Gum Drop Dead: Cupcake Truck Mysteries

by Emily James

  8

  The sign on the door of the fitness center told me I was at the right place. Women’s self-defense class from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. Open to anyone. It gave a number where women interested in joining were supposed to call and sign up.

  “Is the door locked?” a petite blonde about the same height as my friend Eve asked.

  I hadn’t even tried the door yet. How long had I been standing here reading and re-reading the sign? Maybe I should have asked Eve to join me. Or even Claire. Then I might not feel like my feet had grown roots.

  The blonde woman rapped on the glass door rather than waiting for me to answer. A burly man wearing a Lakeshore Police Department t-shirt opened it for us. He had to be at least six feet tall, and the shirt stretched tight across his muscles.

  The blonde thanked him and ducked inside. She didn’t even seem to care that she had to squeeze by him.

  He looked down at me. He probably didn’t mean for the tilt of his chin and lack of a smile to be intimidating.

  “Are you here for the class?” His tone held the welcome his expression lacked.

  But if this man was the instructor, did that mean I’d have to grapple with him to practice? Somehow I’d expected the class to be led by a woman. That’d been naïve of me. A female would likely help him demonstrate the things taught in class, but we’d need male instructors for there to be any sort of practical application.

  I hadn’t thought this through.

  Little black curlicues swam at the edge of my vision.

  My phone rang in my pocket. I grabbed it out and held it up like a shield. “I have to get this first.”

  He nodded but something in the way he moved made me think he didn’t believe me. “Door’ll be unlocked for you.”

  I slid my finger across the screen without even glancing at the number. “How Sweet It Is Cupcakes. Isabel speaking.”

  “Good evening, Isabel.” The man’s voice on the other end of the line was slow and smooth and vaguely familiar. “I’m sorry to call at dinner time, but I assume businesses like yours are probably open for the dinner rush.”

  I made an affirmative noise. The man’s approach made me think we’d met before. Cold call customers weren’t usually so familiar.

  “This is Elijah Wells. You gave me your card at my uncle’s funeral.”

  The conversation between Elijah and Rebecca leapt back into my mind. Rebecca had no reason to murder her husband. She lost her style of living upon his death. Elijah, on the other hand, had a good motive if he resented Rebecca living off his uncle’s wealth and wanted it returned to the family.

  He cleared his throat softly as if my pause had been long enough to become awkward.

  I switched my phone to the other ear. “I remember you. I didn’t think you’d actually use my card once we left the way we did.”

  He chuckled softly in a way that sounded kind. “I don’t believe you poisoned my uncle if that’s what you mean. Quite the opposite. I’d like to do a tasting and discuss options for supplying my business on a weekly basis. You didn’t list an address on your business card or I would have simply stopped by.”

  His speech had a formal quality to it that reminded me of someone who’d traveled to so many locations around the world that the influence of all the different accents came together to make his speech stiffer than the average.

  I couldn’t tell him that we didn’t have a physical location. We’d sound like small fries. He might decide to find a more established business to work with, regardless of how much he enjoyed my cupcakes. I needed to stall him so I could think.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Right now, when we have clients in, all we have to offer them is stale croissants and bland muffins. My uncle thought that was good enough. He didn’t understand that the current competitive climate means we need to woo our clients. I want to give them something they can’t get from just anywhere. I want to show them that we care about their business.”

  He rattled off the number of cupcakes they’d want on average each week.

  The contract was exactly the kind of thing that gave a catering business stability. I had a few of them, and they’d made all the difference.

  If only this offer wasn’t coming from someone who had a motive for murder. Everything he’d said about his uncle only strengthened his motive. From the sounds of it, he’d taken over his uncle’s spot in the family business, and he’d also obviously felt for a long time that he had better ideas. Ideas his uncle refused to listen to. Financial gain or saving a business that someone truly cared about were both potential motives for murder.

  I couldn’t meet with him in my truck alone. I wasn’t stupid enough to take that risk, even if I had been brave enough to be alone with a strange man—which I wasn’t. Unfortunately, there wasn’t room for three of us to do a tasting in there. When I’d done my friend Nicole’s wedding tasting, we’d both barely fit, and that was in my larger truck.

  I also couldn’t turn down a regular contract when I didn’t have solid evidence that he was the one who murdered his uncle. Sabotaging our business on a suspicion was short-term thinking. He, Claire, and I would have to meet at the house. Not that giving our address to a potential murderer ranked high on the list of safe things to do, but what other option did we have?

  Besides, Claire would never forgive me if I passed up this opportunity. Not only would it help our business, but it’d also give us a chance to find out more about Donald Wells and why someone might have wanted him dead.

  If Elijah hadn’t done it, he’d make a fantastic source of information down the line. Once we had a working relationship, we’d be able to slip in a few questions here and there. We’d even have a chance to observe Donald Wells’ business a bit more and see if anyone there might have had a motive other than Elijah.

  “Let me check dates with my partner,” I said, “and I’ll get back to you.”

  He confirmed that the phone number he’d called from was the best one to reach him on. We disconnected the call.

  I turned back to the gym door, and my stomach felt like a clump of tangled string.

  I couldn’t go in yet. First, I should text Claire. I sent her a message and then watched my screen for the dots that would signal she was writing back. Nothing. She was probably in the pool at her gym tonight. She wouldn’t be expecting to hear from me until 8:15 when I was supposed to pick her up.

  This was important. Maybe I should drive there and talk to her now instead of waiting.

  That’s an excuse, Fear whispered in my ear.

  That was great. Fear agreed with Dan that I should learn to defend myself.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. They were both right. Learning to defend myself could buy me the precious seconds I needed to get away if I was attacked. Jarrod might never find me, but all the murders I’d seen had proved one thing. The world was full of evil people.

  But the self-defense class wasn’t going to do me any good if I couldn’t even find the courage to step inside, let alone have the instructor touch me. Dan had made it clear that I couldn’t learn self-defense by watching. I needed to learn by doing.

  If doing involved a man touching me, then I had only one option.

  I dialed Dan’s number. He picked up after a couple of rings.

  “You’re not being followed again, are you? I thought you were going to the self-defense class tonight.”

  The tension in his voice cut straight through to the fortress where I’d tried to lock my heart. I mattered to him. It was an odd feeling to know your well-being mattered that much to another human being. I knew he’d agree to my request even before I asked.

  “I couldn’t do it. Will you teach me instead?”

  9

  “We have this room for the two hours,” Dan said as he opened the door for me. “And we’ll only be able to do our sessions when the common session is running. That’s when the department has the gym reserved.”

  I nodded. I’d wanted him to teach me at
his house or Claire’s, but he’d insisted that we needed floors with better padding so neither of us ended up breaking something.

  Matching the time slot of the regular self-defense session meant we might not even be able to practice each week if Dan had to work or couldn’t convince one of the relatives to babysit Janie. But I was willing to make concessions and take it slow if it meant he’d teach me rather than some stranger.

  Dan had tried to convince me the police detective running the class was a teddy bear and one of the nicest guys I’d ever meet. Apparently, the burly instructor’s name was Zee, and he was one of Dan’s best friends. That knowledge still wasn’t enough to make me feel brave enough to go to the class. Dan explained to Zee that I was an abuse survivor, and Zee helped us get permission to hold our private lessons at the same time.

  I turned in a slow circle. The room was clearly used for exercise classes at other times. Yoga mats lay rolled and piled in one corner, and exercise balls and hand weights lined the walls. The floor under my feet was squishy enough that I wasn’t even sure why people would need the yoga mats.

  Dan stepped in front of me and waited until I met his gaze. “I can’t be gentle with you once we start practicing. You’ll have some bruises.”

  Intellectually I knew that. The tension that radiated through my entire body, making my back muscles spasm, told a different story. I forced what I hoped was a brave smile. “All in the pursuit of safety.”

  The image of Rebecca accusing the hot air balloon operator at the funeral flashed into my mind. Since no one else was in the balloon with them, there was no way of knowing what had actually happened, but maybe there were some clues still. Like bruises.

  I wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on Dan’s lesson with that floating around in my mind. “Can I ask you an unrelated question first?”

  Dan straightened from tightening his shoelace. “The fact that you felt you need to ask if you can ask tells me I might not like this, but go ahead.”

  “Claire and I went to the funeral for Donald Wells. The hot air balloon operator showed up, and Wells’ widow seemed to feel he was responsible for Wells’ death. What you just said got me thinking. Were there any signs that the operator tried to stop Wells from jumping?”

  The look he gave me said he knew he had to give me some answer or my mind would be divided. If I couldn’t focus, I’d have wasted both our time.

  He shook his head. “No signs of a struggle. No signs of defensive wounds or what you’d expect to see if he were trying to stop Wells from jumping out. But you have to remember that he might have been afraid of being pushed over the side himself.”

  That was true. There was a reason not everyone went into a career in the military or as a first responder. Those people had to put their lives in jeopardy to protect others. Most people’s self-preservation instincts were high enough that they couldn’t bring themselves to do it. The hot air balloon operator might have tried to stop Wells verbally, but he might not have felt comfortable trying to stop him physically.

  So we were still at square one. Time to focus on what I was here for. “So where do we start?”

  Dan moved close enough that he could have touched me, but he kept his arms by his sides. “Let’s start with something simple. What to do if someone tries to choke you from behind.” He motioned for me to spin around so that my back was to him. “I’m going to do this slow. I want you to drop your chin as soon as you feel motion behind you.”

  He slid an arm around my waist. His other arm came up.

  My brain shouted for me to drop my chin, but my head wouldn’t move. My whole body felt like it’d been encased in ice. The phantom of Jarrod, his thumbs crushing my windpipe, flamed across my vision.

  The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the floor, my head between my knees, and Dan was telling me to breath in and out to his count. He wasn’t touching me at all anymore.

  Why had I thought this would be okay with Dan? Just because he’d held my hand before when we were pretending to be dating to investigate a lead in the last murder case I helped with. Just because we danced together in the rain once. Just because I was okay touching his arm.

  I was too broken. He was going to see that I was too broken to be around his family.

  “Are you breathing a little easier?” Dan asked softly.

  I nodded. My tongue still felt seared and unwieldy.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t listen to him give up on me too. “Talk to me about something else for a minute.”

  He’d been kneeling beside me. He sat on the floor next to me, his legs partially pulled up, so he could rest his arms across them. He’d left well over a foot between us. “Like about how you and Claire probably weren’t at that funeral just to mourn a man you’d met once for less than five minutes.”

  His tone was light. It lifted away a layer of the heaviness that pinned me to the floor. “Something other than lecturing me about staying out of this case.” I tried to match his tone. My voice came out reedy. “What were Donald Wells and the hot air balloon operator arguing about?”

  My ragged breathing filled the quiet gap that settled between us.

  Dan shifted. “I’m only telling you this because I don’t want either of you putting yourselves in a dangerous situation trying to find out.”

  I nodded my understanding.

  “Andy Frank and Donald Wells were childhood friends. They’d grown apart as they got older, but Frank says he saw Wells’ wife going into a lawyer’s office. He’d been blindsided by a divorce recently himself, and he didn’t want that for his friend.”

  My mind cleared slightly. That didn’t fit with what I heard at the funeral luncheon. I gathered the pieces of myself and sat up. “Either Andy Frank is lying or Rebecca Wells was going to a lawyer about something else. I overheard her talking with one of the other family members at the funeral. Whatever she got from his death was a lot less than what she got from being married to him. My guess is her prenup was even tighter, and she wouldn’t have gotten anything in a divorce.”

  “That’s what I thought as well. The rest of the team assigned to this case isn’t looking at Frank as a suspect anymore, but I think we’ve moved on too soon. When I spoke to Mrs. Wells, she insisted she hadn’t been to a lawyer in years. One of them is lying. Just because Frank didn’t push Donald Wells out of the hot air balloon doesn’t mean he might not have found a way to give him the lime juice that resulted in his death.”

  My legs felt much steadier than they had before. The distraction of talking about the case had worked. I eased to my feet. “I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

  Dan hoped up and brushed off his pants. “Ready to try again? I’ll go slower this time. We’ll start with just my hands on your shoulders.”

  His stance was loose, like he didn’t think anything of what he’d just said.

  My heart felt tight in my chest. “You’re not giving up on me?”

  He smiled in that way that sent crinkles out from the corners of his eyes. “Never.”

  10

  Elijah Wells was so prompt it was almost painful.

  The doorbell rang just as the clock ticked over to the time set for our meeting. He was probably the kind of person who arrived somewhere early but stayed in his car to be sure to be on time without inconveniencing the other person by being early.

  I smoothed down my apron.

  Claire opened the door. “Thanks again for meeting here. We’re still trying to settle on a retail location. It’s not an easy choice.”

  The lie was a small one, but neither of us had wanted to admit to a new client that our entire business was a loaner food truck. Over time, this contract could make up for the loss we’d taken when the hot air balloon festival shut down and only reopened for the final day. We needed to nail it.

  Elijah stepped inside and shook both our hands.

  I hadn’t paid much attention to him when I’d spoken to him briefly a
t the funeral. He didn’t look like his uncle except for his dark hair and golden quality of his skin. He was taller than his uncle had been—at least from what I remembered—with a neatly trimmed goatee that made his jaw look even more square. He wore a three-piece suit even though it was Saturday afternoon.

  Claire and I looked underdressed in comparison. We’d opted for the matching pink and purple How Sweet It Is t-shirts she bought us earlier in the summer when we’d catered the annual barbecue for an insurance company. We’d added the aprons because Claire thought they gave us a more professional look. At least we were dressed befitting out job.

  “We’ve laid out a selection of sweet and savory,” Claire said, “based on what you told Isabel you were looking for.”

  Had I not known this was Claire’s first time liaising with a client, I wouldn’t have known. She sounded like she’d done this so many times she could have repeated her lines under sedation. Coming across with confidence was definitely one of her strengths.

  We’d made the kitchen look as professional as possible with a table cloth that matched the business colors. Elijah waited for us to take our seats as if he were an old-fashioned gentleman rather than a man in his early forties.

  I laid out the first round of samples. “We have a few ways we can do a regular delivery like this depending on your budget.”

  I explained the options to him. Claire hovered by my shoulder the whole time as if she wanted to say something but knew it’d look bad if she cut me off. I stumbled over my words a couple of times. It was like trying to write a test in school with the teacher staring at every word you wrote.

  I finished, and Claire put another cupcake onto Elijah’s plate. “This is the variety Isabel made for your uncle’s funeral, so you might already have tasted it, but it’s always good to have a comparison.”

  Elijah accepted the cupcake and cut into it with the knife we provided. “I thought I recognized you from the luncheon as well.”