Dark Chocolate Demise

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Can you help me wheel it to the front?” Mel asked. “I want to prop it up to help lure the zombies in.”

  “Great idea,” Al said. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Dom knew a guy,” she said. The brothers nodded. Among the seven DeLaura brothers, Dom, Sal, Ray, Joe, Paulie, Tony, and Al, they always “knew a guy.” Mel knew Joe kept tabs on his brothers and their flirtations with breaking the law. Although some of the DeLauras bent the rules a bit, for the most part they stayed within the law, mostly out of respect for Joe since he was a county attorney and all.

  When Mel went to grab a side of the coffin and help, Paulie and Al shooed her away, making it clear that they had it under control. Paulie popped out his real arm and handed her the fake to hold for him. Ish!

  Mel followed them, directing them to the spot where the coffin would get the most traffic. They locked the wheels on the little trailer, keeping the coffin safely propped up.

  “Is it stable enough?” Mel asked. “Marty is going to hang out in it and let people take pictures in it.”

  “Let me try,” Paulie said. He took his fake arm back and climbed into the coffin. He rested against the satin, clutching his fake arm to his chest. “How do I look?”

  “Horrible,” Al said. He screwed up his ghoulish features with a look of distaste. Then he reached forward and slammed the door shut on the coffin.

  “HEY!” Paulie shouted from inside, making it muffled but still discernable. The banging coming from inside started slow but quickly became panicked.

  Mel shot Al a reproving look before she lifted the lid on the coffin. Paulie came staggering out and fell to his knees. His free hand was clutching his throat and he was gasping for air.

  “I can’t breathe,” he wheezed.

  “Oh, Paulie, are you okay?” Mel asked and she hunkered beside him. “That was not nice, Al. You scared your brother half to death.”

  Al had the grace to look slightly abashed and he hung his head and mumbled, “Sorry.”

  Paulie snapped up straight. “I was not scared, not even a little. It was the lack of oxygen.”

  “Yeah, right,” Al said. He pushed his John Deere cap back on his head and gave his brother a skeptical look.

  “It was!” Paulie insisted.

  The two looked ready to brawl so Mel figured a change of topic was in order.

  “Have either of you heard from Joe?” she asked.

  If she’d hit them with a spray of ice water, she was pretty sure they wouldn’t have clenched up as much as they did at the name of the brother who had ripped her heart out.

  They exchanged a worried look and Al said, “Nope, haven’t seen him.”

  “Me neither,” Paulie said. He waved his fake arm at Mel as if to emphasize his words. “And you need not to be asking about him.”

  “Why not?” Mel asked. “His trial is in all of the papers and on the news. It’s not like I can avoid it.”

  “Well, you need to try,” Al said.

  “Yes, Joe was very clear that we need to keep you safe,” Paulie said. “And to do that, we shouldn’t talk about him with you at all ever.”

  “Oh, he said that, did he?” Mel asked.

  Al reached over and snatched Paulie’s fake arm and then whacked him over the head with it.

  “You are an idiot,” Al said. Then he handed the arm back.

  “Ouch! What did I say?” Paulie asked.

  “You just admitted that you’ve been in contact with him,” Mel said. “Now spill. When did you see him? What did he say? How does he look? Is he all right?”

  The brothers exchanged another look, and she was afraid they were going to clam up on her. She was desperate for news about Joe, as he’d cut ties with everyone at the bakery in order to keep them safe from the mobster case he was presently working on. It had been an excruciating few months for Mel, and she wasn’t about to let the brothers hold out on her now.

  “Please,” she said. She gave them her best sad puppy look. “Please just tell me how he is.”

  Four

  Paulie opened his mouth and then closed it. He didn’t know what to say and it showed.

  Mel tried to juice up her eyes a little. It wasn’t hard to do given how much she’d missed Joe over the past few months. In fact, the sob that made her throat constrict was barely manufactured at all.

  “Please . . .” she said.

  Al groaned and Paulie nodded. She knew she had them.

  “Brains! Brains! Brains!” Chanting voices interrupted Mel’s plea and she was shoved back when one particularly large zombie pushed her aside to get to the cupcake van. She was separated from Paulie and Al as the horde of zombies shambled forward.

  “Sorry, Mel, gotta go,” Al cried as he and Paulie dove into the horde, hiding from her.

  Mel glanced over her shoulder to see that the park was filling up with the undead. It appeared the walk was over and the festival had begun.

  Marty came shuffling back to the van, not that much of an act for him, and took up his post beside the coffin.

  “I got this,” he said as he climbed back into the coffin.

  When a group of teen zombies walked by, Marty reached out with a curled hand and grabbed one on the shoulder. The adolescent boy let out a yelp, which his friends thought was hilarious. Marty gestured for the youth to take his spot and prank the next group that came along. The teen jumped at the chance. Seeing that Marty had the front under control, Mel went back to stalking the brothers.

  If Al and Paulie thought they had escaped her, they were so very wrong. Mel circled the cupcake van where Tate, Angie, and Oz were doling out chocolate coffins, mummies, eyeballs, and brains. Judging by the crowd, it appeared even zombies would forgo brains for cupcakes. Good to know, if there ever was a true zombie apocalypse.

  She figured Paulie and Al had decided to blend with the crowd in an effort to hide from her. But she knew them too well. The lure of buttercream was their downfall, and sure enough, she found the two brothers hunkered down behind the van’s engine, trying to get Angie’s attention so they could score some cupcakes. Did they really think this wasn’t the first place Mel would look for them? Honestly, did they not know her at all?

  Mel strode forward and braced an arm on each side of the zombie brothers. “All right, you two, start talking.”

  Al hung his head while Paulie let out a yip of fright.

  “Mel, we can’t,” Al said. “First, Joe would kill us. Second, it really is too dangerous for you to have any contact with him. We love you like a sister; we can’t risk anything happening to you.”

  “Save it,” Mel said. “If you’ve seen him and nothing has happened to any of you, then I’ll be fine, too.”

  “Now we haven’t actually seen him,” Paulie said. “He won’t see any of us. He says it’s too dangerous.”

  “Then how have you been in contact with him?” Mel asked. The brothers were quiet. “Tony rigged something, didn’t he?”

  Al pursed his lips and began to whistle while studiously not looking at her. Paulie examined his fake arm as if he were a surgeon trying to figure out how to reattach it.

  “Angie!” Mel yelled.

  Angie poked her head out of the passenger side window of the front of the van. “Hey, there you are, we were wondering where you went. We could use a hand in here, you know.”

  Paulie held up his fake arm. “Here you go, Sis.”

  “You’ve been waiting for someone to open that door all day, haven’t you?” Al asked.

  Paulie nodded and grinned. “I can’t believe she said that. It was beautiful.”

  “I need two chocolate coffins,” Mel said. “Stat.”

  Angie frowned. “Why?”

  “I need to loosen some lips,” Mel said.

  Angie looked back at her brothers. Her eyes narrowed and she disappeared back i
nto the van. Instead of handing them through the window, Angie climbed out the driver’s side door and walked around.

  “Chocolate cake with chunks of chocolate mixed into the batter, a dark chocolate buttercream with a milk chocolate coffin perched on top,” Angie said as she studied the two cupcakes in her hands. “I think we should rename these the Rest in Peace cupcakes.”

  “Oh, I like that,” Mel said. “Did you know that chocolate releases endorphins? Studies show that even the smell of it makes you feel better.”

  She and Angie both took a sniff of the cupcakes and sighed.

  Al and Paulie looked as if they’d taken a punch to the gut.

  “Too bad we don’t know anyone with a weakness for chocolate,” Mel said.

  “Yeah, it’s a shame,” Angie agreed. “I’m sure they’d really enjoy these.”

  “Hey, now, you’re not playing fair,” Paulie protested. “We took a brothers’ oath, a vow that we can’t break. You have to respect that.”

  “You’re right,” Mel said. “You should put those back, Angie.”

  “Wah,” Paulie sniveled. “Come on, have a heart. It’s not our fault we can’t tell you that Tony has rigged up the bakery so Joe can monitor—”

  “You did not just say that!” Al interrupted.

  “Say what?” Paulie asked. Mel held out the cupcake to him, and his eyes lit up as he chomped a bite of cake and frosting. “Oh, man, this is your best cupcake yet.”

  “Details,” Angie said. She waved the cupcake under Al’s nose. “We need details.”

  “All right, all right,” Al said. “Paulie pretty much blabbed it all out anyway. Tony rigged up a camera system at the bakery so that the brothers could communicate with Joe and he could keep an eye on who came and went at the bakery in case there was anyone suspicious.”

  “Suspicious how?” Mel asked.

  “Like someone sent to do a hit,” Al said.

  He grabbed the cupcake from Angie and took a bite. Mel and Angie exchanged a look, and Mel wondered if she’d just gone as pale as Angie had.

  “What do you mean ‘sent to do a hit’?” Angie asked.

  Al looked at her while he chewed. “What do you think I mean?”

  “What about Mom and Dad and the rest of the family?” she asked. “Is he having all of us watched?”

  “Maybe,” Paulie said, which meant yes. “Oh, Joe did say that you make an adorable zombie chef, Mel, really cute.”

  For a moment Mel felt the same schoolgirl gushy mushy feeling inside that she always felt when Joe DeLaura’s name came up in conversation. Then like a soap bubble it popped.

  “Explain to me how this spying on me works exactly,” she said.

  Al and Paulie shook their heads.

  “We can’t,” Paulie protested. “Joe would kill us. Dead.”

  “Deader than dead,” Al said.

  “That’s nothing compared to what I’ll do if you don’t tell us,” Angie said.

  “What could you do?” Al scoffed.

  Angie took her cell phone out of the bodice of her dress and opened the images file. She tossed her veil back from her face as she studied the small screen. Finally, she found what she was looking for and she opened the picture, making it bigger.

  Mel glanced over her shoulder and bust into a belly laugh. “Is that . . . ? Oh, wow, that’s hilarious.”

  “So, help me, Alfonso DeLaura, you tell us how the system works, or I go live on your social media files and share this picture of you with the world.”

  “What picture?” Al asked.

  Angie turned the camera so he could see it. When he tried to grab it, she smacked his hand away.

  “No!” he cried. “Where did you get that?”

  Paulie looked over his brother’s shoulder and burst out laughing. “I remember that. Virginia Beach, summer of ’95. Ange wanted someone to play dress up with her, and she was so pitiful that you volunteered. Dude, you look horrible in a bikini and makeup. And, wow, your chest was hairy even when you were fourteen.”

  “Shut up!” Al yelled at his brother. Then he turned on Angie. “Delete that!”

  “Yeah, no,” she said. “I found it in Mom’s box of old photos and took a quick snap of it for exactly this reason.”

  “Blackmail?” Al asked. “That’s just heartless. You’re a cold woman, Angela Maria Lucia DeLaura.”

  Angie shrugged. “I can live with it. Start talking.”

  “Fine,” Al said. He gestured to Paulie. “Tell them.”

  “Why me?” Paulie asked. “She’s not blackmailing me.”

  “Everyone knows you’re the weak link in the DeLaura chain,” Al said. “Besides, you understand Tony’s gizmo better than I do.”

  “When the front window of the bakery got smashed a couple of months ago and we were doing cleanup, Tony took the opportunity to install some security cameras, monitoring the interior of the building and the perimeter. We’ve all been taking turns watching the feed. It’s not that hard when there are seven of you. Less than three and a half hours per day.”

  “You’ve been spying on us?” Angie accused.

  “No, just monitoring,” Al said. “The cameras don’t have sound, so it’s not like we could hear your conversations or anything.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Mel said. “Joe has been watching all of us for the past few months, even while telling us it was too dangerous to have any communication with us. How is it that he can communicate with you all?”

  “That was the ingenious part,” Al said. “Tony has us communicating using aliases on the Deep Web.”

  “The what?” Mel asked.

  “Tony would be better at explaining it,” Al said. “But essentially for the past ten years, searching the Internet is sort of like skimming the cream off of fresh milk. There is a lot more to the bottle of milk below the surface in the Deep Web, but it’s very tricky to access, so that’s what we’ve been using to communicate.”

  Mel looked at Angie. “Tony is like scary smart, isn’t he?”

  “Criminally,” she agreed. She looked back at her brothers. “So, is that all of it?”

  “Yeah,” Paulie said. “Ange, I think I deserve a second cupcake for spilling my guts.”

  Angie studied him for a second and then hoisted up her poufy skirts and climbed back into the van to get him one.

  “One of the brain ones, please,” Paulie called after her.

  “Why didn’t Joe tell us?” Mel asked. Her feelings of betrayal ran deep and right into rage. “He had no right!”

  Her mind was spinning. What if she had started dating? He would have seen it. If the bakery was wired, was her home as well? Was he watching her most intimate moments? Which had been a horrifying amount of midnight pizza eating and Carmen Miranda movies, because really, how could a gal not be cheered by a woman dancing with a basket of fruit on her head and a sausage and green olive pizza?

  “Relax,” Al said as if reading her mind. “It’s just the inside of the bakery and the exits. He was very clear that Tony stay out of your personal space. He’s only checking to make sure that whoever threw that brick through the front window a few months ago—you remember, that one that caused you to get four stitches—yeah, he wants to avoid that again.”

  Mel blew out a breath. Joe cared. That wasn’t a bad thing, right? She still cared, too. Then why was she hopping mad? Because he wasn’t playing fair. She had to worry about whether he’d be gunned down by bad guys day and night, but he was sitting back monitoring her every move.

  How much easier would the past few months have been if she could have checked a computer screen to see that he was okay? Lots. And why was it okay for him to communicate with his brothers on the Deep Web but not with her? No, this was unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.

  Angie came back bearing brain cupcakes, but Mel stepped
in between her and the brothers, blocking Angie’s path.

  “You can have the cupcakes,” Mel said. “But you have to make me a promise first.”

  Al and Paulie exchanged nervous glances.

  “That sort of depends upon what the promise is,” Al said.

  “It’s simple,” Mel said. “You tell Joe I want to talk to him. I don’t care if it’s on the Deep Web or in person, but tell him, I am going to talk to him or I am going to rip the cameras out of the bakery. Am I clear?”

  “Aw, man,” Paulie whined. “Joe’s going to kill us.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Mel said as she gestured to their outfits. “Since you’re already dead.”

  Five

  Looking decidedly morose, Al and Paulie took their cupcakes and disappeared into the crowd. Mel didn’t feel sorry for them. For the first time in weeks, her heart didn’t feel as if it were made out of lead, and she knew it was because one way or another she was going to get to talk to Joe.

  “You look entirely too happy to be dead or undead or whatever we are,” Tate said as he joined Mel and Angie.

  “I know, right?” Mel asked. She grinned at them, but they were not sharing her joy. Instead, they glared at each other, still caught up in their argument from earlier. Mel shook her head. “Oh, no. You are not going to keep squabbling about the maid of honor–best man wedding sitch. We’ll figure it out.”

  Angie and Tate did not look as if they were ready to unbend, but Mel was having none of it.

  “Come on,” she ordered. She looped an arm through each of theirs and tugged them together. “I can hear the band is starting up. Let’s get into the spirit of things, yes?”

  “Fine,” Angie grumbled.

  “Sure,” Tate said.

  “Marty, will you help Oz out in the van?” Mel asked as she moved around the van and peered into the coffin. “We’ll be right back. We’re just going to check out the band.”

  Marty was reclined against the blue satin, looking horrifyingly at home. Mel was afraid he was getting a wee bit too attached to the wooden box as he looked to be nodding off again.