Poisoned Prose (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

“No. That is not the kind of heat I need to generate. I need something with a PG rating.”
    Adding the cinnamon Red Hots and a tablespoon of lemon juice to a saucepan, Ella Mae cooked the mixture on low heat. As the candies melted, her thoughts drifted back to her childhood, to a steamy July afternoon on the banks of Lake Havenwood. She remembered how her mother and her three aunts, Verena, Sissy, and Dee, were stretched out on picnic blankets. The four beautiful sisters sipped Tab soda and gossiped while they sunbathed. Ella Mae’s mother, who wore a polka dot bikini and a wide-brimmed straw sunhat, looked every inch the movie star to her gangly, freckled daughter.
    “Mom,” Ella Mae whispered, jerking the wooden spoon out of the saucepan. “I can’t think about her. If I do, all of my customers will be sad. I need to find a memory that can’t be tainted by my present problems. Something innocent and sweet.”
    Removing the pan from the heat, Ella Mae poured honey and a pinch of cinnamon into the mixture and began to stir it with slow, deliberate strokes. The aroma of the honey made her think of the bees that gathered around the raspberry bushes along Skipper Drive during the peak of summer. Suddenly, she was a teenager again. It was another humid day. This one was in August, and Ella Mae was older than she’d been in the memory involving her mother and aunts, though she was still gangly and freckled.
    In this memory, she was fifteen. School would be starting soon. Determined to savor every last moment of freedom, Ella Mae had ridden to the swimming hole with a towel and a transistor radio in her bike basket. She wore a cherry-red swimsuit under a Bee Gees T-shirt and her favorite pair of cutoffs and felt completely carefree.
    Because a street fair was being held downtown, the other kids of Havenwood were unlikely to be at the swimming hole that day. And when Ella Mae dumped her bike at the top of the dirt path and raced down through the dense trees to the water, she saw that she had the popular hangout spot all to herself. Shucking her shirt and shorts, she climbed to an outcrop of rock and dove off, a blur of long limbs and a tangle of whiskey-colored hair rocketing toward the cool water.
    Once the dust and sweat had been washed away and she’d grown tired of floating on her back and gazing up at the circle of trees, Ella Mae climbed out of the swimming hole and found a flat boulder to sit on. Dragonflies flitted through the air and she could feel the heat from the warm stone soaking into her skin. She lay back against its smooth surface, feeling every muscle in her body relax. She rested like this until the sun had dried the last drops of water from her skin and she felt the stirrings of hunger.
    Ella Mae got up to gather wild raspberries from the nearby bushes. When her hands were brimming with berries, she brought them back to the flat stone and ate them one by one, relishing each sweet and slightly tart bite. When she couldn’t eat anymore, she leaned back on the stone again and sang
How Deep is Your Love
at the top of her lungs. She didn’t care that she was off-key or that the echoes of her song startled a pair of whip-poor-wills from their nest in a pile of leaves. She shouted an apology to them as they rose into the clear sky, flying higher and higher until they were tiny pencil dots on a canvas of endless blue.
    Years later, Ella Mae now stood in her pie shop’s kitchen and remembered every moment of that perfect summer afternoon. Holding on to that feeling of warmth and utter contentment, she scooped up a handful of apple pieces and loosely arranged them in a pan lined with her homemade piecrust.
    Smiling, she poured the melted candy mixture on top of the apples and then dropped tiny squares of butter over the fruit filling. After weaving a lattice top crust, Ella Mae brushed the dough with a beaten egg yolk and then sprinkled it with finishing sugar and put it in the oven.
    She was cutting a ham, wild rice, and caramelized onion tart into generous wedges when Reba reappeared. “Perfect. I’ve got six folks waitin’ on that tart.” She raised her nose and gave the air a sniff. “You did it! I don’t even have to taste the pie to know that it’ll light a fire inside your customers—like they’ve gone and swallowed a pack of sparklers. The magic is thick as a cloud around you. You’re gettin’ real strong, Ella Mae.”
    “What good has magic ever brought me?” Ella Mae demanded