Brownies and Broomsticks: A Magical Bakery Mystery (14 page)

After a quick hesitation, I nodded once. Hardly much of a commitment, but at least I’d have a chance to think about the effect this guy had on me.

His phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket. “Yes? … Right … Okay. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Returning the phone, he said, “I’ve got to go. But I’ll see you again soon, Katie-girl.”

Katie-girl? Really?

He didn’t look back as he exited the bakery.

“There is something about that one, no?”

I turned to find Cookie leaning one shoulder against the kitchen doorway. Her eyes flashed a smile.

I shrugged. “I guess he’s nice enough.”

“Nice enough and yet not too nice. He has a streak of something in him. I would be surprised if he is not one of us.”

My fingers tightened on the piece of pink chalk still in my hand. “One of … a warlock?”

“We don’t use that term very much. Not politically correct, if you know what I mean. But he exudes an aura, an energy. Can you not sense it? That man is a witch.”

I sank down on the top step of the stool. It was bad enough to seriously think that I myself had been born with a gift like that. But to entertain the idea that Steve Dawes could share that gift as well? It was frightening.

And thrilling.

I looked up at Cookie. “A witch.”

She smiled. “Oh, yes. And a very sexy one, too.”

The menu was set, the kitchen gleamed, supplies were laid in, even the cash drawer was ready and waiting in the office safe. Mimsey brought in two hanging ivy plants for the reading area. She and Lucy were arranging these last details while Ben worked on the accounting program on the computer in the office, Mungo keeping him company.

No one seemed to mind when I said I had to run out for a while. Not even my dog.

Cookie had been flipping through one of the books
spilling out of the stuffed bookshelf. When I mentioned an errand, she looked up and quickly returned the book. “Would you like some company?”

In fact, I very much wanted company. “How did you know?” The words were out before I realized that she probably just Knew.

The slow upturn of her lips confirmed my suspicions.

“The manager of the Peachtree Arms wasn’t there yesterday when Declan and I stopped by to check it out.”

Ben must have heard me from the other room, because he came around the corner with concern etched into his face. “You’re going back there?”

“We’ve been over this, Ben. Someone has to. From what Detective Quinn was asking you this morning it sounds like the police are only concentrating on the area around the Honeybee. We can’t be sure they’re looking into the pile of enemies Mavis Templeton seems to have had. And we can’t let the system railroad you into a murder charge.”

My uncle shook his finger at me just like Mrs. Templeton had when we first met. “We have a good police force in this town. Let them do their jobs.”

I felt my eyes go wide. “Maybe so. But if you think I don’t intend to do what I can to find who really killed that woman, you’re very wrong. I love you, darn it.” I blinked at the tears that stung my eyelids and lowered my voice. “I’m a grown woman. I can take care of myself.”

“Especially with a little help from her friends,” Cookie chimed in.

Ben still looked unhappy.

Cookie put her hand on my arm. “Let’s go, Katie.”

“Let me go with you,” Ben said.

“You’re a murder suspect. Don’t you think it might be a problem if you go around questioning witnesses?”

Lucy and Mimsey had been watching us in silence from the far end of the room where they’d been loading small vases with the tulips and violets Mimsey had brought from her florist shop.

Now Lucy stepped forward and held out her hand. “Katie, I want you to wear this amulet until this is all over.” She handed me a silver chain with an O-shaped medallion hanging from it. The middle was open, and six etched dragonflies chased each other around the circle. “It’s for luck and protection.”

It felt warm, almost hot, in my hand.

“Thank you.” I put the chain over my head and turned to Cookie. “Ready?”

“Of course.”

Frowning, my uncle stalked back to the office.

We went outside and walked down the block toward my VW. The heat reflected into the muggy air from the pavement, but our gait was slow.

“I wish Ben realized I’m only trying to help. That he didn’t feel guilty about it. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“There are no coincidences,” Cookie said.

That stopped me in my tracks. “You don’t think he’s to blame, do you?”

Cookie paused and met my gaze. “I never said anything about blame. But things, they always happen for a reason. The more you learn about how magic works
within the web of reality, the more you will realize that what I say is true.”

We continued walking toward my car. “You’re talking about fate, then? Inescapable destiny?”

“On the contrary.” She waited while I unlocked the passenger door. “Everything is related. Everything and everyone are on a path at any given time. But we influence our world in everything we do, and that path can change in an instant. And I don’t mean only those who practice magic. Every single thought and action has consequences.”

That more or less jibed with what I’d read the night before. Suddenly just being human felt like a huge responsibility.

I removed the shade from the front windshield, and Cookie slid into the blazing-hot interior. Looking up at me, she said, “Our—witches’—intentions have more effect because we understand the fabric of reality.”

I went around to the other side of the car, got in, started the engine and turned on the air-conditioning full blast. Two days ago Cookie’s words would have made me roll my eyes, but I’d believed for a very long time that personal intention and goals shape our lives. Then my job in Akron turned out to be awful after all my hard work at pastry school, and my engagement to Andrew fell apart to a spectacular degree. After that, I came to wonder whether it wasn’t fate after all. Fate and bad luck.

Except it wasn’t bad luck: I’d gone to pastry school and because of that I was now in Savannah with my own bakery. I couldn’t have done what I needed to at the Honeybee without the experience of working long
hours and getting a taste of every aspect of the bakery in Akron. I had to do that in order to get to where I was now.

And Andrew? For the first time, I admitted we’d never been a good fit. I just wanted us to be so badly that I ignored the fact that we weren’t. I wanted a husband and kids and, yes, a white picket fence, dog and garden. But I didn’t want them for the right reason. I wanted them because I thought that was what normal people had, and I desperately wanted to be normal, too.

But I wasn’t normal. I was a witch.

I was a witch, I had always been a witch, and now I knew other people like me.

I could belong and still be myself.

The realization tightened my throat, making it hard to swallow away the sob of relief that threatened to surface.

“See?” Cookie said from beside me. “You’re beginning to understand.”

We rode in silence for a few minutes before Cookie spoke again. “I will tell you this: Ben should not have so much faith in the police. Where I come from, the system is never to be trusted. Sometimes it works, but that is not something to count on.”

“Lucy said you’re from Haiti?” I prompted.

“Mm-hmm. My parents brought my brother and me to the United States when we were only ten and nine, but they have told us many stories of our home country.”

“And what about your … powers?”

“My people practice voodoo.”

“I don’t really know anything about voodoo.” There hadn’t been much information in Mimsey’s books, either. “Not that I know much about witchcraft, for that matter, but some of what Lucy’s told me feels familiar.”

“Voodoo is the national religion of my first country. As with any religion, people practice it in different ways and to different effects. My father was a voodoo priest before we left, and he is the one who taught me as a child.”

My curiosity raging, I asked, “But isn’t that much different than the kind of magic the others in the spellbook club practice?”

“I do not practice voodoo anymore. I have seen the dark side of that kind of magic. My father died because of it.”

“I’m so sorry.” I resisted the urge to ask what had happened. Perhaps when I knew her better she would want to tell me.

“Thank you. I turned away from voodoo but could not turn away from the power I possess. Your aunt and the others have been a coven for over a decade. Others have come and gone, from what I understand. But those women have helped shape my new magical practices. Not that all of them are happy with my background.”

“Like who?”

A pause, then she gave a short laugh. “Jaida does not believe I always practice white magic. Or gray, for that matter. Most magic falls into the gray category, you know.”

I didn’t know that. I didn’t know a lot of things.

Turning the Bug into the parking lot of the Peachtree Arms, I asked, “Is Jaida right?”

Cookie smiled, and her jade eyes flickered in the sunlight pouring through the window. “Yes. She’s right.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.

“What a dump.” Cookie opened the car door to the afternoon heat after I’d pulled into a space. She got out and waited while I exited the car.

I joined her, and we headed toward the door Declan and I had entered the day before. Cookie stepped inside, and I was right behind her.

She stopped and sniffed the air. “This is a bad place.”

“I thought that, too. But I didn’t know why. Can you tell?”

“There is pain here. Desperation.”

She was right, but it didn’t take any special abilities to figure that out. The people who lived here were down and out, or they wouldn’t be here.

“Death,” she added.

“Probably.” I led the way to the manager’s apartment.

The door across the hall opened and James Sparr stepped into the hall. “Got yourself a girlfriend to check out the place, eh? A second opinion. Well, you’re in luck. Ethan’s in there. Just bang on the door and he’ll come out and show you around.”

“Thank you, James. We’ll do that.”

Cookie shot me a glance as he went back into his apartment and closed the door.

“We met yesterday.”

The hand-lettered
MANAGER
sign quivered as loud music suddenly vibrated through the cheap wooden door. I glanced at Cookie and raised my fist to pound on it. The volume lowered, and Ethan Ridge opened the door.

His greasy brown hair hung to bare shoulders. Long, prehensile toes protruded below his faded blue jeans. His skin glowed golden brown over the wiry muscles of his arms, chest and abdomen. Small brown eyes, red-rimmed and set too close together, peered at us above a sharp nose and thin lips. His face faded away at the bottom without benefit of a chin to define where it ended.

He blinked at us. “Yeah?”

“Are you the manager?”

“Yeah.”

“My name is Katie Lightfoot and this is Cookie Rios. Can we ask you a few questions about the place?”

“We’re full.”

“That’s not what one of your tenants said.”

“There was a death. It’s a bad time.” He started to shut the door.

From the corner of my eye I saw Cookie’s hands moving. But when I turned she was still.

“Let us in,” she said. Her voice had taken on a new dimension.

Ethan frowned for a long moment, then stepped back. We walked into his cluttered living room. The air held the skunky pungency of marijuana smoke. From the pizza boxes and beer cans that littered every surface it appeared that was all he ate. I wondered how he stayed so skinny.

“What do you want?”

“An apartment—,” I began.

Cookie stepped forward. “We want to know about Mavis Templeton.”

Okay. That was one way to play it.

Ethan cleared one end of the sofa with a sweep of his arm. He waved at it. “You and everyone else. Sit.”

Gingerly, I sat. “We’re not the first?” Cookie perched on the arm of the sofa.

He snorted. “
Hardly
. Cops been here twice so far. Blah, blah, blah. And then there’s her family.”

I leaned forward. “By family you mean Albert Hill?”

Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “You a friend of his?”

“Hardly,”
I said.

His head bobbed forward. “Good. You want a beer?”

“No, thanks. So he’s not the new owner of this building now that his aunt is gone?”

“Oh, you bet he is. Wanted to throw it in my face, too. Thinks things are going to be just like they’ve always been. You sure you don’t want a beer?”

“I’m sure.”

“Suit yourself.”

He disappeared through a doorway. A refrigerator opened and closed, and the metallic sound of a pop top drifted back to us. A few moments later he reentered the living room.

“So things are not going to be just like they’ve always been,” I prompted.

“No, ma’am. They are not.” Ethan shook his head in emphasis. “Ol’ Albert is gonna have to find himself another manager.”

“You don’t care for how Mrs. Templeton ran this property?”

“Mrs. Templeton didn’t run this property. I ran this property, and no thanks to her. Tightfisted old bitch wouldn’t pay for any repairs. I did what I could, but I wasn’t going to put my own money into this place. She barely paid me enough to live on, and that was counting this crappy apartment.”

“Surely, as a landlord, she must have authorized some repairs,” Cookie said. “There are laws.” But the look she directed down at me belied her belief in such laws.

Ethan snorted again. “Laws don’t make no never mind when the people who’re supposed to enforce them are willing to look the other way for a few Benjamins.”

“She bribed officials?” I asked.

“Paid off the safety inspectors. Or threatened them. Maybe both. She was good at both.”

I tipped my head to one side. “Why didn’t you leave?”

“Like I said, she was good at making threats.” He paused. Blinked. Shook his head.

“Go on,” Cookie said.

My head whipped around at her odd tone. One corner of her mouth turned up.