Playing with Bonbon Fire

by Dorothy St. James

  “It’s true.” I pulled out the flyer Stella had unearthed in the office and handed it to her.

  Her deep brown eyes widened as she read it through. “Mama? Why wouldn’t she tell me she sang in a band?”

  “She sang with Stan in that band.” I mopped the water off the floor with a rag while Althea refilled the kettle. “I asked Alvin and Fox about your mother and that flyer. They said that even though she was supposed to sing with them at the festival, she didn’t. They mentioned that something had happened, but neither of them would tell me what it was. But whatever happened, it caused her not to sing with the band ever again.”

  “And this was in 1975?” Althea asked.

  I nodded.

  Althea didn’t say anything else after that. She just quietly continued making the ginger tea. Her lips moved as she started to squeeze the juice of a lemon into the steeping pot. It appeared as if she was engaging in a silent argument with herself, so I kept my mouth shut.

  Our friendship was like that. We could sit together, sipping tea and often something stronger, and not say a word. I liked that about Althea. Despite her crazy ideas about the supernatural, she was easy to be around.

  She pressed her lips tightly together as she poured the fragrant tea over ice and then handed me a large glass before pouring one for herself.

  We’d been sipping our iced tea while silently contemplating the puzzle about Bertie’s mysterious connection with Bubba, The Embers, and Stan’s murder for several minutes when Althea blurted out her statement about alligators and truth. Once I’d finished coughing up the tea that had gone down the wrong way, I asked her again what she was talking about.

  “Mama,” she said, clearly distressed. “That’s what this is about. I thought I knew her. I thought we were close, that she was not just my mother but also a friend. But she won’t talk to me about any of this. She won’t tell me why she’s been acting so oddly lately. She won’t tell me what kind of trouble she’s gotten herself into.” Her hand started shaking so violently, she had to put down her glass before she spilled it. She then leaned toward me. With her voice trembling as strongly as her hand, she whispered, “Is Mama somehow involved with Stan’s murder?”

  “We need to find out. If your mother won’t talk with us and the band members won’t either, we need to find someone who will. Do you know someone who was around back then? Someone who would be willing to talk to you?”

  She closed her eyes and thought about that for a while. “You won’t like it,” she warned with her eyes still closed.

  “I won’t like it? You aren’t suggesting you want me to talk to a ghost, are you? Come on, Althea, you and I both know that would be a waste of everyone’s time and it wouldn’t get us any answers.”

  She opened her eyes. They had a funny glow in them. “Of course it would be a waste of time,” she quickly agreed. “Spirits are notoriously unreliable. Now, don’t get me wrong; if a ghost comes to you with a tidbit of information, listen to it. It might save your life. But if you go asking the spirit world for specific answers, forget it. What you’ll get is—”

  “Stop. Please, stop.” Her talk of the spirit world was making me itchy all over. I hated magic because of who my mother was—a fortune teller. But Florence hadn’t said anything about being a fortune teller. She’d said she was a student. Had a lifetime of fear and hatred of magic and fortune tellers been based on a lie? Oh, it didn’t matter. Magic wasn’t real. And my friendship with Althea worked as long as we didn’t talk nonsense. “Let’s just say we agree and change the subject. Who do you think might talk to us about the past?”

  “Uncle Kamba. He’s a root doctor.”

  “A what?” I asked.

  “A root doctor. Kamba lives on a nearby hummock island that’s only accessible by boat.”

  “Root doctor? So that means he works with trees?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No, not trees. He practices what popular media likes to call voodoo. But it’s not voodoo, it’s—”

  “No. No. No. There has to be someone else.” I wasn’t going to visit a fortune-telling conman in search of the truth. “Perhaps someone at the Pink Pelican Inn will talk to us.” I slid down from the kitchen counter stool. “And in the meantime, if you remember hearing anything about your family from that time, tell me, okay?”

  Althea followed me to the door. “Kamba is a nice guy. I spent a couple of summers with him during college, learning from him. He won’t tell you anything that isn’t true.”

  I snorted at that. It was rude of me, I knew. But I had trouble controlling my knee-jerk reactions to the unbelievable. When I heard crazy statements like that, I snorted.

  “Has anything else happened today?” Althea asked me as she opened her front door for me. “You seem more tense than usual. I mean, even for you.”

  “Someone shot at me,” I reminded her.

  “I suppose that would be enough to frazzle anyone’s nerves,” she said slowly. Her big calico cat brushed my leg as it darted inside with a mouse in its mouth. “That’s her rubber mouse, not a real one,” Althea said with a laugh. I didn’t know why she was laughing. It wasn’t as if I’d shrieked at the sight of the mouse dangling from the cat’s mouth. Well, not too loudly.

  I wasn’t sure why I didn’t tell Althea about Florence’s shocking revelation that afternoon. It wasn’t as if my friend would go blabbing about it to anyone in town. Like pretty much everyone else in this town, she knew how to keep her mouth shut about secrets that didn’t belong to her. An annoying trait when I needed to get information, but comforting when there was a secret to be held.

  I probably didn’t say anything simply because I couldn’t make the words come out. Saying them aloud would make them true. Even thinking the words “Florence was my mother” made my chest ache.

  Anyhow, I thanked Althea. Just before I left, she grabbed me and pulled me into a tight hug. “When you’re ready, you know you can tell me what happened to upset you this afternoon,” she whispered in my ear. “We’re friends. Friends depend on each other, no matter what. Friends protect and help each other.”

  That’s what had me so worried. Had Althea’s mother gotten herself in over her head with whatever was going on in this odd town? How far would the protective members of this community go to shield one of their own? Would they conspire to commit murder in order to protect Bertie and her secret?

  Chapter 27

  The band scheduled to play that evening was a local group that played beach music hits from the late 1940s and early 1950s. Many of the songs were R&B hits of their time.

  Bubba had told me the group was popular with many of the area’s shag clubs. As usual, he’d been right. Ticket sales had been robust for a band that very few outside the Carolina shag world would recognize. Everything seemed to be going along smoothly enough.

  Since it was a few hours before the concert, I decided to spend some time working in the Chocolate Box’s kitchen. Tina and Bertie had finished closing up the shop for the day. I hurried through the silent interior to the kitchen in the back of the building.

  Since I didn’t have the heart to ruin another of Mabel’s recipes, I decided to play with the idea that had been bouncing around in my head about crafting a spicy bonbon. I wouldn’t follow a recipe; instead, I’d follow my taste buds and see where they led.

  The outside world and its problems seemed to fade away as I chopped red hot chili peppers into tiny pieces and mixed them in with peanut butter and paprika. I then rolled the mixture into a dozen equally sized balls. Next, the spicy peanut butter balls were dunked into melted chocolate that was so dark it nearly tasted like finely crafted bourbon. I was in the middle of the dipping process when my cell phone rang.

  With melted chocolate simmering in the double boiler, it wasn’t a good time to take a call. But with so much going on in my life, I couldn’t afford to ignore it.

  I glanced at the screen. It was Granny Mae finally returning my call.

  “Granny Mae!” I tu
cked the small phone between my ear and my shoulder—somewhat of a tricky maneuver with my credit-card-thin smartphone. I lowered the heat on the double boiler and wiped my hands on a towel.

  By the time I’d finished, the phone had nearly slipped from its perched position on my shoulder at least three times. I gripped it in my hand and pressed it too tightly to my ear.

  “How is the chocolate making going?” Granny Mae asked.

  Because I loved talking cooking with her, despite the fact that neither of us had much of a clue about what we were doing in the kitchen, I briefly told her about my current attempt to design my own recipe, the chocolate bonbon fires.

  “Oh!” she crooned. “That sounds delicious! You’re going to have to mail me a box.”

  “I’m still working on the recipe,” I warned as I poked one of the still melty and very experimental bonbon fires with the tip of my finger. “These might taste awful. I haven’t really had much time to work on it. The shop’s been really busy. And then some nut tried to burn the place down last night. And today someone, probably the same nut, shot at me.”

  Granny Mae went silent on the other end.

  “I didn’t mean to blurt all of that out like that,” I said as I leaned against the marble counter.

  “You’re having troubles again?” she asked.

  “It all started with the band member I found in the bonfire, or did it start with the rock someone threw through the shop window? I can’t keep it all straight.”

  “Oh, Penn, no.” She sighed. “Please tell me you’re being careful and keeping yourself safe.”

  “I’m safe, but—”

  “But you’re investigating, aren’t you? And you need my help sorting through the details?”

  “No, that’s not what I need to talk with you about.” While I could use her help sorting through the details surrounding Stan’s murder and how it seemed as if someone was setting up Candy to take the blame, I needed Granny Mae not for her amazing mind but for her generous heart.

  “I found my mother,” I said with a trembling sob.

  “Oh, honey,” she whispered. “Tell me all about it.”

  It took several slow, even breaths before I reined in the anger and upset that had made me feel as if I was losing control. Once my voice felt steady again, I told Granny Mae all about the meeting with Florence and how it hadn’t been the Hallmark tearjerker reunion I’d hoped such a moment would be for me.

  “She’s lying,” she said once I’d finished.

  Two words. Simply stated.

  They were the exact two words I’d needed to hear.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked. It suddenly felt as if I was no longer adrift in a sea of emotions.

  “If this woman was your mother, she would have hugged you.” Granny Mae had tossed me a lifeline. “I know you don’t believe me when I tell you this, Penn, but you are huggable.”

  Those stupid tears swam in my eyes. “She dropped me off at my father’s dorm room and never even tried to contact me. I don’t think she’s the hugging type.”

  “I know it’s hard to be rational about these things. It’s too personal for you. So let my rational brain do the heavy lifting for you. If Florence was telling the truth, she’d agree to take the DNA test.”

  “But she doesn’t want anyone else to know,” I pointed out. “She’s ashamed that I exist. She wouldn’t want a DNA test out there that I could potentially use against her.”

  Granny Mae went quiet for a minute. “That may be true. Still, there’s something about what you’ve told me that’s nagging at me. Something’s not right about any of this. You need to talk with your father, see if he can corroborate her story.”

  “Harley told me the same thing.”

  “Good. I always thought he was a smart man.”

  “I’ve talked with my father about this before. He tells me that he doesn’t remember anything about her beyond the fact that she was a fortune teller.”

  “Aha! That’s what has been bothering me about her story. Florence told you she was a college student visiting Chicago with her friends during a break. Her story doesn’t mesh with your father’s. She’s lying.”

  Oh, how I wished that were true.

  “So you still think Carolina is my mother?” I asked.

  “She might be. Do you still have a detective searching for her?”

  “I do, but he’s not had much luck.”

  Her earrings clanked against the phone, which meant she was nodding. “Have that detective poke around in Florence’s background for a while. Ask him to find out what she was doing around the time of your birth.”

  “But what will that accomplish?” I didn’t want to stop looking for Carolina. I’d developed all sorts of fantastic reasons why she might be so hard to find. She could have become an undercover agent, living on the edge of danger while breaking open spy rings. And she’d been forced to give me up for my own safety. Or she could have testified against a dangerous crime organization and been required to go into the witness protection program. The new identity assigned to her was an itinerant fortune teller. She always had to be on the run from the bad guys. In both those scenarios, giving me up would have been a selfless and loving choice.

  So I guess, in reality, it hadn’t bothered me too much that the detective agency searching for her hadn’t been able to find her. I wasn’t ready for those fantasies to be burst.

  “It will help you prove that Florence is lying to you,” Granny Mae said. “Also, start thinking about why Florence would lie about this. What does it accomplish?”

  “I … I don’t know.” I was surprised I hadn’t wondered about that myself. Florence had always come across as selfish and cold. And yet she’d told me today that she had revealed her secret because she thought I needed to know. A selfless act? How very unlike Florence.

  In frustration, I picked up one of the melty bonbons and tossed it into my mouth. I chewed the peanut buttery center, expecting the chili peppers to bite me back. They didn’t. I didn’t feel any heat in my mouth until I’d swallowed the bonbon. Not the result I’d wanted. The heat needed to be on the palate immediately.

  “How long has it been since any of Carolina’s family has seen or heard from her?” Granny Mae asked.

  I pulled my focus away from the chocolates and had to think for a moment before saying, “She ran away in 1975.”

  That was the same year as the last Summer Solstice Beach Music Festival and the same year something happened to make Bertie quit singing with The Embers. Clearly, whatever had happened to her back in the seventies had caused Bertie to start acting strangely ever since the start of the concert’s revival.

  “Oh my goodness, I bet it’s connected,” I said.

  “What is, dear?” Granny Mae asked.

  “Carolina’s disappearance, Stan’s murder, the exploding grill, and this morning’s shooting. I think they are all connected to the same event that made Bertie quit singing with the band.”

  Chapter 28

  “Taste this,” I said to Tina the next morning. I’d spent the early morning hours alone in the kitchen. It was just me and the chocolate and a jalapeño pepper.

  It took two tries, but I managed to make a tray of bonbons that contained their pepper ganache filling and held their shape. I’d decorated them with a deep sunset red sugar to illustrate the flame they held inside. After cooling them in the refrigerator for about an hour, it was now time to see if the flavor combinations worked as well as the visual presentation.

  Tina, who’d come down from the upstairs apartment in search of breakfast, looked amazing. Her brown hair was pulled up in a ponytail that made her look as if she was still in her twenties. She was wearing the cutest tank-top summer dress cut from a fabric that featured big-eyed panda bears peeking out from behind rosy petals. Her tan strappy sandals looked both comfortable and adorable.

  I handed her one of my bonbon fires and held my breath as she took a bite.

  “Well?” I asked when she did
n’t say anything. That’s when I noticed her cheeks had started turning a deeper and deeper shade of red. “Do I need to back off on the pepper?”

  “Water,” she rasped and then fanned her mouth with her hand. “Water.”

  There weren’t any drinking cups in the kitchen. I grabbed a five-cup measuring beaker and started to fill it with tap water. She snatched it out of my hands before I’d finished and swallowed the water in one loud gulp.

  “More.” She thrust the cup at me.

  I filled. She snatched and drank.

  This cycle repeated itself for several minutes before she held up her hand and nodded. “What did you put in that thing, liquid heat?”

  I sighed and dumped the tray of bonbons into the trash. “I was trying to make sure you tasted the heat of the pepper right away.”

  “The heat of the thing hit me like a frying pan.”

  “Too much pepper.” First, too little. And now, too much. It was disappointing.

  “Keep working at it. It’s a good idea.” She slumped against the counter and waved her hand over her opened mouth as if still trying to cool it as I carried several dirty bowls to the sink. “Now let me ask you what I came down to ask before you set fire to my taste buds.”

  “Set fire to your taste buds? That would be a good slogan for my bonbon fires.” I started to fill the sink with hot, soapy water.

  “If you plan on selling those, you’ll have to have your customers sign a waiver.”

  “No, I’ll tone it down. I’m sure I can work out a recipe that tastes right.” Actually I wasn’t sure of that at all, but I didn’t want Tina to know it. If she thought I was struggling, she’d call in reinforcements—like my father—to come and “help.”

  “I know you can,” she said. “Now let’s talk about what happened yesterday. Do you need me to—?”

  “Yesterday? The police will handle all that. I’m more interested in talking about your upcoming fall fashions. What colors will the designers be using? Is there a texture or fabric I should start shopping for that will be the next big thing?”