Free Candles Burning by Tabitha King

finish my breakfast, Calley, I am calling the FBI.”
    Judy was backing out of the room but Mama stopped her.
    â€œYou brought me three brioche yesterday, and this morning there are only two,” Mama said.
    â€œJanice is having trouble with the oven heat,” Judy said. “It’s uneven. She had five dozen brioche too tough to leave the kitchen.”
    â€œTell Janice I am not interested in her difficulties with the oven. Tell Janice I am worried to death about my kidnapped husband and I need three brioche in the morning, and not just two, to keep up my strength.”
    When Judy left, I said to Mama, “Maybe they did it.”
    Mama was buttering one of her brioche. “Maybe who did what?”
    â€œThat Judy, and the Janice that bakes your brioche. Maybe they’re the ones that took Daddy.”
    Mama snapped at me. “Calley, I am living in hell. I do not need this idiocy of yours.”
    A moment later she asked, “Do you suppose that Judy the nitwit and this Janice the cook wrote these notes as a joke?”
    â€œBut where’s Daddy?”
    Her face clouded. She lit a cigarette while she brooded and then she went to put on her makeup.
    As soon as Mamadee and Ford appeared for breakfast, she showed them the note. Then Lawyer Weems had to see it. He observed, as we all had, that it was very like the first one, and advised that the FBI be informed. Eventually he billed Mama for that advice, and got what he deserved: no payment at all.
    An FBI agent came, took the note into custody, and asked Mama, “What instructions?”
    â€œI asked the very same question. I asked the girl who brought me my breakfast this morning. I asked my seven-year-old child. They could not tell me. I have no idea what instructions I am supposed to follow.”
    â€œThen we wait for the instructions.”
    â€œI hope they come soon,” Mama said. “Because I’d like to see the FBI pay for what this hotel is costing.”
    No instructions came that night or the next morning. Judy came though, bringing only one brioche.
    Mama was almost too furious to speak. I thought for a minute that she might put her cigarette out between Judy’s eyes.
    Judy saw Mama was mad and said quickly, “Something happened to the oven. Janice said it about nearly exploded in her face when she tried to light the pilot.”
    â€œThere is no excuse for bringing me teensy, tough brioche and undrinkable coffee, not at this hotel’s prices!” Mama snarled.
    But after Judy left, Mama called the FBI and said, “There is a Judy Somebody-or-other who is a chambermaid in this hotel, and there is a Janice Something-else who works in the kitchen, and I don’t know why I have to do your business for you, but if I were J. Edgar Hoover, I would ask them what they would do with a million dollars if it fell down on them out of the sky.”
    When she heard of all this, Mamadee was first incredulous and then appalled. She had not known, as Mama and I had, that the hotel chambermaid and the pastry cook bore the same first names as the signers of the notes. Nor had Ford. He was shocked, and even angrier than Mamadee that no one had made the connection.
    â€œI tried to tell Mama,” I tried to tell him.
    He paid no more attention to me than she had.
    â€œHow could you not realize?” Mamadee hissed at Mama, while Lawyer Weems frowned his disapproval.
    â€œMaybe because I’ve had everybody in the world telling me what to do for the last seven days!” Mama shouted. “That girl is a moron, I caint see how she could manage to kidnap an ashtray!”
    By this time, Judy DeLucca and Janice Hicks had broken all Daddy’s bones, beating his corpse for more than forty minutes with the bottom of a Black Maria cast-iron frying pan stolen from the hotel kitchen and wielded in turn by each. By pressing hard, and cutting off his head, both feet, then his legs, and his hands and arms, with