Killer Fudge (A Callahan Garrity Short Story) (Callahan Garrity Mysteries) (3 page)

I wandered down the hallway toward the back of
the house. The kitchen was an old-fashioned room, with worn green
and white checkerboard linoleum, scarred wooden cabinets, and an
immense old stove.

The room was thick with heat and a good,
sugary smell. The woman was humming as she poured something
chocolate into a square metal pan. She reached into a small white
bowl and scattered nuts across the top, then moved to an ancient
white Norge refrigerator. She pulled the door open, put the pan
inside, and pulled out another pan, setting it on a white-painted
kitchen table.

"If you see anything you can't live without,
make the check out to Barbara Jane Booker," she said. "That's
me."

My stomach growled loudly. Embarrassed, I
patted my tummy. "I'm dieting," I said apologetically.

"What a shame," she said. "I was going to
offer you a piece of fudge. It's a new recipe I'm
testing."

I held out the pitcher then. "Pretty, isn't
it? And unusual too. It matches a sugar bowl I found at a dead
man's house earlier today. It's cracked, see? I guess that's why he
didn't buy it."

"I wouldn't know," she said. But she'd wrapped
her hands in her apron and was nervously rolling and unrolling
it.

"The man I'm referring to was murdered," I
said, keeping my tone conversational. "Bludgeoned to death with an
iron. The police think a seventeen-year-old kid did it."

While I was talking I was strolling around the
kitchen. I stopped in front of the stove. It was still hot. She'd
left the burner on. When I reached to turn it off, my hand brushed
a small white card written on in purple ink. The card fluttered to
the floor. I bent down to pick it up, and the last thing I remember
was the sensation of cold metal meeting the side of my
skull.

When I came to, I had a splitting headache.
Something warm was oozing down the side of my face. I reached up
gingerly to see how much blood there was. My fingers came back
coated with chocolate and pecans.

"The fudge needed to set longer," Barbara Jane
Booker said apologetically. "I guess I was too impatient to test
it." She was kneeling over me with a roll of silver duct tape,
which she was busily wrapping around my ankles. "When I get back
from our little trip, I'll make a note to let it sit for at least
four hours."

"Trip?" I said, wincing. My head hurt like
hell.

"I can't leave you here," she said. "The house
has been sold. We close tomorrow. Maybe six hours would be better.
I hate runny fudge, don't you?"

"Uh-huh."

"So I thought, what about that big aluminum
recycling bin over behind the high school? I've got bags and bags
of cans in the trunk in of my car that I was going to drop off
anyway. I'm a firm believer in recycling. Aren't you? I'll just pop
over there in your car, put you in, then dump the cans on top. To
cover you up, you see. Monday is pickup day. I'm afraid I'll have
to vandalize your car. To make it look like it was stolen by some
of these teenage hoodlums who terrorize decent folks like
me."

She was chattering away a mile a minute,
wrapping that tape around and around my ankles. “Mrs.
Booker?"

She looked up. "I'm sorry. I didn't catch your
name."

“Callahan. Callahan Garrity. I was just
wondering how you were planning to dump me in one of those bins.
I'm lots bigger than you, you know."

She smiled and flashed a dimple, then reached
in the pocket of her apron and brought out a big rusty black
revolver. "I thought this would persuade you to climb into the bin
by yourself. I've got a touch of lumbago in my lower back. The
doctor says absolutely no heavy lifting."

The gun was so big, she had to use both hands
to hold it up. I folded my knees up against my chest, swiveled, and
kicked her square in the chest, as hard as I could.

She fell backward, ass over teakettle, and the
gun went clattering, across that checkerboard floor. I scooted
across the linoleum on my own butt, propelling myself forward with
my bound ankles.

When I had the revolver, I trained it on her
and managed, with difficulty, to stand up. Mrs. Booker, on the
other hand, was howling with pain, screaming about her
lumbago.

I cut myself free of the tape with a kitchen
knife and held the gun on her with one hand while I dialed homicide
with the other. While we waited for the cops to arrive, she told me
what had happened. I fixed us both a glass of iced tea. Assault and
battery is thirsty work.

"He got here around noon. I'd gone to get us
some lunch. My husband sold him that box of recipes. You can
imagine how I felt when I got back. Aunt Velma's recipes. Gone. I
liked to have died. Aunt Velma's fudge recipe was in there. That
was mine. Aunt Velma promised. My sisters and I are splitting the
money from the house and the rest of the junk in here, but the
fudge recipe was mine. Jerry, my husband, couldn't remember who'd
bought what. Just like a man, but he did remember he'd taken mostly
checks. I took the checks and drove to every address."

"And you ended up at a gray house off Hooper,"
I suggested.

"Nasty old bastard," she spat out. "He laughed
when I asked for the recipe back. Said the box was full of money.
No way would he give it back."

"Money?"

"Aunt Velma," she said, shaking her head
fondly. "We found near $1,500 just in the kitchen. All tens and
twenties. She grew up in the Depression, you know, and she never
trusted banks. We found bills tucked under the shelf paper, in the
pages of books, sewn into the hem of coats."

"And in the recipe box."

"I told him he could have the money," she
said. "He laughed at me. So I pushed right past him. He was a runty
little old thing. Came nipping and yapping at my heels, like one of
those little lap dogs.

" 'Get out or I'll call the police,' he was
yelling. I just kept looking. Then I saw the box on the stove, with
all the money in a pile around it. I offered him $20 for the fudge
recipe card, but he wouldn't take it. 'This was the deal of the
year,' he said. 'It's mine now. Get out.'

"When he tried to grab the box away, he hurt
me. Broke one of my nails." She held up a plump pink digit to show
me. The nail was ripped jaggedly. "I was so mad, I grabbed the
nearest thing to hand. One of those old-timey irons."

She paused then and took a long sip of tea. "I
grabbed that iron and hit him on the head as hard as I could. He
dropped like a rock. I took the fudge card and left. I didn't care
about any of the other recipes. Aunt Velma wasn't really all that
good of a cook. Except for fudge. I was going to take the money,
but on the way out, I dropped it by the front door. It didn't seem
right to take it with him dead and all."

Barbara Jane put down the tea glass then and
leaned forward to tell me something in confidence, I thought.
Instead, she reached out, ran a finger across my fudge-encrusted
cheek, and licked it delicately.

" Velveeta cheese," she said softly. "That was
Aunt Velma's secret ingredient. Good old Velveeta. I'd never have
guessed in a million years."

12 oz. Velveeta cheese (3/4 of a 16 oz. block)
cut into half-inch cubes

2 sticks butter or margarine, cubed

6 squares unsweetened chocolate

2 Tbsp. light corn syrup

2 -16 oz. packages (about 8 cups) powdered
sugar

1-1/2 cups chopped pecans

1 tsp. vanilla

PLACE Velveeta, butter, chocolate and corn
syrup in large microwaveable bowl. Microwave on HIGH 2 min.; stir.
Microwave an additional minute; stir until well blended.

ADD chocolate mixture, in batches, to sugar in
large bowl, beating with electric mixer on medium speed until well
blended after each addition. Stir in pecans and vanilla.

POUR into greased 13x9-inch pan. (Or use
disposable foil pan—no clean up!) Smooth top with spatula; cover.
Refrigerate several hours or until firm before cutting into 1-inch
squares to serve. (For longer storage, wrap tightly and freeze up
to 2 months. Thaw in refrigerator overnight before
serving.)

Authors note: don’t use generic substitute for
Velveeta. Use a stand mixer if possible, as the fudge gets really
dense while you’re beating in all that powdered sugar.

Source: Kraft Foods website.

Mary Kay Andrews is the New York Times
best-selling author of nineteen novels, including
Spring Fever,
Summer Rental, The Fixer-Upper, Hissy Fit
and
Blue
Christmas
. She also wrote the Callahan Garrity mystery series
under her real name, which is Kathy Hogan Trocheck. Mary Kay lives
with her husband and two English setters in a restored 1926
Craftsman home in Atlanta, not very far from the Atlanta
neighborhood where Callahan Garrity lives with her mother, Edna
Mae.

Catch up to MKA on Facebook, and watch
http://MaryKayAndrews.com
for news on her forthcoming books and tour schedule.