“Tamsyn, there are some articles in the back you might be interested in. About…well, about your mother.”
My insides froze. My mother was a topic that had not yet been broached since I’d arrived on the island. It shouldn’t have surprised me that someone would bring it up eventually, but I felt blindsided. “What about her, exactly?”
“The investigation into her disappearance, dear. News coverage, eyewitness statements. You were so young at the time and then going off to Ohio so soon after it happened. I wasn’t sure how many of the details you’d ever been given.”
I fiddled with a sharp edge on my thumbnail as I focused my gaze on the edge of the desk. I dreaded seeing the pity in Auntie Sue’s eyes. “She took the boat out on the cove and never came back. There were squalls reported that day, so she probably drowned, though her body was never found, so who knows? But, I think I’ve got the gist of it.”
“There’s a bit more than that, Tamsyn.”
“Dad and Nancy never thought I needed to know more, and I kind of agree. It was so long ago. What’s the point?”
“But you’re a grown woman now, and she was your mother. Don’t you think—?”
“Thank you, Auntie Sue, but another time. I really have to go.”
I sprinted toward the exit, pretending it was the excitement of the discovery that drove me to hurry, not my desire to put distance between myself and the articles about my mother’s disappearance. I was almost to the main door when I stopped, my attention drawn to a photograph on the wall that I hadn’t noticed before. It was the portrait of a young woman. Its faded sepia tones suggested it was an original print, while the woman’s hairstyle and clothing appeared to be from sometime in the very early twentieth century. No name or date accompanied the photo, though there was a discolored spot on the wall where it looked like a plaque of some sort used to be. I found myself rooted to the spot, my eyes unable to look away from the woman’s face, which felt hauntingly familiar. I had no idea who she was, but she could have been my long-lost twin.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, I rose before dawn with the intention of finding out as much as I could about Larry Sloane. I crept down the back stairs to steal a quick breakfast before anyone else was up, but as soon as I got a glimpse of the kitchen, it was clear I had miscalculated. The old farmhouse table on the far end of the room had been cleared of its usual collection of odds and ends, and on its scratched and well-worn surface sat a massive book with an unmistakable leather binding. The grimoire. Beside it were two wooden spoons, the very same ones I had been warned might make things explode, plus measuring spoons, bowls, and other assorted supplies. I hovered at the edge of the stairwell, keeping my distance.
“There you are,” Aunt Gwen said in greeting as she entered the kitchen through the dining room door, exuding all the chipper good cheer of a true morning person. A fresh floral apron was already tied in place around her plump midsection, and her hair had been pinned into her usual no-nonsense bun on top of her head. “Let’s get started.”
“What’s all this?” I asked, shrinking into the gloomy shadow behind me as if it weren’t too late to hide.
“It’s time to begin your studies.”
“Maybe another day—” I started to argue, but she cut me off, taking me by the arm and leading me to the table.
“It’s time,” she repeated, more forcefully. “Bess Hollings told me all about the coven meeting, and even if she hadn’t, I felt the ripples of it myself.”
“What do you mean you felt it?”
“Any time magic is used, it creates a force that radiates out, like ripples in a pond when you throw a stone in the water. If you’re close enough, you can feel it. If you’re a witch, of course,” she added with a laugh.
“I had no idea,” I mumbled, not sure how I felt about this revelation. Not only did I still need to come to terms with the fact that I was a witch, but if I ever learned to use magic—and, staring at the cooking implements on the table in front of me, that was a big if—every other witch around me would know about it. My world got weirder every time Aunt Gwen opened her mouth.
“That’s what I’m here for, to teach you everything you need to know about being a kitchen witch.” She picked up one of the wooden spoons and used it to gesture to the other. “Go ahead.”
I eyed it warily and shook my head. “I don’t think so. You said things could explode.”
“Not just by picking it up, dear.”
Oh sure, like that was supposed to be obvious. Tentatively, I brushed the spoon with one finger. It felt like…a wooden spoon. No sparks. No electrical current traveling up my arm. No puff of smoke. I curled my fingers around the handle and picked it up, breathing easier. “Now what? Do I wave it at the table, and all of the ingredients will magically combine to form a cake?”
Aunt Gwen fixed me with a look like I’d grown a second head out of my shoulder. “You have quite a vivid imagination.”
Right. You’re about to give me a magic lesson from a grimoire masquerading as a 1970s’ cookbook, and I’m the weirdo in the family?
I watched as she opened the giant book to a batter-splattered page and then set out the ingredients it called for: sugar, cornstarch, salt, cinnamon. I groaned as she lifted a basket of freshly picked wild blueberries from the floor and plunked it onto the table.
“Not pie again.”
“Just the filling,” she said knowingly. “That’s where the magic is.”
“Only in the filling? You mean all that pie crust I rolled out for Doug Strong’s funeral was a waste?”
“Of course not. You can’t make pie without a crust.”
“But you can buy crust already made from the grocery store!” I knew, because up until recently, I thought that was simply how it came.
“Well, I…” she spluttered. Frankly, the expression on her face would have been more appropriate if I’d just suggested making the filling out of kittens as opposed to simply using conveniently packaged frozen pastry product to make a pie like everyone else on the planet did. “Put the berries in the pot.”
I picked up the basket and carried it to the stove. The cauldron-shaped pot was in its spot, and I dumped the berries in, spilling a few on the floor in the process.
“Carefully,” she chided. If magical cooking school was like regular school, I was cruising for a detention. “Now, before you add each of the ingredients, I want you to close your eyes and focus your intentions. Stir three times, clockwise, with the spoon, then repeat.”
“Um.” I looked from the pot to the spoon, then to my aunt. “What’s an intention?”
“That’s the spell you’re working or the purpose for the magic. For example,” she continued when my facial expression revealed I was completely lost, “with something like this blueberry pie, you might infuse it with happiness. You would think of things that make you happy, usually three things because three is a powerful number, and you would meditate on them as you stir, until you can feel the magic flowing into the pot.”
My mouth dropped open as understanding dawned. “That’s why everyone ate so much pie at the funeral. You filled it with happiness!”
“Happiness, comfort, fond memories. Pie is a very good choice for funerals. And holidays.” She shrugged as she reached past me to turn on the burner. “Makes a good breakfast, too.”
My mind flitted back to the mysterious note I’d found in Doug Strong’s papers, and the revelation Madame Alexandria had made about an airplane and the letter L. “What if I wanted to find out something in particular, like who had done something, for instance? Could magic help with that?”
“Kitchen magic is less suited for that type of thing, although there are some ways. I remember when I was a little girl, our mother wanted to find out which of the neighborhood children was picking the tomatoes out of her garden. She made a blueberry pie with some particularly magical berries that grow nearby and infused it with truth. When we’d all had our fill, she simply asked who was doing
it, and the guilty party confessed on the spot.”
Great. So, all I had to do was make enough pie for everyone on the island whose name had an L in it, and I’d find the killer in no time.
I took a pinch of cinnamon and sprinkled it over the berries, stirring clockwise in multiples of three. Nothing exploded, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. I repeated it with the sugar, my mind wandering back to the problem at hand. It was the height of summer, and that meant the island population had swelled to over ten thousand people. That was a lot of pie. But I already had a suspect in mind, so maybe all I needed to do was bake a pie and take it to Larry Sloane.
“Tamsyn! Eyes on the pot, or it will boil over.”
I jumped at the sudden scolding, losing my grip on the wooden spoon in the process. Before I could stop it, the spoon slipped from my hand and fell into the pot with a plop. I jumped again at the sound of a massive boom. In an instant, the kitchen had filled with thick, black smoke.
And with that, my first magic lesson came to an abrupt end.
Considering the events of the morning, there were now two things I could no longer deny. First, everything my aunt had told me about myself and our family lore was true. Magic was real. I was a witch. And second, given that there was likely to be half-cooked blueberry pie filling dripping from the ceiling for the foreseeable future, I was without a doubt the worst kitchen witch in the history of witchcraft.
After opening the windows to air out the smoke and mopping up as much of the sugary, blue goo as I was able to reach, there was little more I could do at the inn. Aunt Gwen did her best to remain upbeat. I truly don’t know how she managed it, given what a disappointment I was turning out to be. I stuck around just long enough to make sure all the overnight guests got breakfast, washed up the dirty dishes, and then headed out on my bicycle before I could cause any more damage.
I didn’t have a destination in mind but soon found myself pedaling along Island Ring Road, which, as the name suggested, made a large loop around the island. It was also the road that led to the Marian Cabot Memorial Airfield, where Douglas Strong had been headed on the night of the crash. I slowed as I approached the sign, weighing whether it would be worth stopping in to see if I could find out more about Larry Sloane.
The airfield was small, with a single runway that had at some point in its history been paved, but not very recently if the faded paint and bleached asphalt was any indication. There was a Cape Cod style house near the driveway, with white clapboard siding and green shutters. A sign on the front door identified it as the business office for Island Air Delivery Services and encouraged pilots to please check in at the front desk upon arrival. Two airplane hangars, the rounded type made of metal, stood side by side at the far end of the runway. There was one small plane visible near the hangers that may have landed recently, as someone, the pilot perhaps, was unloading boxes from it and stacking them in a pile on the ground.
I leaned my bike against the house and pondered what to do next. The hangars seemed the most likely place to start, except that I had no idea what Larry Sloane looked like, or whether he would even be working at the airfield that day. On the other hand, given the prevalence of gossip on the island, any employee at the airfield could be a source of useful information. I turned toward the business office, formulating a plan.
When I pushed the front door open, a blast of cold air hit my face, and I could hear the hum of a window air-conditioning unit. A large man with a ginger beard sat behind an old steel desk. He wore a uniform shirt with the Island Air Delivery Services logo and the name Kevin stitched on a patch above the pocket. “Can I help you?” he asked as I shut the door against the summer heat.
“I hope so. I need some information on shipping,” I lied.
“Well, that’s what we do,” he assured me with a friendly smile that almost made me feel guilty for the ruse. “What are you wanting to ship?”
“Pies,” I said. The smell of scorched blueberries was still embedded deep within my nostrils, so naturally it was the first thing that came to mind.
“You’re Miss Gwyneth’s niece, aren’t you, from the Pinecroft Inn?”
“Uh, yes…that’s me,” I stumbled in reply, still not used to living in a place where everyone knew my business. “My name’s Tamsyn.”
“Tamsyn, that’s right. Your aunt makes the best pies I’ve ever had. Are you thinking of delivering them to the mainland?”
“Exactly, yes.” As made-up excuses went, that one wasn’t half bad. I made a mental note to bring Kevin a pie next time I was in the neighborhood. “Is that something you do here?”
“Sure. We run flights between the mainland and all the islands several times a day.” He pulled out a thick ledger-style book and placed it on the desk in front of him, opening it and flipping through the pages. “Do you have an idea of how many you’d like to ship? We can price them individually, or there are discounts if you do bulk orders.”
“Well, I’m not really sure,” I told him, not wanting him to go through too much effort. “It’s just an idea I’ve been playing with. I’m not ready to commit to anything yet.”
“Well, I think it’s a good idea,” he assured me, unaware he was the one who had come up with it. “Those pies would sell like hotcakes to folks on the mainland. You could probably get orders from restaurants and grocery stores, too.”
“That’s…pretty brilliant, actually.” One thing to be said about Kevin, he had the mind of an entrepreneur. If I hadn’t just proven what an utter disaster in the kitchen I was, I would’ve been tempted to turn this pie delivery idea into a real business. After all, I kind of needed an income.
There was a rumbling overhead, and when I turned to look out the window, a small plane was just touching down on the runway. Unlike the delivery plane I’d seen on my way in, this one had the sleek appearance of an expensive toy.
“Summer folks,” Kevin said when he saw me eyeing the plane. I could tell by the dismissive way he said it that he didn’t have the highest opinion of them as a group, but that was a common enough mind-set for locals. “They always have the fancy ones. Although even that one’s nothing compared to the one Doug Strong flew.”
My heart started to beat faster as the conversation turned in exactly the direction I’d been hoping. “The one that went down in the bay, you mean?”
“That was a real shame. We get a lot of nice planes through here, on account of Larry being the best mechanic in all of Penobscot Bay. They fly ’em in from neighboring islands and even the mainland for him to do maintenance on. But Doug’s was something special.” The way he was talking, I couldn’t quite tell if his regret extended to the loss of the plane’s pilot, as well, or if it was just the machine that would be missed.
“Larry…Larry Sloane?” I asked, trying to play it cool. I didn’t want to let on that Larry was the whole reason I was there.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“And he worked on Doug Strong’s plane?”
“Well, now…” Kevin paused, and I swore I could see the flicker of a troubling thought in his eyes. “It used to be that Larry was the only one Doug would trust with that plane, but he’d started bringing it to a guy on the mainland. Only, come to think of it, I swear I saw the plane in Larry’s hangar not long ago.”
“You’re obviously an expert on planes, Kevin. Can I ask you something?” I tried to keep my tone as casual as possible. “What do you think caused Doug Strong’s plane to go down?”
“You know, that’s been keeping me up at night.” There was a deep furrow in his brow that made me believe this was true. “It just doesn’t make sense any way I look at it. Some of these billionaire types spend all their money on a plane and barely know how to fly it, but not Doug. He knew his stuff. So pilot error is pretty hard for me to swallow. Now, on the other hand, I see some planes coming through in such rough shape it’s hard to believe they can stay aloft the fifteen minutes it takes to get from shore to here. But Doug’s plane was fairly new, and
well maintained, plus if Larry was the one doing the work on it, there’s no way he would’ve let it fly without a clean bill of health. I just don’t know.”
I dropped my voice to just above a whisper. “What do you think of the speculation going around that it wasn’t an accident at all?”
“Suicide, you mean?” Kevin shook his head. “I’ve heard that, too. I’ll admit I didn’t know him as well as some, but Doug didn’t seem the type for that.”
“Did he have enemies?”
“Show me a rich guy who don’t,” he answered with a laugh. “Or anyone, really.”
“Good point. But I imagine building all those condos downtown made him somewhat of a controversial figure, to say the least.”
“There were some troubles back when the project started. In fact, Larry and Doug had a falling out over it, but that had all been patched up some time ago.”
“It had?”
“Well, sure. Otherwise, Larry wouldn’t have been working on Doug’s plane.” That troubled look flickered across his face again, and I was certain Kevin wasn’t as confident with what he’d just said as he was trying to come across. When it came to people who might’ve wanted Douglas Strong dead, Larry Sloane definitely remained at the top of my list.
“I’d better get going,” I said, heading to the door. I’d gotten about as much information out of the conversation as I thought was likely, and more than I needed to confirm my suspicions.
“Don’t forget what you came for,” Kevin called out.
I blinked, having already forgotten what that was. He was holding out a slip of paper, and I took it. On it was a list of shipping prices. Oh right. The pies. “Thanks, Kevin. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know more about what Aunt Gwen has in mind.”
Spirits, Pies, and Alibis Page 9
