldn’t help feeling for him and wishing she could help.

  She rested her hand on his arm. “Is there anything I can do?”

  He gave her a sad smile. “I don’t know. I spent a month in Salem, and I think I talked to every witch, wizard and goblin down there.”

  Rebecca tried to suppress a smile but was only partially successful. “Goblin? Really?”

  “Hey some of them people…they looked pretty strange.”

  “Granted. So how did you end up here in a coven of witches? Are you really a solitary?”

  He frowned. “I guess I am now. Shasta, that’s my sister’s name…she became a Wiccan in Austin. I started looking for clues there and began learning about the religion she believed in, hopin’ it would give me some insight.”

  “Did it?”

  “Maybe. I think I figured out what she found attractive about it…It’s like her, all nature-based, loving, and maternal-like. I just knew she’d seek out her own kind wherever she went. That’s probably what drew her to Salem, Mass. Until last night, I had no idea witches had so many names. I was just callin’ her Shasta around Salem.”

  The timer buzzed and Rebecca had to stop and take out her bear claws.

  “Can I help with that?” he asked.

  “No. But as soon as they cool, you can arrange them on a clean tray and put them in the display case for me.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  She had to get her muffins mixed, but she hated to turn on the mixer and drown out their conversation. Oh well. She’d just have to raise her voice. Customers wouldn’t give her a break if the muffins weren’t ready, because she’d had to take a few precious minutes to comfort and get to know a new friend.

  “So what brought you to Portsmouth?” She tossed the basic ingredients into a huge stainless steel bowl. “Did you get a lead?”

  “You could call it that.”

  She started the mixer and turned halfway so she could see him. “Go ahead and talk. I’m listening.”

  He raised his voice accordingly. “A woman thought she recognized Shasta’s picture and used her ‘third eye’ as she called it to tell me where she’d gone. She said she’d left the state and gone north, but not too far. She guessed it might be in Portsmouth. She saw tug boats, some kind of tower that said “Navy” on it, and a submarine.”

  “Do you think she was telling the truth?”

  “There are charlatans everywhere,” Dru said. “But I’m pretty sure she was sincere and tryin’ to help. She didn’t charge me nuthin’. I’m almost positive Shasta was in Salem, Mass in March. A dozen or so people recognized her picture but hadn’t seen her for two weeks or more. One guy said she was askin’ about cheap rentals. He told her it was cheaper livin’ in New Hampshire, and she could always take a bus back to Salem when she wanted to.”

  Rebecca’s batter was smooth, and she turned off the mixer. “So, that’s all you have for leads? Go north? And maybe she was looking for a rental in New Hampshire?”

  “The psychic was pretty sure she was still on the seacoast. She said she saw her on a dock feedin’ seagulls.” He smiled sadly. “That would be her. Feedin’ vultures.”

  Rebecca whirled around. “Vultures?”

  “Sorry. That’s not very Wiccan of me. But seagulls are scavengers, right? They wouldn’t starve if nobody fed ‘em. But there she’d be with a big bag of day-old bread.”

  She gave him a sardonic smile. “We call them flying rats.”

  He laughed. It was a welcome sound considering how down he had been feeling.

  “Do you have a picture of her?”

  “Sure do. I tried to put up some posters, but a lady walked right behind me, tearing down each one. She said she was from the Keep our Seacoast Beautiful campaign or some such nonsense.”

  He fished his wallet out of his back pocket. The picture showed a smiling blonde leaning against a fence, wearing a cowboy hat and plaid shirt tied above her waist, exposing a taut midriff. The hat was tipped back and showed a very pretty face with big blue eyes.

  “She’s stunning.”

  “Yeah, she got all the nice-looking genetic material.”

  Rebecca glanced at him over her shoulder as she popped the muffins into the oven. “I don’t know…I’d say the looks are about equal.”

  One side of his lip curled up. “Are you callin’ me purty?”

  Rebecca laughed and her face heated, having nothing to do with the warmth of the oven. Busted. “Sorry. I guess that wasn’t very professional of me, especially if you�
��re going to work here.”

  “You think I’m gonna sue you for sexual harassment? Ha! You can harass me any time you like, darlin’.”

  She just about melted inside when he drawled the word ‘Darlin’’ as if it were an endearment. If only there weren’t a million other things on her mind…a handsome distraction was just that. A distraction. She had to focus on her business. How was his working here a good idea again?

  Case manager Danielle breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted the homeless shelter’s psychologist. “Dr. Frampton. I’m glad you could come. I’d really like you to take a look at a young woman we’re calling April.”

  He entered the case manager’s office and closed the door. “This case sounded interesting on the phone, so I cleared a spot in my schedule and came right over from the clinic.” He took one of the chairs opposite Danielle at her desk. “I was told she has no memory and no apparent trauma either?”

  “That’s right. She was examined by an MD initially, and he felt she’d probably recover her memory on her own; however, it’s been a couple of months and…nothing.”

  “You’re sure she’s not faking amnesia? Maybe hiding out here?”

  “We’re not sure of anything, but she looked pretty lost when the police brought her over.”

  “Where can I meet with her?”

  “Sit tight. I’ll go get her, and you can talk right here in my office.”

  Dr. Frampton leaned back and removed a small notebook from inside his suit jacket pocket.

  In a few moments, Danielle brought in the pretty young woman who looked to be in her early or mid-twenties. She was almost too pretty. Fair, flawless skin, and raven hair gave her an edgy look, but it was clear black wasn’t her natural color. Much lighter roots were growing out. Her large blue eyes looked almost haunted. She stood in the doorway and waited.

  Dr. Frampton rose and extended his hand. “Hello.”

  “This is Dr. Frampton. Go on in, April,” Danielle said.

  The girl looked at her imploringly. “Can you stay, Mrs. Reese?”

  Odd. Or maybe not. Could she have been abused?

  The director looked to Dr. Frampton and he nodded.

  Both women entered and Danielle returned to her spot behind her desk. April took the empty chair. She didn’t move it farther away, but she never did shake his hand either.

  He turned his seat toward her and studied her for a moment. Her long black hair looked slightly damp as if she’d recently showered. She worried her lips. Her blue eyes stared at him, as if searching for something, but not knowing what.

  “Hi, April. I’m Dr. Frampton. A psychologist from Portsmouth General Hospital. I stop by every now and then to talk to the residents. How are you feeling today?”

  “Okay,” she said meekly.

  “I understand you came here a little while ago. Can you tell me what brought you here?”

  “A police car,” she answered simply.

  She’d pronounced the hard R. If she had an accent, an expert in linguistics might be able to pinpoint her place of origin. She certainly didn’t sound like a New Englander.

  “What can you tell me about that day?”

  She chewed her lip and looked sad. “I don’t remember much. I was on a bus.”

  “Did you have a ticket?”

  She shrugged. “I must have given it to the bus driver, but I don’t remember.”

  “So, what’s the very last thing you remember?”

  “I was on the bus. The woman next to me was sleepin’. When we stopped, the driver turned around and said, ‘Aren’t you getting off here?’ I looked out the window and didn’t know where I was but reckoned I’d figure it out once I walked around.”

  ‘Reckoned’. Definitely not New England.

  “So, your very last recollection was being on the bus. Did you have any luggage?”

  “There was a bag on the floor between me and the sleeping woman. I didn’t recognize the bag, so I left it there. I got off the bus, because the driver said it was where I was supposed to get off. Nobody was there to meet me, but I waited a while just in case.”

  “And you don’t remember anything before that? Your name or where you’re from?”

  “No, sir.”

  Manners. That’s not very common among New England’s youth either. Maybe she’s southern.

  “Did anything happen to you? Did anyone hurt you that you know of?”

  “No, sir. My head was just fine. Nothing on me hurt. A lot of people have asked me that.”

  “Okay. So, what happened when you got off the bus?”

  “Well, I waited for a good half hour, then walked around some. I never did see anything familiar. There was a newspaper stand, so I looked at the date on the papers, and it was April first. That’s how I got the name April. Some of the newspapers were from other places like Boston, Manchester, and Lawrence, so I still didn’t know where I was or who I was, but at least I knew it was April First.”

  Dr. Frampton smiled slightly. “You must have felt like the butt of the worst April Fool’s Day joke ever.”

  Danielle was afraid she’d be insulted, but she didn’t appear to be. She simply nodded and seemed quite calm, even if sad.

  “So how long have you been here, April?”

  “I think it’s been…eighty days since the day the cops asked me what I was about.”

  “What you were about?”

  “Yeah. You know. What was I doing here? What was my name? I couldn’t tell them anything except that I was hungry, so they brought me here.”

  Her sad gaze fell to her lap. She really did look lost.

  “So, you’ve been here for well over two months.”

  “Them’s the facts,” she said.

  There it was again. It wasn’t so much the accent, but the word choices that reflected a very different part of the country.

  Danielle had told him, that if she had to guess, the girl hailed from the Deep South. Anywhere from Georgia to Texas. She picked up a pencil and tapped her desk calendar. “We kept expecting her memory to return, or we’d have called before this.”

  “Doctor?” April asked.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m goin’ stir crazy just sittin’ around and waitin’ for my memory to come back. Is there anything you can do to hurry it up?”

  Dr. Frampton glanced at Danielle. “We have open beds at the hospital, but I don’t see her needing that much care. Most of our patients have pretty major psychological problems. I want to keep an eye on her, though.”

  “She can stay here for as long as she needs to, but I’d love to see her get a job and a nice place to live. She’s a good little worker. She helps around here as much as we’ll let her.”

  “One of our social workers at the hospital should be able to help with some kind of temporary placement.” He turned his focus to April. “I think you might do well in our adult day care program. With no ID, we don’t know if you have insurance, but we can deal with that later.”

  “Day care!” April exclaimed. “I’m not an infant or elderly person who needs a diaper change every few hours. I just need a job and a place to live—if they get sick of me here.”

  Dr. Frampton suppressed a chuckle. “Adult day care is a place for adults in transition. Sometimes, they’re finished with hospitalization and getting ready to go home. Sometimes, they never need the hospital at all—just a little guidance.”

  She folded her arms. “Well, I could use some guidance, I guess. I just wish someone knew how to guide me home.”

  Danielle’s heart went out to her. She wasn’t faking the amnesia—she’d bet her only pair of designer shoes on it.

  After April left the office, she asked the doctor for his impressions.

  “If I had to hazard a guess at this point,” Dr. Frampton said, “I’d say the symptoms point to a dissociative episode called a Fugue. It often involves travel. Sometimes people show up clear across the country with no memory of who they are, where they came from, or even how they
arrived. They know no one in the area and have never been to the place before.”

  “Wow. I’ve never heard of it. Is it rare?”

  “Yes, but the lack of physical trauma and evidence of travel make a strong case for it. If I’m right, there’s something you should know…Sometimes when a person just can’t face some kind of psychological trauma, the subconscious suppresses it. When amnesia and flight result, you can imagine the situation must have been extremely traumatic for that individual.”

  “I see. So if she remembers…”

  “Call me immediately.”

  Dru hadn’t meant to get emotional about Shasta, but he wanted to be up front with his new ‘boss’. Finding his sister was the most important thing to him right now. He might have to drop everything and follow a lead. Did he make that clear? Sometimes he figured people understood things when they really didn’t…especially women.

  “I need to ask you somethin’ before I accept your generous job offer.”

  She snorted. “Who said it was generous?”

  He needed her on his side so just grinned at her joke. “Even though I’ve only known you for a bit, I can tell you have a generous spirit.”

  She hesitated, then mumbled, “So I’m told.”

  There seemed to be a story there, but he couldn’t afford to get sidetracked. “Well, I hate to say this, but findin’ my sister is more important to me than anything else. If I get a lead, I’ll have to go and investigate it. I hope you can be flexible.”

  “Of course!”

  She seemed offended that he even had to explain. Women…Damned if I do. Damned if I don’t.

  Her expression softened. “I’m hoping we can help each other. I don’t have as powerful a gift as Hanna does, but I’m trying to develop my psychic senses. I could do readings for you after the store closes.”

  Hanna. He hadn’t even thought about the magic she had demonstrated. Talk about getting sidetracked. If she can make things disappear, maybe she can make people reappear.

  “Uh oh,” Rebecca said.

  He was snapped back to reality. “What?”

  “Are you thinking about going to Hanna for help?”