Bell Ringer: The Magician, page 1
Bell Ringer: The Magician
Bell Ringer, Volume 2
PJ Tremblay
Published by PJ Tremblay, 2025.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
BELL RINGER: THE MAGICIAN
First edition. July 19, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 PJ Tremblay.
Written by PJ Tremblay.
Also by PJ Tremblay
Bambi Barlow Mysteries
The Haunted Playground
Bambi Barlow Mysteries: Pirate's Treasure
Bambi Barlow Mysteries: The Flying Saucer
Bambi Barlow Mysteries: The Missing Diamond
Bambi Barlow Mysteries: Mystery Anonymous
Bambi Barlow Mysteries: The Outsiders
Bell Ringer
Bell Ringer: Magic, Muffins, and Murder
Bell Ringer: The Magician
Micki and the Beast
Micki and the Beast: An Ice Mine Tale
The Accidental Witch
The Accidental Witch: The Half Witch
The Accidental Witch: The Water Wraith
The Accidental Witch: Paint by Murder
The Accidental Witch: Love Potion
The Accidental Witch: Dewey Decimal Demise
The Accidental Witch: The Secret to Murder
The Accidental Witch" A murder of Crows
The Ghost Detective
The Ghost Detective: The Haunted Hospital
The Ghost Detective: Flash and Burn
The Ghost Detective: The Christmas Spirit
The Ghost Detective: Top Secret
The Ghost Detective: The Wedding Was Murder
The Ghost Detective: Haunted Honeymoon
Watch for more at PJ Tremblay’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By PJ Tremblay
Chapter One | GOSSIP TIME
Chapter Two | NOTHING'S FAIR
Chapter Three | DEADLY ILLUSION
Chapter Four | HIDDEN MAGIC
Chapter Five | REGRETS
Chapter Six | DELUSION
Chapter Seven | THE SHOW
Chapter Eight | GOOD MORNING
Chapter Nine | LONNIE
Chapter Ten | GUILTY CONSCIENCE
Chapter Eleven | ILLUSION OVER
Chapter Twelve | MIDDLEBERRY LIFE
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Further Reading: The Accidental Witch: Love Potion
Also By PJ Tremblay
About the Author
Chapter One
GOSSIP TIME
“Marmalade! Get down! What if someone sees you, crazy cat?” Star whisper-screeched.
The orange tabby grinned down from the ceiling fan, spinning leisurely with each slow rotation. At least once every full turn, Marmalade made a new face at Star: tongue stuck out, eyes crossed (which is tricky for a cat) and then a wide, toothy grin that was way too human.
The front bell jingled. The door to the Magic Muffin swung open, and Marmalade floated down like a leaf on the breeze, landing squarely in Star’s arms. With impish timing, she dragged a slow, wet cat-kiss across Star’s cheek.
“Yuck! Marmalade, that’s gross!” Star snarled, wiping her face with a napkin.
“How about a muffin for the pretty kitty?” Marmalade whispered in her ear, voice playful and syrupy-sweet.
“If you promise to behave,” Star said, narrowing her eyes.
“Are you... talking to the cat?” said a familiar voice.
Nancy Holderson slid into her usual booth by the window. Bell’s best friend from school, Nancy, barely hit five feet tall on her tip-toes, but the constant movement at her bar kept her slim and trim, even with a few wrinkles. She dyed her shoulder length hair a deep black that seemed, well, too much, and wore a white blouse, black pants and a tan apron. Nancy and her husband Arnold owned the bar next door to the Magic Muffin.
She raised an eyebrow. “Where’s Bell? It’s time for our weekly gossip session.”
“She called me to open, said she overslept,” Star replied, setting Marmalade down. “Bell was so wiped last night, she even left her demon cat behind.”
Star fixed a wide-eyed stare on Marmalade with her lips pursed. The cat stared back, then dropped to the floor, gave an exaggerated butt-wiggle, and strutted toward the kitchen like a fur-covered diva. At the saloon-style swinging doors, she flew effortlessly over them and disappeared in a flash of orange fur.
Nancy, still gazing out at Main Street, thankfully missed the airborne feline.
“I’ll get you some coffee while you wait. Guess I’d better feed the frustrating fur ball, too.” Star disappeared into the kitchen.
Star Sparks looked like a mash-up between a rebellious circus acrobat and an anime sidekick with her white blouse and black tie, mid-thigh red and black checkered skirt, tall striped stockings, and today’s Mohawk dyed electric blue. She moved with purpose, balancing chaos and caffeine like a juggler.
Bell hired Star the first week she opened the Magic Muffin. Star had been homeless, wandering the edges of town with a duffel bag and nowhere to be. Rodney asked Bell to give her a job. She needed a place to stay, so Bell gave her the empty apartment above the shop as part if her pay package.
Only later did Bell discover that twenty years ago, Star’s mother owned the bakery that once occupied this very spot, and lived upstairs with five-year-old Barbara Neasum. Star changed her name, and everything about herself since then. But fate had a way of stirring things together, like flour and salt.
After her mother’s death the year before, Star’s estranged father, Melvin Darling, convinced her to return to Middlebury Center. What Star didn’t know was that Melvin had also tried to frame her for his wife’s murder. Bell had cracked that case and kept Star close ever since. She was too good a friend, and too loyal an employee, to let go.
The bell tinkled again.
Bell swept in. The sixty-eight-year-old baker looked winded. Her white hair frizzed out in all directions, wearing gray running pants and a beige t-shirt. Star slipped a piping hot cup of coffee in front of her and shook her head.
“Sorry, Nance,” she said, sliding into the booth across from her friend. “I stayed late prepping for the County Fair. Thanks again for lending me your trailer. I only jogged around the block twice this morning.”
“No problem,” Nancy said, sipping her coffee. “We didn’t need it this year. The bar got the catering contract for the VIP events. Indoors. Air conditioning. Real napkins. Fancy folk. By the way, you look great. How much weight have you lost?”
“Forty-five pounds. I’ll never make it down to my one-hundred-ten pound teenage weight, but I feel better. Just wish the wrinkles would go away too.”
“This sudden need to lose weight wouldn’t have anything to do with Rodney, would it?” asked Nancy with a wink.
Bell smiled, but didn’t answer. She and Nancy had been best friends since grade school and inseparable until graduation. That was fifty years ago. Bell skipped town the day after prom, the prom where she and Rodney Halloway were prom royalty. He was the hometown boy everyone thought she’d marry. She didn’t.
Rodney stayed in Middleberry, married a hometown girl, raised a family. Now, after the farm no longer paid off, he became Sheriff. His wife Mary passed away a few years back, and his kids are all grown and gone. Bell never married and during those fifty years, visited Middlebury only to see her parents. Her dad passed away years ago, and now her mom. It finally felt like the right time to return home after retiring from decades as an FBI profiler in Philadelphia. Time to slow down and enjoy country life.
“So,” Nancy said, cocking an eyebrow, “how’s it going with Rodney?”
“Cut it out, Nance. We’re not teenagers anymore.”
Nancy gave a knowing smile.
“I mean it,” Bell said, lowering her voice. “It’s been fifty years. I hurt him once. I don’t think he’s looking for more than a friend.” She hesitated. “But... he did—”
“He did what?” Nancy leaned in, elbows on the table, eyes gleaming. “Spit it out. This is our gossip session, after all.”
Bell lowered her voice to a whisper. “He invited me to the magic show at the fair. Already bought the tickets.”
Nancy sat back with a satisfied nod. “Magic show. Huh. Well... it’s a start.”
The door opened again, and the morning rush began. Locals strolled in with their usual orders and sleepy smiles, all ready for their morning pick-me-up. None of them knew the muffins really were magic.
That was Bell’s secret. A secret only Star and Marmalade shared. Each batch carried a simple spell, whispered into the batter like a wish. Whatever emotion Bell felt while baking infused into the muffins and that feeing passed on to the customer. Her blueberry muffins were a special delight. Light, sweet, and packed with cheerfulness, they were her secret to success. When a customer leaves happy, they return.
Last night, though... there’d been no joy to her baking.
Bell had worked late, exhausted and fed up after Marmalade had, yet again, upended an entire cup of flour over her freshly styled hair. Irritation had slipped into the batter, and she’d had to destroy the entire batch. No one needed a muffin charged with that kind of energy.
She stormed out, leaving the flying menace behind.
Star hadn’t believed in the magic at first, not until Marmalade spoke to her. The cat’s first words had caused Star to faint on the spot. Marmalade, ever helpful, revived her with a few enthusiastic licks. Then came the flight. Marmalade soared across the room like a feline firecracker, and Star ran straight to Bell in disbelief. Bell told her everything.
And Star, with all her stripes and sass, promised to keep the secrets.
Chapter Two
NOTHING'S FAIR
Bell had always known there was a little magic in her blood, but until her mother showed her how to bake her feelings into her dainties, she didn’t put it to use. Her mother called it kitchen witchery. Just a pinch, nothing flashy. But lately, Bell began noticing something new. She could sense the emotions of others, like invisible currents brushing against her skin. Nervous energy. Silent rage. Lonely aches wrapped in polite smiles.
And at the County Fair, she’d decided to do something about it.
If someone approached her trailer and Bell felt their uneasiness, she’d steer them toward a calming muffin, usually lemon poppyseed or chamomile honey. If she sensed anger in a customer, Bell might hand over a love muffin, ginger pear with vanilla glaze, and watch a tense silence turn into laughter two bites later.
Star noticed, of course. That girl missed nothing.
“Your muffins are a drug, Bell,” Star warned, arms folded, mouth tight. “And I know about drugs. They help when you need ‘em, and if given by a professional, but if you lean on ‘em for every little thing, you forget how to stand.”
Bell sighed, brushing flour from her apron. “I just want to help people feel a little better. Is that so wrong?”
“It is if you’re treating symptoms without knowing the cause,” Star said, hands on hips, her fiery Mohawk hair cut catching the sun through the trailer’s serving window. “It’s risky. You don’t know what kind of mess you’re kneading into people’s heads.”
Bell tilted her head. “You’re feeling a bit put out with me, aren’t you?”
Star narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
Bell held up a muffin with a sly grin. “Calming lavender citrus. Works wonders on righteous indignation.”
They both burst out laughing, their tension breaking like sugar crystals under heat.
“Okay. Okay. I get it. I’ll stop being an amateur psychiatrist.”
The wail of a fire engine interrupted their moment. Sirens split the dusty fairground air as a truck roared past, fair-goers scattering in its wake.
“What now?” Star asked, peering down the lane. She stopped a teenager sprinting past.
“What’s going on?”
“Cat stuck on top of the Ferris wheel,” he huffed as he kept moving.
Star and Bell looked at each other.
“That ride’s out of service,” Bell said.
Then, in unison: “Marmalade!”
“You called?” chirped a smug, squeaky voice.
Marmalade sauntered up the trailer steps and flopped onto the counter, licking her paw like a cat with a spotless conscience.
“Couldn’t stay out of trouble, could you?” Bell said, arms crossed and lips pursed.
“No trouble,” Marmalade mewed innocently, vanishing beneath the counter to curl up in her bed like a napping cherub in orange fur.
Too smug for her own good, Bell thought.
Later that evening, as the crowds thinned, and the sun dipped into sherbet-colored clouds, Bell closed up the trailer. She scooped up Marmalade. The cat grumbled slightly as Bell dropped her into her quilted tote.
“No more pranks,” she scolded. “That stunt with the Ferris wheel could’ve tied up the entire fire department. What if an actual emergency happened?”
“You humans,” Marmalade sniffed, curling tighter in her bag, “always looking at the dark side of a good joke.”
Bell sighed. “Just behave during the magic show, please.”
Marmalade offered a squeaky, half-hearted meow. Bell interpreted that as a yes.
The fairground midway closed and transformed. The empty rides silhouetted against the molten sky like skeletons from a livelier world. Without the shriek of metal rides or the sweet trill of the calliope, the midway felt hollow. But streamers still fluttered in the breeze and paintings of clown faces wore their silly grins, waiting for tomorrow’s crowds to return.
Bell stood staring, memories pooling behind her eyes, her mother’s award-winning pies, her father ushering cars with his straw hat and sunburned grin. 4H projects, blue ribbons, the year she raised a goat named Popsicle, seemed like yesterday. And always, the fair included Rodney.
Sheriff Rodney Halloway pulled up beside her in his bronze cruiser. She hadn’t even heard it. A soft tap on her shoulder. She turned. He held out a strawberry milkshake.
“You remembered,” she said, smiling as she took it. She puckered her lips and sipped thick, cold sweetness through the straw.
“Of course I remembered,” Rodney said. “Funny how the older we get, the sharper the old memories get, and the blurrier everything from five minutes ago feels.”
Bell smiled. That was accurate enough.
Rodney still had the same blue eyes. The same calm steadiness. His once-wavy blond hair had faded to white and receded around the crown, but his tall frame stood straight. Bell, rounder and grayer than she used to be, hoped the version of her that once kissed him atop the Ferris wheel still lived somewhere in his memory.
“Not all memories are good ones,” she said quietly. “Sorry for that.”
Rodney gave a slow smile tinged with fifty years of weight. “What’s past is past. We’ve got time before the show. Let’s take a walk. Stir up some better ones.”
They strolled in silence past the Tilt-A-Whirl and Scrambler. The Merry-Go-Round’s painted horses looked like they needed a good cry and a fresh coat of joy. Bell touched the back of one and felt the creak in her bones echoed by the old ride.
When they reached the Ferris wheel, she reached for Rodney’s hand on impulse. He flinched and gently pulled away.
“Sorry,” she blurted. “Just... memories.”
Rodney looked off toward the grandstand, eyes glistening.
“C’mon,” he said, trying to be cheerful. “Don’t wanna miss the opening act.”
Bell adjusted her bag. Marmalade squirmed inside, probably trying to reorient her tail.
Rodney started off. Then stopped. Hands in pockets, eyes on the ground.
“Sorry,” he said again.
“You don’t need to be,” Bell replied.
He looked over, and Bell stepped beside him. They stood there together. A plastic bag skittered by and Rodney reached for it, missed, and laughed. Just a little.
“No more being sorry, Bell. Mary and I... we had a good life. The farm. The kids. She loved being rooted. That life wouldn’t have suited you, and I got over it. Mostly.” He exhaled. “Now she’s gone. The kids scattered, and...”
“...and I’m back,” Bell finished.
He nodded slowly. “And I’m glad. Most of our friends are gone or moved. It’s good to have an old friend around who still remembers.”
Bell smiled, though the words old friend hit a little deeper than she wanted them to.
“You’re not being too friendly, calling me old,” she said with a wink.
They both chuckled.
“The stands are filling up,” Rodney said at last, offering her his hand.
She took it.
And together, they walked toward the stage lights.
Chapter Three
DEADLY ILLUSION
The crowd buzzed with sugar-rushed anticipation as Bell and Rodney climbed the bleachers near the grandstand, the twilight air thick with fried dough, popcorn, and tractor grease. Families squeezed onto picnic blankets. Older folks settled into lawn chairs. The makeshift stage lights flickered on one by one, casting long shadows across the fairground and painting everything in golds and reds.
A booming voice echoed from the stage:
“Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to witness the impossible!”
