A Taste of Magic (A Sugarcomb Lake Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Alaine Allister

  Ah well. She was there to work, not to put on a fashion show!

  Climbing out of the car, Clarissa walked up to Mrs. Meddler’s front door. She was extremely careful not to step on any flowers in the process. Everyone in town knew that doing so would likely result in outrageous accusations from the old woman. The last thing Clarissa needed was for Mrs. Meddler to spread a malicious rumor that she had killed Jed Black!

  Clarissa rang the doorbell and waited.

  After a moment Mrs. Meddler came to the door looking annoyed. She looked Clarissa up and down, her lips pursed in disdain. “What do you want?” she finally demanded. “I’m not buying anything from you!” she added sternly.

  “I’m, uh…I’m not selling anything,” Clarissa replied in bewilderment. “You asked me to do some yard work for you today,” she reminded the old woman, wondering if Mrs. Meddler was starting to go senile.

  “Oh, right. I don’t need you anymore,” Mrs. Meddler said abruptly. “I have someone better.”

  Just then a young man who looked like he had stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine appeared behind the old woman. He had a glass of lemonade in one hand and a delicious looking gingerbread cookie in the other.

  “Have another cookie,” Mrs. Meddler told him.

  “I’ve already had three, ma’am,” he laughed, setting his glass of lemonade down. “I had better get to work,” he said. Then he stepped outside and followed Clarissa down the front path.

  Clarissa couldn’t help but watch in annoyance as the young man began pruning a tree. With his designer clothes and perfect posture he made yard work look like a breeze. She didn’t think he was even sweating. It was so unfair: he had taken her job and her cookies right out from under her, plus he looked good doing it.

  “Oh who am I kidding?” Clarissa whispered to herself. “Mrs. Meddler wouldn’t have offered me any cookies anyway!”

  As she watched the young man with more than a little pang of jealousy, Clarissa realized she recognized him. He was the same guy Mrs. Meddler had pointed out to her the day she had visited the site of Jed Black’s murder.

  He was the kid who had grown up right down the street and had, by some miracle, completely won the cranky old woman over. He had shoveled her sidewalk, mowed her lawn and done odd jobs for her. Or at least he had until he had gone away to college.

  Clarissa felt a small, embarrassing twinge of satisfaction as she realized Mr. College-Educated was now, once again, doing yard work to earn a living. Of course she herself was doing the exact same thing, so it didn’t exactly make sense to act all smug. But thankfully if Clarissa was good at anything, it was applying logic very selectively.

  She marched over to him.

  “Hi,” she said, extending her hand. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Clarissa Spencer.”

  He turned and looked at her. “Chase Preston,” he replied.

  “Sorry if this is weird, but I heard through the grapevine that you knew Jed Black.”

  “I did,” Chase confirmed. “Such a shame, what happened to him,” he added.

  “Yes, it really is. Hey listen, could I talk to you for a second? Please?”

  Chase raised an eyebrow. He slowly, deliberately set the gardening shears down and looked Clarissa over. “What did you say your name was, again?”

  “Clarissa Spencer,” she reminded him. “I used to work for the Gazette. I’m a reporter,” she explained. “I’m doing some independent research and I’d really appreciate being able to speak with someone who used to work with the mayor.”

  “Well I’m not sure how much help I can be,” Chase cautioned.

  “You worked at the mayor’s office, right?”

  “Yes, after I worked at Black & Burke.”

  “Wait, you worked at the investment firm too?” Clarissa asked with great interest.

  “Uh huh, but I mostly worked with Adam Burke. I was his personal assistant,” Chase explained. “Then later when the mayor’s office was looking for an intern, Adam pulled some strings and got me the job.”

  “You were Adam Burke’s assistant?” Clarissa repeated, barely able to believe her good luck.

  “Yeah,” Chase nodded. “I did work directly with Jed Black in his capacity as mayor, but to be honest, my job wasn’t very glamorous. I didn’t have a lot of direct contact with him – only with his staffers.”

  “But you would have had direct contact with Adam Burke at the investment firm, right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “How was he as a boss?” she asked, redirecting the conversation.

  “Adam was great,” Chase replied without hesitation. “Being his assistant was a demanding job, but it was also rewarding. And not to brag or anything, but I was pretty awesome at it. Adam – I mean Mr. Burke – joked that he almost didn’t want to get me an internship at the mayor’s office because he hated to lose me.”

  “But he pulled strings for you to get the job?”

  “Well…yeah. He basically just recommended me for the position,” Chase shrugged.

  “You two must have been close,” Clarissa mused, noting that Chase kept calling Adam Burke by his first name and then correcting himself. “I imagine he could really use your help now that he’s running the investment firm singlehandedly,” she added.

  “That’s what I thought. I offered to help,” Chase told her, confirming what Clarissa already knew. “But I was told everything is under control down there. It’s just as well, really. My days of being Adam’s assistant are in the past.”

  “Oh. I had assumed you might be returning to work for Adam now that, er, your position with the mayor’s office is presumably gone. Or will you be continuing your work with the new mayor?” Clarissa asked innocently.

  Chase reddened. “Don’t get me wrong, I was really good at my job,” he said. “I was really good at both of my jobs,” he corrected himself. “I was an honors student,” he added proudly.

  “So was I,” Clarissa replied, hoping to establish some common ground.

  “Cool. But yeah, I’m beginning to think the business world isn’t for me. I’m planning to take a year off to travel,” Chase admitted. “Oldest cliché in the book, I know. But I figure I should do it now while I’m still young…no offense.”

  “I took a semester off to ‘find myself’ too,” Clarissa confided, ignoring the implication that she was no longer young. “I went on a solo road trip through eight different states. It was quite the adventure, or at least it felt like it back then when I was twenty.”

  “And did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you find yourself?”

  Clarissa blinked. “Oh. No. I had a summer fling with a lying cheating scumbag who broke my heart,” she confessed. “For the record, I don’t recommend doing that. I was a sniveling mess for a long time afterward. No guy – or girl – is worth it.”

  “Okay, so no summer flings with lying cheating scumbags,” Chase said, pretending to write it down on an invisible pad of paper. “Duly noted,” he grinned.

  “So where are you thinking of going?” Clarissa asked. “I can confirm California is nice this time of year. Actually, California is nice pretty much any time of year, assuming you don’t mind the heat. Disneyland is always fun!”

  “Actually, I had my sights set on Europe. Backpacking through Europe really is the oldest cliché in the book, isn’t it?” Chase joked. Then he surveyed Mrs. Meddler’s front garden. “I hate to cut our conversation short, but I should probably get back to work.”

  “You probably should,” Clarissa agreed.

  “She’s watching us from the window, isn’t she?”

  Clarissa glanced toward the house and saw the living room curtains flutter.

  “Yep, she sure is.”

  ***

  After leaving Mrs. Meddler’s house, Clarissa went to the grocery store. Normally she wouldn’t run errands in her work clothes, but it was an emergency: she was running low on chocolate chip cookies. Clearly that too
k priority over vanity!

  As Clarissa walked across the parking lot, she glanced over at the alleyway next to the store. Thankfully, there was no sign of Nora the town weirdo. Technically Clarissa still considered her a suspect in Jed Black’s murder – but that wasn’t why Nora was so creepy.

  The fact that Nora seemed to know about Clarissa’s paranormal inclinations was chilling.

  “Hmm, speaking of potions…” Clarissa whispered under her breath after tossing several packages of cookies into her shopping cart.

  She was already at the grocery store, plus she had earned a nice chunk of change from landscaping Adam’s overgrown yard. Why not pick up some of the ingredients that were frequently referenced in that weird magical cookbook of Matilda’s?

  Truthfully, Clarissa had probably never ventured into the spice aisle before in her life. What need did she have to buy seasonings when she pretty much never cooked?

  But, there was a first time for everything…

  “I should have made a shopping list,” she grumbled to herself.

  She half-expected to hear Cat meow in response. That usually seemed to be what the little beast did, as if it was trying to point out how crazy Clarissa sounded talking to herself. But she wasn’t at home. She was at the grocery store, clear across town from her four-legged foe.

  In a weird way, Clarissa missed her whiskered companion. Though she would never admit it, she was kind of looking forward to going home and having a bit of a snuggle – assuming Cat would allow it.

  “Ooh, parsley!” Clarissa exclaimed as she noticed a little jar of the stuff on the grocery store shelf. “I’m pretty sure that was mentioned in the book!” She tossed it into her cart.

  Technically, the potion book had called for fresh parsley, but what difference would it make? Parsley was parsley, right? Besides, this stuff was cheaper.

  Clarissa wandered around the supermarket for some time, filling up her cart. She ran into a few people she knew, often pausing briefly to chat. By the time she was ready to leave her cart was piled high with cookies, croissants that had looked too tasty to pass up and various random spices.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Clarissa murmured as she walked past a large display. “Pies on sale for a dollar apiece? Yes please!” Eagerly, she grabbed three – strawberry rhubarb, apple cinnamon and blueberry. She set them into her cart and then looked at it guiltily.

  To appease her conscience, she swung by the pharmacy area and picked up a bottle of multivitamins. There, that was better.

  “I should get out of here before I spend even more money,” Clarissa decided.

  She walked over to the checkout and saw there was quite a lineup. It never failed to amuse her that every resident in Sugarcomb Lake seemed to turn up in the supermarket checkout line all at once. It was almost like they were plotting to delay her!

  Unfazed, Clarissa grabbed a trashy tabloid from the magazine rack and began idly flipping through it. It wasn’t until she heard a loud, increasingly agitated sounding voice at the front of the line that she glanced up.

  Nora the panhandler was standing there looking as unconventional as ever. Once again, she appeared to be wearing no less than six dresses all at once. She must have had at least half a dozen bracelets on each wrist, and she was holding a sparkly velvet satchel that looked like something a teenage girl might take to prom.

  As Clarissa looked on, Nora turned the satchel upside down. A startling number of coins and bills spilled out onto the counter. A few even tumbled to the floor. Nora had a smug half-smirk on her face as she stared expectantly at the cashier.

  After a moment’s hesitation, the cashier sighed wearily and began gathering up the money.

  “She must do well for herself,” a pretty blonde woman in line ahead of Clarissa commented.

  “Oh, she does,” a balding middle aged man standing nearby confirmed. “I hear panhandling – at least here in Sugarcomb Lake – can be surprisingly lucrative. I just wish she wasn’t going to make us all stand here waiting while she counts out her nickels and dimes!”

  Clarissa looked at Nora’s cartful of groceries and grimaced. It was evident they were all going to be waiting in line for a long time. But that wasn’t the worst news considering she now had the perfect opportunity to find out a bit more about the town’s most mysterious resident.

  Sure, eavesdropping was impolite – but it could also be incredibly informative!

  “What are you talking about? These coupons are so good!” Nora insisted, her shrill, angry voice violently piercing the air. She slammed her first down on the counter forcefully as if to emphasize her point.

  “Oh!” the attractive woman in front of Clarissa gasped as Nora exchanged heated words with the cashier. She looked around anxiously. “Where’s a security guard when you need one?”

  The middle aged man grinned. “Who are you calling security on? Not me, I hope!”

  “That woman!” the blonde whispered, gesturing discreetly toward Nora. “Is she mentally ill?”

  “You’re an out-of-towner, aren’t you?” he asked good-naturedly. “That’s Nora. Most people in town know her or have at least seen her on occasion. And no, she’s not mentally ill. She’s just a bit eccentric, that’s all.”

  “And causing a scene!” the woman chimed in.

  “You call that a scene? Try working in outreach – then you’ll see what a scene is. I used to be a social worker,” the man added. “As for Nora, she has a temper but her bark is worse than her bite. She’s completely harmless, so don’t worry. Nora wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  The young woman breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good to hear. And yes, good guess about me being from out of town. I’m just passing through Sugarcomb Lake – I have to say, overall it’s a charming little place.”

  “Well welcome. What brings you here?” the man asked curiously.

  “I’m just visiting someone in Green City,” she replied. “He needed to come here today for work, so I tagged along.” She looked over at Nora curiously. Then, in a hushed voice, she asked, “I take it you know that Nora woman well?”

  “Well enough,” the man nodded. Then he explained, “I’m the director of Sugarcomb Lake’s outreach program. In a town this size, there’s not a lot of need for assistance. So we’re kind of the one-stop-shop. We operate a food bank and safe house.”

  “Ah, that makes sense,” the attractive blonde nodded. “So you’ve come into contact with her when she’s stopped by the food pantry or has needed a place to sleep, huh?”

  “What? No,” the man replied. “I know Nora because she volunteers.”

  Suddenly someone tapped Clarissa on the shoulder, interrupting her eavesdropping.

  She spun around and came face-to-face with none other than Parker Tweed.

  “What are you doing here?” she gasped, stunned to see him.

  “The same thing everyone is doing here,” he grinned, gesturing to his shopping basket. Then he glanced into Clarissa’s cart. His eyebrow shot up as he took in the contents. “Are you having a party?” he asked conversationally.

  “What?”

  “You…have a cart full of pies and pastries,” he pointed out.

  “The pies were on sale,” Clarissa informed him defensively as she felt her cheeks redden. “They were too good of a bargain to pass up. Besides,” she added matter-of-factly, “I’m also buying multivitamins.”

  “Ah, that makes perfect sense then. Pie and multivitamins, when combined, make for a healthy, well-balanced meal,” Parker declared.

  “Exactly,” Clarissa agreed, secretly delighted that her arch enemy had turned out to actually be kind of cool. Maybe her first impression had been wrong. Maybe he was a good guy and there was no need for them to be rivals.

  She was doing her best not to stare at Parker, but it was difficult. Even standing in line at the supermarket, he looked incredibly handsome and put together. It was almost as though he got better looking every time she saw him.

  That was when
Clarissa remembered she was wearing her ratty work clothes and she wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup. To make matters worse, she hadn’t even had time to brush her hair! Of all the days to run into gorgeous Parker Tweed!

  “Excuse me for one second,” Parker said, stepping past Clarissa.

  As she watched him, he walked over to the pretty blonde woman she had been eavesdropping on only moments early. He put a hand on the woman’s shoulder to get her attention. Then he leaned down and quietly spoke into her ear.

  She nodded and took his shopping basket from him.

  Parker pulled out his wallet and retrieved some cash.

  The woman snatched it from him playfully in a manner that suggested they were completely at ease with one another. The two of them laughed amongst themselves, sharing a private moment and perhaps an inside joke.

  Clarissa’s heart sank.

  Parker was the person the blonde woman was visiting. She was probably his long distance girlfriend, Clarissa reasoned. Sneaking another look at the woman, Clarissa felt a flash of jealousy when she saw how tall, leggy and stylish the woman was. How on earth could she ever compete with that?

  Parker, now empty-handed, returned to Clarissa’s side.

  “What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

  “You mean besides eating pie?” Clarissa joked, trying to conceal her disappointment.

  “Yes, besides that. I was thinking dinner around seven o’clock,” Parker said. “You know, so you actually eat some nutritious food in addition to all the pie and croissants.”

  “I wasn’t going to eat all the pie and croissants tonight,” Clarissa informed him indignantly.

  “Even if you did, I wouldn’t tell,” he winked. “So is that a yes to dinner?”

  Clarissa furrowed her brow. “What about her?” she asked, nodding toward the blonde.

  “She’s planning to do some shopping and then head back to my place,” Parker said. “She wants to call her boyfriend tonight,” he added with a mocking roll of his eyes.