Dark Chocolate Demise

by Jenn McKinlay

  “I can’t talk to you about Angie,” Mel said. “She would skin me, especially since you wrote that song about her. I know she was working her way towards forgiving you, but I’m not sure she’s there yet.”

  “That song went platinum,” Roach said with a shake of his head. “Most girls would fall in love with a guy for that.”

  “Angie is not most girls,” Mel said.

  “Don’t I know it,” Roach said.

  The look of sadness and longing in Roach’s eyes made Mel glance away. She looked at Manny and noticed he was looking at Roach with an understanding that made her distinctly uncomfortable.

  “Is there a specific reason you’re worried about Angie?” Mel asked.

  “You mean other than the fact that she’s the target of a murderer?” Roach asked.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Mel said.

  “Oh, come off it, Mel,” Roach chided her. “She was dressed as a zombie bride”—he paused as if choking on the words before continuing—“and the woman who was killed looked just like her.”

  “That woman’s husband is working a high-profile case with Joe DeLaura,” Mel said. “She could have been the target just as easily as Angie.”

  “Unless it was a crime of passion and the murderer is living with Angie right this very minute,” Roach said.

  “Don’t, Roach,” Mel said. “You know Tate is not the murderer.”

  “I know no such thing,” he said stubbornly. “Taylor could have been so enraged that I was going to win Angie back that he shot her.”

  “His name is Tate and you know it. And it would have been hard for Tate to shoot anyone as he was busy having a fistfight trying to protect Oz,” Mel said.

  “Details.” Roach waved a dismissive hand, and Mel rolled her eyes.

  “While we’re on the subject,” Manny said. He turned and glared at Roach. “You could have been so mad that Angie tossed you over for Tate, that you lost control of your emotions and shot Kristin thinking she was Angie.”

  Mel studied Manny’s face. He was definitely baiting Roach, trying to get a rise out of him.

  “Why would I shoot the woman I’m trying to get back?” Roach asked. “Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”

  “So, you are trying to get her back,” Mel said.

  “Not that it’s working,” Roach said. “But yeah, I’d like to have her back. What does she see in the buttoned-down suit? He’s got such a stick up his a—”

  “Tate is funny, kind, and hardworking,” Mel said. “And she’s been in love with him for years. Don’t mess this up for them when they are finally getting it together.”

  Manny cleared his throat, and Mel realized her little speech could have been to him about her and Joe. Did he think it was about her and Joe? She felt her face get warm. Was it possible to die of embarrassment? Sadly, she had never heard any such reports on the news.

  “I don’t want to mess it up for her,” Roach insisted. “But I’m worried. Jimbo my manager said that the case her brother is trying involves Frank Tucci. That guy is bad news.”

  “What do you know about him?” Manny asked. He had his cop face on.

  “Same as everyone else,” Roach said with a shrug. “He’s a made guy with the mob, an untouchable.”

  “Not for long,” Mel said. A burst of pride flooded her as she thought about Joe putting it all out there to take on the notorious mobster.

  Roach tossed back his hair and looked at her. “Joe has to win, Mel.”

  “I know,” she said. Suddenly, she regretted all of the things she hadn’t said to Joe last night, like how proud she was of him, and she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever get the chance.

  “Will you do me a favor?” Roach asked.

  Mel looked at him. Gone was his rock star veneer. Instead he just looked like a guy hung up on a girl. Boy, could she relate.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Tell Angie I said to be careful,” he said. Then he paused and blew out a breath. “No, tell her I asked her to be careful.”

  “I can do that,” Mel said with a smile.

  “She really loves him?” Roach asked.

  “Completely,” Mel said.

  Roach stood, letting out a heavy sigh. The others rose as well.

  “Come on, I’ll walk you out,” Manny said.

  Roach nodded. He opened his arms and Mel didn’t hesitate. She gave him a big hug. Roach kissed the top of her hair.

  “Be careful,” he said.

  “Hard not to be when I’ve got my own security detail,” Mel said.

  She watched as the door shut behind Roach and Manny. She wondered if she should text Angie about Roach’s visit. She glanced at the clock. It was late. There wasn’t much point in bothering her friend right now. Plus she didn’t want to be the cause of friction between Angie and Tate; better to tell Angie in person when Tate wasn’t around.

  If Tate had sent Roach packing when he showed up at Angie’s house, it might not sit well with Angie even though Mel knew it was just Tate being protective. Sort of like Joe having Manny babysit her. She didn’t like it, was surprised by his choice, but knew that it meant he would do anything to keep her safe.

  When Manny returned, Mel couldn’t help but ask, “You don’t think he had anything to do with Kristin’s murder, do you?”

  “No,” he said. “Even if we ran with the theory that he mistook Kristin for Angie and in some crazy crime of passion decided that if he couldn’t have her no one else could, Roach’s alibi checks out. Plus, by all accounts, he doesn’t even know which end of a gun to point, never mind how to shoot someone from a distance in a crowd.”

  “So Kristin was shot from a distance?” Mel asked.

  Manny blew out a breath. “I didn’t mean to tell you that. I’m not talking to you anymore.”

  He sat back down at the small table and studied his laptop. He punched keys with his big fingers, and Mel got the feeling he wasn’t working so much as avoiding her. Maybe now that the Roach buffer and Stan buffer were gone, and since they’d had their little heart-to-heart, things were officially weird between them. Well, Mel wasn’t going to let that stop her.

  “At their wedding I remember someone telling me that Kristin was an accountant in a local firm,” Mel said. “Could she have enemies of her own? Could it be that the shooting has nothing to do with Tucci or Angie or any of us?”

  “What part of ‘I am not talking to you about this’ do you not understand?” he asked.

  Twenty

  Mel frowned at him and sank onto her futon. There was so much she didn’t understand about this whole situation. She couldn’t help feeling that if she just had more information, she could figure out if Angie had really been the target.

  The pictures of Frank Tucci’s known associates had done nothing for her. She didn’t recognize any of them as regulars in the bakery or from the zombie walk. Still, now she had names. She could look in the bakery records and see if she’d ever done a custom order for any of these guys. If she had, it would make more sense that there might be a tie to the bakery other than the one time she had delivered cupcakes to Frank and Mickey’s.

  Of course, there was no way that she was going to tell Manny what she was thinking. Joe, Stan, and Manny were being overprotective as it was, Tate and the brothers were the same with Angie, and now Roach was neurotic as well. As far as she and Angie went, they were hip deep in men with no answers. This really didn’t work for Mel. And Manny tapping away on his laptop while she slept wasn’t going to work for her, either.

  How could Joe not know how weird this was? Did he think now that she’d agreed to give him another chance she was immune to the detective? Or did it just signify that he trusted her completely? That was so Joe, it made her smile.

  Then she thought about spending a night alone with Manny in her apartment,
and she was sure Joe was out of his mind. Did he think she was made of stone?

  “I can’t sleep,” she said. “I’m going down to the bakery to restock the many cupcakes that the brothers ate today.”

  “You’re going down to bake now?” Manny asked.

  “No time like the present,” she said.

  “Is this because I’m here?” he asked.

  Mel thought about lying, but really what was the point? He knew her too well.

  “Yes,” she said. “How am I supposed to sleep with you in the room? It’s just . . . weird.”

  Manny gave her a lopsided smile. “That’s what a guy wants to hear.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  “I do,” he said. “Look, you won’t even know I’m here. I’m reviewing all of the camera footage we collected from the zombie walk via security cameras and cell phones in an effort to find something, anything that gives us a clue as to who shot our victim. It’ll take hours and I promise I won’t make a sound.”

  “Good thing you can do that down in the bakery,” Mel said. “You can sit out front with Captain Jack while I work in the kitchen.”

  Manny rubbed his jaw and stared at her. Then he smiled. It was a slow smile that started at one corner of his mouth and slid across his lips with the same brilliance and promise of a sunrise.

  Mel swallowed. “What?”

  “You’re afraid to be alone with me,” he said.

  “Pah!” Mel scoffed but she could feel the heat in her face and knew she was blushing. She grabbed a sweatshirt off of the hook by the back door and yanked it over her head. “I am not.”

  Her sweatshirt got stuck and she knew her words were lost as she tried to wrestle the stupid thing on. She felt a pair of hands tug on the hem of her sweatshirt, and when her head popped through the neck hole it was to find Manny standing very close, smiling down at her.

  “What was that?” he asked. “I couldn’t hear you.”

  “I am not afraid to be alone with you,” she said. She didn’t meet his eyes. “I simply have a lot of work to do and, thanks to Roach’s visit, a raging case of adrenaline-induced insomnia.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “Come on, Jack.” She made kissy noises and Jack scampered to the door. He loved it when Mel went down to the bakery at night. He shot out the door and down the stairs right to the kitchen entrance of the bakery. Mel followed with Manny right behind her, his laptop under his arm.

  Mel switched on the kitchen light and locked the back door behind them.

  “I don’t let Jack run around the kitchen while I’m baking,” she said. She offered Manny a cupcake to take into the front of the bakery with him. “Can you keep him entertained out front?”

  “Sure, come on little fella,” he said. “You sure you don’t want us in here with you?”

  “Yes,” Mel said. Mostly, she needed to put some space between herself and Manny for her own peace of mind, but also she didn’t let Jack hang out in the kitchen when she was cooking. “Cat hair.”

  Manny nodded. He double-checked the back door and the inside shutters, which Mel closed every night to keep the bakery secure.

  “No one can see in through these,” he said. “If you hear anything, or even if you just get a funky feeling, call me.”

  “Will do,” she said.

  He stood in the kitchen and assessed the room one more time. Finally, with a nod, he and Jack disappeared through the swinging doors into the front of the bakery.

  Mel had to admit that having him here made her feel much more at ease than she would have felt alone. She quickly gathered her ingredients for a batch of Cookies and Cream cupcakes. She preheated her convection oven and got out her industrial-sized cupcake pan that baked thirty-six.

  She wondered how Angie was doing. Then she thought about the brothers. Good grief. Would tomorrow bring more of the same? She didn’t know if she could handle that. Then she wondered what Joe had to say about his brothers’ job as bodyguards. She could only imagine how he must have felt if he sent Manny here for the graveyard shift.

  She wondered how Joe was feeling about his case. Then she wondered how Scott Streubel was doing. She whisked her dry ingredients while her wet ingredients were beating in her large mixer. Slowly she added her dry ingredients to the bigger bowl. She watched as the beaters churned the cupcake batter until it was smooth.

  Once it was finished, she grabbed a clean ice cream scoop and used it to plop the batter into the paper liners in the cupcake pan. Using the scoop kept the amounts uniform so that all of the cupcakes were the same size.

  She slid the pan into the oven and set the timer. While those baked, she whipped up a batch of buttercream frosting with crushed Oreo cookies in it. She thought about poking her head through the door and checking on Manny, but she knew he had to work. She wondered how looking at endless footage of the zombie walk was going for a guy who didn’t like zombies.

  She was curious but not enough to engage him in conversation. She knew playing with fire often led to third-degree burns, and she had no desire to be scorched.

  None of this would matter if she and Joe were together. Heck, if she and Joe were together, Manny wouldn’t even be here. That sort of made her feel bad, which made her confused, so she shook it off and focused on the task in front of her. She put aside the frosting and prepped another batch of cupcakes, using another industrial cupcake pan.

  The goopy texture of the batter reminded Mel of her personal life, which was a mess and as far as she could tell there was absolutely nothing she could do about it; not even shoving it in a three-hundred-and-fifty-degree oven to bake would help. Darn it. Why couldn’t relationships be as simple as cooking?

  Baking was simple science. Flour and eggs were the foundation of the cake, which was moistened by the fat and sugar. For a perfect cupcake, all Mel needed to do was mind the ratio of foundation to moistness. Why couldn’t relationships be this simple? Too much flour and eggs, and the cake was tough and dry. Too much fat and sugar, and the cake was soupy and wouldn’t set.

  She felt like maybe her relationship with Joe had too much fat and sugar since they couldn’t seem to get it set. Hmm. Joe did have a legendary sweet tooth; maybe there was more to her theory than she realized.

  Ugh. She shook her head. She wasn’t going to think about it anymore. Instead, she thought about all she’d learned about the case Joe was working on. He’d refused to talk to her about any of it, determined to keep her as far away from it as possible.

  Fine. Whatever. She had more information now than she had since the whole nightmare began. She walked by the swinging kitchen doors to see Manny sitting in a booth, looking at his laptop, while Captain Jack played hockey with the crinkled-up cupcake wrapper from Manny’s lemon cupcake.

  Since they both seemed occupied, she thought this might be a good time to see if any of Tucci’s thugs were in her customer file.

  She stepped into her tiny office, which was formerly the supply closet. She switched on her desktop computer and waited. The sound the computer made once it was fully functional made her cringe. She hoped Manny hadn’t heard it. But so what if he had? She would just say she was looking up a cupcake recipe.

  Wait, why did she have to explain herself at all? So what if she wanted to look through her customer files. Surely, that wasn’t a crime, right? Okay, even Mel could see she was already too defensive. She blamed it on the exhaustion hovering around her brain, making her grumpy.

  She opened her customer file on her desktop. Since she had first opened Fairy Tale Cupcakes, she had meticulously collected the mailing addresses of all of her special order customers. They were alphabetic by name, so checking to see if any of Tucci’s thugs had placed an order with the bakery should be pretty snappy.

  She scrolled through the list, jumping through the alphabet by clicking on the letter of the alphabet that
corresponded with the thug’s last name. Of course, for Tommy the Knuckle, she was out of luck, as she seriously doubted that he had done business with the bakery using his nickname, and Manny hadn’t told her his real name.

  She was almost done with her list when the oven timer went off. She went out to grab her first batch of cupcakes before they were burnt. She slid the next batch into the oven and paused by the kitchen door to check on Manny and Jack.

  Manny had shifted so that he was leaning back in the booth. He had Captain Jack in his arms, and the two of them looked to be half-asleep. Mel figured she’d better get them a pillow and blanket. Manny could say he was going to stay up all night, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to need a power nap.

  Since Mel was prone to pulling all-nighters, using her office to take quick catnaps, she kept a couple of pillows and fluffy blankets in the cupboard in her office. She retrieved her favorite Strawberry Shortcake pillow and fleece blankie and brought them out to Manny.

  He glanced from his computer screen to her and back. He tapped a button on the keypad and looked at her.

  “Tell me that is not for me,” he said.

  “Okay, it’s not for you, it’s for Captain Jack,” she said. “It gets chilly in here at night; you might want to keep warm, er, that is, keep Captain Jack warm.”

  Manny took the pillow and tucked it behind his head while pulling the big blanket over his lap.

  “Okay, but just for Jack,” he said. “You seriously don’t have anything more manly than this?”

  “Sorry, no,” she said.

  Manny rubbed Jack’s ears. “Don’t worry about it, buddy, it’ll be our secret, and next time I see you, I’ll hook you up with a cool Avengers blanket. I promise.”

  Mel turned away before he caught her smiling. Honestly, she could have given him the Spider-Man blanket that Tate kept in the office for his power naps, but what would be the fun in that?