Hazel Raises the Stakes

by M. Z. Andrews

  Hazel Raises the Stakes

  A Coffee Coven’s Cozy Capers Mini

  M.Z. Andrews

  Hazel Raises the Stakes

  A Coffee Coven’s Cozy Capers Mini: Book #1.5

  by

  M.Z. Andrews

  Copyright © 2018 by M.Z. Andrews

  VS. 091418.01

  This novella was previously published in the

  Seven Pets for Seven Witches Anthology.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Character Illustration by Crissha’s Art

  Edited by Clio Editing Services

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Also by M.Z. Andrews

  About the Author

  1

  “Listen, Gwynnie. I’ve thought it over, and I’ve decided. I’m going with you!”

  Turning her car onto Hemlock Road, Gwyndolin Prescott swung her glacier-blue eyes up to glance into her rearview mirror. “I’m sorry, Mom, but this is a very important trip for me. I can’t chance taking you and then having you run off. I just don’t have time for your antics.”

  With her droopy eyes split apart wide and one gnarled hand pressed against the passenger side door and the other hand gripping her seat belt firmly, Hazel Prescott shook her grey head wildly. “Fine. I’ll stay at the Village. They need me there to keep an eye on the elderly folk.”

  Gwyn clucked her tongue as she pulled her car into the very last driveway of the dead-end road and shut off the engine. “First of all, Mom, you’re the elderly folk. And second of all, the Aspen Falls Retirement Village is a retirement home, not a nursing home. Unlike you, the residents there can take care of themselves.”

  Hazel looked at the decrepit three-story Victorian house uneasily. Fear filled her heart. She was beyond sure that ghosts lived in the house in front of her. And even though she was a witch, Hazel had a very deep-seated fear of ghosts. “You babysit the rest of them, I take care of myself,” she snapped at her daughter. “You’re getting this award for being a glorified babysitter, you know.”

  Gwyn pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Mother,” she sighed, “I teach residents to make birdseed-and-pinecone crafts and take them on field trips. I don’t babysit them. And I didn’t win an award, I’m simply being recognized by the NAAP for my twenty years of service in the geriatric activities profession.”

  “Right, so you’re getting a pat on the back and a trip to Vegas for having a job. Big whoop. Where’s my pat on the back for raising you your whole life?”

  “Mom, we’ve been over this. I need this. I need to have a minute to myself to refresh. Why can’t you be supportive?”

  Hazel narrowed her eyes at her daughter. “If you need a minute to yourself, then why are you taking Char and Phil?”

  Gwyn covered her face with her hands and scrubbed at her forehead. She sucked in a deep, calming breath and then looked at Hazel again. “I just thought it would be more fun to bring the girls to Vegas with me. You know, have a girlfriends’ getaway.”

  Hazel’s jaw dropped. “Uh! I’m a girl! You could take me! Then I don’t have to get dropped off here! Come on, Gwynnie. You know how much I love poker, and you’re going to the poker capital of the world. I swear, I’ll be quiet as a ghost, you won’t even know I’m there.”

  Gwyn put a hand on the driver’s-side door and pushed it open. “Oh, I’d know you were there alright! Because I’d be spending the whole weekend trying to find you!”

  Hazel’s head shook wildly. “No, I swear you wouldn’t! Just plop me down at the nearest poker table and I’ll be fine!”

  Gwyn got out of the car and walked around to open her mother’s door. “Out of the car.”

  Hazel’s head swiveled defiantly to look out the driver’s-side window and her grip on her seat belt tightened. “Nope. I’m not getting out. I’m going with you.”

  “You are getting out, Mother.” Gwyn reached in, unbuckled her mother’s seat belt and pulled her cane out, leaning it against the outside of the car. Then she ducked into the car, her torso hovering over her mother. Face-to-face with Hazel now, Gwyn lifted her brows. “Don’t make me carry you.”

  “If you throw out your back you won’t be going to the conference,” taunted Hazel.

  Gwyn sighed. “You really want your daughter to throw out her back, just because you don’t want to get out of the car?”

  Hazel pressed her thin lips together, crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes defiantly.

  “Fine.” Gwyn slid her mother’s legs out of the car, rotating her torso. Then she buried her shoulder into Hazel’s lap, wrapped her arms around the old woman’s back, and hefted her over her shoulder.

  Seconds later, Hazel stood on the sloping, rickety porch, clutching her purse and her favorite pillow, with Gwyn towering behind her. Hazel eyed the car. She’d seen Gwyn put the keys in her purse. She thought about hot-wiring it, but it hadn’t worked out so well the last time she’d tried hot-wiring a car. She looked over her shoulder and wondered where the best place to hide would be if she made a run for it.

  But then she felt Gwyn’s hand on the small of her back, grasping hold of her sweater. Dammit. She wasn’t going anywhere now. Her daughter wasn’t very big, but she had the strength of an ox where Hazel was concerned.

  “You’re the meanest daughter I have,” said Hazel, scrunching up her nose as her daughter reached around her to crack open the screen door and knock.

  “I know, Mom.”

  “I mean it. There should be a law against this.”

  “Against what? Making sure your mother is taken care of while you’re out of town?” Gwyn pulled her phone from her pocket and offered it to Hazel. “Would you like to call the Aspen Falls PD or shall I?”

  Hazel crossed her arms over her sagging chest and stuck her nose in the air just as the heavy front door opened with a creak.

  “Who is it?” said a hoarse voice.

  “It’s Gwyn and Hazel, Loni.”

  “Gwyn and Hazel were supposed to be here at nine thirty,” said the voice through the dirt-caked screen door.

  Gwyn furrowed her brow and looked down at her watch. “It’s nine thirty-five, Lon. Mom wouldn’t get out of the car.”

  “I’m going to have to see some ID.”

  Gwyn sighed. She didn’t have time for any of this. “Loni. You know who am I, and you know this is my mother. Just let us in. Char, Phyllis, and I need to get on the road if we’re going to get to Pittsburgh in time to make our flight.”

  The screen door cracked open and a fat nose pushed itself out. “Char and Phil are going with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “To Las Vegas?!”

  “Yes!”

  “And you’re not taking me and the old lady with you?”

  Hazel’s arms flared out wide. “That’s what I’m saying!”

  Gwyn’s jaw dropped. “Loni! I invited you! I begged you to come! You refused to leave your house, so I asked you to watch Mom for me. Don’t you remember?”

  On the other side of the door, Yolanda Hodges was quiet for a moment.

  Hazel took the opportunity to lo
ok up at her daughter. She put a crooked hand beside her mouth and whispered, “See? She doesn’t remember. She’s losing it. You really want to leave your dear sweet mother alone for two days with Loni the loon?” Hazel felt the grip on her sweater tightening.

  “That may have a certain ring to it now that you mention it, but I’m not completely convinced,” admitted Loni.

  Gwyn sighed. “I know you said that, Lon. Can we come in now?”

  A flattened palm replaced the nose in the door. “Wait just a second. Were you followed?”

  Gwyn shook her head. “No. I kept a close eye on my rearview mirror the whole way here. I’m sure I wasn’t followed.”

  “And you’re not wearing any wires?”

  “I swear,” said Gwyn, holding up a palm as if she were swearing on a stack of Bibles.

  “What about her?” The hand in the door turned into a finger and pointed in Hazel’s face.

  “Mom’s not wearing a wire either.”

  Sensing an out, Hazel shook her head and thumbed her chest. “Yes, I am. I’m wearing a wire. It’s a straight line to the FBI. You better not let me in. I’m a bad mama jama.” Her eyes became slits as she patted her purse next. “And, I’m packin’.”

  Gwyn gritted her teeth and stole Hazel’s purse from her shoulder. She opened it up and shoved it towards the opened door. “The only thing Mom is packing in her purse is an extra pair of underwear and a tube of hemorrhoid cream.”

  Hazel’s mouth opened as she narrowed her eyes on her daughter. “You know damn good and well that that cream is for the bags under my eyes, Gwynnie.”

  “There isn’t enough Preparation H in all of Aspen Falls to deal with those suitcases,” said Loni with a chuckle from the doorway.

  Gwyn groaned and shook the bag at Loni. “Look, there’s no gun in here, just like there’s no wires on my mother’s body.”

  “But she said…”

  Gwyn tugged on the handle of the screen door and shoved Hazel forward right into Loni. “We don’t have time to play around, girls. I have to get going, and you know that Mom and I aren’t wearing wires.”

  Yolanda Hodges, hefting an oversized orange tabby cat in her arms, frowned. At five feet nothing tall, she was the shortest woman in the room. She wore thick, Coke-bottle glasses that gave her a bug-eyed appearance and hot pink lipstick that smeared into the deep lines etched around her mouth. Her face sagged heavily and she had a big wart on the side of her nose. Loni was still in her pajamas, a pair of high-water flannel pants with the waistband hiked up beneath her breasts, and a cat t-shirt that read Less Humans More Cats. “Well, good morning to you too,” she snapped.

  Gwyn sighed before giving Loni a warm hug. “I’m sorry, Loni. I hate to be pushy, but I really need to go.”

  “Puh!” breathed Hazel. “Hate to be pushy? Since when? I feel like a shopping cart most days the way you push me around.”

  Gwyn kept talking. “It’s just that I really have to go. I told Char and Phil I’d pick them up at a quarter till and, well, you know how Char is if we’re even a minute late. Plus, I still have to give you instructions.”

  “Instructions?”

  Gwyn nodded and pulled a little baggie of pill bottles out of her purse. “Mom gets two pills from the brown bottle at lunch and then one before bed and one in the morning. She gets one of the white ones at bedtime, and she only gets the pink ones if she’s having chest pains.”

  Loni stared back at her as if the words coming out of Gwyn’s mouth were in a foreign language.

  When Loni didn’t respond, Gwyn nodded. “Right. Well, I wrote it all down. The directions are in the baggie.” She handed her a white grocery bag next. “These are her snacks. She can only have two more today because she already had one this morning. If she’s good, she can have them, but if she’s not listening or doing what you ask her to do, then you don’t have to give them to her at all.” Gwyn looked down at Hazel and said loudly, “You’re going to be good for Loni, aren’t you, Mom?”

  Hazel harrumphed and stuck her nose in the air again. She was always good. She had no idea what Gwyn was talking about.

  Gwyn nodded knowingly. “Right. Well, I do like to keep her on a schedule. Both her attitude and her bowels appreciate it. She takes two naps, one around ten thirty and the other around two thirty. Lunch is at noon and dinner is at five. Now, you do have to wake her up at noon for lunch. I usually wake her at eleven forty-five if she hasn’t woken on her own. That way she has time to wake up and isn’t as grumpy for mealtime. If you let her skip lunch, then she’ll be hungry when it’s afternoon naptime and she won’t take her afternoon nap, which will mess up your dinner schedule, which means she’ll want to go to bed at dinnertime and she’ll wake up at the crack of dawn. Understand?”

  Loni blinked behind her glasses as she stared at Gwyn. Then she looked down at Hazel, who refused to make eye contact with her. “Umm. You might want to write all that down. I’ve been told I don’t have a very good memory.”

  Gwyn smiled at her and handed her a little notecard that was highlighted with pink and orange stripes. “Way ahead of you, Lon. Now. You have cable, don’t you?”

  “Cable? Like TV?”

  Gwyn nodded.

  “Yesss,” drawled Loni.

  “Good. Mom likes watching poker on ESPN. Otherwise, she does like her soap operas. Especially the telenovelas on the Spanish channel.”

  Hazel nodded. “Me gustan mucho mis telenovelas.”

  Loni crooked her head.

  Gwyn shrugged. “We lived in a retirement village in Scottsdale before coming to Aspen Falls. Telenovelas were all the rage there.” She glanced back at the door. “Well, Lon, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you watching Mom while I’m gone. Now, I know I don’t have to tell you, but just remember, Mom wanders. Okay? Keep your doors locked at all times and never take your eyes off her. Easy-peasy.” Gwyn smiled primly.

  Loni stared at Hazel with a funny expression on her face. “I think you’re exaggerating a little there, Gwynnie. The old gal can’t be that hard to look after. I’ve got twenty-eight cats running around this place and I can account for each and every one of them by the end of the day.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll find Mom’s a little more of a handful than twenty-eight cats.” Gwyn gave Loni a sympathetic smile and started for the door.

  Hazel felt her pulse race. She didn’t want to be stuck with Loni. She grabbed the tail of Gwyn’s cardigan and skated behind her daughter as she went for the door.

  Gwyn turned and smiled at Loni, giving her a little nervous giggle. Then she glanced down at her mother. “Mom,” she hissed through a clenched jaw. “Let go.”

  “No.”

  “Mom.”

  “No. I’m going with you.”

  Gwyn reached down and wedged her mother’s hand off her sweater. “Oh, look, Loni’s got your Twinkies, Mom!”

  Hazel turned to look at Loni, and just like that, Gwyn snuck out the front door, slamming it behind her and leaving Hazel alone in the scariest house in all of Aspen Falls.

  2

  With Gwyn gone, Hazel and Loni stood in Loni’s overcrowded front room and stared at each other. Hazel couldn’t help but notice the house hadn’t changed much since the last time she’d been there. Cat food littered the carpet, piles of books and magazines lined the floors, and the curtains were tightly drawn, making the front room dark and dreary. The whole house still reeked of cat urine and day-old cigar smoke.

  “You ever crack a window in here?” asked Hazel, keeping a close eye out for ghosts.

  “Sometimes,” said Loni, blinking through her thick glasses at Hazel while she stroked the cat in her arms. “You hungry?”

  “Puh!” she spat. “No.” Hazel wasn’t sure how anyone could even think about eating in a house as disgusting as Loni’s.

  “Thirsty?”

  With her lips pressed together tightly, Hazel shook her head.

  “Want a cigar?”

  “Definitely not.”

&nb
sp; “Mind if I smoke one?”

  Hazel made a face. “Yes. I do mind.”

  “Fine. So, what do you want to do?”

  Hazel shrugged. “We could play cards.”

  “What kind of cards.”

  “Mmm, poker?”

  Loni curled her lip. “You’re pretty good at poker, aren’t you?”

  Hazel hugged her purse closer to her. “I’m alright.”

  “I’m pretty sure I remember Gwyn saying you swindle people at poker.”

  “Swindle’s kind of a harsh word—”

  Loni cut her off. “Yeah, I don’t think we should play poker. How about a cup of coffee?”

  Hazel lifted a brow. “Gwyn doesn’t like me drinking coffee. It makes me ornery.”

  Loni waved Hazel towards the kitchen. “Eh, what Gwynnie doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

  A slow smile spread across Hazel’s face. She kind of liked the sound of that. “Yeah, what Gwynnie doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” she repeated, more to herself than to Loni. Encouraged, Hazel followed Loni into the kitchen, where six cats sat in front of six different cat food bowls, chowing down. Hazel swatted gently at their rear ends with her cane as she made her way to the kitchen table.

  “Why do you have so many cats?” asked Hazel.

  Loni, who had placed the round-faced, cherubic-looking orange tabby on the kitchen counter, stopped rifling through her cabinets and looked down at them. “My cats are my family. Family’s always welcome in this house.”

  Hazel lifted her eyebrows as she put her pillow and purse down on top of a big pile of garbage on the kitchen table. She pulled out a rolling chair. “Pretty big family.”

  “Some of them are distant relatives,” she explained. She pointed at the cat on the counter. “This one’s Ed.”