“I suppose so. Right, I’m going to get some paper plates, tablecloths, some little cocktail sticks and a few cases of water. Can you think of anything else?”
Sarah took a moment to think, twisting a braid around her finger and then tugging on it distractedly. Then her eyes lit up.
“Champagne! We need champagne for a launch party!”
I shook my head immediately.
“Unfortunately, the budget for our fake business does not extend to champagne. Maybe I’ll get some generic cola if you really want some fizz.”
“Really? My first real business, and—”
“Not a real business,”
“— and you won’t even get me champagne? That’s pretty mean, Aria.”
With a frown, I decided to concede. Partly, anyway.
“I’ll get one bottle. And it’s for us, not the mob. After everyone’s gone, if everything works out like it should, we’ll make a toast to our success together. How does that sound?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Fantastic!”
Leaving her to finish setting up, I headed out to the shops to grab some real supplies for our fake party for our new fake business. I just had to hope that not too many real guests were going to show up.
Chapter 23
“Hello?” came a voice from outside the shop, followed by a rattling at the door.
I checked the clock. There were still five minutes until our 7 p.m. launch time.
“Please wait outside!” I called, loud enough that my voice would penetrate through the door.
“But we’re starving!” said the voice.
“Yeah! Let us in!” chimed another voice.
“Fudge!” came a third shouted voice. “Fuuuuudge!”
A ruffling near the store’s rear entrance made me turn around. “Sarah?”
She was dressed in a long white gown. That, along with her braided hair and the henna tattoos she’d put onto her face, made her look more like a hippie princess than a business owner, but it would certainly be effective at drawing people’s attention.
She twirled around, sending the dress floating up almost to her waist as she spun.
“Don’t I look fabulous?” she asked.
It was impossible to deny that she did. She’d certainly be the talk of the town for days to come. Or she would be—if what I was planning didn’t completely upstage her.
“You look fabulous, my dear,” I gave her an encouraging smile. “Are you ready to be the belle of the ball?”
She nodded enthusiastically and headed for the door.
“You do the honors. It is your business, after all,” I said.
Sarah unbolted the door, and before she could open it herself, it was pushed open violently from outside. While Sarah jumped backward, I put on my warmest, most welcoming smile to greet everyone. But as it turned out, I ran out of smile before I ran out of guests to greet.
“Welcome,” I said to the first lady in, a rather angry-looking diminutive woman in her later years.
“Where’s the fudge?” she said, peering around before spying the tables we set up. “There it is! Out of my way!”
Slipping out of the way to avoid being pushed, I smiled at the next person through the door.
“Ah, Aria,” said Mayor Donovan Charlston. “How nice to see you here!”
“It is my shop,” I pointed out. “It would be strange if I weren’t.”
“It may be your shop, but it’s your little friend with the business acumen, eh? Fudge is an up-and-coming market in Sequoia Bay. Soon we’ll have three fudge shops!”
The implied slight had me frowning for a moment, but I quickly managed to fix my smile back in place as the mayor wandered off to taste some of the fudge.
Next up was the fudge connoisseur herself, Lara Fischer.
“Hello!” I said to her brightly. “You’ll be pleased to know that we have rum raisin.”
“Oh! My favorite!” Her head bobbed up and down with excitement.
“I know! I remembered and told Sarah we just had to have some for you. I don’t want you to be disappointed like you were at Randi’s.”
“I’ll let you know what I think,” she said as she walked over to the tasting table.
“She was not disappointed with my fudge,” said a familiar voice.
Randi herself had decided to come. She was one of the people I had instructed Sarah to invite, but I was still half-tempted to tell her she was barred. Since we weren’t actually starting a real business, I decided to take the high road and allow her to try some of my rather excellent tasting fudge.
“I’m sure she loved your fudge, but you didn’t have the rum raisin that she was craving.”
Randi turned her back on me and headed to taste the fudge for herself without another word.
The stream of people coming in seemed to be constant for the first fifteen minutes, until my shop was packed to the rafters.
It had never been so busy in here before. The only comparable time was when I’d had a crowd of people waiting outside for a sample sale to start; however, that crowd had never actually made it inside due to the rather unfortunate death of a bride before it all began.
Sarah was having a grand time, flitting from person to person, draping her arms around them as she greeted them and leaving them wanting more when she left to go talk to someone else.
“Aria,” said a familiar voice, squeezing my arm to attract my attention.
“Hi, Jack,” I said, blanching. He was not one of the people I’d told Sarah to invite.
“I just heard about the new business. It must be very exciting for Sarah.”
“About that,” I said, pulling him toward me and lowering my voice so that, hopefully, only he could hear. “I’ve got to tell you—this isn’t exactly what it looks like.”
Jack looked around the room. “So it’s not a free fudge tasting?”
“Well.” I wasn’t sure how much to tell him. “It is a free fudge tasting, but there are some ulterior motives at play here behind the scenes. I’m planning to clear my mother’s name.”
He glanced around the room before his eyes settled back on mine. “I’m not sure what you’ve got planned, but I don’t know that it’s going to help. Unfortunately, we found some evidence at your mother’s house that connects her to the death of Sandra.”
I waved a hand, rejecting his concerns immediately. “Yes, yes, ignore all that.”
“Ignore it? I can’t do that, Aria.”
A young man stopped and looked as if he wanted to ask me something. I gave a dismissive shake of my head and sent him on his way.
“Well, you do what you need to do. But I have a feeling tonight might change your mind.” I looked him right in his gorgeous green eyes. “But could you do me one little favor?”
“Err, what is it?” He looked nervous as he spoke, and I knew why.
Jack always did things by the book, a real stickler for the rules, and now he was plainly worried that I was going to ask him to do something against either the official code of conduct, or his personal one. Luckily for him though, I wasn’t.
“Don’t get mad at me,” I said with a grin. Before he could even ask for more details, I slipped between two young women I didn’t recognize and escaped into the crowd.
“Sarah,” I said, touching my friend on the arm. “How’s it going?”
She beamed at me, virtually vibrating with excitement. “It’s wonderful! And they all love my fudge! They say it’s almost as good as Randi’s!”
“Oh? Who said that?”
“Randi!”
That figured. There was no way she’d admit it was better than the stuff she made using Sandra’s recipe. I’d done the best job I could on the fudge, and in my opinion it was at least as good as the stuff Randi was hawking from her shop. I’d even followed Lara’s tip of not stirring the fudge to stop it from going grainy.
Even Kiwi had declared it passable. It’s no Sandra’s, he’d said, but it’s perfectly edible. He’d then proceeded to
eat half a dozen pieces of it, which told me the real truth: it was fantastic fudge.
CLINK CLINK CLINK!
“Can I have your attention please?”
Oh no. It was Donovan, and he wanted to give another of his famous speeches.
CLINK CLINK CLINK!
He repeatedly banged a little silver spoon against the whiskey glass he was holding. He must have brought it himself this time too, because it certainly wasn’t something I was offering.
“Please listen! Listen up! Now, we are gathered here today to remember…”
I shook my head to myself.
This party didn’t need a rambling and irrelevant speech from the mayor.
Nope.
It needed a little bit of Aria magic instead.
Chapter 24
“THANK YOU!” I yelled. “Thank you, Mayor Charlston, for getting everybody’s attention.”
Donovan was frowning and opened his mouth again. “Aria! Aria? Aria, I was just going to say a few words about—”
I muttered some words of my own under my breath and then snapped my fingers as if trying to draw everyone’s attention. Wholly a coincidence, the mayor’s whiskey glass shattered into a thousand pieces at the same moment, covering his shirt in the drink.
“And what fine words they were. Thank you for getting everyone’s attention, Mayor. Are you okay? Did you drop your drink? Someone, please help him clean it up, and be careful not to cut yourselves.”
I paused for a moment and scanned the room. Perfect. Everyone I’d told Sarah to invite was here: Walnut Wanda, Priscilla, her business partner Nora, Lara Fischer, Donovan, Randi, and me. The only person who I wished could be here but wasn’t was my mother.
“As fudge lovers, the last couple of weeks have been a very trying time for all of us.”
The crowd made sounds of agreement, and someone even offered a hear, hear!
“As you all know, one of the greatest fudge makers in all of Sequoia Bay was sadly taken from us. But there are others who have taken up her mantle, and are even offering up her exact recipe in their shops.”
I cast my eyes toward Randi, as did almost everyone else. I gave her a smile sweeter than honey.
“After all, it would be a shame for such a delicacy to be lost forever. Now, you all came here today to taste some fudge. You received, or heard about, an invitation to come and try some samples for a new fudge shop. And here you all are.”
The crowd reacted with happy noises, and those lucky enough to be holding some fudge either held it up in support or popped it into their mouths when they were reminded of it.
“But I’m afraid I have you here under false pretenses.”
A gasp soared through the room like a jet engine firing up. Perhaps it wasn’t quite that strong, but it was nonetheless startlingly loud.
“Sarah?”
The hippie princess clapped her hands together to make sure everyone knew where to look before she began. While she was speaking, I slipped away from where I’d been standing and made my way toward the door of the shop.
Sarah began the speech that we’d prepared. “I’d always dreamed of owning a fudge shop, ever since yesterday when Aria suggested it to me.”
The room reacted with a puzzled, twittering laughter, not quite sure whether she was making a joke, or whether she was out of her mind. Some no doubt suspected it was a little of both.
“As many of you know, and as all of you should know, I spent many, many hours working on a scrapbook to celebrate the life of the dearly departed Sandra Webb. A scrapbook that mysteriously disappeared.”
While the crowd was busy oohing at this mildly dramatic revelation, I carefully slid the bolt of the shop door closed to lock it.
Though it could easily be pulled open again, I was counting on the murderer’s shock and confusion to assist me in keeping them inside. The bolt was just a slight delaying tactic.
“But my scrapbook wasn’t the only one that disappeared.”
There were murmurs of ‘mine too’ through the crowd. I of course knew where they all were, but that wasn’t what we were here to discuss.
“There are…” Sarah raised her eyes to look up at the ceiling in her idea of drama, “strange things afoot in Sequoia Bay!”
The crowd followed suit and also looked up at the ceiling, but the only notable thing up there was a cobweb that we had missed when cleaning earlier.
“Err, thank you, Sarah!” I said loudly to grab everyone’s attention again.
Sarah span around in a billowing twirl, then did a deep bow toward me.
“The reason I got you all here, is actually not to pre-sell you fudge. It is, in fact, to reveal…” the crowd waited with bated breath “…who murdered Sandra Webb.”
My announcement was greeted with shocked oohs and ahhs from the crowd—and one person with a rather panicked look on their face. But with me in front of the door, there was nowhere for them to go.
There was a sudden rattling at the door behind me. I was going to ignore it, but something told me not to. That something was my mother.
“Let me in, Aria! Unlock this at once!”
I spun around, opened the door and there she was: my mother, back down to her old fighting weight, dressed in a red dress designed for someone at least a couple of decades younger than her, but, darn it, she pulled it off.
“Thank you,” she said, entering the room and looking at the crowd with a haughty sniff. Due to my rather exciting announcement, everyone was staring at me, but of course Mom thought they were looking at her. “Good evening, everyone—I’m here!” she said.
There were murmurings in the crowd.
“Actually, we’re in the middle of something,” I said to her. “Be quiet and please listen for a minute.”
“Very well,” she said with a sigh.
Re-focusing on the crowd, I saw Jack making his way toward us with a look of double consternation on his face. Before he could reach us and no doubt arrest my mother, I had to finish what I’d started.
“As many of you know, Sandra had the best fudge in town. But what a lot of you don’t know is that ‘her’ recipe wasn’t her own.”
Everyone except one person gasped. This was a crowd of serious fudge lovers, and this accusation was almost up there with murder for some of them. Possibly even worse than murder for some.
“And that is why she was killed.”
I paused to soak up some of the delicious anticipation, and with a start realized that I now understood, at least partly, what drove Donovan to make speeches at every opportunity. There’s nothing quite like a crowd hanging on your every word.
“Now some of you are probably thinking you know who the killer is. Was it Randi, whose fudge has been nicknamed ‘the poor man’s Sandra’s?’” Actually, I’d just made that saying up on the spot, but after how mean she’d been to me, I hoped it would stick. “No, it was not.”
“What about the Weight Loss Warrior herself, Walnut Wanda, who was nearly killed after being handed nut-infused fudge by Sandra?” I let it hang for a second before again answering my own question. “No.”
Taking another deep breath, I began to reconsider my plan. It seemed like a good idea when there were only going to be a couple of people there, but with dozens and dozens of them it had all become just a little too dramatic. I needed to bring this to a close soon.
“Or was it my beloved old mother, Annabelle Whitmore?” I felt a jolt of pain as my arm suffered a surprisingly solid punch. The pain bled into my pride when a good number of the audience giggled or guffawed at her response. “No, it wasn’t her either.”
“Who was it?” yelled someone at the back.
“Get on with it!” said another.
“Bring out the rest of the fudge!” cried a third, who was going to be in for a mountain of disappointment. There was not going to be any more fudge.
“No, I can tell you that the murderer was in fact…”
I let the suspense hang in the air just a little too long, be
cause someone else stole my thunder.
“Me!” said Lara Fischer. “It was me! I didn’t mean to do it!”
“… Err, her,” I said pointing her way.
“Listen to me!” Lara shouted.
And so of course we all did. There was nowhere for her to escape to now, and there’s nothing more thrilling than a murderer in your midst, even one as diminutive as this mop-headed tourist.
“Sandra was a terrible, terrible person!”
The crowd wasn’t impressed with her opening statement, and greeted it with murmurs of murderer, shut it!, and she was better than most of us!
“Listen! I, too, used to have a fudge business. We had a little store of our own, and a little factory, and we supplied dozens of other shops all over western Washington. Fudge was my life.”
The crowd’s mutterings became a little more sympathetic. Many of them, too, dreamed of living a life of fudge.
“Sandra was our employee. My husband and I hired her to help cook up the fudge and package it afterward. But was she happy that we gave her a chance? Happy to have a dream job? Was she satisfied?”
“No!” shouted the audience as if this were a call and response section of a play.
“Right, she wasn’t. She…” Lara raised a hand and wiped a tear from her eye, her voice quavering. “…she seduced my husband and stole our fudge recipe!”
Gasps and cries filled the room at the treachery.
“When I found out, of course I fired her. But she wasn’t done!” Lara looked around the room with a beseeching expression on her face. “She poisoned the last batch of fudge we made! Our customers fell ill, and my business was ruined. She destroyed my life.”
Now I felt guilty. I hadn’t realized quite how dastardly Sandra had been.
“So I tracked her down. I’ve spent months visiting every fudge shop in the country, tasting and sampling them all until I found my recipe again. And when I found it… well…”
“You killed her!” shouted someone who hadn’t been swayed by her sob story.
“I didn’t mean to! I just wanted to ruin her business like she ruined mine. I put just a little bit of poison—”
Wedding Bells And Magic Spells Box Set Page 51