While Jack was talking to Mom, Kiwi started whispering my ear when he thought no one was paying attention.
"Look in the fridge!" he cried in an urgent whisper.
"Why? The police will do that, I'm sure."
He banged his little head against mine.
"Not for clues. For fudge!"
"Ki! Face it: we're not getting any fudge tonight. And we're not getting any of Sandra's fudge ever again!"
He banged his head against mine again in frustration, treated me to a close-range angry squawk in my ear, and fluttered off before I could tell him not to. Although I wasn't a trained police officer, I knew enough to know that they didn't like parrots interfering in crime scenes.
"Aria," said Mom with a cold tone and an even cooler look in her eyes. "I've spoken to Jack and, of course, I could tell them nothing more than the obvious. It's your turn now. I mentioned that there was no good reason for you to be here. It just slipped out."
I rolled my eyes at her.
"Thanks, Mom. Being a customer of the woman's business is no good reason? And hunting her down because she's been getting familiar with your boyfriend is a good reason I suppose? Funny—”
"Aria?" said Jack, gently squeezing my elbow. "Do you have a moment?"
Leaving my conversation with my mother hanging without another word, I followed Jack to a corner of the kitchen.
"So..." he said to me, his eyes warm and kind.
I couldn't help but smile in response.
"Hi, again."
“Can you tell me what exactly it was you were doing here?"
I bit my lip and nodded, and began to explain to Jack that I was here because of my parrot.
"I know you're very close with Kiwi, but it does seem a little bit, you know..."
"What?"
"Eccentric."
"Eccentric? What do you mean?" I asked with a frown.
"Well. You were walking down the street when your escaped parrot flew out of nowhere and demanded you go buy fudge. It was almost dark, and it was foggy and—"
"It wasn't foggy then," I said. "The fog came later, when we were already on our way here." Because I made it foggy is what I didn't add. Jack’s understanding of my witchiness ends at burning sage in my shop and maybe doing a tarot reading for fun—not manipulating the weather.
"That’s the honest truth?"
I nodded. "You saw! You were with me!"
He nodded. "Yes, I was. And lucky for you. If I hadn't been with you, it would have been a pretty unlikely story, don't you think?"
I shrugged. "You know what they say. Truth is stranger than fiction."
Jack nodded.
"That may be true, but with murder victims, it usually isn't. The simplest explanation is usually the real one—it's the husband or wife if it's at home, and if it's out in the world, it's normally someone they had an altercation with just moments before. This type of situation is very unusual."
We both looked across the room to where Sandra was still head down in the pan of fudge. Policemen were taking photos of her and someone had laid out some plastic sheeting, presumably to reduce the mess when they eventually took her out of there.
"I don't really know what to tell you, Jack. This is as odd a situation for me as it is for you."
"I understand. Could you just go through it all, point by point? Tell me exactly what you saw and when, from the moment we parted?"
“Of course.”
I did as he requested and watched as he carefully wrote down everything I told him. I had to 'trim' one part of the story. Aside from mentioning my part in conjuring the fog, I told him every little thing I could think of.
And except for talking to Kiwi, too. I didn't want him thinking I was crazy.
Jack spent even longer with me than he did with Mom. I was pretty sure that this was because of our almost-relationship, because I certainly didn't have any more to say about what had happened than Mom did.
"Aria, dear," said Mom, tapping my arm and giving me an unnatural motherly smile just as Jack was wrapping things up.
Uh-oh. Why's she being so nice?
"Yes?"
"Your animal flew off down there. I don't know what he's up to," she said raising her eyebrows at me.
"Right. Sorry, Jack. I’d better go make sure Kiwi isn't causing any mischief. Is there anything else?"
Jack shook his head at me, but turned his gaze back to Mom.
"Actually, I have a couple of questions for the senior Ms. Whitmore, if that's okay?"
Inwardly I beamed, but outwardly I only allowed a small smile to cross my lips. Senior Whitmore indeed. Mom would love that.
Leaving the police, the fudgy corpse, and my mom to carry on, I left the crime scene and headed down the hall.
"Ki!" I called. "Kiwi?"
Silence.
Not complete silence, of course. The police officers were as noisy as you'd expect in the kitchen. But there was a definite silence from the direction of Kiwi.
As my familiar, I can sense where he is when I need to, and I could tell he was just down the hall in a room off to the right. A room with its door open just the tiniest crack.
I followed his trail and gently pushed the door open. It opened silently with well-oiled hinges.
"Kiwi!" I said in an urgent whisper.
The room was clearly a dining room, but the large mahogany dining table had been pushed right up against the large window which ran along the far side of the room, and which had been lifted open an inch or two. On top of the table were several large trays of fudge, which had been left to cool by the draft from the window.
But fudge wasn't the only thing on the table. Kiwi was standing right next to a pan of the sweet confection, head occasionally bobbing down into it, while he stared at something else in front of the tray.
"What's that? And what are you doing?" I said in an urgent but low voice. I didn't want the police in the kitchen to hear.
"Fudge," said Kiwi before bobbing his head down for another beakful. "Scpeburk,” or something like it, is what he said right after.
Almost running, I hurried across the room to stand over him.
"It's a scrapbook!" I said.
"That's what I said." He bobbed his head down again into the fudge.
I peered down at the book. It was much like the one Sarah had been working on earlier: a big thick book filled with blank pages, most of which had been adorned with various scraps of paper and other sundry pieces. The page Kiwi was staring at was labeled “Basic Cream Fudge” and on it was stuck a faded, yellowed recipe card, handwritten in an old-fashioned flowing cursive script.
"You can't be in here!" I said.
"Aria!" called a voice from outside, down the hall. It was Jack.
"Why?" said Kiwi.
"You can't! It's not... you can't eat evidence! And you're touching the book! And—"
I cut myself off because I didn't have time for that. Panicking, I did something stupid. Or clever, depending on your perspective.
As Kiwi is my familiar, he's able to boost my magical abilities, which can be handy in a crisis—like being found tampering with evidence.
I quickly muttered some magic words under my breath and waved a hand over Kiwi. There was no way we were going to get the fudge cleaned off him in time so I did the only thing I could: I made him invisible.
Casting such a draining spell in a rush, with my gestures imprecise and my mind a scattered mess, had a few unintended side-effects. Not only did Kiwi disappear, but so did the scrapbook he was resting a talon on, and the tray of fudge his head was buried in.
"Ah, Aria."
I turned to see Jack and gave him an embarrassed smile.
"I was just looking for the bathroom," I said.
"Really?" he asked, not sounding convinced. His eyes scanned the room, which, even from the entranceway, clearly looked nothing like a bathroom.
"Err, yes. And then I saw this and I wondered what it was."
"I see."
&nb
sp; "It's fudge," I said.
"Yes, it is. Aria, as this whole house is a crime scene, we can't have people wandering around. We have to search the entire premises, check for evidence or clues left behind by the killer. All of that."
"I’d better get out of your hair then," I said, quickly hurrying across the room.
“You should probably head home, now yes. Where's Kiwi?"
"Oh. He’s…” I waved my hands around. "Outside, I think. Don't worry about him. I'll find him outside."
Jack gave me a suspicious look.
"Bye, Jack!" I said, giving him a friendly squeeze on the arm. The romance of our date earlier in the evening had mostly disappeared, unfortunately.
"Do you need a ride home? I could get an officer to—"
I was shaking my head as I said my final "No, no, that's fine," and scurried out of the room and out of the front door of the house.
"Whew," I said to myself dramatically when I stepped outside.
"I'll see you tomorrow, dear," said Mom in my ear.
I jumped, startled. 'Lurking in the shadows' sounds bad, but it was basically what Mom had been doing.
"See you tomorrow," I said in return.
Chapter 7
The next morning, Sarah arrived an hour after Blue Moon Bridal had officially opened its doors.
"Am I late?" she asked as the door closed behind her with a tinkle of the bell. She reflexively handed me one of the paper coffee cups from the Black Cat Café as she entered.
"Well, you were supposed to be here yesterday, so you're about twenty-four hours late." I checked the wooden clock on the wall. "And it's ten o'clock, and you should have been here at nine. So make that twenty-five hours.”
"Oh, I'm getting better, aren't I?" said Sarah with such an innocent smile that I couldn't help but give a warm one in response. She was ditzy and strange and invariably late, but she was also one of the sweetest and most kind-hearted people I knew, which is why she’s my dearest friend.
"I heard you had an interesting evening," said Sarah, raising her eyebrows at me.
My cheeks blushed at the thought of my meal with Jack.
"It was," I admitted. "We had the most wonderful meal, and we were having a lovely walk when Kiwi interrupted us and ruined it."
When I was saying the final few words, I glared up at the bookcase, where Kiwi was sitting. He raised his wings to cover his face, as if to hide from the daggers I was glaring at him.
"Eh?" said Sarah.
"What?" I asked.
"Priscilla said you found a dead body. That there was a murder and you and your mother found the body!"
"Oh!" Oops. "That. Yes, that happened too," I said with a nod of confirmation.
"Interesting," said Sarah, tapping her chin with a purple-painted manicured nail. "Very interesting."
"It was an unforgettable evening."
"Because of the date, or because of the dead body?"
"The date! I mean—the body!" I held my coffee cup up to my mouth, flustered, while I composed myself. I took a sip, and tried again. "That is to say… I had a nice meal, but then everything after that was awful."
Sarah nodded in understanding. "Yin and yang. Light and dark. Black and white. An evening of contrasts."
"Right. Yes, I suppose so." I wasn’t exactly sure what Sarah was getting at, which coincidentally was also my normal state of affairs when conversing with her.
Ding!
I looked over to the door to see Priscilla entering. She was the co-owner of the Black Cat Café and Sequoia Bay’s reigning queen of gossip.
"Hello!" said Priscilla cheerily. She looked around the shop, beaming.
I knew why she was so happy. The murder. Not that she relished in death, but she did relish in talking about it: the victim, the suspects, the motives. A death, especially a suspicious one, was Grade A gossip and Priscilla craved it.
"Good morning. What can we do for you today?"
Our shop was a bridal store, and I knew for a fact Priscilla wasn't getting married again any time soon. Her reasons for visiting my shop were purely personal.
"I just came by to drop this off," said Priscilla, waving a black and white printed flyer in my direction.
"Oh? What's that?" said Sarah, her eyes locking onto the flyer.
Ever since she'd taken up scrapbooking, every piece of printed media in Sequoia Bay had become interesting to Sarah, who was rapidly filling up her various scrapbooks with all kinds of mementos.
"I guess you heard, right?" said Priscilla, nodding at me.
I frowned at her.
"Oh, of course! You were there!"
As if she'd forgotten for even the slightest moment.
"We're holding a memorial service. Well, Randi is, in her candy shop. For Sandra. Everyone's invited."
"That's very good of Randi," I said. "Especially since Sandra had so recently cut off her supply of fudge."
"Fudge!" screeched Kiwi from on high.
"Oh, there's my good boy!" said Priscilla up to Kiwi. She had a soft spot for the bird and often treated him to entirely too many cheese puffs when we visited her café.
Kiwi beamed down at us, pleased to have Priscilla in the shop again. She really gets me is what he’d told me after our last visit there, when she had refilled his bowl of cheese puffs three separate times.
"Can I take one of the flyers, too?” asked Sarah.
Priscilla handed one over to each of us.
"I was thinking of making a special scrapbook, for Sandra," said Sarah as she examined the flyer. "So that we can remember her and her fudge."
"That’s so thoughtful," said Priscilla.
"Good idea," I said, though I didn't think it was particularly a good idea. Sandra wouldn't be able to appreciate it, and I doubted many other people would be interested.
"Say, Aria, did your mother speak to Donovan?" asked Priscilla.
"I don't know," I said. "I imagine she probably did. Donovan knew Sandra, and Mom found the body."
"Oh yes, I heard Sandra and Donovan were quite... close. Your mom's probably relieved."
I shook my head. "No, I'm sure she's not. Finding a body would have been very traumatic for her."
Priscilla nodded again. "I suppose you would know about that!"
I gave her another frown. I do like Priscilla, but sometimes she can be a bit too much.
I wanted to forget the unfortunate incident with the dead bride in my shop, not be reminded of it at every opportunity.
"You know that Molly Anderson has been acting up."
I didn't bite.
Sarah did.
"Oh? What's she been saying?"
Priscilla leaned in toward us, as if telling us a secret.
"Well, she's been acting distraught, like she's upset by Sandra's passing. But we all know she hated her! She'd been trying to get her fudge business shut down for ages, but now she's acting as if she's incredibly upset by it all!"
“Just because she didn't want fudge-shoppers outside her house doesn't mean she wanted Sandra dead," I pointed out.
"Perhaps," said Priscilla. "But it seems a bit suspicious to me."
"Ooh, suspicious?" said Sarah. "Do you think she was involved?"
Priscilla shrugged her shoulders airily as if she wasn't the slightest bit interested.
"Who knows? That's for the police to investigate. All I’m saying is it's odd that she's suddenly so upset about the death of the woman she hated."
And that was enough gossip for me. Having been the victim of gossip myself on more than one occasion, I suffered from a severe aversion to it now.
"Thanks for the flyer, Priscilla. We might see you later, around lunchtime."
She looked like she wanted to say more, or at least stay and speculate some more about Sandra’s death, but I wasn't interested. It was my mom who found the body and I was second on the scene. Surely it wouldn’t be long before we were subjects of Priscilla’s suspicions.
"See you later, girls."
"Pret
ty lady!" shrieked Kiwi.
"And goodbye to you, too! Come by for some cheese puffs soon," she said to Kiwi up on the bookcase.
He cocked his head at her. "Fudge?"
Priscilla giggled.
"Sometimes it seems like he understands us," she said.
I nodded. "But sometimes it seems like he willfully misunderstands us.”
Kiwi cackled and the other two women laughed.
"Bye, dears!"
As Priscilla headed toward the door, I turned to Sarah. "Are you really going to make a scrapbook about Sandra?"
Sarah nodded at me firmly.
"I feel I should. We all have our gifts and talents, and I think it's our duty to share them with the world."
If Sarah's special talent was scrapbooking, it was a very recently discovered one. If the event had happened a year earlier, she would have instead of been composing a musical about Sandra's life. Two years ago, it would have been sculpting a clay model of her.
“In fact, I’m going to go with Priscilla now and see what other things she can suggest.” Sarah hurried toward the door. “Hey! Wait up!”
Ding!
As Sarah flew out, a rather rotund woman with a purple headscarf, oversized mirrored sunglasses, and a bulky winter jacket entered the shop in her wake.
"Hello," I said to the strangely familiar woman. "What can I help you with today?"
The woman slowly took off her large sunglasses. Her eyes looked familiar. She unwrapped the headscarf, and as her face was revealed, I blanched.
Even with the added bulk, I immediately recognized that Botoxed, collagen-filled, wrinkle-free visage.
Chapter 8
"Mom?" I asked.
She slowly nodded, as if the weight of her newly-chubby head was too much for her to bear. I guessed that, at least metaphorically, it was.
I ran my eyes up and down her in shock.
Mom took pride in her appearance. In truth, that was an understatement: Mom took way too much pride in her appearance and invested entirely too much time, money, and magic to make herself look the very best she could. From injections and nips and tucks to glamour magic to cover up what the surgeons, beauticians, and stylists couldn't, Mom never stopped working on her appearance.
Wedding Bells And Magic Spells Box Set Page 40