Brownies and Broomsticks: A Magical Bakery Mystery

by Bailey Cates

  Detective Quinn put down the pen he’d used to make notes. He met my eyes straight on. “This is good information. Don’t worry—I’ll follow up on it.”

  “Ethan could have killed her,” I went on. “Albert could have known, or they could have been in on it together, and now Albert has cleaned up a loose end.”

  He raised his palm. “Hold on. Leave the speculation to us, okay? Your part in this investigation is finished now. Over. Understand?”

  The muscles in my jaw flexed. “I only want you to realize that my uncle didn’t kill Mrs. Templeton.”

  “We’ll look into this other business of fraud. See what Mr. Hill has to say. But frankly, I doubt that what you found here today has anything to do with the murder. Ridge had a number of low-life associates, any of whom he might have angered. Either way, we’ll find out what happened.”

  Alarm bells went off in my head. I could tell, whether from the angle of his head or the tone in his voice or something entirely woo-woo, that he still considered Ben his primary murder suspect. Mr. Hill, indeed. Albert might not be his aunt, but he still had the respect of the powers that be.

  “It’s that darn witness, isn’t it?” I asked. “What happened when you talked to Frank Pullman?”

  “How did you know I—” He sighed. “I don’t want to know. But you’re right. He does fit the description the witness gave.”

  “See!”

  “But unlike your uncle, he has an alibi. He was with his sister’s family over in Pooler, as well as two of their neighbors, from eight a.m. until six p.m. the day Mavis Templeton was killed. He simply couldn’t have done it.”

  “But …” I trailed off. Rubbing my eyes with my fingertips, I muttered, “The man your witness saw probably didn’t have anything to do with the murder. I mean, she didn’t actually see him kill her.”

  “That’s possible.” He didn’t sound convinced. “I think we’re done here, aren’t we?”

  “I guess so.” I opened the car door and got out. And perhaps I closed it with a little too much enthusiasm; it did sound awfully loud in the falling twilight. I turned and looked at Quinn through the windshield.

  But I was already off his radar. He was speaking into his phone, not even bothering to look out at me.

  Fine. I had resources, after all. Resources Detective Quinn would only scoff at.

  Until I brought him the truth on a plate.

  Back inside the Peachtree Arms a policeman was closing the door to the manager’s unit. A babble of voices drifted out from James Sparr’s apartment across the hall, and I peeked inside the partially open door to find Declan talking with half a dozen tenants.

  His chin rose when he saw me, and his eyes smiled. I pushed the door farther open.

  Mrs. Perkins perched on a wingback chair, her walker beside her, listening intently to the others. When she saw me, she twiddled her fingers in my direction. “Hello, dear. Did you hear?” The voices died down as the group took in the newcomer.

  I glanced over at James, who was holding court from his recliner. “May I come in?”

  He gestured me forward with a languid wave. “Knock yourself out.”

  The living room felt cramped with that many people in it. Three older ladies sat on a maroon velvet sofa so worn in places that it looked as though pink skin were showing through. Another man stood next to the doorway leading into the kitchen, and Declan leaned against the incongruously elaborate fireplace mantel.

  Sitting on the ottoman next to Mrs. Perkins, I took her hand and said, “You mean about Ethan being missing?”

  “Oh, yes. And all that blood! I looked inside after the nice police lady came to find out if I’d heard any kind of ruckus.”

  The others erupted again with their own stories of police questioning. Under the circumstances it was quite the convivial atmosphere. There were even cheese crackers and a bowl of green grapes on the coffee table. As I listened to the tenants one after another disappointedly relate that they hadn’t heard a darn thing but wished they had, a short, round woman came in with a bag of chips for the coffee table and cracked open a plastic container. The smell of onion dip added to the festive climate.

  Despite tragedy and the neglected property, the Peachtree Arms was a community. These people knew their neighbors and cared about them. Watching them interact, I felt my attitude about the place shift slightly.

  I stood. Declan took a step toward me. The tenants stopped talking and looked at me.

  “Did anyone see or hear anything that could help the police find out what happened to Ethan?”

  Everyone shook their heads. Except, I noticed, James Sparr.

  I turned to him. “Mr. Sparr? Were you in here earlier today?”

  “Sure was.”

  Declan and I exchanged looks.

  “Were you here when we knocked earlier?” he asked.

  “Sure was.”

  Cocking my head to one side, I asked, “Why didn’t you open the door?”

  “Didn’t know it was you.”

  I turned and looked at the door behind me. It didn’t have a peephole. I turned back. “You heard something across the hall, didn’t you?”

  He nodded. “’Bout an hour before you got here I did.”

  Everyone went still. He’d been waiting to spring this.

  “And you’ve already told the police about it?”

  He smiled. “Soon as they asked me I did.”

  Declan got to the point. “What did you hear?”

  “Quite the commotion, it was. Bunch of yelling and then a big crash. Door opened then and someone ran off down the hallway.”

  There was a general intake of breath at that.

  “Just one person ran away?” I asked.

  “Sounded like that. I kept my door shut, though. Don’t have any interest in getting involved in Mr. Ridge’s affairs.”

  Just then I heard a voice in the hallway and held my finger to my lips.

  “You’ve searched the whole place?” Detective Quinn asked. “Top to bottom?”

  “Yessir,” came the reply. “Found some blood on the stairs, but other than the mess inside, nothing else.”

  In James’ living room we all looked at each other, perfectly quiet and straining to hear.

  “Is his car here?” Quinn asked.

  “Right in his spot.”

  “And you’ve talked with all the tenants.”

  “Still working on the top two floors.”

  Quinn sighed. “All right. Check with all the hospitals regarding suspicious wounds and let me know what you find out.”

  “Yessir.” Their voices began to fade as they walked away.

  I peered around the doorjamb to see the retreating backs of Quinn and the uniformed man. I waited until the uniform opened the door to the stairwell, then grabbed Declan’s hand.

  “We’d better get going. I don’t think the good detective is ready for another encounter with yours truly so soon.” I waved back at the Peachtree Arms tenants. “’Bye, everyone.”

  “Good-bye, dear,” called Mrs. Perkins, echoed by the others.

  We made it to Declan’s truck without incident. On the drive home I said, “Somebody hurt Ethan, and now he’s gone but his car is still there. Did they make him go with them?”

  He shrugged and flicked on his turn signal. “He may have hurt someone else, you know.”

  “Do you think Albert had anything to do with it? Because Detective Quinn thinks the whole thing might be fallout from the company Ethan keeps and nothing at all to do with Mrs. Templeton’s murder.”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “But what do you think?” I found myself almost bouncing in the seat.

  “I think no one can answer those questions except Ridge himself.”

  That gave me pause. “So we have to find him.”

  “Good luck with that,” Declan said. “He may not even be alive.”

  Chapter 21

  After Declan dropped me at home, Mungo and I read up on location
spells. For the most part they looked pretty simple. Which was good, because for my very first solitary spell I wanted something easy peasy. There was a common one that looked doable, safe, and didn’t call for any crazy ingredients.

  Still, I needed four blue candles.

  I checked the time. A little after ten. Probably too late to drop in on Margie. Besides, borrowing a cup of sugar from a neighbor was one thing; borrowing candles for a location spell was something else. A quick run to the twenty-four-hour market netted me a box of short tapers. More blue-green than blue, they were still the color of water, so I hoped they’d work. I would have preferred votive candles because I didn’t have holders for the tapers, but all the smaller candles in the store’s limited selection were heavily scented and stank to high heaven. The tapers smelled like plain old paraffin.

  I lit one of them and allowed the wax to dribble into a small puddle on a paper plate. Then I stuck an unlit taper in the middle and let it cool. The melted wax held the candle upright quite nicely. I repeated the makeshift candleholders on three more plates and set them at the four compass points on my living room floor.

  The spell also called for jasmine incense, which I didn’t have. But rooting around in my aromatherapy satchel netted a tiny bottle of jasmine essential oil. Lucy had added clove oil to the candles in Mimsey’s scrying spell, so I carefully dribbled a little onto each candlewick and let it drip down the sides of the candle. The volatile concentrated oil infused the whole house with heady floral tones.

  I looked at Mungo. “How am I doing?”

  Yip!

  The final thing I needed was natural water. Perhaps bottled spring water would have been fine, but I had a stream running through my backyard and that seemed a great deal more natural than water encased in plastic. I grabbed one of the wine goblets Declan had brought the night before and opened the French doors. Mungo followed me outside and to the back corner of the lot. The scent of new-mown grass filled the darkness. Cicadas buzzed, and bright moonlight echoed off the stream water. I remembered that Bianca practiced moon magic. I looked up. The moon was slightly larger than half full, but I didn’t know if it was waxing or waning. Oh, wait. Mimsey had said she’d charged her shew stone by the full moon, so it must be waning.

  I had to start paying more attention to that kind of stuff.

  “Am I supposed to say something when I get the water?” I asked Mungo, leaning down toward the stream.

  “Katie? Is that you?” My neighbor’s voice came drifting over the fence.

  Startled, I dropped the goblet.

  Moments later Margie leaned her elbows on the three-and-a-half-foot fence that divided our yards and peered down at me. “Who are you talking to?”

  Mungo barked.

  Forcing a laugh, I said, “Just the dog.”

  I could feel him glaring at me in the darkness.

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked.

  “Me? Oh! Well, um …” She licked her lips. Leaned forward conspiratorially. “I’m sneaking a little treat.” She held up a length of Twinkie so bright yellow it glowed in the moonlight.

  “A … Really? Why do you have to sneak it?”

  “Redding thinks they’re bad for me, throws a fit when he sees me eating one. He won’t let the kids touch them. I think all the preservatives are what keep me going some days.”

  “Margie?” A man’s voice came from her house. “Where did you run off to?”

  “Oh, my Lord, he’s going to wake the kids if he doesn’t pipe down. See you later!” And she was gone.

  “That was close,” I whispered to Mungo.

  The grass had cushioned the goblet when it fell, so it hadn’t broken. I set the intention of using the water in a location spell in my mind, scooped some up from the stream and hurried back inside before Margie returned to finish her illicit junk food.

  In my living room, I checked to make sure the window shutters were tightly closed and doused the floor lamp. I was a little nervous, but not because I had any reservations about the spell itself. I had reservations about me. Lucy had told me I needed to learn how to manage my power, learn how to harness magic. I was aware that doing a spell alone without really understanding the mechanics might be risky.

  But it was a simple spell. For a good cause. And I didn’t have time to wait. Someone, probably Ethan Ridge, had lost a lot of blood. Waiting until I could get help from my witch nannies might do more harm than good.

  In order for the spell to do any good, I needed to cast it now.

  I lit the four candles and settled cross-legged in the middle of them, facing west. Mungo snuggled into my lap. Deeply breathing in the scent of the jasmine oil, I imagined my roiling thoughts calming to the smooth sheen of undisturbed water. When I felt ready, I looked down into the wineglass and swirled the water clockwise with two fingers of my right hand. I put my hand back in my lap, and my furry familiar licked away the water droplets.

  “Let the water show me the location of Ethan Ridge. Let the water show me where he is.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Let the water show me the location of Ethan Ridge. Let the water show me where he is.”

  Four times I repeated the incantation, peering into the water and waiting for an indication of where the apartment manager might be. For a vision, a feeling about a location, a nice big intuitive hit.

  Anything.

  But there was nothing.

  I tried for more than half an hour and came up with exactly diddly-squat on the divination front.

  Of course, Cookie had said she wasn’t any good at scrying. But they’d also said I was a catalyst. Did that mean I couldn’t do magic myself, could only help others? Heavy disappointment settled over my shoulders at the thought.

  Suddenly I had an image of myself, sitting in the middle of four burning candles with a dog in my lap, muttering at a glass of water to find a missing man. Embarrassment and shame crowded out my disappointment at failing.

  What was I thinking? I’d swallowed the whole witch thing hook, line and sinker. Poor Katie was a lonely little girl with a big imagination who made up stories that made her seem special. And then she’d grown up into poor dumped-by-her-fiancé Katie who grabbed on to a gigantic piece of nonsense that made her seem special and feel like she finally belonged.

  I’d been so careful not to rebound to a man after my engagement failed. But that boomerang energy had to go someplace, and only now did I realize how primed I’d been for Lucy to convince me of my magical heritage.

  Hedgewitch. Oh, brother.

  Disgusted, I blew out the candles, threw them in the garbage, and dumped the water down the sink.

  At my feet, Mungo whined.

  It hit me: I’d skipped supper, and he’d had only a snack of boiled chicken.

  “There’s kibble in your bowl,” I said.

  A tiny growl emanated from his throat.

  “Okay, okay.” I opened the refrigerator door and took out the leftover bourbon-pulled pork Steve had brought. I dumped some in Mungo’s bowl, made myself a small sandwich, and grabbed one of Lucy’s seven-layer bars. Then I put it back. She’d probably drugged them to give me more evidence that magic was real. Whatever she’d put in them had knocked me out, and I couldn’t afford to oversleep again tomorrow.

  Next to me on the bed, Mungo turned over on his back and went to sleep, pork fumes on his breath. Could have been worse, but it would have been nice if he was as willing to brush his teeth before bed as he was to eat people food.

  I didn’t want to think about how much I had liked the idea of being a witch or how pathetic that made me feel. Magic was hooey. I had to face the harsh reality that there was nothing I could do to influence the world around me.

  Wait a minute. So waving a magic wand couldn’t change the world. That didn’t mean I had to give up the belief I’d held my whole life—that fate was what you made it. That people control their own destiny. And that even if they can’t always control the things th
at happen to them, they get to decide their own reactions.

  I could still help Uncle Ben and keep the Honeybee afloat. I just had to figure out how.

  Mungo wiggled against me, as if he was scratching his back. He didn’t bother to wake up, though, so maybe it was a dream. I stroked his wee head with my fingertips.

  “Familiar, indeed. What a bunch of gobbledygook.”

  He was instantly on his feet, and I snatched my hand back in alarm. But he just stood there on the bed, blinking at me in the waning moonlight. It was too dark to really read his eyes, but I had a distinct feeling of disapproval.

  Stop making up stuff like that, Katie. He’s just a dog.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

  He didn’t lie down right away, but after a few more moments of staring at me like I was a piece of bacon, he did. Still didn’t take his eyes off me, though. I closed mine and tried to ignore him.

  The events of the day sifted through my waning consciousness. The joy of working in the Honeybee kitchen. All the enthusiastic customers at the bakery. Mrs. Standish’s elaborate views and expansive gestures. The almost audible click as I’d put together the connection between Ethan Ridge and Albert Hill. Declan’s disapproval on the phone, contrasted with his warm greeting when he came to pick me up. The way he looked at me when he didn’t think I was paying attention.

  The smell of blood and whiskey in Ethan’s apartment.

  The half-packed boxes sitting among the wreckage of a struggle.

  Well, he’d said he was going to leave now that Mrs. Templeton couldn’t blackmail him into staying. I thought about what he’d said. That she’d threatened him with exposure. Would that really be enough? Given what she did to Frank Pullman for leaving some sawdust on her floor, I could see that maybe it would be. But perhaps she used something more than an old prison sentence against him. Something a bit more specific. A bit more recent and possibly unknown by the authorities.