Daisies for Innocence (26 page)

If you love Bailey Cattrell’s Enchanted Garden Mystery series, read on for a sample of the first book in Bailey Cates’s
New York Times
bestselling Magical Bakery Mystery series!

BROWNIES AND BROOMSTICKS

is available from Obsidian wherever books are sold.

T
HIS
was a grand adventure, I told myself. The ideal situation at the ideal time. It was also one of the scariest things I’d ever done.

So when I rounded the corner to find my aunt and uncle’s baby blue Thunderbird convertible snugged up to the curb in front of my new home, I was both surprised and relieved.

Aunt Lucy knelt beside the porch steps, trowel in hand, patting the soil around a plant. She looked up and waved a gloved hand when I pulled into the driveway of the compact brick house, which had once been the carriage house of a larger home. I opened the door and stepped into the humid April heat.

“Katie’s here—right on time!” Lucy called over her shoulder and hurried across the lawn to throw her
arms around me. The aroma of patchouli drifted from her hair as I returned her hug.

“How did you know I’d get in today?” I leaned my tush against the hood of my Volkswagen Beetle, then pushed away when the hot metal seared my skin through my denim shorts. “I wasn’t planning to leave Akron until tomorrow.”

I’d decided to leave early so I’d have a couple of extra days to acclimate. Savannah, Georgia, was about as different from Ohio as you could get. During my brief visits I’d fallen in love with the elaborate beauty of the city, the excesses of her past—and present—and the food. Everything from high-end cuisine to traditional Low Country dishes.

“Oh, honey, of course you’d start early,” Lucy said. “We knew you’d want to get here as soon as possible. Let’s get you inside the house and pour something cool into you. We brought supper over, too—crab cakes, barbecued beans with rice, and some nice peppery coleslaw.”

I sighed in anticipation. Did I mention the food?

Her luxurious mop of gray-streaked blond hair swung over her shoulder as she turned toward the house. “How was the drive?”

“Long.” I inhaled the warm air. “But pleasant enough. The Bug was a real trouper, pulling that little trailer all that way. I had plenty of time to think.” Especially as I drove through the miles and miles of South Carolina marshland. That was when the enormity of my decisions during the past two months had really begun to weigh on me.

She whirled around to examine my face. “Well,
you don’t look any the worse for wear, so you must have been thinking happy thoughts.”

“Mostly,” I said and left it at that.

My mother’s sister exuded good cheer, always on the lookout for a silver lining and the best in others. A bit of a hippie, Lucy had slid seamlessly into the New Age movement twenty years before. Only a few lines augmented the corners of her blue eyes. Her brown hemp skirt and light cotton blouse hung gracefully on her short but very slim frame. She was a laid-back natural beauty rather than a Southern belle. Then again, Aunt Lucy had grown up in Dayton.

“Come on in here, you two,” Uncle Ben called from the shadows of the front porch.

A magnolia tree shaded that corner of the house, and copper-colored azaleas marched along the iron railing in a riot of blooms. A dozen iridescent dragonflies glided through air that smelled heavy and green. Lucy smiled when one of them zoomed over and landed on my wrist. I lifted my hand, admiring the shiny blue-green wings, and it launched back into the air to join its friends.

I waved to my uncle. “Let me grab a few things.”

Reaching into the backseat, I retrieved my sleeping bag and oversized tote. When I stepped back and pushed the door shut with my foot, I saw a little black dog gazing up at me from the pavement.

“Well, hello,” I said. “Where did you come from?”

He grinned a doggy grin and wagged his tail.

“You’d better get on home now.”

More grinning. More wagging.

“He looks like some kind of terrier. I don’t see a
collar,” I said to Lucy. “But he seems well cared for. Must live close by.”

She looked down at the little dog and cocked her head. “I wonder.”

And then, as if he had heard a whistle, he ran off. Lucy shrugged and moved toward the house.

By the steps, I paused to examine the rosemary topiary Lucy had been planting when I arrived. The resinous herb had been trained into the shape of a star. “Very pretty. I might move it around to the herb garden I’m planning in back.”

“Oh, no, dear. I’m sure you’ll want to leave it right where it is. A rosemary plant by the front door is . . . traditional.”

I frowned. Maybe it was a Southern thing.

Lucy breezed by me and into the house. On the porch, my uncle’s smiling brown eyes lit up behind rimless glasses. He grabbed me for a quick hug. His soft ginger beard, grown since he’d retired from his job as Savannah’s fire chief, tickled my neck.

He took the sleeping bag from me and gestured me inside. “Looks like you’re planning on a poor night’s sleep.”

Shrugging, I crossed the threshold. “It’ll have to do until I get a bed.” Explaining that I typically slept only one hour a night would only make me sound like a freak of nature.

I’d given away everything I owned except for clothes, my favorite cooking gear, and a few things of sentimental value. So now I had a beautiful little house with next to no furniture in it—only the two matching armoires I’d scored at an estate sale. But
that was part of this grand undertaking. The future felt clean and hopeful. A life waiting to be built again from the ground up.

We followed Lucy through the living room and into the kitchen on the left. The savory aroma of golden crab cakes and spicy beans and rice that rose from the take-out bag on the counter hit me like a cartoon anvil. My aunt and uncle had timed things just right, especially considering they’d only guessed at my arrival. But Lucy had always been good at guessing that kind of thing. So had I, for that matter. Maybe it was a family trait.

Trying to ignore the sound of my stomach growling, I gestured at the small table and two folding chairs. “What’s this?” A wee white vase held delicate spires of French lavender, sprigs of borage with its blue star-shaped blooms, yellow calendula, and orange-streaked nasturtiums.

Ben laughed. “Not much, obviously. Someplace for you to eat, read the paper—whatever. ’Til you find something else.”

Lucy handed me a cold sweating glass of sweet tea. “We stocked a few basics in the fridge and cupboard, too.”

“That’s so thoughtful. It feels like I’m coming home.”

My aunt and uncle exchanged a conspiratorial look.

“What?” I asked.

Lucy jerked her head. “Come on.” She sailed out of the kitchen, and I had no choice but to follow her through the postage-stamp living room and down the
short hallway. Our footsteps on the worn wooden floors echoed off soft peach walls that reached all the way up to the small open loft above. Dark brown shutters that fit with the original design of the carriage house folded back from the two front windows. The built-in bookshelves cried out to be filled.

“The vibrations in here are positively lovely,” she said. “And how fortunate that someone was clever enough to place the bedroom in the appropriate ba-gua.”

“Ba-what?”

She put her hand on the doorframe, and her eyes widened. “Ba-gua. I thought you knew. It’s feng shui. Oh, honey, I have a book you need to read.”

I laughed. Though incorporating feng shui into my furnishing choices certainly couldn’t hurt.

Then I looked over Lucy’s shoulder and saw the bed. “Oh.” My fingers crept to my mouth. “It’s beautiful.”

A queen-sized headboard rested against the west wall, the dark iron filigree swooping and curling in outline against the expanse of Williamsburg blue paint on the walls. A swatch of sunshine cut through the window, spotlighting the patchwork coverlet and matching pillow shams. A reading lamp perched on a small table next to it.

“I’ve always wanted a headboard like that,” I breathed. “How did you know?” Never mind the irony of my sleep disorder.

“We’re so glad you came down to help us with the bakery,” Ben said in a soft voice. “We just wanted to make you feel at home.”

As I tried not to sniffle, he put his arm around my shoulders. Lucy slipped hers around my waist.

“Thank you,” I managed to say. “It’s perfect.”

•   •   •

L
UCY
and Ben helped me unload the small rented trailer, and after they left I unpacked everything and put it away. Clothes were in one of the armoires, a few favorite books leaned together on the bookshelf in the living room, and pots and pans filled the cupboards. Now it was a little after three in the morning, and I lay in my new bed, watching the moonlight crawl across the ceiling. The silhouette of a magnolia branch bobbed gently in response to a slight breeze. Fireflies danced outside the window.

Change is inevitable,
they say.
Struggle is optional
.

Your life’s path deviates from what you intend. Whether you like it or not. Whether you fight it or not. Whether your heart breaks or not.

After pastry school in Cincinnati, I’d snagged a job as assistant manager at a bakery in Akron. It turned out “assistant manager” meant long hours, hard work, no creative input, and anemic paychecks for three long years.

But I didn’t care. I was in love. I’d thought Andrew was, too—especially after he asked me to marry him.

Change is inevitable
 . . .

But in a way I was lucky. A month after Andrew called off the wedding, my uncle Ben turned sixty-two and retired. No way was he going to spend his time puttering around the house, so he and Lucy brainstormed and came up with the idea to open the
Honeybee Bakery. Thing was, they needed someone with expertise: me.

The timing of Lucy and Ben’s new business venture couldn’t have been better. I wanted a job where I could actually use my culinary creativity and business know-how. I needed to get away from my old neighborhood, where I ran into my former fiancé nearly every day. The daily reminders were hard to take.

So when Lucy called, I jumped at the chance. The money I’d scrimped and saved to contribute to the down payment on the new home where Andrew and I were supposed to start our life together instead went toward my house in Savannah. It was my way of committing wholeheartedly to the move south.

See, some people can carry through a plan of action. I was one of them. My former fiancé was not.

Jerk
.

Lucy’s orange tabby cat had inspired the name of our new venture. Friendly, accessible, and promising sweet goodness, the Honeybee Bakery would open in another week. Ben had found a charming space between a knitting shop and a bookstore in historic downtown Savannah, and I’d flown back and forth from Akron to find and buy my house and work with my aunt to develop recipes while Ben oversaw the renovation of the storefront.

I rolled over and plumped the feather pillow. The mattress was just right: not too soft and not too hard. But unlike Goldilocks, I couldn’t seem to get comfortable. I flopped onto my back again. Strange dreams began to flutter along the edges of my
consciousness as I drifted in and out. Finally, at five o’clock, I rose and dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and my trusty trail runners. I needed to blow the mental cobwebs out.

That meant a run.

Despite sleeping only a fraction of what most people did, I wasn’t often tired. For a while I’d wondered if I was manic. However, that usually came with its opposite, and despite its recent popularity, depression wasn’t my thing. It was just that
not
running made me feel a little crazy. Too much energy, too many sparks going off in my brain.

I’d found the former carriage house in Midtown—not quite downtown but not as far out as Southside suburbia, and still possessing the true flavor of the city. After stretching, I set off to explore the neighborhood. Dogwoods bloomed along the side streets, punctuating the massive live oaks dripping with moss. I spotted two other runners in the dim predawn light. They waved, as did I. The smell of sausage teased from one house, the voices of children from another. Otherwise, all was quiet except for the sounds of birdsong, footfalls, and my own breathing.

Back home, I showered and donned a floral skort, tank tops and sandals. After returning the rented trailer, I drove downtown on Abercorn Street, wending my way around the one-way parklike squares in the historic district as I neared my destination. Walkers strode purposefully, some pushing strollers, some arm in arm. A ponytailed man lugged an easel toward the riverfront. Camera-wielding tourists intermixed
with suited professionals, everyone getting an early start. The air winging in through my car window already held heat as I turned left onto Broughton just after Oglethorpe Square and looked for a parking spot.

A
BOUT
THE
A
UTHOR

Bailey Cattrell
believes magic is all around us if we only look for it. After earning degrees in philosophy and English, she held a variety of positions ranging from driver’s license examiner to soap maker. She traveled the world as a localization program manager, but now sticks close to home, where she writes, cooks, and tends to a dozen garden beds. Bailey resides in Colorado with her guy and two felines: Cheesecat the Orange and Minerva the asthmatic wonder kitty.