Bewitched, Bothered, and Biscotti: A Magical Bakery Mystery Read online

  A CRYSTAL BALL SHOWS ALL….

  “Mimsey, what did you see in your shew stone?” I practically whispered. We didn’t usually talk magic in the bakery unless there were no customers to overhear us.

  “Well, my stars!” Mimsey kept her voice low, though it trilled with excitement. We all leaned closer. “It appeared to be an emergency, though of what kind I simply can’t pretend to know. My dear little pink stone only indicated that you needed help, darlin’.” She looked around at the others.

  I pressed my lips together. “Your crystal ball is nothing more than a gossip, then.”

  Her face fell, and Bianca gave me a stern look. I backpedaled. “I mean, yes, Declan and I discovered a body under a rhododendron bush in the square, but that doesn’t have anything to do with us. Long term, I mean.”

  “What!” Ben exclaimed.

  Heads all over the bakery turned toward us, and I felt my face redden. I scooted closer to Lucy and motioned Ben to the cushion next to me. “Shh.”

  He ducked his head. “Sorry.” He sat down and whispered, “A body? What happened?”

  Praise for Brownies and Broomsticks

  “Katie is a charming amateur sleuth, baking her way through murder and magic set against the enchanting backdrop of Savannah, Georgia. With an intriguing plot and an amusing cast of characters, Brownies and Broomsticks is an attention-grabbing read that I couldn’t put down.”

  —Jenn McKinlay, national bestselling author of Death by the Dozen

  Also Available from Bailey Cates

  THE MAGICAL BAKERY MYSTERIES

  Brownies and Broomsticks

  Bewitched,

  Bothered, and

  Biscotti

  A Magical Bakery Mystery

  Bailey Cates

  AN OBSIDIAN MYSTERY

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-60738-1

  Copyright © Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON

  Acknowledgments

  It takes so many people to create a book and get it into the hands of readers. I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with Kim Lionetti, and so many thanks go to the hardworking team at Penguin/NAL: Jessica Wade, Jesse Feldman, Kathleen Cook, Kayleigh Clark, and all the others who contributed their talent and dedication to this project. My writing buddies, Bob and Mark, provided tons of useful feedback. The inspiring ladies of the Old Town Writing Group gave me unfailing encouragement. And Kevin Brookfield was—and is—my anchor.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Recipes

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “Mmm, that was delicious.” Declan McCarthy leaned back on his elbows and looked up through the branches of the live oak arching overhead. His eyes reflected the electric blue of the clear October sky.

  “Even if you do say so yourself,” I said.

  He blinked slowly. “I could take a nap right now.”

  Mungo, my Cairn terrier, sighed his agreement.

  I slapped my human companion lightly on the knee. “It’s only nine a.m., lazybones.”

  “Not my fault you insisted on a breakfast picnic, Katie.”

  “Well, it’s your fault for bringing so much food.”

  Declan did all of the cooking for the crew when he was on duty at the firehouse. Right now he was on days off, and when he’d offered to put together a Saturday-morning nosh for the two of us, I leaped at the chance. I spent so much time in the kitchen of the Honeybee Bakery that a morning off was pure heaven. Not that I didn’t love my work.

  Declan had packed up a culinary extravaganza of Low Country breakfast shrimp, Tasso ham and cheese grits, flaky buttermilk biscuits slathered with butter and peach jam, and a thermos of freshly squeezed orange juice. Mungo had sampled all but the last with the verve of the canine gourmet that he was. On my way to meet Declan in the parklike setting of Johnson Square, I’d stopped by the Honeybee and grabbed a couple of dark-roast coffees and some pumpkin spice cookies for, God help me, dessert.

  Now, stuffed to the gills, I stretched out on the quilt. “It’s been hot for this time of year, don’t you think?” Not that I’d lived in Savannah the previous October, but it seemed like the sticky heat was going to go on forever.

  The previous April I’d driven my Volkswagen Beetle from Akron, Ohio, to Savannah to open the bakery with my aunt Lucy and uncle Ben. It was a fresh start after a broken engagement and years at an unpleasant job. Six months later I
was the proud owner of a tiny carriage house in Midtown and part owner of the bakery, and I felt a sense of belonging with my new friends that I’d never known before.

  Declan—one of those new friends—looked down at me with a smile. “Ah. But not here. There’s always a breeze in Johnson Square. Don’t you know the story?” He indicated the marble obelisk towering nearby.

  I shook my head.

  His sweeping gesture took in the whole historic square. “Nathanael Greene, the Savior of the South himself, absolutely despised fair Savannah. He hated the heat, and for some reason he especially hated all the Spanish moss.”

  “Because of the chiggers?” The elegantly draping plant wasn’t really a moss at all, and it deceptively housed a teeming population of tiny red biting insects.

  “I daresay that didn’t help.” He pointed to the towering white monument. “Ol’ Nathan is buried right there, and he keeps the air-conditioning on for everyone who comes here.”

  I snorted.

  “It makes a certain amount of sense,” he said. “I believe he ultimately died of heatstroke. Notice anything else?”

  My gaze followed his upward. Then it dawned on me. “There isn’t any Spanish moss on these trees!”

  “That’s right. Nathan forbids it to grow.”

  My eyes narrowed. Normally I would have pooh-poohed the notion, but since I had discovered six months previously that I was a hereditary witch, my willingness to believe in magic of all sorts had expanded exponentially.

  Declan shrugged and sat up. “That’s the story, anyway.” He was a big guy, but sitting there grinning at me he looked all of fourteen years old. I couldn’t help but grin back, and had to resist the urge to ruffle his dark curls.

  Then he looked over my shoulder, and his smile faded. “Poor guy. Must be sleeping it off.”

  I turned to look where he pointed. It took a few moments, but then the dark outline of a figure lying under a mature rhododendron bush became clear in the morning shadows. Stripes of buttery sunshine cut obliquely across the bricks of the walkway and the small expanse of grass, which made it even harder to see.

  Squinting helped. It was a man. A large man. His blue shirttail had come untucked from a pair of khaki slacks. I made out a worn brown boot, caked with mud. A shiver ran down my back, and I Knew.

  I pushed up to my feet. “I don’t think so, Deck.”

  “Katie…”

  Ignoring him, I walked swiftly toward the prone figure, Mungo at my heels.

  “Katie!” He scrambled up. “What are you doing?”

  Other than a woman reading the Savannah Morning News on a bench in front of the Coastal Bank on Bryan Street, no one was near the square. The pathways were curiously empty. Silent, even. My steps slowed as I neared the five-foot-tall rhododendron’s mottled shadow.

  I stopped, reeling at the sight. The man lay half under the bush, but I could see that dirt smeared the faded chambray fabric of his shirt. His slacks were dirty and had a hole in the knee, and the one visible boot was heavily scuffed under its coating of mud. His worn shirtsleeve brushed the edge of a tattoo on his left bicep, and below that a sturdy black-and-silver watch hugged his wrist above a dirt-encrusted hand devoid of rings. I leaned forward enough to make out the words TAG Heuer on the timepiece.

  When I dared to look at the man’s face, I saw tanned skin, full lips, a hooked nose, and bushy eyebrows sprouting beneath a high forehead. Thick white hair spread around his head in an exaggerated halo. One side was streaked with deep red beginning to dry to brown.

  Almost against my will, my attention returned to the tattoo. It appeared to be some kind of wreath, with three equidistant pairs of lines extending from it. There was nothing the least bit threatening about it. So why did the telltale shiver begin at the base of my neck, work its way down my spine, and then make the return journey?

  Mungo sniffed at the boot, then saw the tattoo. He made a little sound in the back of his throat and jumped back, then blinked up at me with eyes full of doubt.

  I nodded down at my familiar. “Yeah. I know.”

  Just to make sure, I nudged the boot with the toe of my trail runner as Declan reached my side. His fingers closed on my arm, ready to pull me away.

  “Careful,” he whispered.

  “No need.” I shuddered. “He’s dead.”

  * * *

  “How exactly is it that you happened on this guy?” Detective Peter Quinn asked me, running his fingers through his thick gray hair.

  “Declan and I were having a picnic and saw him lying there.” I tried not to sound defensive.

  Quinn was a regular Honeybee customer, and had known Uncle Ben—Savannah’s former fire chief—in a professional capacity for years. Unfortunately, I’d first met Quinn in a professional capacity as well—his profession, not mine. He still brought up how I’d barged into his murder investigation, though at least he usually smiled about it.

  He wasn’t smiling now. “So you spread a cozy blanket out on the grass and unpack your little picnic, and then—boom!—you just happen to glance under a bush and there’s a dead man.”

  “Well, we ate first,” Declan said.

  The thought made all that lovely food in my stomach do a slow flip-flop. Mungo poked his head up from the tote bag slung from my shoulder and glared at Quinn. Around us, crime scene specialists poked and prodded the foliage, took pictures, and dropped bits and pieces of who-knew-what into evidence bags. The whole square was cordoned off, but the three of us stood inside one corner, off the street but out of the way of the technicians trying to do their jobs.

  The detective sighed. “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about solving this crime for me, Katie. I’m pretty sure the Savannah Police Department can handle the death of a homeless man all by ourselves.”

  “Homeless man? Did you see his watch?”

  A short, slightly rotund man with an unfortunate comb-over broke loose from the knot of people surrounding the rhododendron and its grisly guest and stomped toward us. I watched him approach and tried to ignore the alarm bells ringing in the back of my mind. When Quinn saw me looking over his shoulder, he stood and waited for the other man to reach us.

  “Katie Lightfoot, Declan McCarthy, this is my new partner, Detective Franklin Taite.” Quinn smiled when he said it, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  I turned to the newcomer. “Nice to meet you, Detective.”

  “So you know these two?” Taite said to Quinn by way of greeting. A New York tang rode under his words, tight and abrupt.

  But Quinn smiled easily. “Katie and her aunt and uncle have the Honeybee Bakery down on Broughton Street. Declan is a firefighter with Five House.”

  “So what’s the story?” Taite demanded.

  Declan and I repeated what we’d already told Detective Quinn. I ended with, “Do you know who the victim is?”

  Taite spoke to me with exaggerated patience. “Victim? Of what? There’s no official determination of cause of death yet.”

  I frowned. “Maybe not official, but he was assaulted. I saw the blood.”

  Taite snorted. “I’m sure you like to watch those detective shows on television, Ms. Lightfoot. But let’s try not to be sensational. Especially if the press starts asking questions, all right? Wouldn’t want to get yourself in any trouble for speaking out of turn, now, would you?”

  Declan frowned at the mention of the press, and I knew he was thinking of my friendship with crime-reporter-turned-columnist Steve Dawes—a friendship he heartily disapproved of. A long-ago family tragedy had made enemies of those two, and my fondness for both of them didn’t help matters a bit. I didn’t know if I would ever tell Declan I was a witch, but I trusted him with my life. Steve, though—he knew I practiced magic because he was also a witch. A sexy, intriguing male witch who made me crazy in more ways than I liked to admit.

  My thoughts came up short as I realized this balding jerk of a detective had just threatened me. The heat of the day had increased and suddenly
felt oppressive. The cooling breeze from earlier had given way to a dank stillness. The ghost of Nathanael Greene had abandoned us all.

  Taite stepped closer. Mungo leaned out of my tote bag and bared his teeth at him. I smoothed the hair between the dog’s ears with my fingertips. The growl died in his throat, but I could still feel him quivering beneath my hand.

  Ignoring my canine companion, the detective patted me on the shoulder. “I’m sure it was horrible finding a dead man like that. You probably didn’t take a very close look, and that’s for the best, honey. You just go home and forget all about the whole sad situation.”

  I sensed Declan bristling beside me. “Listen, Katie’s not some delicate…” He trailed off when I put my other hand on his arm.

  “‘Horrible’ is one way of putting it, Detective,” I said with heartfelt emphasis. “I imagine I did miss a few details.”

  Quinn watched me with a wry expression.

  “There you go,” Taite said. “But don’t you worry about it. We’ve got everything under control. Your friend Detective Quinn here will check in with you if we have any more questions, or perhaps I will. After you’ve had a chance to settle down a little, of course.” With another dismissive pat, he directed what was intended to be an encouraging smile at me, nodded at Declan, and made his way back to one of the many minions of officialdom already investigating the suspicious death.

  “Why, that—,” Declan spluttered.

  I shook my head. “It’s okay.”

  “But he was so condescending!”

  I was watching Quinn, who suddenly wouldn’t meet my eye. “Since when do you work with a partner?” I asked.

  He sighed. “Since the new captain doesn’t approve of lone wolves.”

  A smile crept onto my face. Quinn struck me as more of a lone dachshund than a lone wolf. “You must have really made him mad for him to saddle you with Mr. Charm.”

  “Eh, he’s a Yankee, and a little obsessive, but he seems smart enough.”

  “Really? Is he the one who suggested the victim was homeless?”