“Well, would you look at that,” I said to myself.
There was a handwritten sign scrawled in blue marker on letter paper and taped to the glass of the front door. It read: Sold out! Come back tomorrow for another delicious, fresh batch of the BEST FUDGE IN TOWN!
Sold out, huh? That was something.
Randi’s business had never struck me as being particularly successful, but it looked like things had turned around since the memorial. Of course she’d always been able to keep the lights on, but I couldn’t ever recall her having sold out of anything before. All those free samples—and paid for boxes—at Sandra’s memorial must have really helped spread the word about her fudge. And with Sandra gone, there was no longer any competition.
With my initial plan rendered moot, it was time to try something else. If I couldn’t ask Randi questions directly, I could visit the oracle instead. The oracle who knew just about everything about everyone in Sequoia Bay. The oracle known as Priscilla, proprietress of the Black Cat Café.
There was another advantage to this slight adjustment to the plan as well: pie.
“Hey, Aria,” Priscilla greeted me when I arrived.
I beamed at her and made my way over to the lunch counter. The Black Cat Café had a counter, some tables in the middle, and a row of booths along the side and back walls. I sat in the booths when I wanted a bit of privacy and some quiet, but when I wanted to chat, I made sure to sit at the counter.
No one sitting up there would ever find themselves bored, as either Priscilla or her partner Nora were able to keep an almost constant stream of news and gossip about Sequoia Bay flowing for any customers brave enough to sit up there.
“A slice of cherry pie and some ice cream?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye.
I nodded and grinned. “Just a small one, please.”
“Of course, hon.”
Priscilla grabbed a large bowl and began to remove a slice from the massive, home-baked pie. They baked them up in their kitchen every day of the week and were one of the highlights of the café. In my book, the pies were one of the highlights of Sequoia Bay—or even all of California.
“Not that one!” I said a little too loudly and a little too sharply. “The one next to it, please,” I said, injecting some more sweetness into my tone.
Priscilla gave me a knowing look as she switched the small slice for the second largest one in the whole pie, and then placed the heavy bowl in front of me with a spoon. I’m sure she knew by now that when I said I wanted a small piece, I didn’t really mean it.
“How are things at the Blue Moon? Keeping busy?”
I nodded and chewed the first mouthful quickly so I could respond. “Fine, fine. Sarah is holding the fort. I popped out to get some fudge, originally.”
“Oh?” she said looking me up and down as if to check for any hidden bags or packages.
“For Kiwi. But Randi’s shop was closed.”
“Closed?” said Priscilla with a frown. “I heard she was doing great business these days. There was even a line this morning of people buying fudge to take into work with them. At least, that’s the word around town.”
“That sounds about right,” I said, balancing a large piece of pie on my spoon in front of my mouth. “The sign said she’d sold out and the shop was closed while she made some more. I guess her candy shop is turning into a full-time fudge shop.”
Priscilla hmmed thoughtfully, and I took the opportunity provided by the lull to put some more pie in my mouth. There was something about the pastry that was just so much better at the Black Cat than anywhere else. I’d asked Priscilla about it once, but she’d hand-waved it away with a comment about a secret family recipe.
“I suppose that new recipe of hers is the reason,” said Priscilla. “You know, I didn’t really care for the fudge she used to sell. She got it from some supplier out of town and it just tasted greasy.”
“Kiwi didn’t like it either,” I said while covering my mouth. Luckily the sentence was short enough that Priscilla could understand me despite my mouth being full of pie.
“I wonder where she got the recipe?”
I swallowed half in surprise, but mostly because I was almost ready for another spoonful of the delicious pie. I would have assumed Priscilla knew where the recipe came from already. But perhaps I was ahead of her in the town gossip chain for once.
“It was Sandra’s recipe,” I said, causing Priscilla’s eyebrows to shoot up. “She said Sandra gave it to her a long time ago.”
Priscilla eyed me, her expression skeptical. “If she had the recipe all along, then why didn’t she use it? Randi always knew that Sandra’s recipe was better than that other supplier she used.”
I shrugged and carefully prepared another spoonful.
“I suppose it was out of respect for Sandra. That was kind of her, don’t you think?”
Priscilla didn’t look impressed. “I’m surprised to hear that. You know Sandra used to supply Randi’s shop, before she started selling her own out of her house. I find it hard to believe that Randi wouldn’t have started making the fudge herself, after Sandra cut her off.” She glanced off to one side and pressed her lips together, as if trying to recall something.
“It strikes me as a little strange, that’s all,” she finally continued. “Before Sandra died, Randi was worried about losing her business. If she’d been that worried, you would have thought she would have at least tried using Sandra’s recipe to drum up sales.”
“Mmhmm,” I said in agreement around my pie.
“But maybe that is what happened. Maybe she really didn’t want to use the recipe while Sandra was using it. And then, after she died… she gave it a go.”
I nodded and licked some crumbs from my lips. “It does seem a bit unlikely, doesn’t it? I bet there’s more to the story that we don’t know.”
Priscilla pulled her lips tight and nodded thoughtfully. No doubt she would be doing some investigating—or at least gossiping—of her own to find out the real story behind Randi and the fudge recipe she was now using.
“Oh, look, I think someone’s coming to talk to you,” said Priscilla.
I rapidly chewed and swallowed what I was eating while twisting my head around to see who it was.
Oh, it’s him, I thought.
“Hello, Aria,” said Mayor Donovan Charlston with a big grin.
“Working hard, Donovan?” I asked him with a sweet smile.
“Oh yes. Talking to my constituents, doing my rounds of the town. It’s non-stop for me. Of course, I have to do it. It’s part of the job. Isn’t that right, Priscilla?”
“Err, is it?” asked Priscilla with a furrowed brow.
Donovan nodded three times in quick succession. “Oh yes. I try to visit all the hotspots in town to keep an eye on what’s going on. My townspeople need me. What would they think if I stopped coming in here? Or stopped dining at Mama Victoria’s? They’d say, ‘Where is our wonderful mayor? Why is he no longer gracing us with his presence on a daily or twice daily basis? Has he abandoned us?’ That’s what they’d all be saying.”
“Right.”
“Oh yes, it’s tough being the mayor, I tell you. It’s not a job, it’s a—it’s a—it’s a—” he blustered for a moment.
“Lifestyle?” I suggested.
He nodded gratefully. “Yes, a very tough lifestyle, being mayor.”
“Did you want to talk to me about something?” I asked.
It wasn’t hard to guess what the topic would be. He and my mother had been having an on-again, off-again relationship for years, and there was practically nothing else the mayor would have to talk to me about.
“Oh, yes. Your mother, Aria.”
“Yes…”
“Haven’t heard from her for a few days. She seems to be missing in action. Have you spoken to her?”
“Not since before the memorial, I’m afraid. But she wasn’t looking her best. She was feeling quite unwell, in fact.”
“Oh, nothing serious
, I hope?”
I tilted my head to one side. “It’s hard to say. She wasn’t very happy, though. In fact, she was kind of… swollen up. You know how vain she is. She’s probably hiding away until she looks more like her old self.”
“Vain? She’s a fine-looking woman, your mother, Aria. I don’t think vain is the right word.”
Vain was precisely the right word, at least in my opinion. Along with narcissistic. There were a few others too: annoying, overly-critical, unmotherly… “No? Well, I think she’s staying out of the public eye for now, anyway.”
I was a little curious as to what Mom was up to.
Would she find some way to reverse the spell to get the weight back off magically? Or was she going to have to work it all off the old-fashioned way? If that was the case, I doubted we’d be seeing much of her months.
“Shame, shame. She brings a brightness to town when she’s around. Don’t you think?”
“Some people certainly think so,” I said evasively. “Though last I heard, you weren’t really in her good graces, Donovan.”
He sniffed and rubbed his brow. “What? Why?”
I arched my eyebrows at him. “You really don’t know?”
He shook his head.
With a sigh, I put my spoon down. I probably should take a break from the dessert anyway. Eating too much at once is bad for you; at least that’s what some people say.
“She had heard you and Sandra were spending a lot of time together.”
“Sandra? Sandra who?”
I gave him a well-deserved roll of my eyes. “Sandra Webb. The fudge lady? The one who died? You gave a speech at her memorial?”
“Oh!” he nodded to himself, seemingly pleased to be able to recall her. “Her. What do you mean I was spending time with her? I only have time for one woman, and that’s your mother!”
“Well that’s not what she thought. She heard you were spending a lot of time in Sandra’s house.”
“No, no! Oh. Well, I did drop by to purchase some fudge from her on occasion.”
“Just fudge?”
“Well. If you must know—and I shouldn’t tell you this, it’s secret mayoral business—we were discussing some possible rezoning plans. You see, her fudge business wasn’t technically allowed to be operating out of her home, not with customers coming in and out, anyway. She was operating it like a shop, but that’s a residential area.”
“Right.”
“I’m thinking—and keep this under your hat—about proposing that whole neighborhood be rezoned. It’s full of historic houses that really could put Sequoia Bay on the map. If we got rid of a few of the families, we could turn some of those lovely old properties into proper little businesses. Some Olde-Worlde type stuff, you know?”
“Like a fudge shop?”
“Exactly. A fudge shop, a craft shop, a jam shop. A little gallery. Maybe a nightclub for the youngsters.”
“A nightclub!?”
He shrugged. “All the big cities have them.”
“Well, Sequoia Bay isn’t a big city and—”
“Not yet!” he said, interrupting. He followed that up with a smile, and for a brief moment, I thought I saw dollar signs flashing in his eyes, though surely it was just a trick of the light.
“So there was nothing… romantic going on with you and Sandra?”
“Absolutely nothing of the sort! I only have eyes for your mother, Aria.”
“Mmhmm,” I said dubiously and nibbled on a little piece of pastry.
“Though I suppose it is a bit of luck that she’s not out in public at the moment.”
“Oh?”
“Well, what with her discovering Sandra’s body. It might make me look bad, to be associated with all that!”
I tried to refrain from rolling my eyes again.
This guy was unbelievable. It did make him almost perfect for my mother though; they both had enough arrogance and self-importance to sink a battleship and would no doubt poison any relationship with anyone who wasn’t as self-obsessed as each of them was. Mom and Donovan were so busy thinking about how wonderful each of them was that they didn’t notice when the other didn’t shut up about how wonderful they were, either.
“Well, Aria, I can’t stand here chatting with you all day. My other citizens will get jealous,” he said, followed by a loud, “Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“I’d hate to deprive them,” I said, already looking down at what was left of my pie again. “Have a nice afternoon, Donovan.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “Bye Aria, bye Priscilla, bye Black Cat Café!”
With a wave of his hand, high in the air, the mayor bid farewell to the café and strutted outside to whatever he had next on his hectic agenda of schmoozing and boozing.
With Donovan gone, I could get back to my own important business: finishing the rest of my beautiful, delicious dessert and thinking about Randi and Sandra and fudge.
Chapter 14
At just before 9 a.m., there was a loud thud at the front door of my shop. I turned off the vacuum, which I had been pushing around counterclockwise for obvious reasons, and went to investigate.
The thump was followed by rapid banging on the door from what appeared to be a large deranged woman. I peered through the glass. It was a large deranged woman.
“Hi, Mom,” I said when I’d unbolted the door and pulled it open.
If anything, Mom looked even worse than she had last time I’d seen her. She was just as large, but now her face had turned into a splotchy red mess as well, and her hair seemed to be going haywire—even under the headscarf she’d wrapped around her swollen head.
“Oh, Aria,” she said with a plaintive whining tone to her voice.
“Would you like some tea?”
She nodded appreciatively. “Get out the good stuff. I’ll need it.”
The “good stuff” was a special blend we had put together of chamomile and lavender, along with a little bit of witchy-magic on top. We’d created it for those times when the stress was getting to be just too much to handle, and I had to admit, with Mom in her current state, I wasn’t sure if even our special blend would be enough to settle her.
I went behind the counter and took out the tea tin, and set some water to boil in the electric kettle I kept specifically for this purpose. “So you haven’t reversed the spell, then.”
Mom glared over at me. “No, not yet. Though I am working on it.” There was a small amount of hope in her voice now. “But I’ll need to keep out of prison to pull it off.”
“Prison?”
I fetched two cups and gave them a quick wipe, and then I put the herbal tea blend into my hand-painted ceramic floral teapot.
Mom let out a loud sigh with a bit of a wheeze behind it. The weight really seemed to be affecting her body as well as her mental state. “That awful man was hammering on my door this morning.”
“Which awful man was that?” I asked with an amused smile.
“Your awful man. Your policeman. Jack fudging Bowers.”
“Mom!” I said with shock and irritation. “He’s not my man. What did he want?”
While Mom and Mayor Donovan had an on-off relationship, my relationship with Jack Bowers had been more a slow burn. In fact, the burn was so slow I wasn’t sure if it was even smoldering yet. We didn’t officially have a relationship. But still, I wouldn’t have Mom speaking ill about him, not in my shop.
“He wanted to arrest me and throw me in prison until I die, Aria.”
That didn’t sound like the Jack Bowers I knew.
With a roar, the kettle brought itself to a boil, and I carefully poured its contents into my little teapot. The air immediately filled with lavender-chamomile steam and the tense muscles in my neck and shoulders began to loosen up.
“Did he say those exact words?”
“Didn’t have to.”
“Didn’t have to?”
“Nope. I could tell, Aria. I’m a very intuitive person, and I knew that was what he wanted to do. He’s neve
r liked me, and you know what I say: don’t ever trust a man who doesn’t like me.”
Inhaling the scent of the tea to keep my cool, I breathed in and out slowly. Then, I lifted the teapot and slowly filled the two cups with hot violet liquid. Once they were nice and full, I carried them both across the room, gently handed one to my mother, and sat in the neighboring armchair to hers.
“What did he say, exactly?”
Mom shrugged and silently raised her cup to her lips.
“Mom?”
“He didn’t say anything.”
I took a sip of my own tea. Talking to Mom was an ordeal sometimes.
“What do you mean he didn’t say anything? He knocked on your door and stood there like a zombie?”
A smile almost crossed my mother’s lips, a faint tightening of the corners of her pudgy cheeks giving her away.
“I didn’t open the door. But I could tell what he wanted.”
“With your intuition?”
She nodded again, firmly.
“So you just ignored him?”
Mom shook her head, took a sip of her tea, and then looked up at me again.
“I didn’t ignore him, Aria. I hurried out the back door of my house and came here!”
I took another sip of tea. I needed it. “In other words, you’re on the run from the police, and you came here?”
“Of course. I couldn’t exactly go to the mayor’s office in this state, could I?” A shudder seemed to pass down her spine and a drop of tea spilled out of the cup onto her thick jacket, but she didn’t seem to notice. “If Donovan saw me like this… well, it doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? Not that I would want to see him, anyway.”
“I saw him, by the way. He was asking after you.”
“Now that his Jezebel is in the grave he wants me back, I take it?”
Using my hand to wipe my lips, I covered up a smile. “He assured me he had no romantic interest in her. He has eyes only for you, Mom. Well, he did.” I ran my eyes up and down her rotund form in its heavy jacket. “But maybe he’d change his tune if he could actually see you now.”
Mom treated me to one of her meanest glares. The tea must have been working, because I just responded with a serene smile.
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