In Hot Fudge And Cold Blood Page 7

  “Cobb! I mean Webb. Sandra Webb!” I shouted out.

  “Sandra Webb,” said the mayor, staring at me as he emphasized Webb, “was one of them. We mayors—and I am the former president of the highly prestigious Mayors and Mayoresses of Northern California, excluding San Francisco Organization—have a saying. And that saying is this: we know half of our citizens half as well as we would like, and half of them twice as much as we hoped we wouldn’t. And half and half make a full glass.”

  The mayor paused for a moment to let the words sink in. Glancing around, I could see that he had succeeded in confusing just about every person in the room, myself included.

  “The exact words aren’t important. It’s the spirit of the saying that is. And that spirit reminds me of the spirit of dear, departed Sandra Cobbwebb, who I knew personally and dearly. She was a passionate and fiery woman of excellent taste and excellent tasting fudge.”

  There were murmurs of agreement and amusement from the crowd.

  “I will share one brief anecdote with you. About Sandra. My Sandra. Our Sandra. Fudge’s Sandra.”

  The mayor took a sip of his whiskey before continuing.

  “Sandra once said something to me. Not long ago. Just a few weeks back. She said, Mayor Donovan Charlston, I make fudge and you are the mayor. She said that she hoped to continue making fudge for many, many years to come—which unfortunately she will not—and that she hoped that I would remain mayor for many, many years to come. I hope that you all will honor her memory when it’s time for my re-election, by following her dearest, deepest, and almost dying wish for me to continue to be mayor, so that I can serve this city the same way I have done. I think this little story just shows what kind of woman Sandra was, doesn’t it? The kind who wanted the very best for Sequoia Bay, and she knew, she knew that the best way to do that was to keep re-electing me as mayor.”

  Some of the crowd were looking a little perplexed now. Not me, though. I’d known Donovan for years and this was exactly how I’d expect him to give a eulogy at a memorial.

  “So, I’d like you all to raise a glass. Or some fudge, to me.” He lifted his own glass up. “And of course, no less importantly, to Sandra the fudge lady.”

  “To Sandra the fudge lady!” said the crowd, raising their balled-up napkins, water bottles, or little squares of fudge. After the mayor had taken another sip of his whiskey, the crowd broke out into a round of applause.

  When the clapping had abated, Donovan made his way over to me.

  “Interesting speech, Donovan,” I said to him with a smile.

  “Thank you, Aria. I felt someone had to step up and be the man of the hour, and who better than me? I’ve probably given more speeches than everyone else in this room put together. It comes naturally to me, you know.”

  “Does it?” I said with arched eyebrows. “Was that speech off the cuff?”

  He took a sip of whiskey as he nodded.

  “Oh yes. Didn’t prepare at all, and I still aced it!”

  “It sounds very impressive when you put it like that,” I murmured.

  He bowed his head in acknowledgment.

  “Tell me, Aria, have you spoken to your mother today? You see, she’s not here. I left her a message but I don’t think she got it.”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t spoken to Mom since we’d visited Walnut Wanda’s and I guessed she was in hiding until either the spell wore off or she found some other way to lose all that weight.

  “I haven’t seen her, Donovan.”

  “Well, when you do, tell her to call me.”

  “Right. I’ll keep that in mind,” I said evasively. I wasn’t about to start acting as a go-between for my mother and Donovan if could help it.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to mingle. As mayor, it’s my job to talk to everyone. People don’t realize it, but I actually work harder than any other single person in Sequoia Bay.”

  I nodded at him again to get rid of him, though I strongly suspected he didn’t even rank among the top one hundred hardest workers in Sequoia Bay.

  “I’ll just take a piece of fudge to keep my energy up. No rest for the wicked!”

  Donovan walked away, laughing to himself as he grabbed several squares of fudge and left to mingle with the masses.

  “Are you friends with the mayor then?” asked Lara when Donovan had fully departed.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call us friends, but my mother and the mayor are quite close. Or they were, anyway.”

  “Oh interesting. Excuse me, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but your parrot…”

  I’d almost forgotten he was there, but at the mention of the word parrot he perked up again.

  “Fudge!” he demanded.

  Kiwi had taken a brief respite from eating sweet treats while the mayor had been speaking. He had been so quiet that I suspected he may even have dozed off for a few minutes—perhaps a crash after so much sugar. But he was awake again now and squeezing my shoulder to provide emphasis to his demand.

  I passed a square of fudge up to my shoulder, which Kiwi snatched up again quickly, as I smiled at Lara.

  “His name’s Kiwi.”

  “He’s adorable. I didn’t know parrots liked fudge. Isn’t it bad for them?”

  “He is occasionally adorable,” I said and was quickly rewarded with a hard squeeze to my shoulder. “And yes, he does have a bit of a soft spot for fudge. It used to be cheese puffs, but he’s become a fudge addict recently. That’s why I thought I would bring him along today—Sandra’s fudge was his favorite.”

  “Really?” said Lara in surprise. “He has favorites?”

  “Oh yes. You should have seen what happened when we fed him some fudge that wasn’t up to his standards. He spat it out and screeched like he’d been bitten!”

  “Oh my!” said Lara, giggling.

  “It was funny. Actually, it happened right here. Randi—the owner—was using a different supplier. But now that Sandra’s gone, she’s using Sandra’s recipe instead, and Kiwi seems to be happy again!”

  “It is pretty good,” said Lara.

  Kiwi banged his head against mine to indicate he was ready for another mouthful of fudge, and I quickly obliged him.

  “Just ‘pretty good?’” I asked with a grin.

  Lara giggled again, setting her curly hair bobbing up and down. “I’m a bit of a connoisseur, actually. I learned to make it as a child from my mother, and ever since I’ve been trying fudge wherever I travel, testing them out right across the country trying to find the very best.”

  “Oh? And where’s the best you’ve found so far?” Despite not having as much interest in fudge as, say, Kiwi, I found myself fascinated by Lara.

  “At home!” she said, dropping her head back in a laugh that seemed louder than appropriate.

  I waited for her to regain her composure. “And what’s the difference in the fudge then, do you think? This stuff tastes good to me.”

  Lara leaned in toward me, like she was going to tell me a secret. In a way, she was.

  “The thing about making really good fudge,” she said in a low voice, “is that you mustn’t stir it.”

  “Don’t stir it? What difference does it make?”

  “Taste it again.”

  I took another little nibble of fudge and chewed on it thoughtfully. It tasted good to me.

  “It seems…”

  “Grainy!” said Lara in excitement. “It’s grainy, isn’t it? That’s because Randi stirred it when she was making it.”

  I chewed on it some more. Now that she mentioned it, if I really focused, it did seem a little bit grainy. Not overly so, but if you were looking for it you could find it.

  “And that’s because she stirred it?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Lara, nodding with authority. “When I was a child, my mother would rap my knuckles with a wooden spoon if I tried to stir it. That’s how I learned about making fudge—through the years under my mother’s instruction!”

  “Goodness, I didn’t kn
ow it was so complicated.”

  “Well, despite its graininess, this fudge does seem to be a hit with the customers—or mourners, I should say.”

  Lara and I both made a point of looking over the room at all the people enjoying their fudge. Up at the counter, Randi’s assistant had a constant stream of customers purchasing little boxes of the treat in a variety of flavors. Despite the free samples, it looked like the shop was booming in sales during the memorial.

  Randi herself was now back behind the counter with a very satisfied look on her face as she surveyed the crowd. If I didn’t try to think the best of other people, one could conjecture that this memorial was more of a business opportunity than a thoughtful ceremony for a departed citizen of the town.

  “It was nice to meet you,” said Lara, “I’m going to do some more sightseeing now.”

  I bade her farewell.

  “It’s about time we made a move too, isn’t it, Kiwi?” I said to my shoulder.

  A woman nearby gave me a strange look but I ignored her. People talk to their dogs and cats all the time, so why not parrots? Kiwi responded with a single command.

  “Fudge!”

  I took another four squares from the sample table, finishing off most of what was left. Another hand reached out and snatched up the paper plate the fudge had been displayed on and the remaining pieces.

  I glanced over to see the paper plate being tilted and then emptied into a black leather purse. With another casual glance, I looked up at the owner and had to cover my mouth to stop from giving away my shock.

  Walnut Wanda, who had told us she had given up fudge for life, had just emptied a half dozen pieces into her bag!

  Her eyes met mine for an instant before she quickly hurried off, slipping through the crowd and out the door before I could even greet her.

  It looked like someone had fallen off the fudge wagon.

  Chapter 12

  Ding!

  “Good morning!” said Sarah brightly.

  She almost seemed to float in, her long peasant dress billowing around her slender frame. Tucked under her arm was her large brown leather satchel that she used to carry necessities. At the moment, I knew those necessities included glue sticks, scissors, glitter, stickers, and of course her scrapbooks

  “Good morning,” I said, reaching out my hand for one of the coffees she was carrying.

  “We’ve got a lot to do today,” said Sarah. “That’s why I’m early.”

  I checked the clock. It was nine fifteen, which was indeed early for her.

  “Oh, it’s not too bad today,” I told her and gave her arm a squeeze. “We’ve got a fitting this afternoon, but this morning I thought we’d just clean up the shop and maybe start putting together a bath bomb collection to put by the cash register. Oh, and maybe think about changing up the window display.”

  Sarah nodded thoughtfully, as she looked around the shop. After a quick scan, she shrugged her shoulders.

  “Don’t worry about the shop, Aria. It looks great already,” she said with a satisfied smile. “I meant we’ve got some real work to do on this scrapbook!”

  Sarah dumped her bag onto the counter and immediately began to pull out stacks of what looked like junk.

  “What’s all this?”

  I watched as Sarah made a little mound of papers. There were old newspapers, newsletters, and magazines, all from Sequoia Bay or the Northern California region.

  “Right. What we’ve got here is more stuff for Sandra’s scrapbook. But it needs sorting, and I’m not sure we’ll need everything.” While she talked, Sarah flicked through the piles of papers, discarding some to the side and giving others little pats of approval. “Also, I think we need to re-work page four. It looks a little too childish, you know?”

  Oh great. The ‘work’ Sarah intended to do today had nothing to do with our business.

  “It looks like you’ve got it all covered,” I said with an encouraging smile.

  The thing about Sarah and her passions is that they’re short-lived, but they burn brightly while she’s in their thrall. I needed to let her get it out of her system, and then in a few days, she would be onto something newer and shinier. Of course, if there were customers in the shop she’d have put the scrapbooks aside, but she did have a point. The shop looked fine, and there was no urgent business I needed her help with.

  “I’ll want your advice on some parts. You know, what to leave in and what to leave out.”

  “Sure thing, Sarah. I’ll tell you what—I’m going to start working on a little display, and when you need help with the book you just ask, okay?”

  Sarah nodded. “Okay. You’re the boss!”

  Sometimes I wondered with how little they liked to listen to me around here. Oh, speaking of…

  “By the way, Kiwi isn’t here today.”

  “Is he sick?”

  I laughed. “Yeah. I think he ate too much fudge. He’s not feeling himself at all.”

  “The poor little baby. Is it like the other day, after Sandra’s?”

  I shook my head. The day after Kiwi, Mom, and I had discovered Sandra’s body, he’d been in a veritable fudge coma, barely able to lift a wing. I would have been worried about him, but he’d assured me it was simply too much fudge. I didn’t ever dare take him to a veterinarian because his temperament and his makeup were both too unique. I wasn’t sure whether a vet would know how to deal with a magic parrot.

  “He’s not as bad as the other day, but he didn’t want to come down with me. He just sat on the sofa and screeched until I put on the Dress Me For a Date marathon.”

  “Do you think he can tell the difference between the stations?” asked Sarah with a frown.

  “Oh, certainly.”

  And there was a lot more truth to that statement than Sarah could have guessed. Kiwi had very strong opinions about TV and was frequently disappointed by my lack of interest in the goings-on of celebrity gossip and reality television.

  “Sometimes I think animals are as clever as people,” said Sarah, scrunching up her nose as she discarded an objectionable piece of scrap. “It’s like they really do know what’s going on.”

  I was often tempted to spill the beans about Kiwi to Sarah, but it wasn’t right for a witch to reveal the secrets of their familiar. Kiwi’s secret intelligence was one of my most powerful magical weapons, in fact.

  “I’m pretty sure Kiwi does think he knows what’s going on.”

  Sarah giggled and held up an old newspaper article.

  “Ooh, look at this one. Perfect, right?”

  “Let me see that?”

  Sarah handed it over. The article was titled “Randi’s Candy Becomes Randi’s Fudge” and was accompanied by a photo of Randi and Sandra standing together with arms interlocked and great big smiles on their faces. The article was about how Randi had partnered with the person who made the best fudge in town: Sandra.

  My eyebrows drew together. “So Randi used to sell Sandra’s fudge when they were partners, then she switched to that other supplier that Kiwi didn’t like, and then now she’s making her own.”

  “I don’t want this scrapbook to be too much about Randi, Aria,” said Sarah, slowly shaking her head.

  “Sorry, for a moment there I wasn’t thinking about your scrapbook. I was thinking about Sandra’s death and her fudge-making history.”

  “Oh! I forgot about that,” said Sarah gave me a silly smile. “Sometimes I get so into scrapbooking I forget what it’s really about. Does that ever happen to you?”

  “Not while scrapbooking, no.”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  I lifted up one shoulder. “Who knows? But everyone knew Sandra had the best fudge. I suppose she stopped supplying Randi when she saw it was more profitable just to sell it out of her own house.”

  “I bet that made Randi mad,” said Sarah, nodding her head up and down. “And she didn’t look happy at Kiwi’s review of the other fudge supplier.”

  I snickered at the memo
ry of Ki spitting out the fudge right in the shop.

  “No, she did not! This is very interesting, Sarah. Good work. Stick it in your book and let’s see what else you can find.”

  Sarah nodded and put the article aside in her ‘keep’ pile.

  “Oh, goodness, look at this one!” she said holding up another.

  “What about this? Do you think I should put it in the book?”

  I peered over.

  When I saw the headline, I had to stop myself from laughing, even though it would’ve been mean. It was titled “‘Walnut’ Wanda Whipped by Wicked Walnuts” and was accompanied by a photo of an apologetic-looking Sandra with a grimacing Wanda in a hospital bed.

  “That’s Walnut Wanda!” I said. “She nearly died after Sandra poisoned her.”

  “Poisoned her?” asked Sarah with wide eyes.

  “It was an accident. Wanda is severely allergic to nuts, but Sandra accidentally sold her a batch full of them. She had a reaction and nearly died.”

  “Hmm, that may not be good for the scrapbook. I should focus on the positives, right?”

  “Do you want the scrapbook to be honest, or do you just want it to show her best parts?”

  “Good point. Maybe I should include it, to show that even great people like Sandra make mistakes.”

  “Was she?” I asked quizzically.

  “What?”

  “Great?”

  Sarah put down the article and took me by the shoulders. “Aria, everyone is great.”

  “Everyone?” I asked dubiously.

  Sarah nodded. “It may be hidden in some people, but I’m telling you, we’re all great if we can unleash our inner goddess…”

  I nodded again, even more doubtful but not really wanting to get into it. Of course I believe in magic—it kind of comes with the job of being a witch—but Sarah had more than a couple of completely unsubstantiated beliefs that I couldn’t get my head around. Like everybody being great. No way. Some people are just complete fudging—

  “…and embrace our inner-wonderfulness, it can express itself as greatness to the outside world. Do you see?”