Mumbo Gumbo

by Jerrilyn Farmer

  I opened one of the deeper side drawers in Tim’s desk and extracted a knitted woolen vest in a bright turquoise blue.

  “You found it!” she shouted. “Oh my gosh! I just can’t tell you how much that vest means to me. Maddie, how can I thank you for rescuing it?”

  “Well,” I said, patting the sofa cushion on the brand-new sofa, “let’s get back to the part where you aren’t very good at keeping secrets.”

  “You want some more answers.”

  “Start with this vest. It’s very nice,” I said, “but…fifteen hundred dollars?”

  Susan nodded.

  “And just why are you giving Tim gifts that cost fifteen hundred dollars?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said, sitting down and shaking her head. Her brown curls jiggled.

  “About Tim?”

  “Well, yes and no. It’s about money.”

  “Cash money?” I asked. This discussion had suddenly become much more fascinating.

  “Did you find some?” she asked, hope in her voice.

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “Oh, thank goodness! It’s mine,” Susan said.

  That stopped me cold. “It’s your money? All of it?”

  “Tim helped me sell something pretty valuable and he got the money in cash. He was keeping it for me. That’s why he was meeting me at Pierce this morning, Maddie. He was going to give me the money. To save my sheep.”

  “Tim was going to give you fifty thousand dollars in cash,” I said. “For your sheep?”

  “Maddie, what are you talking about?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills.”

  “Are you crazy? No. Tim owed me five hundred.”

  It was my turn to stare.

  “Five hundred might not sound like that much, but it is enough to keep Heidi and Monica in feed for three more months at least.”

  “I think we’re talking about two entirely different things,” I said, and sighed, “but money is money. Where did Tim come up with the five hundred?”

  “I told you. I had something kind of special and Tim knew how to find the right kind of buyer.”

  “Are you talking about drugs?” I asked, keeping my voice steady.

  “Are you crazy?” Susan almost shouted. “What kind of person do you think I am? Tim and I are game-show people, Maddie. That’s bad enough. But don’t make us out to be druggies.”

  “Sorry,” I quickly apologized. “I’m sorry. Someone kind of put that idea into my head and I had to ask. So, what did he sell for five hundred dollars?”

  “A packet of Kool-Aid.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Berry Blue.”

  “A packet of Berry Blue flavor Kool-Aid?”

  “Yes.”

  “For five hundred dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there were no drugs of any kind in the packet of—”

  “No! Of course not.” Susan giggled. “It was a very old packet. Rare.”

  I groaned. “Don’t tell me there are Kool-Aid aficionados out there somewhere who appreciate the rare vintages. Don’t tell me that, please,” I begged her.

  “I know these people sound strange…”

  “Strange? I know strange people! I count many honest-to-gosh strange people among my dearest friends, Susan. But I can’t say I know any who yearn for a good packet of aged fruit-drink powder. I must be slipping.”

  She giggled again.

  “Go ahead. Tell me about them.”

  “There are these collectors…,” Susan said.

  “You’re deadly serious, aren’t you?”

  “They call themselves Koollectors, spelled K-O-O-L—”

  I groaned again.

  “I’m not making this up,” she said, smiling. “They buy and trade all the different flavors of Kool-Aid. I think it’s just a hobby.”

  “Why not?” I offered. “Not any weirder than collecting stamps, I guess.”

  “Right.”

  “But,” I muttered, “at least stamp collectors stop short of calling themselves stampectors.”

  “Well, yes, but probably because it doesn’t sound as cute.”

  I looked at Susan and appreciated her simple perspective. “Okay, vintage Kool-Aid traders. Tell me more.”

  “Honestly, Maddie, I only learned about these Koollectors recently myself. Primarily, I know about Kool-Aid from the dyers who are just crazy to get their hands on the great bright colors. The old Berry Blue ‘Smiley,’ that’s the packet with the smiling frosted pitcher, makes a great dye. Kool-Aid hasn’t produced Berry Blue since 1988 and any original packets marked P-5139 are extremely rare.”

  All of a sudden, I had the crazy impression I’d recently seen just such a Berry Blue “Smiley.” I pulled open the center drawer in Tim’s desk and found the paper I had left there. A Xerox copy of an old packet of Kool-Aid, a Berry Blue Smiley packet marked P-5139. Bingo.

  “Tell me again. You said something about dyers?”

  “Yes. You know I’m into sheep, but you probably don’t know I’m also into wool. Most of us sheep women are. We spin it and dye it and knit it. All of that stuff.”

  “And where does the Berry Blue Kool-Aid come in?”

  “That vest you’re holding was dyed with Berry Blue. It makes a beautiful dye color, don’t you think? I made that vest for Tim using the fleece of one of my favorite sheep, Dances with Wool.”

  That stopped my train of thought like a, well, a fluffy white sheep in the middle of the tracks. “Susan, where do you get your names?”

  “My friends think them up,” she said with a smile. “Tim named Dances and as a reward, I spun some of Dances’s wool and dyed it this special color for the vest. Of course, not everyone can appreciate a color this bright. Tim didn’t wear it much.”

  “But I still don’t quite get it,” I said. “You use Kool-Aid to dye your wool? Why not just use real dye?”

  “It’s part of the fun, really. You can use lots of things to dye wool. You’d be surprised. Every year I have a group from my spinners club who come to my house and we do up a bunch of different dye batches in the backyard. It’s so much fun. We drink beer and talk. We have to watch it, because all the minerals and chemicals we use can get pretty toxic if you aren’t careful. For instance, we boil a big cauldron of water and add some copper to it, to make up our own mordant. But sometimes buying this chemical called alum in the store works best. And there’s always vinegar, of course.”

  “Wait. What’s a ‘mordant’?”

  “If you use something to help the wool accept the dye, it will make the colors brighter. That’s what the mordant does. Anyway, then we usually gather all sorts of natural materials to dye the wool. You get a cool reddish brown by using onion skins. And alfalfa leaves and stems leave the wool a nice baby yellow. But unfortunately you just can’t get a good blue using all natural materials.”

  “So you use Kool-Aid?”

  “Kool-Aid makes for a terribly effective dye. Didn’t you ever dye something using Kool-Aid when you were a kid, Maddie?”

  “I wasn’t that kind of kid, Susan, no.”

  “You have to try Kool-Aid dyeing! You don’t need a separate set of utensils. If you hate the color, you can drink it. It makes the kitchen smell terrific. It works without any mordants. The colors are a stitch. And if the baby gets in it, you don’t have to worry about poison.”

  “Thanks. I’ll keep that all in mind,” I said, awonder at the myriad weaving-arts expertise developed over the millennia, none of which I possessed, except this new Kool-Aid trick. “So you like to dye with Kool-Aid.”

  “Well, I actually prefer the natural colors, myself. But for folks who have got a craving for that clear aqua blue…”

  I caught on. “They need to find a packet of discontinued Berry Blue,” I said.

  “Right.”

  “Only they can’t get any more because it’s so rare,” I finished.

  “Right. For a while, Kraft was
making this flavor they called Great Bluedini, but now that’s been discontinued, too. It made a nice turquoise-color dye, but my spinners are sticklers for the Berry Blue. I’ve got this friend Lenny who came up with a great discovery of Berry Blue Kool-Aid last year. Her aunt found an old display case filled with it at a yard sale in Maine, of all the weird things. Anyway, for holiday gifts, Lenny gave everyone in our spinning group four packets.”

  “How cool!” I was enjoying Susan’s tale of found treasure.

  “It was. I used three packets to dye the wool for Tim’s vest.”

  “So then what?”

  “Then, as I told you before, I had this trouble with money. Artie wasn’t going to keep paying my sheep’s bills, and I was pretty depressed. Tim and I tried to figure out if I had anything of value to sell. That’s when he found out about the Koollectors on the Internet, and how much they would pay for a rare Smiley packet in perfect condition. And I had one packet left over.”

  “I can’t believe it. Who would know something like that?” I asked, marveling.

  “Tim is a professional game-show writer, Maddie,” she said, quite matter-of-fact. “He knows everything, and anything he doesn’t, he can research in about three seconds.”

  I had an instant flush of unworthiness. I was not fit to wear the crown…But I got over it, fast. “So he sold your Kool-Aid. How?”

  “I think he used eBay,” she said.

  Just like Holly, Tim had been mining the odd tastes of the buying public by putting up an unusual item for auction. It was a great way to connect with just the right buyer, and if you were trying to unload an old packet of drink powder, I suspected that right buyer might have to find you.

  “Tim took care of everything. When he told me it brought in five hundred dollars, I nearly fainted. Just think. I used up three packets to dye Tim’s vest.”

  “So that’s why you said this vest is worth fifteen hundred dollars.”

  “And,” she whispered, “he didn’t even like the vest.”

  We both looked at the bright-turquoise woolen garment.

  “Only then Tim had to leave so quickly…” She shook her head at the recent memory. “And then he was hiding out next door. He planned to meet me at Pierce today and I slipped him that note about what time we should meet. You know the rest.”

  “Do you know where Tim is right now?” I asked.

  “Of course not.” Her eyes were wide. “And now, I really have to get the scripts collated.”

  “Susan, finding Tim is pretty important.”

  She ran her hand through her shaggy hair, the curls twisting through her fingers. “I wish I could tell you more,” she said.

  It was infuriating. I could get only so much, and then she clammed up. “I’m frustrated,” I told her simply. “In the week or so I’ve been here, I’ve been insulted, flirted with, frightened, bullied, praised, hit on the head, mocked, underestimated, stalked by a lion, kissed, barked at, locked in the dark, off on a wild-goose chase, introduced to sheep, yelled at, befriended, confided in, overworked, and lied to. And now, what I’d really like is to know what’s going on with Tim Stock.”

  “Look, Madeline, okay. I’ll tell you. But please understand, I am scared. Really, really scared. Tim won’t tell me any details. That’s the truth. I swear. But he says he’s sure someone is going to kill him.”

  “Who would want to kill him?”

  “He absolutely wouldn’t tell me. Maybe he was just trying to protect me, I don’t know. But here’s the thing. Tim and I had a long talk about two weeks ago. That’s when everything turned upside down.”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Tim said he was finally ready to start on his dream. Somehow, he’d come into a lot more money than he was expecting. I don’t know where it came from, he wouldn’t say. But maybe it was the money you told me you found. He said he had taken on this extra assignment this season, and it paid very well.”

  “What else?”

  “You remember when Tim and I had that talk a long time ago, and he told me he was only working on game shows to finance his big dream?”

  I nodded.

  “Tim said he was ready. He had the money now. He could go to London and do research for his novel.”

  “And you must have been happy for him. You have been friends such a long time.”

  “I was. Of course. And I told Tim I had saved just about enough money after this season of Food Freak to buy some land up near Eugene and start my sheep ranch. And you know what? I realized right then, when Tim and I were talking, that I didn’t want to move to Oregon.”

  “You didn’t? You don’t?”

  She shook her head. “And Tim said he didn’t really want to move to England. See, we realized sort of all at once that we would be too far away from each other.”

  “You and Tim? You mean, romantically?”

  “We suddenly realized what we really wanted was to get married,” Susan explained, looking quite pretty in a dazed way. “We might have never figured it out, if it hadn’t been for this trouble he got himself into. He was always a guy who liked to date around but never wanted to settle down. I am pretty much the opposite type. I don’t think I’ve had a date in two years. But then, things changed. He’s been under this incredible stress. He’s had time to think. He said he’s probably loved me all along.”

  “Oh, Susan.”

  “And he loves my dogs.”

  “Oh, Susan.”

  “But it’s horrible, Maddie. Now that we know what our big dream really is, and I love him and he loves me, Tim may have disappeared for real. I’m afraid they may catch him soon and kill him. And I don’t know what to do, so I’m here, working my tail off to keep my mind off what I can’t do anything about, and hoping for a miracle for Tim and me.”

  “I had no idea,” I said. “And you really don’t know what extra job he took on or who is after him?”

  “I promise and I swear,” Susan said. “If you can help us, Madeline—you may find something here in the office, or you might hear something. I don’t know—but if you can possibly save Tim, I’d do anything. Say the word. I’d owe you.”

  “Would you knit me a vest?” I asked her, trying to keep it light.

  “I’d even dye it Berry Blue,” she said and rushed over to give me a hug.

  “I’ll keep my eyes open, Susan.”

  “You’re the best,” she said and, checking the watch she wore around her neck on a chain, hurried out the door.

  Tim Stock and Susan Anderson. I suppose even the worst predicaments bring with them a spark of enlightenment. I told myself to remember that the next time I was in a jam.

  But just what kind of trouble had Tim found while earning extra income? I thought over all that Susan had told me and kept coming back to Berry Blue Kool-Aid. I pulled the Xerox copy out of the desk drawer again, and smoothed it on the desktop. Could Tim have raised $50,000 in Kool-Aid sales? One hundred Berry Blue packets at $500 a pop would do it. And lacking the real deal, had Tim indulged in a little phony Kool-Aid fraud?

  I reviewed the facts. Tim knew he could get $500 for a packet of the rare drink mix. Susan said Tim had found a way to make a lot of extra money recently. Had Tim found a way to make some “creative” sales? On the road to riches, had Tim Stock unwittingly cheated the wrong guy? Was there some incredibly vicious Koollector out there right now—set up by the promise he could own a “Smiley,” and then bitterly disappointed and scammed—lurking in the shadows, out for unsweetened revenge?

  Chapter 23

  Five days passed, and getting ready for “Food Freak Revenge: The Final Food Fight” kept us all busy. On such a short schedule, the preproduction staff simply had no time to relax. Just like in the catering business, the traditional hours of business were not observed. Everyone was at his or her desk, working, every minute of every day. No one in the office remarked as Saturday and then Sunday flew past. No one even looked up at the clock each evening as the windows in our office went from bright to bla
ck. Everyone who worked on Food Freak, from the question-writing staff to the PAs, was focused on getting the script in order and the production team coordinated. Script changes were rushed out to Chef Howie’s house in Beverly Hills by runners. Shopping lists were filled by the PAs. Contestants were treated like stars, with the contestant staff ordering limos to pick up each of the returning champs and guarantee their safe and prompt arrival at the studio. Time was a fixed commodity. We had to be ready by Wednesday at six.

  “You got it, sweetie?” Wes asked Holly, patiently, as the three of us representing Mad Bean Events had a final meeting to lock down details for Food Freak’s rescheduled wrap party.

  “Yes,” she said. “Everything except the time thingie.”

  Taking into consideration the country’s four time zones, and the TV scheduling quirk of prime time starting at eight P.M. everywhere in the country except the Midwest, where, for some early-to-bed reason, it starts at seven P.M., broadcasting a live one-hour program in key viewing time across the nation was not altogether possible. Therefore, the final Freak was going to be broadcast live only to the East Coast and Midwest, at nine P.M. and eight P.M. respectively. The show would be taped and rebroadcast to the West Coast three hours later, airing at nine P.M. here. It meant that even though our “live” show was being produced in California, it wouldn’t be viewed in this time zone live. But, of course, it was more complicated than that. Any folks who had satellite hookups, and could figure out the hieroglyphics in their program guide, could view the East Coast feed, which meant they could actually watch Freak live at six P.M. Wes and I had to explain this mathematical insanity to Holly several times, and she still looked uncertain.

  “See, Holly. It’s airing at nine P.M. here. That’s all you need to remember,” I said, trying again.

  “But you’re shooting the show at six. And it’s live, right?”

  “Yes,” I said kindly, “but not live to the West Coast.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I see.”

  I looked at Holly. Her white-blond hair was artfully gelled into asymmetrical peaks and spikes. The low-cut V of her skinny black tank dress was covered at the moment by a bulky magenta ski parka. The studio was kept extra cold to offset the heat of the lights. When the full stage lights weren’t on, it was like a meat locker. Holly’s lips were slightly blue and her brow was furrowed.