Christmas Witch List--A Westwick Witches Cozy Mystery by Colleen Cross

Author:Colleen Cross [Cross, Colleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-988272-16-0
Publisher: Slice Publishing

17

I placed my arm around Mom and squeezed her shoulder to console her. “Maybe the mice were already poisoned from Earl’s concoction before they hopped onto the table. I turned to Earl and asked the obvious. “Were they already on the plate, or did you put them there?”

“Of course I didn’t put them there. Why would I do that?” Earl wiped his sweaty brow. “I went to change out of this stupid Santa suit—it’s so damn hot—and that’s when I saw the dead mice on the table.”

“How did you get that flour all over you?” Aunt Amber’s eyes narrowed as she looked suspiciously at Earl. A dusting of white powder covered the top half of his Santa suit. “Mistaking it for rat poison again?”

Earl shook his head and held out his hands in protest. “No…that’s not what happened at all. But I had to know whether or not Ruby got my measuring cup mixed up with hers. It’s been driving me nuts, and I couldn’t live with myself if that happened, so I went back into the kitchen to test it.”

“How exactly do you do a toxicology test on an empty measuring cup?” Aunt Amber asked.

“I never said it was scientific or anything.” Earl looked down at his oversized Santa belt buckle. “But if it was my rat poison, there is a way to tell.”

“How?” I asked.

“I filled the empty measuring cup with water. It didn’t fizz, so that told me that it really was just flour in Ruby’s measuring cup.” He frowned as he saw we weren’t following his logic. “My homemade rat poison recipe fizzes if you add water.”

“You make your own poison?” I shuddered, thinking that homemade poison sounded like something Aunt Pearl would do. Maybe they weren’t so different from each other after all. I wondered how many more deadly recipes were in our house.

Earl rolled his eyes. “Of course I make my own. I’m a farmer so I improvise. I used flour, sugar, baking soda, and a little peanut butter. Oh…and a small amount of warfarin.”

I frowned. “The blood thinner?”

Earl nodded. “Just a small dose is toxic to rodents. The amount I used is harmless to humans, just like the rest of the ingredients. The peanut butter, flour, and sugar attract the critters, and then the baking soda and warfarin kills them by giving them both gas and ulcers. People can fart but mice and rats can’t. All that gas is fatal to them. The warfarin is just an extra measure. Works like magic.” Earl snapped his fingers for effect.

“So my cake wasn’t poisonous after all?”

Earl shook his head. “Not unless you’re a rodent who can’t pass gas.”

Mom pressed her palms together in a prayer gesture. “Thank goodness I didn’t kill anyone.”

I shrugged. “I guess we’re right back to square one.”

Aunt Pearl gave me a blank stare.

“Your tea.” I was only half-joking because Aunt Pearl’s bruised ego often led to drastic actions. Judging by the cargo cult accounts and my own first-hand experience with the snow globe, Merlinda was already a better witch than Aunt Pearl.

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