Wedding Bells And Magic Spells Box Set

by A. R. Winters

  We weren’t taking the most direct route home though. It was such a lovely evening, and we were so stuffed after the delicious but perhaps a tad too rich meal, that we had decided to wander around a little more.

  "Did I tell you about Mom and Donovan?"

  "You did. So what's your mom going to do about Donovan?" Jack asked me.

  I had filled him in a little, but he still wasn't privy to all juicy details.

  "Well, I'd like to say she's going to break up with him..."

  "But that's not your mom's style, is it?"

  He squeezed my arm when I giggled.

  "No. That’s not really my mom's style, unless it involves copious amounts of screaming, shouting, and possible acts of magical violence," I said grinning.

  "Violence, huh? Well, as long as it doesn't involve me being called. That would be awkward, wouldn't it?"

  "It sure would.”

  SQUAWK!

  "That's the strangest thing," I said.

  "That bird. It didn't sound like an owl," said Jack, and I could tell that he was frowning. The way he said it had been in his policeman’s voice, which meant he was thinking about it very carefully. But there was no need to for him to do that. I was going to enlighten him.

  "No, it didn't sound like an owl. It sounded like an Amazonian parrot.”

  "An Amazonian parrot? Here in Sequoia Bay? That seems un... oh."

  "Kiwi!" I called out.

  Jack had met Kiwi several times before, though he had never interrupted us like this.

  SQUAWK!

  "Look, up there," said Jack pointing on top of a lamp post.

  "What are you doing up there, Ki?" I shouted.

  With a flutter of wings noisier than you'd expect, he descended, landing on my shoulder with a solid thud.

  "Fudge!" he shrieked in my ear.

  "Did he say 'fudge?'" asked Jack, confusion plain in his tone.

  "Yep, he did. He learned the word a little while ago and unfortunately he's obsessed with it—well, with what it actually is."

  Jack tapped his chin thoughtfully.

  "You mean, he likes fudge? And he knows the word for it?"

  "Fudge!" screeched Kiwi, standing up tall on my shoulder and extending his wings.

  "Yep. Pretty much."

  "Pretty smart bird," said Jack.

  I shook my head in disagreement.

  "Pretty dumb bird," I said. "What's he doing out here? He could have gotten lost, or attacked by seagulls, or goodness knows what."

  I love Kiwi and I'm always happy to see him. Well, almost always. On this particular occasion, my 'love' for seeing him was tainted by the fact that he was interrupting a date. An actual date. With Jack Bowers, with whom I'd shared a gentle flirtation for years, which finally resulted in us going out on two separate occasions now. And the possibility of more occasions in the future. Unless Kiwi ruined it all for me.

  "Fudge!"

  "So, err, I should probably get going soon," said Jack.

  "Oh. Right," I said for want of a better answer.

  "I’m working the early shift tomorrow. Up before dawn and all that. Hence the early dinner."

  "Right.”

  It had been an early dinner. For us, it seemed like the logical thing to do. I could go straight from my shop as soon as we closed up, and he could walk over from the police station. It did mean that we were the youngest diners by about half a century, but that was okay. We went out to be in each other's company, not that of the other diners.

  "Shall I walk you home?" I asked.

  There was a pause and what sounded like Jack kicking himself, but I was too distracted by the great weight on my shoulder to really be sure.

  "I can see myself home," said Jack.

  "And I suppose we're going to get some fudge," I said with a sigh.

  "I, umm, I saw you this morning" said Jack.

  "Oh?"

  Oh. He must have seen Sarah, Ki, and me.

  "You were buying fudge at Randi's," he said. "I saw you through the window and I heard shouting, but when I saw that everything was resolved peaceably, I didn't intrude."

  "How embarrassing! You must think I'm some kind of fudge addict," I said, defensively dropping my arm to my stomach.

  "Yes."

  "What?" I was startled by his brazen honesty.

  "I mean, no! Not you! That is—I think you've got a fudge-addict on your shoulder, by the sounds of it."

  We both laughed and Kiwi let out a chattering complaint. He didn't like to be talked about in negative terms like 'addict' when he couldn't justifiably respond.

  "I think you're right. Every day he keeps asking me."

  "Isn't it bad for him? Eating it several times a day?"

  I nodded.

  "I'd say it probably is. But he didn't actually eat the fudge at lunchtime, hence the noise you heard. It turns out Randi doesn't carry Sandra's fudge anymore, and this little fiend wouldn't accept any substitute."

  "Goodness. He can tell the difference?"

  "Yeah. He's annoying like that."

  " I'll leave you to it. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Aria."

  Our eyes met and there was something. A hint. A flash. But then his eyes dropped to my brightly-attired shoulder and the moment was gone, and instead, he took my hand and gave it a squeeze in an odd kind of handshake.

  "Good night, Jack."

  As he turned and walked away, I twisted my head to glare at my shoulder. This didn't have the desired effect, as Kiwi's head was entirely too close to mine to give a properly menacing stare. It also made my neck ache.

  "What on earth do you think you're playing at, Ki?"

  "Fudge," he said, quietly this time, a hint of contrition in his voice.

  "Are you serious?"

  Chapter 5

  There was no gate to the driveway of Sandra’s house, meaning it was completely open to the street outside so that customers could easily access the building. She even had a little wooden sign outside, reading “Sandra’s House of Fudge.” But thanks to the thick, swirling fog, we couldn’t even see the front door of the house from the street.

  “Spooky,” said Kiwi in my ear.

  “Is not,” I whispered. “You’re only saying that because of the fog, and I made the fog.”

  “Still spooky.” He was a stubborn bird.

  The driveway was paved and smooth, and even with the poor visibility, there was no problem reaching the front door. The definitely not spooky fog had the side effect of muffling all the sound in the neighborhood, which I had to admit did make it just a little bit unsettling. It was barely seven o’clock, but with the fog also blocking out the day’s last rays of sun, it felt much closer to midnight than barely dusk.

  “Knock! Knock!” said Kiwi, who was eager to get out of the fog and closer to the fudge as soon as humanly and parrotly possible.

  “I was just about to.”

  I rapped my knuckles against the door three times, loudly, and I could hear the echoes inside the house. While I knocked, the door gave way a little, opening inwards a couple of inches.

  “It’s open. For the customers, I guess.”

  “Fudge!”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  I pushed the door the rest of the way open, and we stepped inside.

  “Hello?”

  There was no response.

  “Fudge!” said Kiwi loudly, before launching himself off my shoulder and fluttering forward toward the kitchen.

  Shaking my head, I followed after him. The hall lights were on, and even more light was pouring out of the kitchen door ahead.

  “Hello?” I called again as I made my way through. I don’t normally let myself into other people’s houses and wander around, but this was different—Sandra had turned it into a place of business, and so she must surely expect customers to walk through on occasion.

  Just before I reached the kitchen door, there was a loud squawk from Kiwi. This was immediately followed by a woman’s screech.

  “You!
What are you doing here!?”

  I hurried forward to see what was going on. That voice was strangely familiar. It wasn’t Sandra’s, but I knew whose it was.

  “Fudge!” said Kiwi, in a wailing tone of lament.

  I took in the scene and my face blanched. There was a large stove on the far side of the room, next to a window. There were two women by the stove. One of them was my mother, and she did not look pleased.

  It was impossible to read the face of the other woman, due to the fact that it was buried face-down in the pot of fudge that was on top of the stove. I imagined it was even less pleased than that of my mother.

  “Mom?”

  She turned to me with her mouth open.

  “Aria,” she said, clearly trying to keep her emotions under control. “Nice to see you.”

  “I wish I could say the same. Is that…”

  Mom nodded.

  “…Sandra?” I finished, for confirmation.

  Mom nodded again.

  “Is she…?”

  Once again, my mother gave a firm nod.

  "Fudge," said Kiwi softly.

  "Dead," I said with emphasis.

  Mom looked at me, her plumped lips and wrinkle-reduced eyes almost showing emotion.

  "Mom..."

  She shook her head vehemently.

  "You didn't kill her?"

  "Aria! How could you say such a thing? I'm your mother!"

  "I know. So what are you doing here?"

  Mom looked down at Sandra. She was quite a sight. She was still standing, but her upper body was slumped across the top of the cooker with her head buried right inside a giant saucepan full of fudge. Splatters of the chocolate goop were splashed all over the cooker, worktop, and in a couple of patches on the floor. Mom was thankfully fudge-free, which I hoped would bode well.

  "I wanted to speak to her," said Mom primly.

  "I don't think she'll listen, now."

  "No. I don't suppose she will." Mom let out a sigh and shook her head to herself.

  "You came here, and she was just..."

  Mom nodded again.

  "I came in here to give her a piece of my mind. To tell her to keep her hands to herself and off my Donovan, but..."

  "Seems someone beat you to it."

  "I wasn't going to hurt her!" Mom glanced at the body again before returning her gaze to me. “Much,” she said softly.

  “Unbelievable,” I said, shaking my head.

  I stepped closer to the body.

  “Do we actually know it’s Sandra?” I asked.

  “Looks like her, doesn’t it?”

  “The clothes seem about right. And the size.”

  Mom reached out and grabbed the woman by the hair, and began to lift the head out of the pan.

  “No! Don’t do that!”

  Mom let go and with a slurping glomp the head sunk back down. She raised her eyebrows at me in a ‘happy now?’ gesture.

  “We shouldn’t touch the body. This is a crime scene now. We should leave everything just as it is.”

  “I suppose you would know, dear.”

  I glared at her. It wasn’t my fault, but not long ago, a body had been found in my very own shop, meaning I was now an expert on crime scenes.

  “I’ll call Jack,” I announced, pulling my phone out.

  “I think we’ve got more important things to think about than your boyfriend.”

  “He’s a police officer! A detective!”

  “Oh, right.”

  “And he’s not my boyfriend! Not officially, anyway. Not yet.”

  “I don’t think this is the time or the place to talk about your love life, dear. Not with,” she wriggled her fingers above the fudgy body, “this here.”

  Sometimes I hate my mom. Other times, I’m merely annoyed by her.

  “I’m going to call him to tell him about this.”

  “Oh. Do you think that’s a good idea?” Mom was frowning and shaking her head.

  “We have to, Mom. Someone’s dead. We have to call the police.”

  Mom kept shaking her head at me, slowly, with something like exasperation.

  “She’s dead now anyway. Why don’t we just leave it?”

  “What!?”

  “It’s going to look bad for me, isn’t it? Me finding the body, when Sandra had been… you know… whatever it was she was doing. Trying to seduce Donovan.”

  Kiwi flew off my shoulder onto the stove, and tilted his head at me.

  “No!” I shook my head at the bird emphatically.

  “What in magic’s name possessed you to bring your animal to a murder scene?”

  I put my hands on my hips and gave Mom the nastiest scowl I could muster.

  “I did not deliberately bring Kiwi to a murder scene. We were coming here to buy fudge!”

  “Well, I don’t think you’ll be buying any fudge now, dear.”

  “Clearly. I’m going to call Jack now, and I don’t want to hear another word of complaint.”

  Mom listened.

  I could tell she listened, because she did the exact opposite of what I asked her.

  “But Aria, don’t you think it would be better if we just left it? If someone else found the body, we wouldn’t have to waste all that police time interviewing me. We would basically be misleading them, wouldn’t we? I’d look like a suspect, they’d have to investigate me, and it would just slow them down from finding the real killer.”

  “Mom! We are not going to do that. No way. And what if you do know something? Something that you don’t know that you know. They might get it out of you in the interview!”

  “I don’t know anything, so they can’t.”

  Every muscle on her face attempted a deep frown, but I didn’t care. Kiwi gave another squawk and hovered his head over the pot of fudge, ready to take a bite of the dessert.

  “No! Bad parrot! Come back here!”

  With another squawk of lament, Kiwi flapped across the room to land back on my shoulder.

  “And anyway, Mom, we don’t know she even was killed. Maybe she died of natural causes.”

  Mom raised her eyebrows at me in pleased surprise. “Good point.”

  We both stared at the body of the woman face down in fudge.

  “She could have had a heart attack and fallen in,” said Mom.

  “Or maybe she tripped, banged her head on the side of the pan, and then drowned in the fudge while she was unconscious.”

  Mom gave a thoughtful hmm.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The police can work it out. I’m calling Jack. Now.”

  “Fine,” said Mom in a tone that registered just about every emotion except ‘fine.’

  I pulled out my phone and called the man I’d just been on a date with. While the phone was ringing, I almost hung up. He’ll think I’m really into him when he sees I’m calling him right after the date, and I didn’t want to dash his hopes like that.

  “Aria!” he answered with barely concealed pleasure on the second ring.

  “Hi, Jack—”

  “Would you like to get a coffee? I think I left you a bit too suddenly.”

  “No, I—”

  “Sorry!” he said in an almost panicked voice. “I thought you might—”

  Mom was looking at me with a smirk.

  “Jack, I found a body. A dead body.”

  “Another one?”

  Chapter 6

  We stood awkwardly in the kitchen while we waited for the police to arrive. I wanted to pull out the chairs from the kitchen table to sit down, but the whole house was probably a crime scene. Don’t touch anything is what Jack had said on the phone.

  So, we stood.

  “I can’t believe you wouldn’t protect your own mother,” said Mom with a sniff and a frown.

  “It’s not a matter of protection, Mom. It’s about doing the right thing.”

  “Framing your mother for murder is doing the right thing, is it?”

  I could feel my face growing red and my hands balling into
fists. If she weren’t my mother… this wouldn’t even be an issue. Stay calm, Aria.

  “No one’s framing anyone. Jack will be here soon and he’ll figure it all out. You won’t get in trouble, Mom.” I was tempted to add ‘unless you murdered her,’ but Mom was worked up enough already. The woman was many things, but I didn’t actually believe her to be a killer.

  Kiwi began emitting a wailing noise.

  “What’s the matter with him?” asked Mom.

  I snickered.

  Kiwi continued as we heard a squeal of tires outside.

  “It’s a police siren,” I said. “Well, Kiwi’s impersonation of one. He must have heard them pulling up outside.”

  “More like a wailing infant. You should get rid of that thing, Aria. Get a cat or something more normal.”

  I just shook my head. There was a banging at the front door followed by the sounds of heavy footsteps. Kiwi stopped his police siren sound and we waited patiently in the kitchen.

  “Aria,” said Jack as he entered the room. He paused, looking around to take in a view of the kitchen. I suppose it must have looked like quite the scene. Me, with a parrot on my shoulder, Mom dolled up like she was my age instead of her own, and Sandra face-down in the pot of fudge, dead as a doornail. Uncharacteristically of when my mother and I were together, neither of us was the center of attention.

  “Goodness. If it hadn’t been you that called me, this would have looked very bad,” said Jack as he slowly paced around the body. “I’m going to have to ask you both some questions.”

  “Fudge!” shrieked Kiwi, making me almost jump.

  “But not you, little guy,” said Jack to my shoulder.

  Jack took turns interviewing me and Mom, questioning us both about what we'd found and why we were in the murder victim's kitchen in the first place.

  Hours earlier, Jack and I had been talking in a friendly, almost romantic way while we enjoyed our Italian meal.

  Then he interviewed me as a possible murder suspect.

  Talk about emotional whiplash.

  I couldn't blame him; it was his job, after all. And I did find the murder victim, or at least I was the first to find her after Mom anyway, but still, it left a bad taste in the mouth. No one likes it when their almost-boyfriend starts asking them whether they murdered a woman in cold blood and hot fudge.