The flavors and textures were excellent, but I had expected that. The chocolate was smooth and warm, like silk. The little bit of candy shell gave a fun contrast in texture. But it was the jelly center that took it to the next level. It was hot, almost too hot to eat but not quite. On the edge without going over in both temperature and spiciness. The cayenne flavor was unusual mixed with the chocolate but was actually a great fit.
I gave Ellen a thumbs-up, and I worked the flavor in my mouth and finally swallowed. “You’ve really knocked that out of the park.”
“This new location meant a bunch of new imports because now I have all these cool new ingredients to try. I gave your familiar a new cat-friendly recipe that I developed. People love to spoil their pets. These are still in the testing phase. I won’t charge you if you give me your honest feedback.”
My ears perked up at the mention of new imports, but I kept my face smooth. “New imports? Fascinating. Like what? And how are they connected to the location?”
“The bird’s nest has a bit of dragon spit in it to keep the chocolate and jelly warm. But I think the name is unappetizing, so I’m going to market them as dragon-fire nests.”
I gave a little swallow and tried not to think too much about the dragon spit. It could be humanely harvested, but spit was spit. During the previous year’s cheese festival, I had learned that it was often used in food to keep it at just the right temperature. I leaned in and whispered, “Is it black market?”
“Nope. It’s all legit. All the ingredients are. I even have the paperwork in back. It’s amazing no one else around here can really push that marketing angle. My guy comes by every month or so.”
Another guy selling rare merchandise. “Is your guy Russian?”
“Uh, no. He’s like… Middle Eastern? I don’t know. He has, like, dark hair and a beard. He has an accent, but it’s definitely not Russian. Why?”
I skipped her question. “Was he pushy for you had to buy certain things?”
She bit her lip and thought. “I don’t think so. Keri dealt with him. She said he was a little rude, but then she told him to ditch the attitude or she was going to make his pants spontaneously explode when he least expected it. She said he was much more polite after that.”
Ellen grabbed another few desserts and slid the plate between Vanessa and me before she took a seat. I tried to see what they were, but Vanessa grabbed the plate and attacked it before I could even lift my fork.
Instead I checked my watch. Our quick stop was starting to drag on. We had to circle back to talk to Mary plus try to interview as many of the shopkeepers as possible, but already I had some ideas that I wanted to talk out with Bear or Vanessa. “Hey, Ellen, we should get going, but before we do, you were going to tell us about how you got this store.”
“Oh yeah. It was so weird. Ned stopped in one day at the Avenue location and offered it to us at this crazy low rate. We didn’t need another place, but he was really insistent and mentioned that he had suppliers who would help us out. Well, obviously I was really excited about new suppliers, but we had to take the location in order to get it. At three hundred bucks, it was worth it.”
“Three hundred bucks a month? That seems really low.”
“It’s crazy low, and the kitchen back here is amazing. Plus, they pay all the utilities as part of our rent. It’s cheaper to have this location and do all our cooking here and take it over to the Avenue than it is to not have this place at all. So we took it. I guess they just really think we’re going to bring in some serious traffic once we have our official opening.”
I had been sampling the desserts. The effects of eating so many different types, one after another, might have lessened the mind-blowing qualities, but I loved every bite. “If you serve these, then I think you are going to need to beat people away with sticks.”
Vanessa burped loudly. “Excuse me. I really want to get some to go.” She burped again and covered her mouth.
“I think that’s our cue to leave. It was great to see you, Ellen. You have my card, so if you have any concerns, give me a call.” I stood and pulled out my wallet.
Ellen waved a hand at me. “Put that away.”
I hesitated. “Only if next time you let me pay?”
She gathered up the plates. “I’ll charge you double if it makes you feel better.”
“Great. We’ll be back soon, but feel free to give me a call if you hear about anything weird going on around here.”
“Sure thing. You’ll be the first to hear.”
CHAPTER TEN
The morning was rapidly slipping away, and while I wanted to meet the other store owners, there was something I wanted to get to first. I went over to my car, where one of Badger’s employees was staring in horror.
As I got closer, he turned his eyes on me. They had a haunted look to them. “I just detailed your car a few days ago. What happened?”
“Crows. Do you think you can fix it?” I tossed him the keys.
With a hand over his nose, he started unpacking potions and brushes from the back of his van. “I can get this cleaned up, but it is going to be one heck of a bill. You okay with that?”
I sighed. “I don’t have much of a choice.”
We cut across the parking lot to the far right of the stores, where the office was nestled at the end. Something weird was going on, but maybe it wasn’t at all connected to Ned’s death. But if that was the case, then what did it all mean?
I noticed that Vanessa was trailing far behind me, and I paused to let her catch up.
She rubbed her lower back with one hand and caressed her stomach with the other. More than anything, she looked like a pregnant woman who had just barely started to show. “I think I ate too much.”
“They could have filmed that for shark week. I’m surprised you didn’t swallow the silverware.”
“I feel like I did.” She let out a burp.
I was barely listening, letting my mouth run on sarcastic autopilot because I was mostly focused on what I learned. “What do you think it means?” I unlocked the office with the keys Bear had given me and flipped on the light.
Vanessa waddled to a chair, slowly lowering herself and letting out a gigantic moan of relief. “What does what mean? Do you have an antacid? Or a potion? Last time I tried a degassing spell I—”
“No! I don’t need to hear any more.” I waved both hands in the air. I patted my belly, which was calm and flat, even after all the food. “I’m pretty good at the general healing spell. That should be enough. I use it on myself all the time. Can I use that rune to do the spell on you?”
She carefully pulled her purse into her lap and dug out the rune to hold out to me. “Sure. You don’t have to hold the rune, but it will help, especially while we’re getting the hang of using it. And perform it like you would for yourself, but keep your intentions on me while holding the rune.”
“You were up until all hours of the night, learning how to use this, and that is all the instruction I get?”
“There’s a lot more to it than that to make it the most efficient, but this should get the job done. I could explain more, but I think I’m going to barf.” She covered her mouth and started making little erping noises like Patagonia made before coughing up a hair ball.
I grabbed the rune in both hands and cleared my mind for the spell. In a split second, Patagonia was pressed into my calf, and I cast the spell. The aura of my magic flared up around me. Setting my thoughts on Vanessa, I felt the spell slip away from me and into both the rune and her. It was easier than I had expected, like slipping down a slide into the pool. Perhaps I was fueled by all the sugar or my earlier healing, but it didn’t feel nearly as exhausting as I had expected.
My eyes were still closed when Vanessa let out a belch that made the whole room smell like frosting.
“Oh man, I feel so much better.” She rubbed her stomach, and I swore it looked smaller than it had a few minutes earlier.
“First off, you are so gross some
times. Secondly, did you learn a lesson?”
“Yes, I did. I am never letting this rune out of my sight. I can eat like a cow, and you can fix me right up.”
I slapped the rune into her outstretched hand. “That is the wrong lesson.”
Patagonia sauntered around the office, sniffing papers and rubbing up against the corner of the desk. She would give the room a thorough inspection. I followed her and trailed a hand along the filing cabinets. The thought of going through them one by one seemed overwhelming. Maybe I could find an angle to explore and start there.
“What do you think all the ‘special supplies’ were about?” I gave finger quotes around the words to give them emphasis.
“I don’t know. Kickbacks maybe? Black market?”
“But Ellen said she had all the paperwork, and is dragon-heart wine illegal? And why do so many mage products have dragon in the name?”
“Dragons are cool. I don’t think dragon-heart wine has anything to do with dragons directly. It’s just a cool name. The wine isn’t illegal, just hard to get. Though paperwork could be forged for the ingredients Ellen gets. Maybe someone is stealing it or faking it then selling it as real and making a profit.”
“And maybe Ned got a cut, and he brought supplies to specific stores, and if they didn’t agree to take the supplies, then he kicked them out and got new stores to move in? That works, but it’s kinda convoluted.”
Vanessa’s and my phones each chirped with the sound of an incoming text. I groaned. “I can’t look. It’s probably Tiffany.”
Vanessa pulled out her phone. “Yep. She says that she expects the bachelorette part to start at eight p.m. on the dot and wants us to bring something special to drink. Well, we definitely have that covered with a bottle of the wine. Don’t tell her we have more than one. I’m going to save the other two for something special. I’m worried that having Tiffany around will sour the wine.”
“I understand. Where is the party? Oh, and tell her that we are together so she doesn’t harass me about not responding.”
Vanessa tapped out the message, quietly saying words as she wrote. Then my phone sounded again as she sent out the group message.
I continued to poke around the office, pulling out a drawer and finding an old-school set of books. Most places used computer accounting programs, but he was a mage and probably found paper and pencil to be more reliable. I flipped through one of the books and tried to get oriented to his method, as it certainly wasn’t what we were taught in school. He seemed to use his own system, but because of the nature of the business, it wasn’t too complicated since the money coming into the business appeared to be only rent. Most of the entries were around a thousand dollars. Expenses were low and clearly marked. Nothing stood out as suspicious.
I would need to sort through it more and see if anything weird showed up. My years in auditing should make this the easiest part of the job. I hoped at least.
Our phones chimed, but I ignored it, letting Vanessa handle the texts. She was my secretary, so why not?
“No. No. No. Tiffany is out of her mind.”
“Good news?” I teased.
“Apparently the bachelorette party location is our job?”
I blew a raspberry. “That’s ridiculous. I’m not having it at my place.”
“No. She expects, and I quote, a fun place to dance and drink, and it has to be nice.”
“Or what? She’ll kick us out of the bridal party?” After a few moments, my cool exterior dissolved. I didn’t want to spend the rest of the week fighting with Tiffany about everything. “It’s a Tuesday in October, someplace has to be free. Plus, and I hate to admit this, so never ever repeat it, the wedding is a little bit of a big deal, and I think some place will want to host the party. But we aren’t paying. Put it on her parents’ tab.”
Vanessa looked no happier about the decision to help but clearly agreed that it wasn’t worth the fight. “I’ll let her know.”
I had been hearing the rattling of papers, but just then, it clicked in my head what was going on. I rounded the desk, and there was Patagonia, on the floor, systematically shredding a check. The ground was freckled with small squares of paper.
I snatched it from her and only sustained a minor scratch on my hand. Half of the check was gone, though the upper left corner with a name and address had survived. “Dang it! You ate someone’s rent check, you flea bag?”
Patagonia narrowed her eyes and gave a warning meow before lying down to lick her nether regions clean.
The address that showed was for the apartment building behind the strip mall. I could pop over and ask for a replacement check and use the encounter to ask some questions of the tenant, a Linda Harris.
“Oh great, she wants it on the Avenue. That severely limits our options.” Vanessa flopped down in the desk chair and let out a rather loud and raucous fart that sounded like a balloon leaking air. “Oops, excuse me.”
I pinched my nose shut and backed up to the open door, imagining how awful it was going to smell. “Why don’t you make some phone calls while I get a replacement check?” Patagonia raced out past me, coughing and wheezing as she went.
***
The apartment building behind the strip mall was as boring a structure as I had ever seen. It was a two-story rectangle. The doors to the apartments opened straight to the outside. There appeared to be only about a dozen units, and I probably needed to take the time to question all the occupants, but I could schedule that for another time or day.
I knocked on the closest bottom unit that faced the back of the mall. The charms at my wrist sounded like little bells, and I took a moment to admire them. I was running a finger around a pair of dice that Thomas had picked out after I told him a story about catching a group of guys cheating at a craps table when a voice startled me.
“Can I see it?” The door to the apartment was open, and inside was a little white girl. By white, I meant not only her general ethnicity but rather everything about her. She had a complexion so pale that she had a blue cast to her skin. Her hair was a startling white blond. She didn’t immediately appear to even have eyebrows and lashes until I got my bearings and looked closer. She wore pink pajamas covered in hearts, and she clutched a pink stuffed unicorn to her chest.
She looked to be seven or eight, or at least that was my rough guess with zero knowledge about children. I could probably be off a few years either way and wouldn’t know it.
I extended my wrist to her, and she touched the charms, leaning in close enough that I could feel her cold breath on my wrist. I shivered a little as her fingers grazed my skin.
Finally, she had seen enough and stepped back to watch me. Patagonia walked in the door and rubbed against her side, looking like a panther in comparison to the little girl’s small frame. Patagonia was not overly friendly with most people but seemed to instantly warm to others.
The little girl giggled, and when Patagonia stood on her back legs to lick the little girl’s nose, the girl screeched in pleasure, a warm-pink color coming to her cheeks.
I smiled. “I’m looking for Linda Harris.”
She reached out and petted Patagonia. “That’s my mom. Why?”
I peered into the apartment, hoping to see an adult I could speak to, but I didn’t see any.
“My cat ate this check with your mom’s name on it. I wanted to see if she could replace it.”
“Do you work with that man? He was bad.” She wrinkled up her tiny button nose.
“I’ve never met him. I, uh…” I wasn’t sure on the etiquette of telling a strange child that someone was dead.
“He won’t hurt anyone anymore. He’s dead. I saw him last night.”
So that was a little creepy, but that was how kids were, right? A little blunt. I turned around, and the office door, which came out on the side of the strip mall rather than through the store fronts or the back alley doors, was visible from the apartment, but only just barely. She would have been able to see them wheel his body out
of the building.
“You were here last night,” she said.
She must spend a lot of time at the window. “Yes, I was. I’m going to help the owners with the stores and this building until they hire someone new.”
“And you are going to find out all the bad stuff he did?”
I crouched down, hoping to appear less threatening. “Like what?”
She shrugged and avoided my eyes, suddenly shy. Hugging her unicorn tighter, she twisted back and forth so her hair spun out around her. “I don’t know. He was mean to Mom. I didn’t like that. And he hurt people. They told me, but they’re dead now.”
She was one step away from “I see dead people” level of creepy. I was going to try to get more information, when a woman walked in and was clearly shocked to see me kneeling by her daughter.
I stood up and tapped my thigh to get Patagonia’s attention and call her to my side. She had been helping herself to a glass of milk on the coffee table. “Are you Linda Harris? I’m Ella, and I’m taking over as property manager until they hire someone new, and my cat ate your rent check, I think. I was just asking if you were here.” The words all tumbled out, probably from guilt. I shouldn’t try to grill kids on information about a dead guy. Especially a little girl with an active imagination.
She gave her daughter a look that only they understood, and the little girl skipped over to pick up her glass of milk and gave me a wave as she turned down a hall.
The woman was clearly related to the girl. They shared the same nose and coloring though the woman’s blond hair and skin were just a few shades darker. She extended her hand cautiously. “I’m Linda. I’m confused. You have my check?”
“Yes.” I handed it to her. “Sorry, I’m making a mess of this. I was just talking to your daughter—”
“Why don’t you come in?” She gestured, and I followed her in. “I’m sorry if I seem out of sorts. It’s been a crazy few days, and I didn’t realize that Sally had opened the door. She doesn’t normally talk to people.”
Nice Day for a Mage Wedding: Casino Witch Mysteries 4 Page 8
