Wicked as a Christmas Fruitcake (Paranormal in Manhattan Mystery: A Cozy Mystery on Kindle Unlimited Book 10)

by Lotta Smith

  “Yeah… of course,” Woody agreed with Jackie, but his tone sounded absent. “The purple… I’ve seen that purple. Oh hell, why don’t I recall where I saw it?”

  Anna placed the tray on the table and distributed a cup and saucer for each, then poured fragrant amber-colored liquid. When all the cups were filled with tea, she smiled. “Help yourself, please.”

  Exactly at that moment, Woody exclaimed, “Yeah, that’s it! Now I remember seeing this flower just before my death! Mandy, don’t eat or drink anything served here! The same flower was displayed very close to me when I died, and Anna was helping Harriett and Meg handle the party—meaning she had the opportunity to poison me!”

  I was reaching for the cup. “What?” I exclaimed and pulled my hand away from the tea.

  I was going to warn Madame Roloff off from drinking the tea and eating the macaroons, but my clumsiness got the better of me. In a state of adrenaline rush, my hand moved as if it had its own will, knocking my cup and saucer over.

  When the porcelain smashed onto the tile floor, Madame Roloff was about to take her first sip of the tea.

  “Madame Roloff, please don’t eat or drink anything served here!” I snapped in a tone that was absolutely unsuitable to use with your current biggest client, who was also in consideration for an even bigger contract.

  Still, I was talking to one of the savviest living women on the surface of the earth. Without making a fuss of asking me the reason for my words and behavior, understanding registered into her eyes. The hand holding the teacup stopped in midair, and she seemed to be ready to discard the contents.

  “Excuse me? What is this all about?” Anna demanded. “Where are your manners? Assuming you happened to have some in the first place.”

  Her tone was quiet, but there was an obvious vileness in her voice. Not only that, she moved quickly. Before Madame Roloff was able to flinch, Anna was pointing the tip of the scissors at her throat.

  If the scissors were something used in elementary school arts and crafts, I wouldn’t have to worry that much about Madame Roloff’s well-being; however, they were huge enough to cut off the thick parts of rose bushes.

  “Anna, do you mind taking the scissors away from my throat?” Madame Roloff said calmly. The hand holding the teacup was still in midair as if it was permanently fixed there.

  “Madame Roloff, you should be ashamed about bringing such a rude guest to my home. Can you believe she just smashed my good teacup on the floor?” Anna said sarcastically.

  “Look, it’s not like she did it on purpose.” Madame Roloff offered a small smile. “Everyone errs, isn’t that so?”

  “I don’t care.” Anna’s lips curled into a snarl. “Drink the tea.”

  She didn’t bother with “please” and “will you?” anymore.

  “I don’t think so,” Madame Roloff said without moving. Her eyes shifted toward me.

  “Look, Madame Roloff was once diagnosed with water poisoning, so she’s watching her daily water intake. If she’s not careful, she tends to drink too much, and I don’t recommend doing that,” I babbled.

  “What are you talking about?” Anna frowned at me.

  “Come on! Cut out the silly mumbo jumbo! You’ve got to ask her why she offed me,” Woody insisted by my ear.

  “Well,” I said without acknowledging Anna’s question, “speaking of poisoning, you’re the one who poisoned Woody Napoleon to death. Also, you’re trying to kill Madame Roloff by using the same poison extracted from monkshood, right?”

  In a split second, Anna’s face turned crimson. “He deserved to die,” she spat.

  “Excuse me? What have I done to you?” Woody demanded. “Okay, so I had this little scheme to turn your neighborhood into a shopping mall. In retrospect, my scheme sucked—that part, I’d admit. Then again, if I recall it right, we’re in a free country where you’re entitled to express your opinion. You could have joined people like Keith Schuyler or one of those cults of tree huggers and fish suckers and marched in front of my office, yelling, ‘Bad developer, get outta here! Bad developer, get outta here!’ until I got sick of it all and gave up on the project. Why did you kill me?”

  Then he let out a monster burp that could have awakened dead people buried in the cemetery.

  I winced.

  Then he turned to me. “Mandy, you’ve got to ask her why she killed me!”

  “Anna, why did you kill Woody?” I said, partly because I feared he might have another belching bout unless I did what I was told.

  “He deserved to die! He pretended he didn’t recognize me!” she seethed. “Can you believe that? After such a passionate night with him swearing to divorce Natalia and tying the knot with me, he had the audacity to ignore me and join the association!”

  “What? I’d never seen you before I joined.” Woody knitted his eyebrows.

  “I thought you met him for the first time when he joined the association,” I said.

  “No, no, no.” Anna shook her head. “We met each other at a nightclub called The Masquerade where everyone wears a mask. He was new in town, and we hit it off. He took me to his condo near Battery Park.”

  “Aha! Now I remember.” Woody snapped his fingers. “Okay, so I might have had a one-night stand with you. Yeah, I remember meeting a woman who wanted to marry me. I thought she was kidding, and I played along with her.”

  “Seriously?” Jackie narrowed her eyes. “Come on, Woody. In that case, you’re partially responsible for driving her to kill you.”

  “What? Are you saying my murder was justifiable?” Woody burped.

  “Oh no. That’s not what I mean.” Jackie shrugged. “What I’m saying is, sometimes misunderstanding leads to tragedy such as yours.”

  Anna went on. “He promised to divorce Natalia to marry me! And he joined the same cultural association where I’m affiliated! I thought he was joining because he wanted to be close to me, but noooooo! All he talked about was land, real estate, and building that stupid shopping mall! When I asked about his divorce process with Natalia, he said, ‘Huh?’ And that’s his exact word!”

  “You loved him, didn’t you?” Despite having the sharp tip of the big scissors that could have snapped her neck—or at least slash her throat—pointed at her, Madame Roloff said calmly, “I can understand your feelings. I was involved with a married man not so long after I was widowed. I wanted to believe he was my true love, but for him, I was just one of those women who just bumped into his pathway. And—”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him,” Anna muttered. Her voice was shaking, and the hand holding the scissors was turning white at the knuckles. “I put the crushed petal of the monkshood flower into the fruitcake… I was just going to make him sick. Suppose he gets sick, rushes to the hospital, and then he finds me by his bedside when he wakes up. He was supposed to realize that he needs me, but…”

  “But I dropped dead. As in literally.” Woody slapped his receding forehead with his palm. “Hey, you could have mentioned we met at the nightclub and we had a great night.”

  “That’s right. Killing with no warning is terrible,” Jackie chimed in.

  “He was supposed to need me. He was meant to love me…” Anna’s gaze darted across the living room. Her eyes were frantically looking at something, but at the same time, she wasn’t looking at anything.

  She was breaking down, in a not-so-metaphoric way. I could see the electric signals literally jamming in her head. She was sporting the same gaze manifested by seriously ill patients in the psych ward.

  “Drink the tea!” She pushed Madame Roloff’s throat harder with the tip of the scissors. “Take it or leave it. If you prefer a painful and bloody death by being slashed across the throat, it’s your choice. But isn’t it ridiculous to pick that option when you can select a painless one just by drinking tea?”

  “Don’t be fooled by her words!” I warned Madame Roloff as her hand trembled. “According to the toxicology textbook I read when I was in med school, aconitine poisoning is tot
al agony, involving nausea, vomiting, palpitation, and…”

  Back in med school, professors and attending physicians were adamant about using lay language when talking to nonmedical professionals, but at the moment, I had completely forgotten about what they taught me.

  Without saying a word, Madame Roloff gave me a small nod.

  “What’s wrong with you ladies? How can you be so rude not to drink the tea I prepared?” Anna demanded. “I’m growing so sick of dealing with you!”

  I opened my mouth and shut it, and then I opened it again. “I… I… I understand your irritation.” I tried to offer an affirmative smile while I shifted into the art of acknowledging the feelings of the person I was talking to.

  “Come on, you wanna regain your sanity!” Jackie preached by Anna’s ear, and Woody joined. “Hey, triple murder gets you in serious trouble. You might face the death penalty. Not that a single homicide is good, but killing an additional two is a big no-no.”

  “Stop talking like a shrink to me!” she snapped, almost stabbing Madame Roloff’s throat with the tip of the scissors.

  “Oh!” Madame Roloff gasped.

  “Stop that!” I shrieked. “Look, you have a beautiful greenhouse outside, and the living room here is as beautiful as that. I imagine your whole house is filled with beauty… and… and…”

  Anna narrowed her eyes at me. “Do you have a speech impediment?”

  “No, what I mean is you don’t want to mess with your beautiful house by stabbing her, because blood is the worst enemy for beauty, isn’t it?” I babbled. Hell, I didn’t care that I’d been using the word “beautiful” too frequently, like I had a really short vocabulary. Still, when you’re confronting a crazy person with big scissors, your vocabulary tends to suffer.

  “Oh, the solution is simple.” She shrugged. “You two can drink my tea and eat my macaroons and drop dead.”

  “No way! That’s no solution!” Madame Roloff pointed out. “Even with the two of us dropping dead, you’ll have to get rid of our bodies. How would you dispose of our bodies without making a total mess of the whole place?”

  “You hear her? Stop that already!” Jackie and Woody were trying to stop Anna by shouting in her ear, but of course it wasn’t working.

  “I don’t care!” Anna snapped. “All right then, you chose the scissors instead of poison!”

  Her knuckles grew whiter.

  My jaw dropped. So did Madame Roloff’s.

  “Mandy, you need to loan us your body for a moment,” Jackie said, hand in hand with Woody.

  And the next thing I knew, the heart-shaped stone on Jackie’s finger sparkled and I felt my body being taken over. Before I had a moment to say, “What the—?” my hand grabbed the teapot full of hot water and threw it across the table.

  I was always a terrible shot whenever I played sports. Indeed, I sucked at it so much, I couldn’t recall the last time I played any kind of sport. So I was truly shocked when the teapot caught Anna straight in the face.

  “What—ahhh!” she shrieked as the teapot’s lid fell off and hot water poured all over her head. “My face! It’s so hot! Ahhhhhh! I can’t see anything!” Stumbling with her vision marred, Anna started ambling toward the kitchen. The scissors in her hand dropped to the floor with a ka-ching! leaving a huge crack on the floor tile.

  “Whoa! That was close.” Gasping, Madame Roloff bent down and picked up the scissors. Considering her advanced age, her physical flexibility was impressive. Also, it was a miracle the spilled hot water had missed her beautifully tailored Oscar de la Renta suit, much less burning her.

  “Right, that was close,” Jackie said, floating by my side.

  “But we’ve managed to help Madame Roloff before it was too late.” Woody grinned proudly.

  “Excuse me, did you just take over my body?” I muttered, squinting at the ghost duo.

  “Yup.” Jackie nodded. “Good thing I obtained this certification.” She stroked the ring. “My professor said this darling ring would help me in a critical situation, and indeed it did. It helped Woody and me slip inside you.”

  “Right!” Woody pumped his fists. “You saw my killer pitching that was totally to die for, right? Oh, did I mention I used to be a hotshot pitcher in high school?”

  Suddenly feeling dizzy, I crumpled over the table, pushing the macaroons and other trays off to the floor.

  “Ahhhh!” Anna’s shriek pierced my eardrums from the kitchen.

  “Mandy, are you all right?” Madame Roloff stroked my back.

  “I’m good… thank you,” I mumbled, trying to catch my breath.

  “I have a question,” she said. “I’m thinking about calling 911, but which should I ask for first, police or an ambulance?”

  EPILOGUE

  “You should have come with us, Harriett. I know you’re desperately wishing that you’d witnessed the moment when Mandy threw the teapot and knocked Anna down. Seriously, it was so epic!” Madame Roloff bragged, suddenly sounding like a giddy tween instead of the former CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

  “Oh my God, you fought Anna with a teapot?” Harriett exclaimed.

  “To be more specific, Jackie and Woody did by taking over my body,” I confessed, remembering the trauma of my body being controlled by not just one but two ghosts.

  “You’re very welcome!” Jackie said, and Woody chimed in with “That was the least we could do.”

  “Oh, is that true, Mandy? Were you indeed taken over by the ghostly duo? Wow, witnessing someone possessed by a ghost or ghosts has been high on my to-do list before saying adieu to this world. What a day! You’ve been like my dream come true.” Madame Roloff took a bite of Charmed and Sprinkled’s new signature Christmas fruitcake and let out a contented sigh.

  “Did Anna really take you at knifepoint?” Meg exclaimed, her eyes wide.

  “Yes, Madame Roloff has already talked about it. Also, it wasn’t knifepoint, as the weapon was scissors. Weren’t you listening to her story?” Harriett nudged her younger cousin in the elbow, but her tone was gentle and caring.

  “I could hear Madame Roloff’s voice, but I was in a dreamy state. I was detained at the precinct for hours, remember?” Meg poked Harriett back and broke into a grin. “Oh my gosh! I now resent so much that the police decided to take me in their custody. No thanks to their misjudgment, I missed all the excitement!”

  “You’re right,” Madame Roloff said. “Their misjudgment absolutely spoiled the best moment. Do you want to sue them? If you’d like, I can arrange lawyers for you.”

  Tilting her head to the side and munching on Nutty Nutcracker’s Christmas Delight, Meg seemed to be thinking for a while, but she shook her head. “Thanks, but no thanks, Madame Roloff. Your offer is both kind and generous, but I’d like to focus more on having a great holiday season with Harriett, our customers, and Harriett’s folks soon to come back here.”

  “Splendid.” Madame Roloff smiled widely. “That’s the spirit. All is well when it ends well.”

  She didn’t mention the part about regarding Keith Schuyler as the prime suspect, and neither did I. Okay, so Mr. Schuyler was a jerk and a schmuck, but he wasn’t a killer. Indeed, I thought he was responsible for Mr. West’s death, but Detective Derringer clarified with us that Mr. West’s cause of death was from old age.

  After the fiasco in Anna’s living room, Madame Roloff called 911, and we had to give a long statement at the precinct. We could have called Detective Derringer because that would have slightly simplified the process, but sadly neither of us had his number. When the police officers arrived, we were almost arrested for assaulting Anna Linton. Thanks to the monkshood flowers in her living room and the trace of toxin detected in the tea and macaroons served to us, they finally believed our story.

  Meg, Madame Roloff, and I were finally released from the precinct after giving our statements, and the first place we visited was Charmed and Sprinkled, where Harriet welcomed us with so much joy, as if her birthday and Christmas came at the same time.
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  “So, what now?” Jackie asked Woody while floating by our table.

  “What do you mean?” Woody shrugged.

  “Now that you’ve finally had your much-wanted closure, I assume you’re ready to depart for a better place.” Jackie tilted her head to the side.

  “Come on, are you implying that I’d have to leave?” Woody said defiantly. “I won’t be leaving here.”

  “Excuse me?” Jackie and I exclaimed in unison.

  “What was that for, Mandy?” Three women who couldn’t hear Woody’s voice widened their eyes.

  “It’s Woody. He says he’s not going to depart for a better world,” I muttered, having a hard time believing my own words.

  “But you said you’d be moving to a better place when we found your killer, right?” Harriett said breathlessly.

  “Harriett.” Meg reached for her arm. “Maybe Woody fell in love with your bakery. Also, he’s not burping anymore, is he? Maybe he still misses this side of the world. Also, by saving Madame Roloff and Mandy, he’s practically saved me from the precinct’s interrogation room. I’d like to grant his wishes as much as possible.”

  “Thank you, Meg. Yeah, yeah, back when I agreed with the condition to leave here as soon as I found my killer, I was almost convinced that my killer would never be caught,” Woody explained.

  “It’s our bakery,” Harriett corrected Meg. “Unless you want to get a museum or historic association job in hopes of landing a curator job at some museum someday, you can join me as a partner. After all, you’re a part of my family.”

  “Are you sure?” Meg’s eyes widened and then welled up with tears. “Oh my God, I’m so touched. You know I love art, and I’ll love it all my life. Then again, I was beginning to feel that I wasn’t cut out to be a curator. Indeed, I was growing so fond of working here, having little chats with the customers, making the flyers…”

  “Also, you rock at coming up with ideas for new events,” Harriett added.

  “Congratulations!” Madame Roloff applauded.

  “Hey, anyone want to hear my reason for staying here?” Woody waved his arms.