It was the next day before Apollo realized he'd never heard from Trucy just who her father ostensibly visited on Christmas Eve. He meant to ask, but Apollo suddenly found himself busy with a car theft case (the defendant was a friend of Wocky Kitaki, and had the same delusions of gangsterhood), and for several days he was too worn out from dealing with uncooperative witnesses to have the energy to question an evasive Trucy, or worse, Mr. Wright. Trucy was inclined to be somewhat sulky, too, since with finals coming up she couldn't ditch school to follow Apollo as he searched for clues or stood in court.

The sun had almost set by the time he'd finished organizing his notes for the next – and last – day in court. Finally done! He looked up across the coffee table to ask Trucy how her homework was going, but the young magician wasn't there. In fact, she wasn't anywhere in the room.

It was then that he realized just how quiet the room was. No scratch of pencil on paper, no grumbling from Mr. Wright about the rule against perpetuities, no lilt of Trucy's voice as she practiced her patter, or slap of cards or rustle of Mr. Hat's cape as she practiced a trick. Unnerved, he stood up, banging his knees on the underside of the coffee table in his haste. "Trucy? Mr. Wright?"

"We're in the kitchen, Apollo," Mr. Wright called.

Apollo stepped into the tiny kitchen to find Mr. Wright was telling the truth. The lights had been turned down, but he could still see them both clearly in the light from the hallway. His mentor was sitting at the small table, leaning his chair back so that it bumped against the refrigerator, the front feet off the floor. Rather than scolding him, Trucy was bouncing on her heels and staring at the glowing microwave clock. A small brass candelabrum, covered in dripped wax, sat on a tin-foil covered plate in the middle of the table. There were two thin candles set in it, one higher than the other, although Apollo noticed room for seven others, and a box on the counter.

"Is that a menorah?" he asked – unnecessarily, since what else would it be?

"Yep." Trucy didn't take her eyes off the clock. She fidgeted with one of her wands – Apollo wasn't good enough yet at identifying them, so he wasn't sure which it was. "One minute."

"One minute until what?"

"'Til Hanukkah!" Trucy said, bouncing even more impatiently.

"Jewish holidays start at sundown," Mr. Wright said, leaning forward so that his chair stood flat on the floor again. "And Trucy's stricter than I am about lighting the candles at the right time."

"It's time!" Trucy announced, and spun around, wand raised. "Your turn tonight, Daddy." She passed the wand like a knife scissors, holding the tip in her hand and offering the base to her father. Mr. Wright took it from her carefully. He fiddled around with something on the base, and a small flame rose

Apollo backed up quickly. He recognized the wand now, and Trucy's tricks with flashpaper always made him nervous.

"Baruch atah Adonai," he said quietly, touching the tip of the wand to the raised candle. Trucy's voice, low and solemn, joined in. "Eloheinu melach ha'olam." As they spoke, Mr. Wright extinguished the wand and set it on the tinfoil, then reached for the lit candle. "... asher kidishanu bmitzvatov..."- He lit the other candle with the one in his hand – "vitzivanu, l'had'lik neir" – waiting until the flame, initially faltering, had risen well above the curling wick before returning his candle to its original place. "shel Hanukkah."

They repeated the words again, or so it seemed to Apollo, Mr. Wright's deeper voice and Trucy's lighter one an octave apart as they spoke the prayer. The ending was different this time – "shehecheyanu v'kiyimanu, v'higi'anu laz'man hazeh."

Apollo watched father and daughter's faces glowing in the faint, flickering light from the two small candles. Trucy's smile was guileless as always – Apollo had never known her to hide her happiness or affection from her expression. Mr. Wright's smile was smaller and gentle, and not the wry, careless grin Apollo was used to. The man's eyes gleamed in the candle-light, and his smile widened when his gaze met his daughter's across the menorah.

The corners of Apollo's eyes pricked, and he stepped back, feeling acutely like an intruder. In his blind retreat he bumped the lightswitch. The overhead fluorescent light came to life with a flicker, and the spell was broken. Mr. Wright stood up, and Trucy turned to rummage through the cabinet under the sink.

"Do you want to light the candles tomorrow, Apollo?" Mr. Wright asked him genially, his eyes on Apollo's face. "We'd have called you in, but Trucy said you were absorbed in your work, and I didn't want to interrupt you preparing for court tomorrow."

Apollo swallowed, feeling shy. "I, um, I don't know the words," he mumbled. "And I'm not Jewish..."

"That's okay, neither am I," Trucy called from under the sink. She uttered a cry of triumph, and stood up. "I found the food processor, Daddy."

"If you don't want to, you don't have to," Mr. Wright said easily. "But you're welcome to join us." He stepped around the table and started pulling things from drawers and cabinets – a knife, a cutting board, and several large potatoes. "Speaking of joining us, did you have dinner plans tonight?"

Apollo shook his head. "I, um, was going to order something when I got home."

"Then stay for latkes!" Trucy encouraged him. "They're really great. Daddy makes the best latkes I've ever had."

Apollo recognized the set-up for a joke when Trucy fed it to him. "Are they the only latkes you've ever had?" he asked, and hid his smile at Trucy's affirmation.

The kitchen was small, but somehow they found room for all of them to work. Apollo scrubbed potatoes, and then an apple and onion, while Mr. Wright and Trucy cut them into long, narrow pieces and fed them into the food processor. Then Apollo and Trucy wrung the water out of the shredded potatoes over the sink, bumping elbows repeatedly in the small space, while Mr. Wright beat eggs, and then whisked together salt, cinnamon, and flour.

The very messy business of mixing the egg and flour-mixture into the potatoes was handled by Mr. Wright, who worked the eggs in first with a fork, and then by hand. Still, Apollo slipped his bracelet into his pocket, not wanting to get it dirty.

"Time for the oil," Mr. Wright said, and produced a battered, olive-green electric skillet from under the sink.

"Hanukkah's all about fried food and fire," Mr. Wright said, pouring the oil about a quarter of an inch deep. "The Maccabeans retook the temple from Antiochus, who had desecrated it by sacrificing pigs. When they retook the temple and rededicated it, they only had enough oil for the ner tamid, the Eternal Flame, to burn for one day. However, by a miracle, the oil lasted for eight days, and that's why..." Mr. Wright trailed off and rubbed the back of his neck, his face reddening. "Um, sorry, went on autopilot there. We had to give speeches on the holidays in first grade in Hebrew school, and I picked Hanukkah. Guess I still have it memorized." He turned his back to them and busied himself with tying on an apron.

"Daddy's not really religious," Trucy whispered to Apollo as Mr. Wright spooned the first four latkes into the sizzling oil. "But it's funny to get him reciting things like that! Later on I'll see if I can get him to do a recitation for you where he starts singing. Those are the best." She raised her voice to a normal volume, and lay paper towels across a plate. "It's not actually an important Jewish holiday, you know. Mostly we do Hanukkah because Daddy says it's important to pass on family traditions like food."

"It's also a good excuse for fried foods," Mr. Wright said over the pop and sizzle of the skillet. "Some families eat donuts, too. And cheese. And Hanukkah gelt, but we stopped that because Trucy said they weren't any good for tricks."

"Gelt are chocolate coins," Trucy explained. "Except they're usually made of that cheap chocolate that tastes like soap, and they really are no good for tricks. They get all melty in my hands and up my sleeve."

It took longer than Apollo expected for the first batch to finish, but he'd never had much experience with frying food, unless you counted eggs. When Mr. Wright and finished transferring the first four crispy brown pancakes to the plate, and covered them with another layer of paper towels, he turned to face them and offered the spatula to Trucy. "Your turn."

The phone rang then, and Mr. Wright struggled out of the apron and ran off to answer it. Trucy had already flipped all four of her latkes by the time he returned to the kitchen.

"That was Santa. He just told me his latest girlfriend dumped him, so he'll be here for Christmas Eve."

"Aww, poor guy!" Trucy expertly maneuvered a finished latke to the paper-towel covered plate, and added more of the potato batter to the hot oil. "I'm sure baking cookies and watching holiday movies will cheer him right up." She offered the spatula and apron to Apollo. "Your turn!"

Santa's girlfriend? Whatever happened to Mrs. Claus? Apollo wondered as he put on the apron. "Santa is able to come this year because he broke up with his girlfriend?"

"Yup. Otherwise he'd be spending the evening with her, of course!"

"Oh. Of course." Carefully, Apollo flipped over a latke. The Wrights' Santa mythology got stranger the more he heard. "When did you first meet Santa?"

"Oh, it was the first Christmas Eve when I was with Daddy – this Daddy, I mean, not my first Daddy. He babysat me while Daddy went to visit his friend," Trucy said easily.

Visiting a friend, huh... This was a perfect opportunity to poke holes in Mr. Wright's Christmas Eve alibi. He wished he'd left his bracelet on – it was hard to pay attention to the latkes emand/em watch Trucy for her tells. "A friend of Mr. Wright's?" Apollo asked, perhaps a little too aggressively.

"I have an old friend who shouldn't be left alone on Christmas Eve, in case someone frames him for murder again," Mr. Wright offered, grinning disarmingly. "I like to make sure he had an alibi. We usually go out for dinner and drinks."

Framing for murder? Again? Is that a common problem for your friends? Apollo tried to find a polite way to ask more, but Trucy interrupted his thoughts.

"Ah, Polly! It's getting black around the edges!"

Apollo spent the next few minutes transferring finished latkes from pan to plate and trying to clear the oil of burned fragments without disturbing those still cooking. He spooned in two more, flinching as the wet batter made the oil hiss and spit. Pinpricks of hot oil stung the backs of his hands and forearms.

"My turn now," Mr. Wright said, and Apollo surrendered the spatula and apron. "Say, Apollo... would you like to meet my friend this year? Just for a short while, before he and I go out for the evening."

I guess he noticed me pressing that issue. "Um, sure!"

Apollo's turn came around again with the last batch of latkes, and he switched off the skillet as Trucy and Mr. Wright made ham sandwiches ("we need some protein to go with all of the starch and grease," Trucy had decreed, and neither she nor Mr. Wright seemed to see anything wrong with eating ham on a Jewish holiday.) The kitchen was too small for all three of them to sit at the table – there was only one chair, even – so they decamped to the main room of the agency and sat at the coffee table.

The latkes were delicious, soft in the center and crispy tendrils of shredded potato along the edges. Apollo tried his with applesauce and sour cream at Mr. Wright's behest, but bypassed the honey Trucy was drowning hers in. He did try to ask a few more questions about "Santa", but Trucy and Mr. Wright were so evasive that he gave up.

Stay tuned for the next update, where Apollo sorts out this Santa nonsense, meets Phoenix's friend, and also makes sugar cookies!

After "The Best I Know", you didn't think I would really post a whole chapter about latke-making without also supplying a recipe, did you? Once again, Phoenix's recipe is my family's recipe, although in this case it comes from a few cookbooks, rather than Grandma.

Phoenix and Trucy's Latke Recipe

Ingredients:

6 large potatoes
1 large apple
2 tbsp flour
3 eggs
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1teasp. salt
Oil for frying
1 onion

Grate the potatoes, apple, and onion, by hand or with a food processor. Squeeze out the excess moisture (it's easiest to wrap it all up in a floursack towel or cheesecloth to do this).

Beat the eggs and stir into grated potato mixture.

Whisk the dry ingredients together and mix them in as well.

Pour oil ¼ inch thick in a skillet (electric or stovetop). You can tell when it's ready by dropping in a small shred of potato and seeing if it sizzles.

Using several tablespoons of mixture at a time, shape oval pancakes and add to the hot oil. Press down lightly to help them keep their shape. When the edges are crispy and brown and they hold together, flip over. Transfer finished latkes to a plate lined with paper towels. Keep warm until serving.

Serve with applesauce and sour cream (traditional), or honey (not so traditional, but also delicious!)