Dying for Devil's Food

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Hmph.” Marty picked up his mop and snagged the speaker off of the shelf. “I’ll be in front, finishing up.”

  “Make sure the shades are down; you don’t want to scare off any passersby,” Angie called after him. She was grinning, so Mel knew she was teasing.

  Marty looked over his shoulder at her with one bushy gray eyebrow raised, and then with a wicked twinkle in his eye, he did the floss again. Angie laughed as the door swung shut after him.

  “What are you making for tomorrow’s special?” Mel asked Oz. She looked at the cupcakes in the tray but didn’t recognize them as one of their regular flavors.

  “Pineapple Upside-­Down Cupcakes,” Oz said.

  He grabbed a bowl from the table and then sprinkled brown sugar on the tops of the cupcakes, which Mel noticed had pineapple rings and cherries baked into the top. Then he took a kitchen torch and caramelized each pineapple.

  “Ah, the smell of burnt sugar,” Joe said. His sweet tooth was legendary and he began to look at the cupcakes Oz was working on like a hawk circling a ground squirrel.

  “Oz, you’ve outdone yourself,” she said. “Those look amazing.”

  “Thanks.” He beamed. He looked at Joe and said, “You can have one. One. After I frost them.”

  “Sweet!” Joe said. Then he turned on his heel and went over to the walk-­in cooler where they stored the cupcakes overnight.

  Tate and Angie joined him and Mel watched as Oz took out two more trays of cupcakes and repeated the sugar and torch technique. The smell of cooking pineapple almost made her dizzy. Once he was finished, Oz headed over to their industrial mixer to start up a huge batch of vanilla buttercream.

  Joe returned to the table, sitting on the end away from the cupcakes. He gestured for Mel to join him and she took the seat by his side. He put a s’mores cupcake in front of her and Mel remembered, again, why she was marrying this man. He knew what she needed when she needed it. She could look the whole world over and never find a man that in tune to her.

  Oz looked from the cupcake to Mel and back to the cupcake. “Uh oh, s’mores. You only eat those when you’re upset. What happened at the reunion?”

  “What didn’t happen?” Angie answered with a question as she and Tate joined them at the table.

  “Bullies?” Oz asked. He’d had his own share of bullying to contend with when Mel had first met him. It was one of their bonds. The love of cupcake baking hadn’t sat well with Oz’s peers, but Oz had persevered as all heroes of their own stories do.

  “Yeah, there was some of that,” Mel said. She gave him a rueful look and bit into her cupcake.

  Oz studied her for a second and then glanced at Joe. “So, did you knock him out?”

  “Huh?” Joe asked. “How did you—­?”

  “Your knuckles,” Oz said. He turned away from the table and went to the small freezer they kept in the corner. He dumped some ice into a towel and brought it back for Joe.

  “Thanks,” Joe said. He plopped the towel on his hand and used the other hand to eat his cupcake. He’d gone all in on a margarita cupcake, with a chocolate cupcake chaser.

  Oz turned back to Mel. “You okay?”

  “Better than Cassidy Havers-­Griffin at any rate,” she said.

  Oz’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Wasn’t she the mean girl? What happened to her?” He glanced at Joe. “You didn’t punch her, did you?”

  “No,” Joe said. “I would never.”

  “It’s actually worse than that. She died,” Mel said. “Right there at the reunion.”

  “What? Hold on,” Oz said. He shook his head and fished his wallet out of his pants pocket. He took a five out and opened the door and called into the bakery, “You won.”

  “I did?” Marty slid into the open door with his hand out. “Hot dog!”

  Oz slapped the bill into Marty’s outstretched hand.

  “Wait! You two had a bet?” Mel asked.

  Both of them looked at her and then Oz shrugged. “It’s been months since anything bad happened, we figured you were due. I just didn’t think it would be tonight.”

  “I did,” Marty said. “So, what happened?”

  “A mean girl from our graduating class died,” Angie said. “We don’t know how yet. Mel found her in the ladies’ room, sprawled out on a couch. Some people think she had a heart attack but I’d argue that’s impossible since she didn’t have one.” They all looked at her in varying levels of horror. “Sorry, too soon?”

  “A bit,” Joe said. “No matter how awful she was, you really shouldn’t talk about her like that, especially given that Mel is the one who found her and the police are looking at this as a possible homicide.”

  “But she was the worst, a total nightmare,” Angie protested. “And I still don’t regret cutting off all of her hair.”

  Tate burst out laughing. “I remember that! She had headphones on in language lab and when you heard her trash talk me, you cut off all of her hair in the back and she didn’t know it until after class.”

  “I thought she was going to murder you,” Mel said. “She had to get all of her hair cut to even it out.”

  “She deserved it,” Angie said. “She was so nasty. Remember when she pretended to be bisexual and joined the gay and lesbian club at school just so she could out whoever attended in the school paper? I mean she actually printed their names even after an oath of privacy. She really messed up some lives there.”

  “Oh, that was awful,” Mel agreed. “Then she tried to pretend that naming them in the school paper was her First Amendment right. One of the boys, Tommy Handler, was kicked out by his parents because of her reveal.”

  “What happened to him?” Tate asked.

  “I know this one,” Joe said. “He’s a law professor at Stanford, specializing in the first amendment. We attended the same law school and, although he was younger than me, our paths crossed in a few classes. He’s brilliant.”

  “Huh,” Mel said. “Well, that’s one way to turn the bullying around.”

  “Sounds like this gal had a lot of enemies,” Marty said. He leaned close to watch Oz pipe his fresh vanilla buttercream onto a cupcake. His pupils practically dilated when Oz put a stemmed maraschino cherry on top.

  Oz turned to glare at him. “Back up. You already took my five bucks, stay away from my cupcakes.”

  “If I lick it, can I have it?” Marty asked. He batted his eyelids at Oz, who did not look amused.

  “Here.” Oz handed him the freshly decorated cupcake. “Now shoo.”

  Marty plopped down on the empty stool on the other side of Mel. “So, given all of the people who hated this old classmate of yours, who do you think had the most reason to do her in?”

  “No idea,” Mel said. “Unfortunately only one of them found her. Me.”

  Seven

  “Well, that’s just bad luck, isn’t it?” Marty said. “It doesn’t mean you had anything to do with her death.”

  “Normally, it wouldn’t,” Mel said.

  Oz lowered the piping bag. Joe reached for one of the fresh cupcakes and so did Tate.

  “What do you mean ‘normally’?” Oz asked.

  “Well, I found Cassidy with her lipstick in one hand and a cupcake in the other,” Mel said. “I thought she was sleeping it off and tried to sneak back out.”

  “Had the cupcake been eaten?” Tate asked.

  “It looked like she’d taken a bite,” Mel said. “But the lighting was dim in there. I couldn’t be sure. I just wanted to get out of there before she lit into me again.”

  “But?” Marty asked.

  “But before I could leave two other women showed up,” Mel said. “Brittany and Lianne. Lianne is a nurse and she’s the one who determined that Cassidy was dead.”

  “Well, that doesn’t mean any—­” Angie began but Mel held up her hand in a wait-­for-­i
t gesture.

  “I didn’t get a chance to tell you this before, but in one of the bathroom stalls, it looks like Cassidy had been using her lipstick to write something.”

  “What?” Tate and Angie asked in unison.

  “I mean, it could be anything,” Mel said. She glanced at Joe. As if sensing an impending meltdown, he put his arm around her and pulled her close.

  “Whatever it was, she didn’t finish,” he said. “But the beginning was the letters M . . . E . . . L.”

  “What?” Angie’s eyes went round. “Why didn’t you tell us this? What do you think she was writing?”

  “Honestly, I was hoping it was melody or meliorate, but probably she was going to use her old nickname for me—­Melephant. Then who knows what she would have added? I know she was furious with Danny for dancing with me, and I’m sure in her mind it was all my fault.”

  “Melephant?” Marty asked. Two red spots of color darkened his cheekbones. “Who are her parents? You get them on the phone with me right now. They have some explaining to do about that daughter of theirs, and I am just the one to hold them accountable. I will not tolerate bullying.”

  Mel smiled at him. “Aw, I appreciate it, Marty, I do, but her parents are getting the worst news of their lives right now, assuming they are still around. I actually feel really sorry for them.”

  “Me, too,” Angie said. “And even if she was writing something mean about you, I don’t think you have to worry about the police looking at you when so many people hated her, and I mean really, really hated her.”

  Joe’s cell phone chimed and he pulled it out of his jacket pocket and looked at it. He glanced up at Mel and said, “Stan.”

  She nodded at him, knowing that there was only one reason Stan would be calling Joe. He pressed accept and lifted the phone to his ear.

  “Joe here,” he said. There was a rumble on the other end that Mel recognized as Uncle Stan’s baritone. She was trying to determine if it was a happy grumble or an unhappy grumble, when Joe interrupted. “I don’t care if they found Mel’s fingerprints on a murder weapon with the handle still poking out of the victim’s chest. She had nothing to do with this and you know it.”

  Mel glanced at Angie. Joe sounded angry. Joe never got angry. He was the DeLaura family mediator, born smack dab in the middle of the seven brothers. He was the keeper of the peace and as such never lost it. Never.

  “Well, you can tell Tara that I said no, absolutely not. I am not bringing Mel in for a lie detector test or anything else,” he said.

  Mel could hear Stan’s voice rise on the other end of the phone. He was not happy with Joe or the conversation or both.

  “I know you know she’s innocent,” Joe said. “But I’d be remiss as her fiancé if I let her be put in a situation that might adversely impact her later so, no, no lie detector test, not unless you can come up with a hell of a better reason than her finding Cassidy first and some scribbles with a lipstick.”

  There was a long pause. Mel noticed that everyone in the kitchen had stopped moving as they listened to Joe’s conversation.

  “I know we’re on the same side,” Joe said. “Sorry I got testy.” There was another pause and then Joe laughed and said, “Coming from you, I take that as high praise. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  He ended the call and pocketed his phone. He reached for his cupcake but Mel grabbed the plate and moved it out of range before he could get it.

  “Whoa, there, big fella,” she said. “Explain that first.”

  “Not much to explain,” he said. “Tara was pushing hard for you to come in for a lie detector test but Stan was balking. He called me so that I could say no and he couldn’t be accused of favoritism since you’re his niece.”

  “Do they have a reason to believe that she was murdered?” Mel asked.

  “The medical examiner is running a tox screen,” Joe said. “He seems to think she died from a heart attack but her husband, Daniel Griffin, says that she had no medical history of a heart condition. In fact, he says she was very fit since she was compulsive about working out.”

  This did not surprise Mel at all.

  “Early­ to mid-­thirties is awfully young to have a heart attack,” Angie said.

  “Unless someone helped her to have one,” Tate said.

  “And I’m their chief suspect because I found her,” Mel said.

  “Well, that and the fact that it looks like she was writing your name just before she died,” Joe said. Mel knew she must have looked upset, because Joe forgot about the cupcake and hugged her instead. “Try not to worry. Uncle Stan is on top of the investigation and none of us are going to let you get busted for a crime you didn’t commit.”

  “Except for Tara, who would love to have me behind bars, permanently,” Mel said. She looked at Joe. “Then she could make a play for you without me in the way.”

  He shook his head at her. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll spend my life proving you’re innocent if I have to. I’m a one-­woman man, cupcake, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

  “Good, because we need to stop by the station so I can take a lie detector test,” she said.

  “What?” Joe cried. “No, absolutely not. As your fiancé and your attorney I have to say no, as in no, no way, no how.”

  “But this is the only way I can remove myself at least partially from suspicion,” Mel said. “Won’t it make Uncle Stan’s job a heck of a lot easier if I pass a polygraph?”

  “Yes, but this isn’t about—­”

  “Yes, it is,” Mel said. “Everyone is going to believe I killed her. I have to do this not just for Uncle Stan but for me, too.”

  Joe heaved and sigh and hugged her close. “For the record, I hate this.”

  “I know.”

  * * *

  “This isn’t going to zap me or anything, is it?” Mel asked.

  “Only if you lie,” Don Jenkins, the polygraph operator, said. His voice was terse.

  Mel glanced down at the equipment and then back up at him.

  “I’m joking,” he said. He didn’t look like he was joking.

  Don had arrived shortly after Mel and Joe. Uncle Stan had been resistant to Mel taking the polygraph test but when Mel insisted and Detective Martinez looked thrilled, Uncle Stan called in Don—­his favorite examiner. Don was wearing a bright orange and blue Hawaiian shirt, untucked over a pair of jeans, and Birkenstocks. He looked as if he’d thrown his clothes on and rushed out the door, not even bothering to run a comb through his thick white hair. Uncle Stan, who was standing in the corner of the small exam room with Joe, was watching them with his usual roll of antacid tablets clutched in his fist. They were both staring at Mel with matching expressions of not happy. She gave them a little finger wave.

  It was late. They were all tired but Mel knew there was no way she was going to be able to sleep tonight with the whiff of murderer hanging over her like a bad smell. She hadn’t harmed Cassidy and if taking a polygraph would get Detective Martinez—and anyone else who thought she did it—off her back she was all in.

  She tried to ignore the tubes strapped around her chest, the cuff on her right arm, and the sensors wrapped around the fingers of her left hand. She was afraid to breathe, move, or scratch any part that itched, which at the moment felt like her entire body.

  “Sorry you had to come in so late,” Mel said. She tried to meet Don’s gaze but he was fussing with the computer monitor in front of him. When he did finally turn toward her, one white eyebrow rose above his black framed glasses and he said, “Really?”

  “Yes,” Mel said. Don looked back at the monitor and she felt herself panic, wondering if what she’d said had just registered as a lie. She started to freak out.

  Her expression must have mirrored her thoughts because he looked suddenly sympathetic and said, “Relax, Mel. Remember what we talked about in our pre-­in
terview. You’re going to do just fine. I promise.”

  Mel relaxed against the cushion they’d put on her seat. She could do this. She hadn’t done anything wrong. All she had to do was tell the truth.

  She glanced at Stan and Joe. They both smiled but the smiles didn’t reach their eyes, and she could tell they were concerned. Not that they thought she committed murder, she knew, but that this test wasn’t going to help her in the end. Polygraphs had been proven faulty before, but Mel couldn’t live with the possibility that anyone might think she’d murdered Cassidy, so it was a chance she was willing to take.

  “Ready to start?” Don asked.

  “Fire away,” Mel said. She was going for levity but he didn’t smile. She stifled a sigh.

  “What is your name?”

  “Melanie Cooper.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Scottsdale, Arizona.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “Cupcake baker,” she said.

  Don glanced between her and the monitor as he asked the questions. His voice was calm; it matched his Hawaiian-­shirt-­hippie vibe, and Mel realized that this was probably why he was so good at this job. He managed to make her feel relaxed even though there was a part of her that was completely traumatized by the mere idea that she was taking a lie detector test.

  The questions were all very basic. Mel glanced at Joe and saw him studying the computer monitor. She wondered if he knew how to read the results of a polygraph test. She couldn’t tell by his expression, which made her feel anxious. She glanced away, not wanting to taint her test results.

  “Did you attend your high school reunion tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you speak with Cassidy Havers-­Griffin?”

  “Yes.”

  Mel kept her voice calm and steady. She could feel her heart rate increase and she felt a little sweaty but, surely, that was normal when talking about a murder. Don asked what felt like a million details about the reunion. Mel tried to keep all of the emotion out of her responses.