The Chocolate Magic Cozy Mystery Box Set Books 1 to 7 Read online

  “You’re the boss, you know, Magda. You can go out if you want to.”

  “I don’t want you to be rushed off your feet. I have to go out to meet Alison on Monday morning as well.”

  Rula gave her friend a hug. “We can all help her to house hunt, and I am longing to meet little Jezebelle.”

  “She is such a lovely woman,” Magda said. “We liked each other on sight. Eventually, Sam and I will have to go back to Ireland and convert the cottage to a vacation home.”

  “Extension here comes first,” Rula added.

  “And Christmas, I guess.”

  “The café at Christmas should be great fun,” Rula smiled at her friend and boss. “Busy but fun.” Magda rang Sam and agreed to meet at the ranch. She made some truffles and then grabbed a jacket and went off to see what the boys would think about the log cabin diner.

  As she turned off the main highway, she saw Sam’s truck parked beyond a group of trees and pulled in beside it. The turning had a big, fancy sign pointing to the Panhandle Ranch. Horses were the main decorative theme. The fencing at The Panhandle was all very smart and painted white. The two huge gates with crisscrossed bars were wide open as usual.

  “I never really noticed before,” she said to the others already there, “but this is really quite private when you come around behind the trees.”

  “The entrance must have had trees and shrubs planted a long time ago and they have spread and taken over,” Merle answered.

  “It might have to be tidied up a little bit when we come to do the parking area,” Sam added.

  “Where did you see the cabin?” Branston asked Declan.

  He pointed and walked across the space. “It is a ways back from the road but I saw it from the highway and then when I turned off I saw it again after I passed the trees.”

  “That is too far back for the diner,” Merle said.

  “But you could have a picnic area where guests or visitors could sit if they wanted to,” Branston observed. He and Merle explained what they had in mind and Sam measured out the space that would be taken up. They had moved over to where Declan said he had sight of the log cabin and the woman. They were talking about the entrance and exit when Magda saw that Declan was very quiet. He had a faraway look in his eyes. Merle picked up on it as well.

  “Can you see something, Declan?” Magda asked. The man nodded but didn’t reply.

  “I feel that real sadness here,” Merle said. “Makes me want to cry.” Branston placed an arm around her shoulders.

  “What can you see, Declan?” Sam asked his friend.

  “This woman looks about forty but could be younger. She seems tired, worn out, and weary but digs the vegetables and keeps gazing down the trail.” He looked at the others. “The cabin is still there but the woman has faded away. The house is almost invisible now as well.”

  “Is the house just out there on its own?” Magda asked. Declan said that he thought there might be other cabins nearby, but he couldn’t see them.

  “It just feels like there is more.”

  “We need to find out what was here. It might help to make something similar and use the history as part of the attraction,” Magda suggested.

  “I should find out why there is sadness here,” Merle added. “I don’t want to build something and find out that it makes people miserable.”

  “The ranch is all about enjoying yourself,” Branston agreed.

  “I can sketch out a plan for you in the meantime,” Sam offered.

  “Thanks,” Merle said with a smile.

  “Do you only see the woman and the cottage when you first come to the site?” Magda asked Declan.

  He nodded. “She hasn’t reappeared since we have stood here. I wonder if I went away and came back, I would see her again.”

  “Give it a try,” Branston said. “Drive up to the ranch, turn and come back. Be interesting to see if it works.”

  Declan went over to the van that he used for work and drove away up the entrance road. They heard him coming back. He slowed the van and stopped.

  “Yes. It worked again. She is there and still in the garden.”

  “And the sadness comes with her,” Merle added. “We need to sort that out before we launch into building work.”

  “What about a late-night séance to see what we find?” Magda suggested with eyes shining at the thought of an adventure. “Crystal definitely found the picture of the log cabin.”

  “We would be quite private behind the trees and could treat it as a holiday camp experiment,” Branston added.

  “We need a few days to look up what was here so that we have some background information,” Merle suggested.

  “Sam’s aunt arrives Monday. We could try for Tuesday evening,” Magda said. They looked at each other and grinned. All of them felt that little spark of excitement at starting another mystery solving get-together.

  “We might need some folding chairs,” Sam added.

  “And flashlights,” Declan put in.

  “Just to make it a good night out, I will get the chef at the restaurant to put up some roast chicken legs and other stuff. You know it might be possible to add séances to our list of holiday entertainment,” Merle said with a smile. “Branston could pretend to be the ghost of a cowboy.”

  “That’s my girl. Always an eye on expanding the program,” Branston joked.

  “We can bring drinks,” Magda offered, and Merle said that she would make sure there were glasses and a folding table.

  “Ooh. I do like these weird experiments,” Magda said. “I wonder if Crystal will tell me anything else.”

  “Back to work,” Sam said. “If we don’t do the paid things, the café extension will not be on the cards.”

  “Righto, Boss,” Magda told him and remembered that she should be back at the café anyway. They parted company and agreed to pass on any information.

  Magda told the girls at the café what had happened and they both asked immediately to be part of the séance.

  “I wonder if Aunt Alison will want to come along as well? She kept out of the ones in Ireland but that was a bit scary.” They talked about an earlier brush with the spirit world. A climber from the hiking shop had an aunt who loved anything supernatural and the older woman had been a genuine asset to the situation.

  “I am guessing Mikey will come along as well,” Magda said and Rula grinned.

  “Gotta have somebody to hold onto when I’m scared.”

  At the end of the afternoon Sam and Declan arrived and said they would measure up for the extension foundations.

  “If we lay that out, Katie’s dad can bring the concrete and pour it whenever he has the time. He won’t need to be inside the café, and I can give him a key to the outside gates.”

  Magda locked up and told him that she would go and make them something to eat. Rula had disappeared into the hiking shop and Katie waved goodbye saying she would start a few sketches of old-world cowboys.

  Magda decided to stop and quickly look at her old house to check all was well. She stepped inside and remembered all of the things that had happened there.

  “Good memories,” she said out loud, “but I will have to sell it at some point.”

  All was well so she locked up and went home to find the cats impatiently waiting for their supper.

  “Come on then, guys.” Magda found the pouches that they loved the best and got out four feeding bowls. The cats then all ate from one bowl together and moved on to the second, third and fourth. She shook her head because she knew that if she put one big bowl down, they would all walk away in disgust.

  “Cats have minds of their own,” she said out loud as she started on a meal for herself and Sam. She popped it in the oven and turned on the television, kicked off her shoes and took advantage of no cats on the sofa. After a few minutes those cats were all finished eating and climbing on top of her. Little Pushkin, the black and white kitten, was turning into quite a big boy.

  “You are a handsome man,�
� she said to the cat and scratched his ears. He kneaded his paws onto her chest as she told the cats about Jezebelle who was coming to join them on Monday. She heard the door open and close and smiled up at Sam. He lifted her legs, found a space to sit and dropped her feet across his knee.

  “Good to be home,” he said. “The foundation is marked out. I will give Katie’s dad the key to the gates tomorrow and they can make the base whenever they can fit it in.”

  The cats were trying to find another comfortable spot since another human was now taking up space. Abigail, the darker sister of the two Birmans, jumped onto the coffee table slid, across the surface and knocked one of the books onto the floor. Sam reached out and lifted it.

  “Don’t tell me Abigail is now turning psychic as well,” Magda grumbled. Sam showed her the page that had opened as the book had landed. It said that the stories of the old settlers were fraught with danger and accident.

  “Oh, no,” Magda exclaimed. “Jezebelle is coming to join this lot as well.”

  “I guess we will have to have a look to see if we can find out the history.”

  “Food first,” she said and pushed the cats away to go and check on the food in the oven.

  Sam’s cell phone rang. It was Declan, who told Sam that his cats were behaving very strangely.

  3

  “How strange?” Sam asked.

  “They have never done this before, but I had a Stetson on the table, and they jumped up and knocked it onto the floor. Now they are stalking around it as if it was a mouse or something. They don’t react if I show them food or anything else. They are such good cats normally and I have never known them to hiss at me.”

  “Tell him about Abigail. She has never done anything like that before either,” Magda joined in.

  “It’s all since we started looking at old time cowboys, settlers and cabins,” Declan observed. Magda said that she would do some research so that they would be ready for the séance.

  “I hope this mess settles down. I am going to try and take the Stetson away. I already tried once, and they all hissed at me. I think maybe a can of sardines might distract them,” Declan added.

  “Let us know what happens,” Sam said.

  Sam and Magda ate dinner and afterward Magda found her tablet, settled in a comfortable spot, and started to search for history of the area. Sam settled at the big desk he used when sketching and started on a plan for the diner. There was quiet concentration until Magda looked up and found all four cats in front of her and staring at the tablet. It was very weird. She put the tablet to one side and patted the sofa. The four cats all gave her a look of disgust and walked away.

  When she started to search again, they didn’t move and she gave a sigh of relief. She found quite a lot about the Panhandle Ranch when it was a working outfit. It had changed hands a couple of times and was run down when Merle found it eight years before. There were some newspaper pieces about a young woman who offered holidays on a ranch.

  “You know that when Merle started, she ran the place herself and rented out a couple of trailers until she upgraded the barns to holiday homes. She did most of the work herself.”

  “I wonder if she wants to do some woodwork,” Sam laughed. “We could do with some extra help.”

  “There is nothing that stands out about the ranch itself. I can’t find anything about a settlement before the ranch was started.”

  “Maybe it was called something else,” Sam wondered. Magda closed down the screen and decided to leave it until another day. There was a text from Declan to say his cats were back to normal. The four cats all managed to join them in the bedroom and everyone settled down to the peace and quiet of the night.

  Abruptly, Magda half sat up to hear what was making a rustling noise. She turned on the bedside lamp and saw that Crystal had found a Stetson belonging to Sam and was pushing it around the floor.

  “Oh, Lord!” she said. She swung her legs out of bed and went to pick up the hat. Crystal hissed at her. “You little madam,” Magda said and snatched the hat. She pushed it into the wardrobe and Crystal turned her back and sat huffily staring at the wall. Sam had woken by that time and she snuggled back in beside him and told him she had rescued his Stetson from Crystal.

  “Have these cats got smartphones and tell each other what they are doing,” he grumbled and went straight back to sleep. Magda smiled and drifted away with a picture of Crystal on her cell phone telling Declan’s felines what had just happened.

  Friday and Saturday were busy and flew by. The cafe was closed on Sunday and Magda decided to try searching for the settlement near the ranch. Sam finished the plans for Merle and put them to one side.

  “Have you found anything else?”

  She shook her head. “Things have changed so much. The railroad changed everything. The roads were different. People came and went. They thought they would make a fortune or find a goldmine, and when it didn’t work, they went somewhere else. I don’t suppose they ever knew who lived in these out of the way places.”

  Merle called to ask if they could come over with some maps that she had found online. She and Branston arrived clutching tablets and got comfy on one of the sofas, much to the feline resident’s disgust. They obviously thought the place was theirs and went huffily up the spiral staircase to gaze down on the newcomers.

  Magda served coffee and asked what they had found. Merle sent both Sam and Magda links which were the quickest way to show them, even though they were all sitting in the same room. As they followed the links, Merle said that she had searched for old maps and one of them showed a place called Whitemist from the time before the railroad and probably at the time of the gold rush.

  They pulled up the pages and looked at what she had found.

  “So, there was quite a settlement there at one time,” Magda observed.

  “And on what was then the main trail. I should think the railroad changed everything,” Branston added.

  “I put Whitemist into the search for ghost towns and nothing came up. I think that means that nobody has investigated it before,” Merle told them.

  “There are rules about ghost towns,” Sam said. “If you find anything it has to be reported and nobody is allowed to take anything away except photographs.”

  “We might have discovered a real ghost town?” Magda asked. “That would be fantastic.”

  “We could call the place ‘Ghost Town Diner’,” Branston smiled at his cousin.

  “It might be possible to incorporate the ghost town feel into the way we lay it out,” Sam added and brought out the plans he had drawn up for Merle.

  “The picnic area could be a sort of museum if we covered it over. The main building is not on the place where Declan sees the woman.”

  “That is just right, Sam. Thanks,” Merle said. She handed back the plans. “You’ll need to have these back.”

  “And we have to find out if it really is a ghost town,” Branston joined in. “What next?”

  “The séance on Tuesday should give us a better idea,” Magda answered. “We pick up Alison at the airport on Monday.”

  “And Jezebelle,” Merle smiled. That reminded them about Declan’s cats, their own pets and the fact that they had all been very taken with Stetsons.

  “Declan’s cats have never done anything peculiar before,” Magda added.

  “Even Abigail found the book as well as that little villain, Crystal, hissing at me.”

  Merle pointed them to the website she had found that registered ghost towns.

  “If there is nothing to see it is apparently called a real ghost. Some places have buildings left standing or parts of them.”

  “But we can’t see anything. That is fascinating.” Magda scrolled down the website. “It might be worth sending an email to ask what we should do if we do find it.”

  Branston had gone back to looking at the old map and was comparing it to present day ones.

  “The old settlers were tough guys,” he remarked and grinned. “It’s
one thing dressing up and showing off on horseback, quite another to have to find your own food and survive out there.”

  “The gold miners had a low survival rate, didn’t they? I suppose the thought of sudden riches made it worth the risk,” Magda added.

  “There weren’t any mines near here though,” Merle remarked. “Maybe the place was just a trading post on the trail.”

  “Maybe aerial photos would spot outlines or something,” Magda said. “They show those on archaeology programs.”

  “Let’s see what the séance turns up. We know the name of the place now,” Merle said.

  “We are quite a bit farther forward really,” Sam said. Merle and Branston left for the ranch and Magda went back to reading about ghost towns.

  “Fascinating,” she said as Crystal appeared beside her and actually looked at the screen.

  “No hissing today, little madam,” Magda said as she stroked the cat. Crystal jumped onto her knee and nudged her hand on the computer keyboard.

  “Oh, darn it, Crystal. I lost the page now.” Then she looked at the picture on the screen. It showed a rickety building made of wooden planks with a canvas cover held up by poles over the area at the front. An old man sat on a seat of some sort. Crystal gave her a disdainful look and stalked away to the sofa.

  “Crystal found another picture of old-time western townships,” Magda said and turned the screen for Sam to see.

  “Those places must have been really rickety and pretty dirty,” Sam observed. “I guess sitting outside when you finished for the day was a relief.”

  “Lots of pictures archived all over the place,” Magda added. “Lots of them with gun battles and some with native Americans as well.”

  “I think I will have one of my chocolate gold nuggets,” Magda smiled as she closed down the internet. Sam was happy to test them out again and the cats looked to see if the treats were going to be shared but went back to sleep when they weren’t.