Her reading chair and coffee table were also in their correct places, and the fireplace that made the whole room cozy was also exactly as it should have been.
What wasn’t normal, though, was the dozens of books scattered across the floor and piled up along the wall. Dozens of hard-backed books of various sizes that I had never seen before.
They weren’t Mom’s books.
There was a large black book right by my feet, so I picked it up. On the front, in what appeared to be handwritten text made with a gold glitter pen, were the words: Emily’s Scrapbook.
I dropped it onto the chair and picked up another. Sandy’s Special Memories. And another Billie’s Treasure-trove of Scrap.
Every book I picked up had something similar on the front. They were all scrapbooks, and all belonged to different people, presumably from Sequoia Bay.
It looked like Mom had a massive collection of scrapbooks. In fact, by the looks of things, she must have had just about every scrapbook in Sequoia Bay down in her basement.
“Oh, Mom, what have you gotten yourself into...”
Shaking my head, I decided it was time to leave. I couldn’t move all the evidence out of the basement, and nor should I.
I had already reached the stairs when I thought of something. Turning, I quickly hurried back to Mom’s little library and began to search through all the scrapbooks. It didn’t take too long to find what I was looking for.
“Aha!”
I pulled out the large, thick tome that was dedicated to the life and memory of Sandra the fudge maker—Sarah’s scrapbook that she’d been working on for the last couple of weeks.
It seemed Mom had collected just about every scrapbook in town. But most of them had been left here when she fled. In fact, all of them, except one, I’d wager.
Although it wasn’t a confirmation, I checked each of the scrapbooks in turn to make sure I was right. Sure enough, Sandra’s book with all of her recipes was indeed the only one not in Mom’s basement.
I wasn’t yet quite sure what was going on, but I had a few ideas. Grabbing Sarah’s book to take with me, I left the basement and hurried back outside.
As soon as I was back in my car, my phone began to ring.
“Why now?” I said to myself.
It was Jack.
“Hello?” I said, trying not to pant.
“Aria. Are you okay? You sound a bit... breathless.”
“Oh, fine, fine. Just been up and down the stairs too many times.”
“I wanted to tell you personally, before you heard it on the news.”
Uh-oh.
“We still haven’t been able to track down your mother, and, well...”
“What?”
“I’m sorry to say, but we’ve been forced to put out a warrant for her arrest.”
I sighed into the phone. Great.
“Do you know where she is, Aria?”
“Nope. I wish I did, I really do. I’ve got questions for her as well.”
“Well, if you do see her...”
“I know, I know. I’ll get her to turn herself in.”
“Thanks, Aria. And by the way, just in case you wonder what’s going on, we’ve got a warrant to search her house as well. So don’t be alarmed if you see police cars outside her house.”
I gulped. Great. They were going to find everything. Probably just about all the evidence they needed to convict her, in fact.
“What’s brought all this on?”
“I shouldn’t say...”
“But it’s me, so you will.”
“I... well okay, but please, keep this to yourself for now. The lab results came back from Sandra’s fudge. It seems it was absolutely filled with rat poison.”
“Strychnine?”
“Yes, exactly. How did you know that?”
“Just a lucky guess. It’s one of the most common rat poisons.”
“Is it?” Jack sounded surprised.
“Oh, yes. I guess I spent too much time watching police procedurals on television.”
There was a long pause before he spoke again. “If you do hear anything, let me know. Take care, Aria.”
“You too. Thanks, Jack.”
Now what was I going to do?
Chapter 21
It was with relief that I returned to my shop: a little space of my own, cut off from the outside world. A little sanctuary of calm.
That was one of the good things about bridal shops—they weren’t too hectic. About once a month or so we’d get a bride who brought a whole gang of noisy screeching bridesmaids with her, but usually things were relatively peaceful in my line of work.
I pushed the front door open, the bell went ding! and I went...
“What in the name...”
“Oh, Aria! Thank goodness you’re here! It’s a disaster!”
It was a disaster. She was right about that. The whole place was a mess. The armchairs had been moved away from the wall and their cushions yanked off the seats, every mannequin had been moved from its position and their dresses lifted up and thrown over their heads. It looked like the entire contents of the cupboards and drawers behind the counter had been emptied out and dumped on top.
“What’s happened? It looks like we were robbed!”
“We were! Oh, we were robbed!” said Sarah, running at me and flinging her arms around me in a hug.
“This isn’t about your scrapbook, is it?”
Sarah’s eyes went wide.
“It is! You knew! As soon as you came in, you could tell it was missing, couldn’t you? We’re like twins.”
“Not exactly...”
“What are we going to do? I’ve looked through the whole shop but I can’t find it!” Sarah released me from her hug and started to flounce around, sobbing dramatically.
“Well, I think we’re going to have to have to tidy up in a minute. But don’t worry about the scrapbook. I have it in my car. I’ll get it in a minute. It was the strangest thing…”
I explained to her what I’d discovered while we worked on tidying up the shop.
“It looks bad for your mom, doesn’t it?” said Sarah with a furrowed brow as she attempted to force a cushion back into its proper spot on the armchair.
“It sure does. I think someone’s trying to frame her.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What we are going to do is clear her name—and expose the real killer.”
Sarah let out a dismayed sigh. “But we don’t know who the real killer is, do we?”
I gave her a mischievous grin. “Actually, I’ve got an idea. Did you find any fudge recipes?”
“Sure did. I’ve got one with a five-star rating that’s supposed to be the best in the world.”
“Then that should do the trick. I’ve got to go upstairs for a little bit. Can you try and get everything back in order?”
Sarah looked around the shop, shaking her head. “But it’s such a mess.”
I raised my eyebrows at her.
“… But that’s no problem. I’ll have everything shipshape in no time.”
“I’ll be back down soon.”
“Oh, before you go, this came for you. Someone slid it under the door.”
Sarah handed me a small, plain white envelope. Curiously, I opened it up. Inside was a newspaper cutting from a small local paper in Washington state. There was a photo of Sandra with another couple, and just a caption underneath. It read: “Local Couple Fudging Happy at County Fair Win.”
“Well, isn’t that interesting?”
Upstairs, it was even worse than I had feared. Kiwi had been hard at work searching for the scrapbook he had purloined from Sandra, and he had left no stone, or indeed chair, cupboard, drawer, book, or item of clothing unturned.
“I can’t find it anywhere!” he said with an angry shriek as soon as I opened the door.
I surveyed the devastation. It was as if a small cyclone had whipped through my apartment. I suppose, in a way, it had.
“I don�
��t think you’ll find it here.” I stepped over a pile of clothes that hadn’t been by the door earlier. “It’s gone.”
“Gone!” he screeched dramatically, following it up with a wail that sounded like a screeching cat.
“But I’m pretty sure I knew who took it.”
“Who? Tell me so I can punish them!”
I grinned at the little feathered devil. “Mom.”
“She’s the worst.” He literally hopped up and down with anger as he said it. “She tried to murder me, and now she’s robbed me.”
Bending down to pick up some of the clothes, I met Kiwi at eye level. “To be fair, you kind of stole that scrapbook yourself.”
“Did not. She was already dead, and everyone knows you can’t steal from the dead.”
“Do they? I’ve never heard that before.”
“Oh yes. You have to be living to have something stolen from you. That’s probably why your mother tried to kill me, so she could take the scrapbook!”
With a hand covering my mouth to stifle my laughter, I began to walk around the apartment to figure out how long it would take me to get everything back in order. At least a couple of hours, I calculated.
“Do you think you can tidy some of this up? I’ve got some things to do.”
“Me? With what? My hands?” asked Kiwi, flapping his wings as a demonstration that he did not, in fact, have hands.
I glared down at him.
“If you can make a mess, then you can clean one up, Kiwi. If there’s anything too heavy for you, I’ll get it later, but I expect you to do the bulk of it.”
He shook his tiny head at me.
“But I’m just a poor little parrot.” He raised up one wing feebly. “Look how weak I am.”
“Well, if you’re that weak, then obviously there’s something wrong with your diet. I’ll throw out all the cheese puffs, ban you from any fudge we might come across, and put you on a strict diet of insects and vegetables. How does that sound?”
Kiwi stood up as straight as he could, snatched up a scarf with his talons, and burst into the air, dropping it onto one of the clothes hooks by the door in the flash of an eye.
“I must be stronger than I thought,” he said as he landed back down on the floor next to the rest of the heap of clothes.
“Funny, that.”
Leaving him to it, I went back downstairs and into the stockroom to use the old computer I kept there. I had some work to do if my little plan was going to come together. I smiled at the screen as I began to type:
Sarah’s…
Half an hour later, I was grinning triumphantly as I emerged from the back room holding a sheaf of papers I had printed off.
Sarah had made decent headway in cleaning up. The initial mess hadn’t been as bad as it looked. Either that or Sarah was a way better tidier-upper than I’d given her credit for.
“What have you got there?” she asked me as she finished fluffing a cushion.
“This is the key part to our plan,” I said with a smile I hoped was mysterious.
“Do I get to be part of it? You usually do all the fun stuff on your own.” There was an air of accusation in her tone.
“Yep,” I said with a nod. “In fact, you’re the key component.” It was a bit of an exaggeration, but not much.
“The star?”
“The brightest.” I took the top piece of paper off my stack and handed it to her.
She looked at it, and then wrinkled her nose.
“Sarah’s Fudge Emporium—Coming Soon. Come for a delicious free taste of fudge at our pop-up pre-launch event at Blue Moon Bridal...” She looked at the paper again and then up at me. “This is tomorrow! Am I starting a business?”
“Not exactly—”
“I don’t even own a suit! Do I need one? I think a pantsuit would suit me—”
“Hold your horses,” I said holding up a palm. “You’re not actually starting a business. It’s a trap!”
“Ooh, a trap? I like the sound of that. Will it be dangerous?”
I shrugged nonchalantly.
“Only if you think...” I paused, and then raised my voice loud for the last part, “Catching a murderer is dangerous.”
Sarah clapped her hands together and did a little jump.
“Fantastic! What do I have to do?”
“Well, the first thing you’ve got to do is hand out these invitations. We’re only going to invite a few people.”
“Like who?”
“Oh, just all of the suspects.”
“This is so exciting!” Sarah beamed at me.
“But remember, it could be dangerous.”
That didn’t seem to put her off at all; in fact, it made her seem even more excited. I wrote down a list of all the people I wanted her to invite, with the understanding that as long as they were there, she could invite whoever else she wanted.
“Can I go now?” she asked when I’d finished reeling off the list of names.
“Yep, you’d better. Your opening night is tomorrow!”
She clapped her hands together again. “See you later!”
The bell rung as Sarah enthusiastically launched herself out the front door and went to hand out her invitations.
Invitations to several of Sequoia Bay’s most upstanding citizens... and one murderer.
Chapter 22
I spent the bulk of the next day doing everything except working in my shop. Didn’t have time. Most of my morning was occupied preparing fudge samples using the recipe Sarah had dug up on the internet. I went a little overboard and ended up making more than a dozen full trays of the stuff.
And it wasn’t just plain fudge either. Using the base recipe, I created several variations, including strawberries and cream, rum raisin, walnut, and rocky road.
Of course I didn’t do it alone. I had Kiwi to assist me. Though irritate may have been a better verb to describe what he did.
“Can we try it now?” he asked for the dozenth time.
I shook my head, again. “Nope. We have to wait until it sets. You’ll mess up the whole batch if you start taking it out now. We don’t want it going grainy, do we?”
“Don’t we?” he said, shaking his little head. “I think we should risk it.”
“Nope. In fact, no one’s having any until the event.”
“Is it really a fake event?” he asked me, again.
“Yep.”
“But couldn’t Aunt Sarah really start a fudge company? If she did, we’d be fudge rich! We could eat it every day! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
The mere thought of it turned my stomach. A little square of fudge every now and then was nice, but eating it non-stop for days on end sounded like some kind of torture. From the look on Kiwi’s face, it sounded like heaven to him, though.
“We’ll let it all cool down, then we’ll slice it into squares, and I’ll let you have a piece or two while we get it put on plates. How does that sound?”
“I’ll wait, I suppose.”
“I’m going downstairs to check on Sarah. Are you coming?”
He shook his head. “No way. I’ve got to guard the fudge!”
“All right, but no tasting until I say.”
Kiwi answered with a complaining chattering sound of agreement. I knew the only thing he needed to guard against was himself, but I figured even if he did break his word and eat some, it wouldn’t matter in the end. We weren’t really starting a fudge business after all.
When I opened the door to the shop, I was pleasantly surprised. Sarah had managed a lot in such a short amount of time.
Hanging above the counter was a banner which Sarah had made by hanging a piece of string and affixing pieces of letter paper to it. It read:
Welcome to Sarah’s Pop-Up Fudge Emporium!
She had moved all the mannequins and dress rails to one side of the shop, where they had been covered in white sheets to disguise and protect them. I didn’t want any excited fudge taster wiping their fudgy hands on one of my expensive wed
ding dresses, and of course we couldn’t clear out the shop entirely. I did still have a real business to run once this was all over.
“How many of the invitations did you give out, in the end?”
I had given Sarah ten of them the day before. There were four people I wanted her to invite, and the other six she could give to whoever she pleased.
“I’m not sure...” she said, twisting a couple of her braids together while she thought.
“Was it all of them?”
Sarah’s tinkling laughter which she gave in response made me nervous.
“Oh, I’ll say,” she said, the smile on her face not likely to go anywhere soon.
“So you gave out all ten of them?”
She shook her head.
“Nope. Better than that!”
“Better? How could you do better?” This sounded more and more ominous to me.
“Easy. You only gave me ten. But I figured if we want this business to be a success—”
“What!?” I interrupted. “We don’t want it to be a success, remember? It’s a fake business!”
Sarah shook her head. “I don’t want my name on a fake failure of a business, do I? I want Sarah’s Fudge Emporium to be a success!”
“A fake success,” I clarified. “So what did you do? Who did you invite?”
“After I’d given the invitations to the people you told me to, I was nearly out. So, I went to the library and made some more copies!”
“How many more?”
“Just a hundred or so.”
“A hundred!? Who did you give them all to?”
“Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t give them to a hundred people. I handed out about half of them, and the rest I left in the Black Cat Café. Priscilla said it was okay as long as we weren’t going to start selling pies and coffee and competing with her.”
I clasped my head in my hands. It was going to be like Sandra’s memorial all over again.
“I think we might have some disappointed fake customers. I definitely didn’t make enough fudge for a hundred people.”
Sarah shrugged. “Good. Then we can say we sold out on our first day.”
Wedding Bells And Magic Spells Box Set Page 50