Sinister Cinnamon Buns

by J Lee Mitchell

  “Good,” said Q’Bita. “You two are just in time. I’ll grab two more iced teas. I was about to fill Jamie in on my and Nana’s visit with the publishers yesterday. I was hoping the two of you might be able to shed some light on any options Nana might have.”

  Kari buried her face in her hands and shook her head side to side.

  “Ugh, this is so horrible. I feel partly responsible for this whole mess. Your nana really struggled with the decision about whether or not to share our family recipes, and I can’t help but think we might have avoided all this drama if I hadn’t pushed her so hard.”

  Tom Block was half-way through his second biscuit but paused to interject, “I know that things seem bad right now but if we’ve learned anything while churning out twenty-three books and coaching countless clients through the publishing process, it’s that nothing ever comes easily in this business.”

  Kari nodded in agreement. “Your father’s right, publishing can be brutal at times, and we’ve been really fortunate so far to have never run into this kind of a legal issue, so, sadly, we can’t be much help.”

  “So that’s it, then? Are y’all saying there isn’t anything we can do to fix this?”

  Jamie looked from Tom to Kari and then to Q’Bita, his eyes clouding up and lower lip trembling slightly.

  “Liddy Lou took me in when everyone else in my life had completely given up on me. I love that cantankerous old goat, and I can’t stand to see her hurt and upset. There has to be something we can do.”

  Q’Bita got up, grabbed the pitcher of blackberry iced tea from the fridge, and placed it on a tray with the rosemary simple syrup. She sat the tray on the counter next to the last few biscuits and refilled everyone’s glass.

  Then she moved to the other side of the counter and hugged her bestie for the second time that day. She was suddenly overcome with a sense of appreciation for her nana’s wisdom and foresight to buy the Red Herring Inn and bring them all home where they could work through the tough times as a family.

  Chapter 5

  Patti Becker could feel her heart beating in her ears, accompanied by a roaring noise that drowned out all the sound around her as she made her way down the hall towards her doom. The crew had played rock, paper, scissors to see who was going to be the unfortunate soul to go fetch Macie Dixon from her dressing room, and Patti had lost.

  “I should have gone for throat punch instead of rock,” she muttered to herself.

  Patti paused for a moment just outside the door and swallowed hard. No sound was coming from the dressing room, and she said a silent prayer to the food gods that Macie had already gone back to the set. She was just about to knock when the door flew open and Patti found herself face to face with Macie.

  “Why are you lurking, Patsy? Didn’t I tell you idiots that I didn’t want to be disturbed?”

  Patti squared her shoulders and straightened her back, which put her at least three full inches taller than Macie Dixon. “It’s Patti, and you said not to disturb you until we re-staged the set, which we have. We need to wrap for the day by five so the sooner we get you on set the sooner we can get this episode put to bed.”

  Macie’s face curled into a snarl. “This show is called Country Cooking With Macie for a reason, me! I’m the talent, it’s my show, which means I say when we wrap, not you, not the crew. Me. Are we clear on that, Patsy?”

  Patti choked back a snarky reply and tucked her hands into her back pockets where she could give Macie the bird without getting fired. Macie slammed the door in her face without another word. As Patti turned away, cussing under her breath, she noticed Macie’s assistant standing behind her.

  “Sorry, she’s in one of her moods today.”

  Hadleigh gave Patti a small, meek smile and said, “Go on back to the set. I’ll get her majesty there as soon as I can.”

  Patti took a few steps then turned back to face Hadleigh. “Please understand this isn’t directed towards you in any way, because God knows you have it even worse than we do, but someday Macie Dixon is going to mistreat one of us one time too many, and she’s going to get what’s coming to her. You can’t treat people like they don’t matter and not have to deal with the consequences of your actions at some point.”

  The look on Patti’s face was pure hatred, and Hadleigh shuddered as Patti walked away.

  Chapter 6

  Hadleigh waited until Patti Becker turned the corner at the end of the hall before knocking on Macie’s dressing room door. A few seconds later Macie yanked open the door.

  “Look, Patsy,” Macie snapped. She crinkled her surgically perfected nose and gave Hadleigh a disinterested look.

  “Oh, it’s you. Did you inspect the set and make sure those morons staged this segment with pieces from the Macie Dixon Line this time? If I go out there and every detail isn’t perfect I just might shit-can the whole bunch of you. I can’t even begin to tell you how sick I am of being the only person with a vision around here. It’s no wonder successful entrepreneurs are often seen as unreasonable and demanding. It’s completely frustrating, and exhausting, trying to find competent help some days.”

  Hadleigh stood in the doorway suppressing a smile, and a giggle, as she pictured herself bitch-slapping her smug, self-entitled sibling.

  “Hadleigh, are you listening to me? God, sometimes I swear you pretend to be clueless just to boil my blister.”

  Hadleigh had reached her breaking point. Unable to stifle her laughter another second, she snorted like a piglet. Macie’s expression quickly changed from disinterest to indignation.

  “Really? Is this funny to you, Hadleigh? Because it’s not funny to me. The Macie Dixon Line is my raison d’être, the love child I’ve carried inside myself and given painful birth to. I realize you’re a just an assistant, but I expect—no, I demand—you have some respect for me and my vision.”

  From behind Hadleigh a deep, male voice interrupted Macie’s lecture.

  “If you want respect, you have to earn it, Macie, and you sure as hell aren’t going to gain anyone’s respect by stealing recipes and passing them off as your own.”

  Hadleigh turned to find a handsome, dark-skinned man she’d never met before standing just inches behind her. She hadn’t heard anyone approach, but his timing was as impeccable as his sense of style. She thought to herself that it was no wonder she’d never met this delicious hunk of man-meat before. Hell, if he belonged to her she’d keep him well hidden from every other female in town, too.

  Hadleigh couldn’t help noticing that Macie’s expression had turned from fury to fearful. Macie pushed past her, practically knocking her into the door frame. She grabbed the handsome stranger by the elbow and yanked him towards her dressing room, shoving him inside.

  Macie started to shut the door but paused and said, “You’re dismissed, Hadleigh. Tell the crew I will be there when I’m ready, and right now, I’m not ready.” Macie then slammed the door in her face.

  Hadleigh stood staring at the door for a minute. She couldn’t make out what they were saying but she could tell they were having a very heated discussion. Hadleigh made a mental note to herself to find out just who this mystery man was and what he’d meant about stealing recipes and trying to pass them off as her own.

  Chapter 7

  Since moving to Castle Creek to join her family at the Red Herring Inn, Q’Bita had come to love sharing breakfast with her brother Beecher and his husband, Rene. They’d quickly fallen into a routine that included Q’Bita making coffee and biscuits or pastry while Beecher fed the Inn’s growing flock of critters and grabbed the morning paper, and Rene spent the entire time primping himself.

  As soon as they were all gathered, Rene would be proclaiming himself a hot mess and tear through the paper until he found the Heard About Town column, or gossip section, as Beecher liked to call it.

  Q’Bita and Beecher would sip the coffee while Rene regaled them with every juicy bit of dirt on the who’s who of Castle Creek.

  Some people might fin
d Rene’s chitchat annoying first thing in the morning, but Q’Bita loved every second spent with her family. After all, who wouldn’t love a two hundred eighty-five-pound, semi-hairy diva in a too-short, fuchsia-colored silk kimono as their breakfast companion? Okay, most people, but Q’Bita wasn’t most people, and today’s gossip just happened to be about Nana.

  Rene let out a gasp that caught their attention.

  “Holy Hettie Lamar, you two’d better prepare yourselves for this bombshell.”

  Rene’s voice was several octaves above its usual caterwaul. Q’Bita leaned in closer as Beecher folded down the top of the sport section and said, “Do tell.”

  Rene threw him an exasperated look.

  “If you two could settle yourselves and let me finish, I will.”

  Beecher, who hadn’t gotten more than five words in edgewise since they’d met eight years ago, chuckled and waived his hand in a ‘please go on’ gesture.

  Rene rolled his eyes, huffed in pseudo-indignation, and began reading from Spenser Penn’s Heard About Town column. “I have it on very good authority that Castle Creek’s own culinary darling, Macie Dixon, host of Country Cooking With Macie has had her reputation besmirched by none other than Red Herring Inn owner and Block Family matriarch, Liddy Lou Cormier. Rumor has it these two feisty females are having a bit of a row over whose recipes are whose, and things are now getting messy on a legal level. While I have no personal knowledge of who is in the right, one cannot help but take notice that Country Cooking With Macie is still airing new episodes each week but Cooking The Cormier Way, which was scheduled to be released next month, appears to have been placed on hold by the publisher.”

  Rene tossed the whole paper over his shoulder with a flurry of drama.

  “Can you believe they actually printed that blasphemy? We should march down to their office, and Beecher should plow that blow hard in his Dixon shit-smeared nose. I mean, really, who reads this drivel? And even if they do, why would they believe a word this schmuck prints?”

  Rene paused for a split second to inhale, and Beecher saw his chance.

  “Um, Rene, you read that drivel. Besides, I think the best thing we can all do is keep our eyes and ears open and our mouths shut.”

  Rene interrupted, “Good Lord, Beecher, I thought Rolfie was the only neutered male in this family.”

  At the sound of his name, the twenty-pound Havana brown cat lifted his head from where he currently lay basking in a shaft of morning sun and cast them all a look that said he did not wish to be pulled into this discussion unless it ended in him being worshiped via offerings of thick-cut bacon.

  Q’Bita chuckled, nodding in Rolfie’s direction. “Sorry, your majesty, we did not mean to disturb your sleep.”

  As if he understood, Rolfie stretched his entire length, yawning wide to show a mouth full of meat-shredding teeth, and promptly returned to his solar-induced coma.

  Rene sneered in the feline’s direction.

  “Oh, please, such drama.”

  Q’Bita laughed again. “I wonder where he learned that.”

  “Hush. I’m incensed here, and we need to get back to me. We cannot just sit back and let hacks like Spenser Penn malign this family and have the whole town believing that Macie Dixon is the victim. I just don’t understand why you two aren’t more worked up about this.”

  Beecher sighed, set the sports section aside, and rolled his eyes at Q’Bita.

  “We are upset, Rene. We Blocks just have a different approach than most. The last thing we need to do is get things all stirred up while everyone is watching and waiting to see what we’ll do next. I think the best thing any of us can do is focus on how to make this right.”

  Rene slapped the table with the palm of his hand.

  “Well then, Sherlock, what’s the plan? And please, be specific, so I know what to wear when we spring into action. The right shoe makes all the difference.”

  Beecher picked up the last bite of cranberry orange scone from his plate and tossed it towards Rolfie, who’d been startled by Rene’s outburst and was now sitting a few feet away cleaning his inappropriate bits.

  Rene shoved an enormous bite of scone slathered in citrus compound butter into his mouth and then tried to talk around it.

  “I tell you what, why don’t you two finish nourishing yourselves while I shower, and then we can brainstorm our next move?”

  “Fine but don’t take too long. Now that Rolfie’s had a taste of scone he just might maul us to death for the rest of them,” Q’Bita said.

  Chapter 8

  Liddy Lou was trying to decide if she wanted to wear the pearls her husband had given her for their last wedding anniversary before he passed, or the scarf Myra Thomas had given her for last year’s secret Santa. She felt her spirits sag as she thought about how poor Myra had never made it to the New Year. A fall on the ice led to pneumonia that she just wasn’t strong enough to fight.

  She finally decided that she was depressed enough without bedecking herself in reminders of those she’d lost and settled on her purple hat with the peacock feathers in the band when her house phone rang. She knew before she even picked up that it was Evie Newsome. Evie was the only one who ever called her house phone. They had been best friends for decades, but unlike Evie, who preferred the farm life and simple things, which did not include computers or cell phones, Liddy Lou loved technology and gadgets and all the things that Evie found so complicated.

  “Hiya, Evie. What’s up?”

  “Dag blamet, Liddy Lou. How’d you know it was me? What if I’d been some creepy deep-breather or a serial killer checking to see if you were home alone?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Evie, it’s not like I live off the grid in isolation. The Red Herring Inn is staffed twenty-four seven, I’m surrounded by family, and we’re booked solid with guests until the middle of next year. I couldn’t be alone even if I wanted to.”

  There was a long pause before Evie spoke again. “Speaking of wanting to be left alone, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. I know you don’t bother reading the Castle Creek Gazette since Rene takes such pleasure in regaling us with the daily dirt, but you just happen to be today’s main scoop.”

  “Me? What on earth are you talking about? There isn’t a darn thing about me that’s interesting to the people who read that rag.”

  “Well, you may think that, but your troubles with the Dixons seem to be newsworthy enough to get you a mention right at the top of the page.”

  Liddy Lou closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose, and pulled in a deep breath.

  “Thank you for the heads-up, but I had a very long talking-to with myself yesterday and I’ve decided to put this in the good Lord’s hands and let him sort this mess out before I muck it up any more than I already have.”

  Evie laughed. “Well then, I wish you luck, but I give it two days tops before you break another remote.”

  “Some best friend you are. I’m hanging up now. When you can be bothered to pull yourself away from today’s paper I’ll be waiting on the front porch for you to pick me up. And make it quick; I’m old and hungry.”

  Ten minutes after hanging up Liddy Lou stood waiting on the porch. She could hear Evie Newsome’s side-by-side approaching down the access road that separated their properties. Liddy Lou laughed to herself thinking how ridiculous the two of them must look at their age, all gussied up and riding into town in a John Deer UTV.

  The paved road into town went way out around River Front Park and took twice as long as the trail path through the woods but the latter was too rough for a car to travel.

  As usual, Evie gave the side-by-side too much gas and overshot the turn into the front driveway of the Red Herring Inn, scaring Beecher’s chickens and sending them running for cover.

  She lurched to a stop at the bottom of the steps and hollered out, “All aboard who’s coming aboard. Next stop, Castle Creek Diner.”

  Liddy Lou hustled down the stairs and had barely gotten herself into the seat wh
en Evie tromped the gas and peeled out of the driveway, sending chickens running and squawking all over the place again.

  Liddy Lou kept one hand on the roll bar and one on her hat as Evie careened down the dirt path dodging pot holes and low-hanging branches. As they approached the end of the path, Evie laid on the horn to let pedestrians know that they were about to enter the intersection where the path crossed over the sidewalk of Main Street. Evie popped the curb so hard it lifted them both a few inches off the seat. A young couple with a double stroller was gawking at them like they were driving down the street on fire, and Liddy Lou couldn’t help laughing out loud as Evie let out a big “Whoop!”

  They might be old country girls, but they still knew how to tear it up, she thought to herself.

  Evie wheeled the muddy, green side-by-side into an open spot in front of the Castle Creek Diner and turned to look at Liddy Lou. “Your hat’s crooked; might wanna address that before we head in.”

  “Well, I can’t imagine how that happened with you being such a cautious driver.”

  “You should consider yourself lucky it was me driving and not Putt. He drives like a little old lady. We’d a starved before he got us here.”

  Liddy Lou kept her comments to herself as she adjusted her hat and smoothed her crushed velvet blazer. She’d been best friends with Evie Newsome since they’d been girls. When it came to Evie’s husband, Putt, Liddy Lou tolerated him out of respect for Evie, but he was like a hangover from a two-dollar bottle of wine, cheap and miserable.

  As they exited the side-by-side, Liddy Lou noticed Hilde Sanders blabbing away to Carol Besom and Molly Clausen just outside the entrance to the diner. They were pretending not to notice Evie and Liddy Lou approaching, which immediately signaled to Liddy Lou that they were being gossiped about—after all, that’s what Hilde did best, and often.