In Hot Fudge And Cold Blood Read online

  “Oh,” said Sarah, wincing. “She wasn’t very nice to me either, when I was asking for things for my scrapbook.”

  “I accused her of stealing Sandra’s scrapbook—or at least a recipe card. I figured that was why the house had been turned over but nothing valuable seemed to be missing. The police wouldn’t know about something like that.”

  “But she didn’t admit to it?”

  “Nope. Instead, she said maybe Mom or Kiwi or you stole it.”

  “Me? But I’ve got my own scrapbook!”

  “Yeah, and Kiwi’s a parrot. He doesn’t exactly maintain a robust library of books either.”

  Sarah giggled at the thought of Kiwi reading. Little did she know, he actually did read. Unfortunately, the only thing he was interested in was tabloids focused on celebrity gossip.

  I’d told him repeatedly he should read some of my magic tomes, but he just cackled and said they were boring. It was probably a good thing though. The thought of the mischief he could cause with some of those spells…

  After I’d finished telling Sarah about my morning’s misadventures, she gave me a wistful, doe-eyed look. “It’s always the children who suffer when adults fight, isn’t it?”

  “Children? What children?”

  “Kiwi.”

  Kiwi raised his head to look at her, though as soon as he realized she wasn’t talking to him he went back to pecking at the fudge.

  “Now that you and Randi are fighting, he won’t be able to get any more fudge.” Sarah made a sympathetic, clucking noise. “Such a shame.”

  “That’s the least of my worries,” I said, rubbing my head. It still ached from my confusing conversation with Hazel.

  Once Sarah had finished work for the day, it was time to sit Kiwi down for a little chat.

  “What did I do?” he asked, the umbrage clear in his little voice before I’d even asked him a thing.

  We were still in the shop, and he was standing on top of the counter while I leaned against it next to him. I wanted him to feel relaxed, not reproached.

  “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. I just need you to remember something,” I said.

  “What?” He was standing just in front of the last remaining piece of fudge from the box I’d brought back earlier. It was like he was standing guard over it, protecting it from potential fudge-nappers.

  “Do you remember the night we found Sandra?”

  “I ate fudge!”

  Kiwi looked positively delighted at the memory.

  “Yes, you did. Do you remember I found you in that dining room, and you were trying to eat that whole tray of the stuff?”

  He nodded his little head up and down happily.

  “Well, do you remember you were reading something?”

  He cocked his head and then dropped it down to his chest in a motion equivalent to a human frown.

  “You do remember, don’t you?”

  “Oh! The fudge book!”

  I nodded at him, pleased that he hadn’t completely forgotten that day. Thanks to how much fudge he’d eaten, he’d seemed a bit woozy for a day or two afterward.

  “Do you know what happened to it?”

  There was only the briefest of pauses before he perked up, standing tall.

  “Yep!” he said with a happy screech.

  Sometimes Kiwi misunderstood what I was getting at, though I suspected at least half the time it was his willful misunderstanding rather than a fault in my ability to ask questions.

  “Well? What happened to it? Where did it go?”

  “I took it.”

  I looked at the parrot. I thought back to that night. No way.

  “How, exactly, did you take it? You’re tiny and that scrapbook was bigger than you.”

  He chattered to himself in a kind of giggle, the shoulders of his wings shaking up and down in mirth. “You helped me!”

  That wasn’t how I remembered it. “How exactly did I help you?”

  “You did that magic. Remember? You made me, and that tray of fudge, and the scrapbook invisible.”

  “And? Is it still there? That spell wouldn’t have lasted more than an hour or two.”

  He shook his little head and gave me a parrot-grin. He loved it when he knew something I didn’t, especially when it involved my supposed area of expertise: magic.

  “It’s not there. I took it. It had pictures of fudge. I took the fudge, and the book, and I brought them back home when you abandoned me.”

  I arched my eyebrows and asked him simply, “How?”

  He giggled to himself again.

  “You’re so silly, Aria! When you make stuff invisible like that, it completely alters it. Everything became light as a feather. With my magic and yours, it was no problem to bring them back here!”

  “Here? Here, here? In the shop?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well?” I asked, getting exasperated with his roundabout answers to my simple questions.

  “Upstairs. Come on! Let’s look at fudge pictures!”

  “Sounds better than those celebrity articles you keep trying to show me.”

  With an angry screech, he took off and flew to the door that led upstairs, waiting for me to open it.

  In our upstairs apartment, apart from the living-dining room and my bedroom, there’s another room that I tell guests is a craft room, but is in actual fact Kiwi’s.

  People would think it strange if I told them my parrot had his own bedroom, and luckily he neither needed nor wanted a bed, so the ‘craft room’ was given over to him. Each week, I’d dump the latest celebrity gossip magazines through the door, and occasionally I’d try to tidy it a little, but usually I’d be interrupted by Kiwi screeching about ‘moving his stuff.’

  “Is it in your den?”

  “I don’t have a den. Lions have dens. I’m a parrot,” said Kiwi with a snicker.

  “Fine. Is it in your nest?”

  He cackled again. “Silly Aria. I have a room, not a nest.”

  Having enough of his smart parrot mouth, I proceeded without him, pulling down the handle—Kiwi struggled with twisting door handles—and pushing it open.

  “Hey!” he complained. “You’re supposed to knock!”

  “But you’re out here!”

  “That may be, but you’re still supposed to follow the rules,” he said with a sniff.

  Deciding to play along just a for a bit, I rapped my knuckles on the already open door.

  “Come in!” said Kiwi as he jumped off my shoulder and flew into the room, landing on the large table that was on the other side and had my main claim-to-crafting upon it: my antique Singer sewing machine.

  The floor was strewn with magazines and empty cheese puff packets. The walls had been scratched, and there were at least three different piles of torn-up paper which Kiwi liked to hide in.

  “Okay then, dig it out, where is it?” I asked, surveying the mess.

  Kiwi looked around the room. He hopped onto the floor and strutted up and down. He flew back onto my shoulder and peered down from there.

  “It’s here somewhere...”

  “Is it?” I asked him, dubiously.

  Despite the mess, I could see across the room and something the size of Sandra’s scrapbook should have been clearly visible.

  Kiwi suddenly gave a loud, frustrated shriek.

  “It’s not here, is it?” I said.

  “It’s gone! Robbed! We’ve been robbed!” he screeched.

  “You probably just forgot where you put it,” I said calmly. “You ate far too much fudge that day, remember? All you did was sleep and complain for the next couple of days.”

  “I was sick!” he complained.

  “Sick of fudge,” I answered. “I think you were too zonked to realize where you put the thing.”

  Kiwi made another angry caw but didn’t answer again. He knew I was right.

  “Do you remember anything about the scrapbook? Anything that might help us?”

  “No,” he said sullenly.
>
  “No, you don’t remember, or no, there was nothing helpful?”

  “It was boring. Except for the fudge pictures.”

  “So, nothing? It looked like you were reading something when I saw you in the house.”

  “Oh. Yeah. It was a story about some fudging couple.”

  “Kiwi!”

  He screeched loudly in my ear and then flew back over to the craft table. “Really! It was some couple and their family run fudge company!”

  “I see. What else?”

  “It was about their super secret fudge recipe, and how they and Sandra had won an award.”

  “Sandra?”

  He nodded his little head up and down authoritatively. “Yep. It was the three of them. The fudge company couple, and Sandra was their worker. Small company.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “Very interesting.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Kiwi with a shake of his wings. “It was boring, boring, boring. Just recipes and boring newspaper articles.”

  “Recipes are boring, are they?”

  Kiwi took half a second to consider before replying with another firm nod of his little head.

  “You know, if we had Sandra’s recipes, we could make her fudge at home. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about Randi at all.”

  Kiwi blinked several times. He opened his beak. He closed his beak. He jumped into the air, shook his wings out, landed back down.

  “I’ve got to find it!” he said and jumped off the table, landing atop a six-month-old copy of Pregnant Celebrity Secrets and started running around like a manic whirlwind.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” I said. “When you find it, let me know.”

  “Got to find it, got to find it...” Kiwi was saying to himself when I closed the door behind him.

  Despite not yet having the scrapbook in hand, what Kiwi had told me had given me an idea.

  One of the best ways to work on an idea is to let it develop—let it ferment—while you do something relatively mindless. So I decided to tidy up the rest of the apartment while I thought through my plans.

  And you never know, I thought, maybe the scrapbook will turn up in some corner.

  Chapter 20

  The next day, I went down to the shop about half an hour before opening, but I was not accompanied by Kiwi. The thought that he may’ve lost the chance at getting an unlimited supply of Sandra’s fudge without ever having to leave his own home was too much for him.

  He’d spent the whole night tearing his room apart, making such a racket I had to put in earplugs to get some sleep, and now he was planning on carrying on with the rest of the apartment. I’d told him as sternly as I could that he’d better not make a mess, but I suspected it was in vain.

  I called Sarah when I got there and asked her to come in early. I had a few things I wanted to do that day. You know, just little things. Like solving the murder of Sandra, finding out what happened to my mother, and just what exactly Hazel Crane was playing at.

  “I’ll be there in two minutes!” said Sarah on the phone.

  Much to my surprise, she was, and she was carrying two coffees.

  “That was quick,” I said to her once she’d arrived and settled down with her coffee into one of the chairs.

  “Well, I was already nearly here,” she said.

  “Why?”

  Sarah gave me a quizzical look.

  “I’m never late. I make a point of it. My guru said that a late guest is an unwanted one.” She looked wistful. “He’s so wise.”

  “Is he? Is he? And anyway, you’re not a guest. You’re an employee.”

  She tilted her head. “Oh. I suppose you’re right. Then, it doesn’t matter if I’m late or not!”

  “That’s not...” I shook my head. I didn’t have time for Sarah-logic. “I need you to mind the shop this morning. I’ve got a few things to do.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” she said with a smile.

  “Oh, and if you have any quiet moments, I want you to look up some fudge recipes.”

  “Fudge recipes?” she asked wrinkling her nose.

  “Yep. Fudge recipes. Good ones. Go online and find the best fudge recipes you can. I’m working on a plan.

  “Are you going to open a fudge shop?”

  I grinned at her. “I’ve already got a shop. But you’re not far off the mark. All will be revealed...”

  “Ooh, that sounds exciting. I’ll find the best gosh-darned fudge recipes there are. Better than Sandra’s, even.”

  “Excellent, you do that.”

  Leaving her in a good mood, I left my shop to try and solve a few of the mysteries that had been plaguing us.

  The first order of business?

  My mother.

  I knew my mother, vain as she was, wouldn’t have completely abandoned her home, even if she was in hiding. She’d need to go back to grab her jewelry and makeup at least, and probably some of her magic supplies too.

  I drove over to her home as quickly as I could. She lived a couple of miles away from downtown Sequoia Bay in a modern suburb that was popular with ‘women who lunch’ and other members of her country club.

  The driveway was paved with red-bricks and lined with a variety of bushes that looked ornamental along the sides. The bushes were not purely for decoration though; each of them had some use as a reagent in a witch’s spell. In the backyard, she had an impressive herb garden too. She had the second most impressive collection of plants for magical purposes in all of Sequoia Bay. The most impressive was, of course, Hazel Crane’s.

  There was no obvious sign of Mom when I arrived.

  Her car wasn’t in the driveway, and even though she had a garage I knew it wouldn’t be in there — it was full of old furniture and boxes of clothes which were currently out of style, but which my mother assured me would be the in-thing again before I knew it.

  The front door was painted bright white and, like the rest of the house, was well-maintained. Mom wasn’t just proud of her own appearance; it extended to everything she owned.

  Using my spare key, I quickly let myself in and closed the door quickly behind me.

  I knew Mom wasn’t home immediately. Call it witch’s intuition or just good old-fashioned human intuition, but I can always tell when a house is empty. There’s an air to it, a feeling of slightly resentful abandonment emanating from the very walls.

  A no-one-home silence is different, too. It doesn’t matter whether an occupant is sitting reading completely quietly, it still affects the air in a different way, giving the house a homier feel to it if there is someone present, than if it’s silent due to no one being home.

  “Hello?” I called out, just to be sure.

  Of course there was no response. My intuition hadn’t let me down yet.

  The hallway floor was hardwood, and my shoes click-clacked with every step, sending echoes bouncing down the hall.

  The walls were mostly undecorated, with the exception of several large photographs.

  The first was of Mom as prom queen in high school, and it stood in pride of place near the front door. It was blown up to a giant size and displayed in a gilded frame.

  They say some people peak in high school. Mom claims that she peaked—but never dropped down again.

  She’s still peaking, she says, though I suspect Donovan Charlston is the only person in town who’d honestly agree with her.

  There were several more photos of her along the entire length of the hall; pregnant with me, at a summer gala, wearing a ridiculous hat at a wedding, on the stage after earning a Sequoia Bay Citizen of the Year award presented—and judged—by Donovan in his mayoral role, and an enlarged version of the cover of California Country Magazine from when she was featured on the cover.

  You could quickly count the number of pictures she kept of me on her wall-of-fame: none.

  The hallway was Mom’s tribute to herself, a kind of mini-gallery dedicated to the accomplishments of Annabelle Whitmore. Well, not so much her accomplishments, more her v
arious ‘looks’ over the years. Most of Mom’s accomplishments weren’t exactly the kind that drove the nation forward or helped alleviate the pains of the suffering.

  I headed over to her bedroom; that was where I was likely to find some clue about where she’d gone, and what she had been cooking up with Hazel Crane.

  Mom’s bedroom was less a place for sleeping, and more a place for self-beautification and self-adulation.

  Everything in it was pink and frilly or sparkly and glittery, with most of the bling being provided by glass mirrors and genuine diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other assorted gems. On one wall were three floor-to-ceiling mirrors, with another three on the opposing side so that she could admire herself from every angle. Sometimes she made me go in there so that she could critique me from every angle without having to move.

  The bed was a massive four-poster, complete with hanging curtains around the side. When Mom had first had it delivered, I’d told her it was a princess bed. She had claimed that it was purely for practical reasons though; the curtains around the side were mosquito netting. Not that I’d ever seen a mosquito around Mom’s house — she had perfectly decent magic spells to keep the little pests away.

  Mom’s usually perfectly arranged room was in turmoil today. Although she wasn’t the tidiest person, she had a housekeeper who came in a couple of times a week to keep everything in order. It looked like she hadn’t been in for quite a while though.

  There were three empty suitcases on the floor, all of which had been dragged out of her massive walk-in closet. If a normal person had done that, I would have thought something had gone wrong, but with Mom, I knew exactly what had happened—she’d taken all her suitcases out, and then decided which one looked the best, or at least matched her outfit in the most flattering way. The others had been abandoned on the floor for Esmerelda the housekeeper to deal with.

  The doors to the walk-in closet were also open, and much of the contents had been tossed into a heap on the floor, still on its hangers, while others were just missing, presumably in the missing suitcase.

  It looked like it was mainly the bulky winter jackets that had gone missing. Most of Mom’s other clothes wouldn’t fit her in her current state. The other clothes must have been thrown on the floor in a rage when she realized she didn’t fit in them anymore.