by Lynn Cahoon
“James, the Lodge chef. He helped me look; then, when we couldn’t find anything, he kicked me out of the kitchen. He said he’d find it.” Mia paused, “Wait, how did you know my knife was missing? James told you, didn’t he?”
Grans bustled into the room and didn’t give Baldwin a chance to respond.
“My granddaughter is very fatigued. It’s been a long week. Can we continue this later?” Grans’s voice was soft yet firm.
“No worries, Mrs. Carpenter, I’m done anyway. We’ll check with the phone company and see if we can trace the calls. I’ll let you know what we come up with.” He stood and brushed crumbs from his lap onto the floor.
He put his notebook in his pocket, then clicked his pen, glancing up at Mia. “One more question before I leave.”
“Of course.” Mia tried to keep the sarcasm out of her tone.
“Do you know anyone who would want to kill you?”
* * *
Sleep proved elusive and Baldwin’s question kept bouncing around her head. Or at least want her out of town. That really was the question. She knew someone who wanted her out of town, and he’d even pay her the fair market price for her building. If he had wanted her dead, she would have been killed the night she was attacked. Unless the two events weren’t connected. And of course someone being a jerk didn’t mean they were a killer. It had been a crazy week. First Adele showed up with a knife in her chest. Now Mia was being attacked and threatened. She felt like she should be living in Los Angeles rather than tiny Magic Springs.
She sat up, put on her robe and slippers, and headed out to the tiny kitchen. If her insomnia kept up, she’d gain twenty pounds just from all the baking she’d be doing. She’d think about dieting later; tonight she wanted brownies. Cheesecake brownies.
As she passed by Christina’s door, she saw light bleeding out from the bottom into the hallway. Reaching up her hand to knock, she heard Christina’s voice from inside the room.
“I really don’t care what you want. She’s been good to me. A lot better than any of you. I’m not betraying her.” Christina must have been almost shouting into the phone for her voice to be heard through the closed doorway.
Mia slowly dropped her arm. She’d been right about Christina’s loyalty. But how long would it last? Her heart sank as she slowly shuffled to the kitchen. She’d wanted to be wrong about Isaac. Just for once, why couldn’t he have been that sweet boy she’d seen trying to juggle the grill at the hotel the first day they’d met. He’d been all thumbs that day, and later he’d admitted she had been the cause of his distraction.
The betrayal she’d felt during this whole breakup came back. Tears filled her eyes as she pulled out the flour and sugar, along with some baker’s chocolate from the upper cabinets. She knew she had fallen out of love with Isaac many years ago. Yet she still grieved. As she grabbed the butter, cream cheese, and eggs from the fridge, she realized she wasn’t grieving the man. She cried for the loss of what could have been. Wiping her eyes with a cotton kitchen towel, she shook her head. Their relationship had never been the fairy tale she’d wanted or believed in. The next time she fell in love, she’d do it with her eyes wide open. And he’d have to walk on hot coals for her before she’d give in. A high standard, but she was worth the pain.
“Isn’t that right, Gloria?” She focused on her kitchen witch perched on the windowsill. The doll seemed to grin back at her. “The next man better be worth the future tears. This one definitely wasn’t worth a drop.”
The air around the doll shimmered, and Mia felt the comforting blanket of air envelope her. She hadn’t felt this kind of attention from the doll in years. Not since she’d left for college. Mia had spent hours as a teenager talking about her problems in the kitchen, either with her grandmother or just alone, the doll in the window, listening. She’d named her Gloria as a child when the doll used to live in her room. Gloria had been the replacement of her imaginary playmate, only Mia hadn’t outgrown her attachment to the ancient doll. As it happened to all kitchen witches, the attachment grew over time, until the witch felt strong enough to perform healing spells on their own.
She felt the gentle laughter shimmer over the room.
“Sure, laugh at me now. But just wait, you’ll see how strong I am when the next man comes calling. He’s going to have to be special for me to even notice him.” Mia broke the eggs into a bowl and then, before she whisked them with a fork, she turned on the small radio she kept in the kitchen. “We need some music.”
Humming, she focused on making the brownies. Creaming the sugar into the butter, she thought about using her Cuisinart, sitting on the counter, but discarded the idea of using the mixer. The machine was fine when she was in a hurry or making large batches, but tonight was less about the result and more about the process. She wanted to feel the sugar cream into the butter and know she created that new concoction. Baking felt better than any of the money she’d spent on therapy over the years. Mostly because in therapy, she still held back. How could she explain to anyone that part of her angst was carrying the secret of the witchcraft she practiced? Although being a hearth witch was less about the action and more about the being. She could no more not be one of the ancient coven as she could change her DNA sequencing.
Thinking about covens brought Levi to mind. His dancing eyes making her smile in spite of herself. The guy had magic all right, mostly in the flirting department. So different from his serious brother. Sure, Trent flirted with her, but it was on a different level. More substantial. With Levi, you knew it was a game. Trent’s interaction felt more serious. Maybe he was like this with everyone. He seemed to know everyone in town. Probably a side effect of running the store.
And why do you care? Gloria’s thought burst through her mental wanderings.
Mia glanced at the doll. “You’re right, I don’t care.”
“You don’t care about what?” Christina’s voice came from the doorway. “Who are you talking to?”
Mia spun around, spoon in hand. “You scared me. Why are you up?” Telling Christina she’d heard her on the phone would make her look like a stalker, or nosy.
“I heard the music.” Christina filled the teakettle with water and put it on the stove to heat. “We really have to stop meeting like this.”
Mia smiled. “I couldn’t sleep. Being accused of murder and being told you’re a possible victim in the same breath kind of does that to a person.”
“Baldwin’s a jerk. He hates you because he doubly hates me. I’m just trouble.” Christina made the air quotes with her hands.
“You’re not trouble.” Mia pushed a lock of hair out of Christina’s face. “Even when you are at your worst, you’re just confused. People need to get to know you.”
“Mia, you are naïve. You wouldn’t say that if you knew what happened in Vegas.” Christina sighed. “Maybe the cops would stop hassling you if I left. I know a guy in Boise who said I could crash on his couch for a few days.”
Mia sat in a chair and pulled Christina’s hands toward her. She squeezed them together. Christina had been like a sister to her all during her relationship with Isaac. She wasn’t giving up on her now, just because they weren’t actually going to be related in the future. “Look, you’re not a problem and you aren’t leaving to sleep on some guy’s couch. I need you here. If you want to go back to school, or home,” Mia paused to let the word sink in, “that’s fine. But you aren’t leaving because Baldwin’s giving me trouble.”
“But he wouldn’t . . .”
Mia put up her hand. “He would. I’m the new kid here too. Even with Grans’s family being descended from one of the town’s founding fathers, the guy looks at me as an outsider. We have to stand together and show him he’s not going to push us out. Besides, I didn’t kill Adele. You didn’t kill Adele, did you?”
“No.” A small smile started to play on Christina’s lips.
Mia stood. “Then we’re not going to run. If we have to find out who killed Adele by ourselves, we w
ill.”
Mia walked back and removed the melted chocolate from the microwave. She folded the chocolate into the batter. “You want to learn how to make the cheesecake topping?”
“I guess. What kind of kitchen sidekick would say no?” Christina went to the sink and washed her hands. Setting aside the towel, she picked up the kitchen witch and settled it farther on the windowsill. “Seriously, who were you talking to when I came in?”
CHAPTER 11
The door actually creaked as Grans pushed the large front door open and they stepped into the foyer. The stone house looked more like a castle than a house. According to Grans, Adele’s family had lived in the place since her great-grandfather moved to oversee his cattle ranch a few miles out of town. “As Adele told it, Great-Grandmother made one request of her groom before she’d say ‘I do.’ And that was to build this house.”
The foyer was more grand entry than mudroom. The wooden surfaces shone as cherry or some other dark wood, Mia couldn’t tell. But she was sure the wood wasn’t the more locally available pine, which would have been cheaper to use. Adele’s great-grandmother must have been some catch for a man to build this home for her. Mia reached out to touch the glossy banister. “It’s amazing.”
“What are you doing? Don’t touch anything. Just because I have the key doesn’t mean we’re not trespassing in the eyes of the law. I should have told folks about that time I caught him shoplifting. That would have kept him from thinking he’s high and mighty.” Grans nodded to the back of the house. “Adele’s office is back there, in the old servants’ quarters. She turned it into a library ten years ago.”
Mia followed Grans to the back of the house, her hands now shoved into the pockets of the wool peacoat she’d picked up at the army/navy surplus store last winter in Boise. The house felt warm and welcoming, not like Adele at all. Maybe she’d misjudged Grans’s friend. The woman had to have something nice inside for Grans to put up with her.
When they reached the office Grans pushed open the door. Files were strewn on the desk, the couch, even on the floor.
“I didn’t think she’d be this messy.” Mia glanced over the files on the desk. Mostly old clippings from the local paper about births and obituaries.
“Adele was ultra organized. This isn’t her doing. The office has been ransacked.” Grans glanced around the room. “I don’t know what they were after. Adele didn’t keep any money at the house. She believed in using her debit card for every transaction. She never carried a dime’s worth of cash. I don’t know how many times I had to give her a dollar for a soda or a candy bar. The woman must owe me a few thousand dollars from the change I’ve given her over the years.”
“The door was locked, right?” The back of Mia’s neck had started to tingle. Someone had been looking for something, and recently, unless Adele’s maid hadn’t come in since her death.
“I heard the click when it opened. Yes, it was locked. And the front door is the only entrance. She kept getting warnings from the fire department that she had to have at least two exits, but Adele said that her grandfather had built one door and that was the way the house would stay. She thought the old guy had been afraid of his wife sneaking out and running away. One door was easier to watch than two.” Grans frowned. “I didn’t realize Adele was doing genealogy.”
“What do you mean?” Mia removed a pen from her pocket and poked at the clippings.
“This family tree. She was tracing back something.” Grans picked up the paper, glancing at the writing.
“Hey, I thought you said not to touch anything.”
Grans didn’t even look at her. “I told you not to touch anything. I’ve been over here more times in my lifetime than I can count. No one will question my fingerprints showing up. You, on the other hand, are a suspect.”
“Ouch.” Mia faked taking a shot to her midsection.
“It’s the truth, dear girl.” Grans frowned. “Didn’t she tell you that Danforth was her nephew?”
“I think so. She said the guy probably ran through the money her sister had given him. I guess I just assumed. Why?”
“It may have been an omission, but her sister doesn’t have any children listed on this family tree. There’s a cousin with a ‘Billy’ listed, but nothing under Barbara.”
“So you think William is Billy?” Mia stepped closer to the desk. Maybe they’d found the killer. The so-called nephew who’d called her out at the wake. That would tie everything up nice and tidy. Hope filled her as she tried to read Adele’s handwriting.
“I don’t know. And if he was, why would she call him her nephew? It’s probably just a mistake. Adele’s eyesight wasn’t the best lately. Maybe she just wrote the name in the wrong spot.”
“Maybe.”
A footstep echoed overhead. Mia’s eyes widened. Grans had heard it too. “Come on; someone is in the house.”
Mia pushed Grans out of the office and into the lobby, but then voices sounded from the top of the stairs. They retreated into a coat closet next to the office door. She put her finger to her lips, seeing Grans in the dim light. Adele’s furs had been stored in the closet and Mia tried not to sneeze, the fur tickling her nose. Grans, instead of being scared, looked like she was about to laugh. Mia leaned closer to the barely opened closet door.
“So when do you think probate will close and you can sign over the deed?” A male voice boomed in the empty foyer.
“A month or two. As soon as I get permission, I’ll clean out all of Adele’s junk and you guys can move in. We can set up a presale lease contract.” A different male voice answered, one that Mia recognized. She tried to remember if it was the same voice as the guy who’d threatened her.
“Don’t get rid of too much. Adele had such great taste, I’d like to keep her furnishings.” A woman’s voice was added to the mix.
Grans frowned and leaned closer to the door.
“No worries, we’ll just add that to the price of the contract. I’ll clean out the closets and take out her personal stuff. I’m sure I’ll have to take it all to Goodwill. The woman had no taste at all.” The man hesitated, then added, “In clothing, I meant.”
Even in the dim light in the closet, Mia could see Grans’s face tense. She reached out and touched her grandmother’s arm in warning. She didn’t know who was in the house, but she knew barging out of the closet wouldn’t make the situation any better.
“Have your attorney draw up an agreement and we’ll look it over. I hope we can have this completed in the next month or so?” the older male voice asked.
“No worries. The sooner I get out of here and back home to Arizona, the better.” The voice Mia now knew as William Danforth the Third’s drifted out of hearing range, and then she heard a door shut.
Grans reached for the closet door. “I am so mad. I can’t believe he said all those things about Adele. The poor woman’s body isn’t even cold. The lawyer better speed up the reading of the will or that nephew of hers will have this place sold off before he even officially owns the house. Poor Adele.”
“Hold on a second; let’s make sure they’re gone.” Mia thought about her van parked across the street. Good thing she drove an older vehicle. Most people around here didn’t even notice what type of car you drove unless it was a Range Rover or a Hummer. Anything else was for the servants or townies. People like the couple who’d just made a deal with Danforth weren’t interested in the lower classes. Mia thought about them. “Any clue who the other two were?”
Grans opened the door a crack so they could watch the front entry. She glanced back at Mia. “I know both of them. I recognized her whine. Helen Marcum and her husband. The people from Chicago.”
After five minutes Mia couldn’t stand the smell of mink or rabbit or whatever other fur Adele had stuffed in the closet anymore. She slowly opened the closet door. When they reached the front hallway she glanced out the side window by the door. Not seeing any car parked in the driveway or any neighbor out in their yard, the two of them slipped
out of the house. Instead of running directly to the van to keep from being seen, they walked around the side away from the driveway. Then Mia pushed through a break in the hedge and returned to the street, using the side yard of the summer home of a famous actor and his equally famous wife. Or ex-wife, Mia mentally corrected. The celebrity faces changed fast, with the happy couple together one summer, and the next season just the wife or just the husband would return. Usually with a new lover in tow. She’d seen a couple of the Sun Valley elite milling around at Majors the last few weeks. Grans called them “wannabes.” The Hollywood and New York celebrities never showed before June or after the Christmas ski season ended. Now, the Lodge was filled with die-hard ski fanatics. Rich or poor, they all came for the powder.
When they reached the safety of the van Mia glanced at her grandmother. “What now? Do we take this to the police?”
“And tell them what? That her nephew is showing the house to prospective buyers?” Grans pulled out the piece of paper with the family tree. “Mark would laugh us out of the station, if he didn’t arrest us for trespassing.”
“Well, me, not you.” Mia corrected. She had no doubt Magic Springs’s finest would waste no time in charging her with a crime if she freely admitted her guilt.
Grans’s smile brightened her face. “You have got his panties twisted, haven’t you?” When Mia protested, Grans put up her hand. “I’m just teasing. But you’re right. He would throw you in a cell.”
“In a heartbeat.” Mia started the engine and steered the van away from the curb.
Grans tapped the paper. “The answer is here, I know it.”
“In the family tree?”
She nodded. “You always find skeletons when you start to do this kind of research. I just wonder what Adele was looking for.”
“Don’t all old people do genealogy?” Mia headed the car toward Grans’s house a few blocks over.
