Chili Cauldron Curse - Lynn Cahoon Page 0,32
and students will gather before classes and where we’ll do most of the daily work scheduling. Here, customers will be able to sample dishes and peruse a weekly menu of available meals.”
“You sound like a commercial.” Grans chided. “It’s just us. You don’t have to put on the sales pitch.”
Mia smiled. “Just trying it out. I’ve got a lot of work to do before I can even think about opening.” She nodded to the half-painted wall. “Do you like the color?”
Her grandmother nodded. “It’s friendly without being obnoxiously bright, like so many buildings. Day-care colors have swept through the decorating studios. I swear, the new crop of interior designers have no sense of style or class.”
“Fredrick just did Helen Marcum’s living room in pink.” Adele sniffed. “The room looks like an antacid commercial. I swear the woman shows her hillbilly roots every time she makes a decision.”
“I don’t believe Helen’s southern, dear.” Grans focused back on Mia, closing her eyes for a second. “Color holds a lot of power. Pull out your books before you go too far. Although if I remember, yellow represents the digestive system.”
Mia loved listening to her grandmother talk about the representations of power. Being kitchen witches was different than being Wiccan or what people normally would think of when you said witch. They didn’t wear black pointy hats or fly around the moon. Mia’s magic was more about the colors, the food, the process of making a house a home. That was one of the reasons her career choice was such a natural extension of her life. Food made people happy. She liked being around happy people. Sometimes magic was that easy.
“You are not doing woo-woo magic stuff again, are you, Mary Alice?” Adele shook her head. “Next you’ll be telling the girl to open on a full moon and wave around a dead cat.”
Grans looked horrified at her friend. “I would never tell her to desecrate an animal that way. We’ve been friends for over forty years. You should know better.”
“Oh, go fly your broom stick.”
Grans and Adele had been the swing votes on the board allowing Mia to purchase the property based on her pledge to save the building’s history. The losing bidder had presented a plan to bulldoze the school and replace it with a high-end retail mall. Instead, Mia had a place to start over. Grans always said the best way to get a man out of your head was to change your routine.
Mia may have gone a little overboard.
Her arms and back ached from painting. Another two, three hours, the room would be done. Then she could move on to the kitchen, the heart of her dream. Right now, all she wanted was to clean up the paint supplies and return to her upstairs apartment for a long soak in the claw-foot tub. The unexpected visitors had her skin tingling, a sure sign nothing good was about to happen.
Catering Adele’s birthday party had been an order more than a request, even though her business wouldn’t be completely up and running for a month or so. The planning for the event had gone smoothly, like an aged Southern whiskey. The final prep list for Saturday’s party sat finished on her kitchen table in the apartment. James, the chef at the Lodge, had allowed her time to prep in his kitchen tomorrow evening. By Sunday, she’d have a successful reference in the books for Mia’s Morsels. Now, without warning, the triumph she’d hoped for was slipping through her fingers.
“Add one, maybe two more, to the guest list. Who knows who he’ll bring from Arizona to help me celebrate.” Adele shoved a piece of paper toward her.
Mia glanced down. A name had been scrawled on the torn note paper, William Danforth, III. She hadn’t known Adele had any living relatives, no less a nephew. “How nice. Are you close?”
A harsh laugh came from the woman. “Close? I wasn’t kidding about the money. He’s checking on his inheritance. I’m pretty sure he thought I’d be dead by now.”
“Now, Adele, at least he’s visiting.” Grans picked up Mr. Darcy, Mia’s black cat who’d wandered into the room. He’d probably been sleeping in one of the empty southern classrooms where the afternoon sun warmed the wood floors. He curled into her neck and started purring. Loudly.
Unfortunately, during a late summer visit to Grans’s house, Mr. Darcy had picked up a hitchhiker. The spirit of Dorian Alexander, who had been Grans’s beau before his untimely death, had