by Nic Saint
“Well, Alice and I have talked it over.”
“And?”
She spun away for a moment, holding onto his hands, and smiled. “Yes.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, Fee. That’s wonderful!”
He pulled her in and kissed her tenderly. She swooned, her spine tingling. She could get used to this, and now that they were moving in together, she realized that she would. “There’s just one catch.”
“Oh?”
“You know how Reece asked to move in together too?”
“Sure.”
“And how Alice and I love rooming so very much?”
“Of course. Fee, that won’t change. You and Alice are best friends. I don’t want to come between you.”
“I know. And you won’t. We’re moving in together.”
“Great.”
“All of us.”
“Mh?”
“You and I and Alice and Reece. We’ll all move in together.”
There was silence as Rick digested this piece of information, then he took her by the shoulders. “Wait. What?”
She gave him her most radiant smile, then, from the corner of her eye, saw that Alice and Reece were dancing just nearby. “Oh, look, there’re Alice and Reece now.”
Rick was unfazed. “I know. What?”
“You and I and Alice and Reece. We’ll all live together.”
Rick’s lips moved but no sound was produced. Felicity looked over and saw that Reece had the exact same expression on his face. She smiled at Alice. ‘I think this is going really well,’ that smile said.
Alice returned her smile and added some wattage of her own. ‘I’m not so sure,’ her smile said.
Then Reece and Rick caught each other’s eye, but instead of smiling, they simply stared. In horror.
Both Felicity and Alice stood on their tippy toes and kissed their respective boyfriends, drawing their attention back to themselves.
“I love you, honey,” murmured Felicity.
Rick blinked, then grinned. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh, honey,” he said, picking her up and swinging her around until she was whooping with joy.
“I love you too,” he said when he finally set her down again. “So about this moving in together…”
She hugged him close. “I knew you would like it.”
“Right.”
Rick looked over at Reece and they grinned. ‘I think we can make this work,’ Rick’s grin said.
‘Damn sure we can,’ Reece’s grin said.
Felicity watched as her parents joined them on the dance floor, then Aunt Bettina and Uncle Achilles and even Chief Whitehouse and Alice’s mother. As she let her gaze wander, she noticed the Stokelys, too, and even Virgil treading the measure with his mother Marjorie. All her friends were gathered here, and she heaved a deep, contented sigh.
Life simply didn’t get any better than this.
Three Shots of Disaster
The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse 3
Chapter 1
Alice stared at the muffin, turning it this way and that, and finally took a tentative sniff. “It smells funny. And why is it green?”
“Just eat it already!” an exasperated Felicity exclaimed.
The two friends were in the kitchen of the cozy house they shared on Stanwyck Street, where Felicity had just baked up a batch of muffins for her weekly column in the Happy Bays Gazette.
Alice opened her mouth, her pixie face scrunched up into an expression of fear and loathing, then ever so slowly brought the muffin to her lips, squeezed her eyes tightly shut, and halted in midair. She shook her head, her blond bob tossing this way and that.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Felicity groaned, and snatched the muffin from her friend’s fingers, and took a quick nibble. Frowning, she munched the spinach muffin, swallowed audibly, and cocked her head, like a parrot studying a nut, her red curls dangling curiously.
“Well? Don’t keep me in suspense. How is it?”
Felicity blinked once, and contorted her features into a violent spasm, then emitted a loud burp. Bringing a mortified hand to her round face, she mumbled, “Sorry about that.” And promptly burped again. Ever so slowly, she set the muffin down on the kitchen counter. “Don’t tell me you got that on camera.”
“I didn’t!” cried Alice. “Dammit! I knew I’d forgotten something.”
Felicity supported herself on the counter. Her stomach was making strange noises, obviously not appreciative of the treat. “Not my finest achievement,” she finally admitted, grimacing freely.
Alice’s green eyes flashed. “Phew. Am I glad I didn’t eat that thing.”
“Horrible. Simply horrible.” She eyed the recipe once again. Weird, she felt, that her grandmother would hand her a recipe that failed on such an epic scale. Until now the Flour Girl columns had been a huge hit, and practically all of the recipes had come from Granny Bell. This one, however, was absolutely horrible. She took a glass of water and started to gurgle in an attempt to rinse the foul taste from her palate.
At least her stomach seemed to hold up. “So weird,” she muttered.
“What’s weird about it? You’re allowed to fail once in a while. I’ll bet even Martha Stewart doesn’t hit them all out of the park.”
“Yeah, but Gran assured me this was the ultimate muffin.”
“Ultimate sick maker, you mean. I could see from the color that something was off. Muffins aren’t supposed to be pea green.”
“That’s the spinach, I guess.”
“Spinach? You put spinach in a muffin? No wonder it’s so bad.”
“Spinach is healthy. Ask Popeye.”
“What else is in there?” Alice asked, snatching the recipe from her grasp. “Inquiring minds want to know. Eggs, spinach, wholewheat flour, sugar, butter, cumin…” She frowned. “Nothing wrong, or so it seems.”
“I know. So why does it taste like crap?”
“Maybe one of the ingredients was off? Maybe the eggs? Did you check the date?”
She glanced at the carton. It appeared in order. “I would have smelled a rotten egg. No, the ingredients are fine. Just that the combination somehow created this…” She stared at the twelve muffins cooling on the tray. “Frankenstein brood.”
“Let’s just forget about it. Your column isn’t due until Monday, so we have plenty of time to shoot another video.”
“I guess,” said Felicity quietly. She needed to ask Gran about this. It was the first time that a recipe supplied by the Bell family’s greatest baker had gone so horribly wrong. There was a mystery there, she felt, and one that needed looking into.
She was cleaning up the kitchen and returning the leftover ingredients to their proper places when she heard munching sounds behind her. Whirling around, she saw her boyfriend stuffing the last of a muffin into his mouth.
“Rick!” cried Felicity. “Don’t!”
Too late. Rick swallowed, and the muffin started its fateful descent along his esophagus. The moment it arrived in his stomach, his jaw dropped, and his eyebrows shot up into his blond fringe, his blue eyes reflecting horror and surprise. Clutching his hands to his belly, he seemed to realize he’d made a terrible mistake.
His eyes slowly swiveled to Felicity’s, his face quickly turning the same pea green as the muffin, and he asked in a hollow voice, “Honey? What did I just eat?”
“Oh, Rick,” she said softly, and watched him make a mad dash for the bathroom. Moments later the sound of retching reached her ear, and she knew Granny Bell’s muffin had just found its final resting place and was now sleeping soundly with the rest of Happy Bays’s raw sewage.
Shaking her head, she started gathering up the remaining muffins, fully intent on throwing them in the trash, when the phone rang.
Crossing to the dining room table, she picked it up, and saw that her editor Stephen Fossick was trying to reach her.
“Fee, hi!” he bellowed. “Terrible news. Really terrible!”
&nbs
p; She clutched the phone to her ear. “Oh, no. What is it?”
“Moe’s been kidnapped.”
It took her a moment to recollect that Moe was Mayor MacDonald’s parrot. “Someone kidnapped a parrot?”
“Not a parrot, Fee. The parrot. And a damn fine bird indeed. And whoever took the poor creature knows he’s got the mayor just where he wants him.”
She frowned, and wondered if Stephen had been slugging back the vino again. The man loved his grapes. “I’m not really getting this, Stephen. You’re telling me the mayor’s parrot disappeared. And this is important how?”
Stephen sighed. “It’s obvious you’re not in the know, honey. Moe’s the apple of the mayor’s eye. He and his wife love that damn bird like a son. A fact the kidnappers are probably aware of. I’m sure the ransom demand will be sizable. So I want you to get your perky little butt over to Town Hall and give me five hundred words on this. Pronto!”
After Felicity hung up, she stared before her for a moment. Rick had returned from the bathroom, still a little green around the gills, and asked, “Are you all right, honey? You look…shell-shocked.”
She grimaced. “That was Stephen. He wants me to do a story…”
“That’s great.”
“…on the mayor’s parrot.”
Rick’s lips trembled into a faint smile. “Really going places, huh?”
Chapter 2
Moments later Fee was pulling up outside Town Hall, a one-story red-brick building located on Loy Street, right in the heart of Happy Bays, that small and cozy community nestled on Long Island’s South Fork.
“I wonder who could have stolen the mayor’s parrot,” said Alice earnestly as she stared at the modest building that housed Ted MacDonald, Happy Bays’s most powerful man.
“Who cares,” scoffed Felicity. “It’s just a silly old bird.”
“Oh, no it’s not. Moe’s the apple of the mayor’s eye.”
Felicity rolled her own eyes. “Not you too. It’s just a parrot, hon, not a baby.”
“Well, since Ted MacDonald doesn’t have kids, Moe’s about the closest thing to a child the poor man has ever had.”
“Are you seriously telling me the mayor loves this bird like a son?”
“I am. You should have seen him when Moe was ill. He had the best veterinarians come running to take care of the poor thing.”
Though Felicity still found it strange, she could understand the affection one could feel for a pet. She and Alice owned six cats, and if anything would happen to them, she would definitely feel the pain. So she shrugged and started to crawl from the bakery van that was her usual mode of transportation.
“Let’s just see what’s going on, shall we? If Stephen thinks this is a story fit to print, I guess he must be right.” After all, the man had been the editor of the Happy Bays Gazette for going on forty years, and knew just what the small community he catered to liked to read about.
They ambled up to the entrance, Felicity with pad and pencil in hand. Only now did she notice that Alice was chewing her lower lip thoughtfully. “What’s wrong, honey? You look worried.”
Alice sighed. “Do you think I was too harsh on Reece last night?”
“You mean when you told him he should learn how to pick up after himself? No, I think you were right. We all keep finding his dirty socks everywhere, and frankly if you ask me it’s a horrible habit. I thought you would have weaned him off it already.”
“I’m trying, Fee, but Reece has a hard time adjusting to the whole ‘living together’ thing. I mean, he still has this Hollywood Star complex, and seems to think he’s the best thing since sliced bread.”
“Well, he is a bona fide movie star, that’s true enough,” Felicity said as they pushed through the double doors and swept into Town Hall’s main hallway. “But that doesn’t mean he can do what he wants. He’s in our house now, and he has to follow the rules just like Rick does.”
Her own boyfriend Rick Dawson, who was a well-respected reporter working for Time Magazine, had adjusted remarkably well to the new situation. Unlike Reece, who behaved as if he was the king of the castle; leaving a trail of dirty laundry in his wake. The man needed housebreaking, and Alice frankly didn’t seem up to the task.
“That’s what you get when you take a grown man and try to change him,” Alice muttered. “I adore Reece, I really do, but sometimes he just drives me mad. Take yesterday morning, for instance. I make him his favorite breakfast, Belgian waffles with caramel sauce and scrambled eggs, and instead of rinsing his plate he simply gets up, cheerfully announces he’s got a meeting in town, and leaves. I mean, I’m not his maid. I don’t have to clean up after him. That’s not my job, is it?”
“It sure isn’t.” It was another aspect of the matter that greatly disturbed Felicity. It was obvious that Reece was used to people waiting on him, and cleaning up after him, and he seemed to expect Felicity and Alice to perform that particular task.
They’d reached the office of Mabel Stokely, the mayor’s secretary, and found the door wide open. She rapped her knuckles against the jamb, announcing their arrival. “Mabel, honey? Are you in here?”
She searched around but there was no trace of the middle-aged woman. Mabel Stokely was a good friend, and like Felicity and Alice themselves a member of the Happy Bays Neighborhood Watch Committee. And since she’d worked in Town Hall her whole life there was nothing that happened in Happy Bays that she didn’t know about.
“Mabel?” she tried again.
From across the room a soft groaning sound came, and Felicity and Alice quickly rounded the desk. The sight that met their eyes disconcerted them. Seated on the carpet was Mabel, her fluffy pink hair a mess, and her moonlike face deathly pale. The stocky secretary seemed distraught, and when she caught sight of Felicity and Alice, she feebly muttered, “What happened?”
“Oh, Mabel, honey!” cried Alice, and kneeled down next to her. Mabel flinched, and seemed woozy. “I was sitting at my desk, and then suddenly I was sitting on the floor. How—” She stared, as if wondering where she was. “How did I get down here?”
“You must have fallen from your chair,” said Alice.
“I—I must have,” agreed Mabel, and with some effort, and with the support of Alice and Felicity, managed to get on her feet, only to plop down on the chair, victim of a dizzy spell. “I must have passed out,” she muttered. “So strange. This has never happened to me before.”
Alice and Felicity gazed at the secretary, concern etched on their faces. Mabel was right, Felicity thought. This had never happened to the able secretary before. Coming upon the news of the missing Moe, this was highly disconcerting, she felt. Highly disconcerting indeed.
Chapter 3
“We actually came down here because of the parrot,” Felicity said.
As she spoke the words, she felt a bit silly. Was this what she’d come to? After solving a murder case that had held all of Happy Bays spellbound for days she was now on parrot watch? But then that was to be expected. This was still Happy Bays. She could hardly expect a fresh murderer to swoop down on the peaceful town. And a good thing too.
Mabel brought a hand to her flustered face. “Parrot? What parrot?”
Felicity frowned, and shared a look of confusion with Alice. Was this really Mabel Stokely? The most strong-minded woman they knew?
“The mayor’s parrot. I’m doing a story on his kidnapping.”
“Oh, you mean Moe,” said Mabel, spiriting a feeble smile on her still pale face. “Well, Moe is fine. Just fine. The life and soul of Town Hall, as usual.”
Felicity frowned. Could Stephen have been so mistaken? “You mean to tell me Moe hasn’t been taken?”
Mabel smiled bravely. “Absolutely not. He’s fine! In fact he just had a haircut this morning.”
“A haircut? I didn’t know parrots had haircuts.”
“I didn’t know parrots had hair,” Alice muttered.
“Oh, yes,” she assured them. “Moe is always coifed to perfection.
The mayor likes him to look his absolute best at all times. You never know when an important visitor might come in, you know.”
Once again, she smiled feebly, and Felicity’s worry deepened. There was something horribly, terribly wrong here, she just knew it was. “Mabel, there’s something you’re not telling us, isn’t there?”
Mabel pushed at her hair, which was the texture of cotton candy. “What a silly thing to say. What could I possibly be hiding from you?”
As she spoke the words she glanced around nervously, as if she were afraid someone might stroll in and catch her talking to them.
“What’s going on?” Alice chimed in. “You’re never this nervous.”
“Well, to tell you the truth,” she said, fidgeting with a Magic Marker, “I have been feeling a little under the weather lately. Mark has been having some trouble at work, and we’re simply trying our best to cope.”
“Trouble? What trouble?” Felicity wanted to know. Mark Stokely, Mabel’s husband, was in charge of public relations at the nuclear power plant. He was the one who had to tell visitors and reporters that all was well, and that the strange odor they smelled, and the strange fumes escaping the cooling towers, were absolutely nothing to worry about.
“Well, Mark has a new manager, and for some reason they don’t see eye to eye. They had a small discussion and Mark was sent home on an extended leave of absence—nothing to concern yourselves about.”
“A discussion? About what?” Felicity wanted to know.
The power plant supplied power to the whole of Long Island. When something went wrong, the consequences could be dire.
She waved an airy hand. “Oh, just some trifle about cracks in the cooling towers. Nothing they can’t fix.”
Felicity and Alice gulped at this news, which Mabel didn’t seem to feel was very important.
“Cracks? In the nuclear power plant?” Felicity demanded.
She dabbed at her hair again. “Just a minor problem, but Mark and this new manager disagreed on how to handle it.” She giggled nervously. “You know how managers are. Always think they know better than people who’ve worked at the plant for over thirty years.”
