by A J Maybe
I was just impressed that Kasper could get down those stairs. Now I was amazed.
“Hi guys,” Sherry said. She approached one of the younger men, maybe in his late 20s, and wrapped him in a hug. With her cheek now coated in sweat from his chest, she pulled back and said, “Sorry about your brother, Ty.”
Ty pushed a hand through his fine, shoulder-length blonde hair, gave her a sincere nod, and showed off one dimple with a sad half-smile. “It’s been a rough few weeks. But Kasper’s helping keep my mind off my dad, now that we can’t work out in the park. The pain of a good toe hold will push out everything else!”
Kasper nodded. “Very cleansing, the toe hold.”
I snorted.
Ty gave me a look. I couldn’t decipher it, but it was intense. I looked away.
So this was Barry’s son, Rex’s brother. I noticed that he only talked about keeping his mind off Barry’s death, not Rex’s murder. Interesting.
“We’ll be in the kitchen,” Sherry said. “Donuts won’t be ready until tomorrow but maybe we’ll do some cookies for you guys.”
Six sets of eyes brightened, like the wrestlers were big, muscle-bound puppies hearing the word ‘treats’. I noticed Luke’s dog Leo napping in the corner and imagined a guy his height trying to get down those stairs while carrying a hundred and fifty pound dog.
On our way up the stairs, Sherry called over her shoulder. “Keep ‘em screaming, Kasper. Their pain will make the dough extra sour.”
11
A Deal
A Deal
Upstairs, I examined Esme the kitchen witch again. She really did have the Mars family nose, and eyes. Esme looked a lot like my mom, and even more like me. “Wasn’t she holding the spoon with her other hand before?” I said.
“Maybe.” Sherry didn’t even glance over as she pulled out bowls, flour, butter, and the biggest Mason jar I’ve ever seen.
“So, Sherry, I was thinking.”
“Mm hmm.”
“I was thinking… I bet the cops have basically stopped looking for suspects. They think it’s Luke. Er, Lion Tamer. And we don’t think he’s the killer—”
“He’s not.”
“Right. And we want to clear his name, but the police need our help. I was thinking of setting up a little grassroots investigation. Maybe we could be a team? We need to talk to lots of Coveys, and they won’t trust Bridge Trash like me.”
Sherry turned away from her baking preparations and faced me with an unreadable expression. “I like how you call it ‘grassroots’ instead of ‘vigilante’.”
“Yeah, well, you know. It’d be a community thing, not a superheroes-in-the-night thing. Will you help?”
She raised an eyebrow — a thoughtful eyebrow, not a sassy one. “Tell you what. We can make a deal. When I asked you to bake with me? Well, it’s not just about the baking. You’ve tasted a hint of magic—”
“Tasted and felt! That light I summoned, it—”
“Yeah, okay, good,” she said. “So you understand. But I’m no master, just a practitioner. I’m trying to level up, but to do that I need an apprentice. A total noob. Pedestrian, or uh, neophyte, as Kasper calls it. I’ve been searching for someone like you for months.”
“Yes!” I cried, answering a question Sherry hadn’t asked yet.
“Here’s the deal: I’ll help with your investigation, and you’ll practice baking, the witchy way. You’ll have to come to the Cove on weekends, but you can stay in the spare room here if the camp isn’t available to you. Once you’ve gained enough skill to be a Middling Witch, I can begin training for my First Stratum designation.”
I hooted. “Are you kidding?! That's a win-win for me! I searched for a way into this world for YEARS. All I ever got was mockery for even believing in magic. I’m SO in. Sherry, we have ourselves a pact!”
Sherry looked grave. “I need to bring you from non-cook, up to a certain level of competence. Only my guide, Kasper, will decide when that’s been achieved. I need you to commit, but I can’t tell you how long it could take. Months, maybe years.”
“It’s all cooking-based? Do you do like… wands? Or enchanted spatulas? What about throwing the soup bones? Ooh, do you read tea leaves?”
“We’ll get to the details, all in good time. Just know that there’s more than enough magic to be harnessed in the kitchen. A Middling Witch can access all the power they need with a heat source and a bit of quality cookware.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “I just never thought of the kitchen as an enchanted place.” Most of my cooking involved a microwave and pre-measured packets of spice or powdered cheese to be mixed with the pasta.
“You never blew out a candle on your birthday and made a wish?”
“Well, sure.”
“So you’ve practiced kitchen magic. Maybe ineffectively, but still.”
“Fair point.”
“So? Are you in or out?”
“Sherry, I told you: there’s nothing else I’d rather do.” I was already picturing driving the Cupcake Machine to the Cove, baking in those preternatural wee hours of the morning, and selling heaps of sweets to the tourists all day. A little magic could only be good for business. “This is perfect! Where do I sign?”
Sherry turned her attention to the Mason jar. Its contents reminded me of a science experiment: a thick white paste filled the jar halfway, a chunky grey sludge sat in the middle, and an inch of watery, mint green stuff sloshed around the top. Sherry removed the cheesecloth from the opening and screwed on a lid. “Repeat this,” she said, and began to methodically turn the jar, end over end. “Ursa, nycteris, nudipleura.”
My heart raced. This is it! “Ursa, nycteris, nudipleura?”
“Okay, but without the question mark.”
I tried again, with force, and waved an invisible wand. Sherry raised an eyebrow at me. I was starting to understand that was a signature look for her. “Okay. Maybe somewhere in between the two next time,” she said, but she set the jar down as if we’d completed the ritual. It looked exactly as it had twenty seconds before.
Then she unscrewed the cap, and the air sucked out of the room like a vacuum. My ears popped and the jar’s three layers swirled into one sticky-looking, bubbly paste. A dark, earthy aroma hit me so hard that I stepped back and snapped my head sideways like I was dodging a punch.
“Woah.”
“Yep.”
“So that’s…”
“Uh huh.”
“Ursa, nysterics, nudi—”
“Shhh! Not now!” Sherry scolded.
Then she had me stand behind and watch over the top of her head as she scooped out a tiny bit of the jar’s contents — just a fancy, magic-infused sourdough starter, she explained. In a small but deep steel bowl, she mixed it with some water and a half cup of flour from a big porcelain cylinder on the counter.
“That’s it?” I said, as she pushed the bowl of what seemed like pancake batter to the back of the counter. “That’s only gonna make like, one donut!” I pouted.
“This is the leaven. You can take it home and make the dough tomorrow. I’ll write out the directions and give you the flour and nutmeg too. You have salt at the camp right?”
“Sure.”
“Great. For today, we’ll just make cookies.” She reached into the fridge and retrieved a plastic tube of pre-made cookie dough.
“Really?! Store-bought?!” I said. “Even a neophyte like me can make cookie dough!”
Sherry shrugged. “This is Ty’s favourite.”
“Ooh, so you keep Ty’s favourite on hand, do you? Very ro-man-tic,” I sang.
A blush flashed across her face. “Shut up! We’re just friends. Like with all the wrestlers.”
“Hey, it’s okay, I get it! They’re kinda like rockstars, except they’re addicted to protein powder instead of boring old drugs. They’ve got the hair, the fame thing, the fitness—”
“These guys aren’t famous.”
“Not like, Mark Wahlberg famous, but wrestling famous!
Like Barry was: they’re legends in certain circles, right?”
Sherry shook her head. “No, no, these are indie guys. They’re never on TV and they mostly perform in high school gyms or nightclubs. Once or twice a year, someone gets called up to the big show, up to the corporation, but it’s just to be a jobber.”
“Jobber?”
“Yeah. Like, everyone likes to win, but there’s always a loser in a wrestling match and somebody’s gotta do the job. If all you ever do is lose to the real stars, you’re a jobber.”
“Oh, right. A ham-and-egger,” I said, remembering a term from my youth.
“That’s old school, but yeah.”
“So, these guys must have day jobs then?” There was so much I didn’t understand about my prime suspects.
Sherry shrugged. “I dunno. I’m not really interested in money or numbers.”
Jimmy appeared, leaning on the wall under Esme and rubbing his shoulder. “Some guys do. Seasonal grunt work mostly, but anything flexible. They have to be free to travel for weeks at a time. The indie wrestler life is something like the struggling musician life, except the pay is split between twenty guys instead of four.
“Ty though, he’s a bit of a horsetrader,” he continued, answering the question Sherry wouldn’t. “He finds a good deal on something, sells it to someone else. In the early spring he’ll help out the Marshalls in their sugar bush. He’ll do anything, really.”
I nodded. “Got it.”
“So you’ve had enough pretzel-twisting?” Sherry said, giggling at Jimmy.
“Yeah, that’s enough for this guy. Don’t want to get too deadly and have to register these hands as weapons,” Jimmy said, striking a kung fu pose which made him grimace with fresh pain.
“So how’s Ty doing? Is he okay?” I said. I wanted to see if anyone else noticed that he was only mourning his father, not his brother.
“Oh yeah, he keeps the bills paid.”
Not what I meant, but okay.
“But he’d be better off if he’d kept building the food truck empire he and Barry were dreaming about.”
“Empire?”
Sherry snorted. “You mean that you were dreaming about, Jimmy.”
“Well, I’d have a small managerial role, sure,” he said. “Barry needed a plan after Rex’s bylaw kicked him out of Saint Mauvais. Barry was ready to curl up in a ball and die after that, but I thought... it’s a big country, right? A food truck can go anywhere! And Barry never really leveraged his name the way he could have. There’s legions of hardcore wrestling fans who appreciate what the old-timers did for the business, and they’re easy to find online.
“With the right marketing and direction, a few years of hard work, I know we could build a fleet of trucks, a coast-to-coast brand! Barry didn’t really have the energy for it, but Ty’s young and could carry the Bales name. I know he could do it, if he wanted to.”
“But?” I said, soaking up the information.
“But then Barry had his accident. I was trying to get Ty to bid on the truck, but he’s just not ready to think about the future right now.”
“He is thinking about his future, Jimmy. He wants to stay focused on being a wrestler,” Sherry said.
Jimmy shrugged. “No reason he can’t do both. Bake in the afternoon, do the show in the evening, then afterwards he could sell cupcakes like hotcakes. That could be his gimmick: The Baking Brawler!”
“It’s got a ring to it,” I deadpanned. “Except I bought his truck.”
“Well, hey, no hard feelings there. It was a public auction, it’s a free country. Ty didn’t want it, didn’t even bid. Guess he’s given up on the dream.”
Sherry shook her head. “It was your dream, Jimmy! Not Ty’s. Not even Barry’s.”
Jimmy raised his hands, palms out in surrender. “Okay, okay. I just thought, you know, Barry still had to do something after Rex’s bylaw came in. He never made his wrestling money last. Not many old boys did, though. They all liked to party.”
“Oh?” I said.
“You know what they say about idle hands,” Jimmy answered. “Too much downtime was no good for Barry.”
My nostrils flared as I recalled the way my thumbs blurred across my phone screen as I steered my forklift around the Seshman’s warehouse. My hands had never been less idle than in the height of my online auction craze.
“Right, sure,” I said, awkwardly. “So let’s get baking.”
Jimmy threw a pointed look to the tube of cookie dough.
“Still counts as baking!” I said. “It’s Ty’s favourite.”
We sliced the pre-made dough cylinder into thin pucks as Jimmy excused himself and hopped into his little truck, thoughtfully remembering to haul out my bike before he left. Sherry slid the pucks of dough on top of the woodstove, where the soup had been the day before. “They won’t burn?”
“Not if we watch them,” Sherry said. A series of particularly high-pitched shrieks wafted up from the vent in the floor. “Ah. They’ve moved on to toe holds,” she smiled. “That’s good for the leaven.”
I couldn’t tell if she was serious. “So, where’s the magic really come from?”
Sherry glanced at the cookie pan and gave me the eyebrow treatment. “Gary’s Grocery. Freezer section.”
“No no! The sourdough! The starter! And the soup, for that matter. I created A LIGHT, Sherry. That’s like, godly.” I whispered the last bit, afraid of being struck down where I stood.
My mentor snorted. “Calm down. That’s a fine start, but it shows about as much power as a D-cell battery. And you didn’t create it. It was there the whole time, and you experienced a moment where you could harness it. In time, you’ll notice it more and more. The Intuit will tell you when.”
“The Intuit,” I repeated. I tried to remain the humble student, and stopped asking questions.
I waited around for half an hour after the cookies were done, hoping to see the guys again, but the groans and moans from the Dungeon showed no signs of abating. I wanted to find out more about Ty, but my internet habit pulled strong. My introduction to sourdough and kitchen-witching seemed to be done anyway.
“Well, I’d better get home,” I said. I looked forward to the reply notification announcing an email from The Familiar Faces.
Sherry shrugged. “Sure.” She carefully packed the leaven with parchment paper, then a dish cloth, and then doubled-bagged it with two canvas totes. She filled a large porcelain jar with flour and wrapped it with several dish towels, wrapping them around the leaven too, so it wouldn’t slide around. The whole assembly slid into another canvas tote, this one plus-sized. “Ride slow, so that doesn’t swing around on the handlebars. Gimme your email and I’ll send your instructions for the morning. You have enough oil to fry the donuts in?”
“Yeah, and I have a sturdy basket. This potion shall not swing around a single handlebar.”
“Okay.” Eyebrow.
I printed my email address on the dry-erase board stuck to the fridge before leaving.
“Be careful with this,” Sherry said, dead serious.
“Of course. I’ll bring everything back tomorrow, okay? I’ll drive, so I can bring the donuts and you can grade my work.”
“I meant that you need to be careful with the donuts. Don’t eat more than one.”
I patted my belly. “With all the cycling I’m doing, I’m not too worried about calories,” I smiled.
“That’s not what you need to be careful about,” she warned. “Do it right! A deal’s a deal.” I know that was supposed to scare me, but I couldn’t hide my excitement. Would the donuts be even more powerful than the soup?
It wasn’t until I was halfway home that it dawned on me: I’d left Sherry and Kasper in a house with the OPP’s prime suspect.
12
The Bottles
I supposed it wasn’t so bad. Lion Tamer might have been the OPP’s prime suspect, but Jimmy and Sherry were confident it wasn’t him, and they knew him better than I did. And they weren�
��t alone with Lion Tamer. Five other beefy dudes were still there.
Plus, Kasper seemed plenty capable of defending himself, and Sherry was an honest-to-goodness witch! That had to count for something.
I had lots of time to think about suspects in Rex’s murder while I slowly pedalled my lemon-coloured cruiser, careful not to jostle the leaven. Everyone had a reason to hate the man, but I kept coming back to Ty. Jimmy said Rex basically ruined Barry’s life with that bylaw. What if Barry’s accident wasn’t an “accident”? What if he decided to take the ultimate bump? If Barry’s wrestling money had really run out, and his business was basically squashed… what if the former champion of the world couldn’t bear the thought of asking for help, or even declaring bankruptcy?
Imagine what the Coveys would say. I could relate to that kind of angst.
What if Barry would rather stage an “accident” than live in shame? Plenty of people chose suicide in the face of less daunting circumstances.
I should find out if he had an insurance policy, I thought. Rex was furious about being cut out of the inheritance, but what about Ty? Imagine if Barry had a policy that paid out handsomely to only one of his sons, especially in the event of an “accident”.
I knew I was letting my mind run away with possibilities, but was it so strange to think two brothers, seeming opposites, might have a rivalry? A father’s tragic death could easily bring that rivalry to a head.
I leaned my bike against the hitch of the Airstream that Brennan thought he’d restore. The trailer, like a metal dirigible, had sat in the yard for ten years now and was exactly zero percent restored. I loved Brennan and owed him the world for his mentorship, but he wasn’t perfect: he started more projects then he finished.
The front steps of the camp were another example. They’d been demolished to make room for new ones that never came, so the front door was more of a fire escape than a functioning entryway.
In most places, you probably couldn’t rent out a place with only one functional doorway, but not too many inspectors trekked out to Familiar Island. A trunk full of blankets served to block the doorway, making it safe enough to keep toddlers and pets from inadvertently opening the door and tumbling to the grass below.
