The Cakes of Wrath (A Piece of Cake Mystery)

by Brady, Jacklyn

  “Very funny,” Sparkle said with a frown. “I’m just saying that Estelle might be right. We should all be careful.”

  Isabeau frowned thoughtfully as she crossed the room for a mixing bowl. “Wouldn’t it be weird if the two things were related somehow? Like, I don’t know, like if somebody is trying to get rid of Moose and Destiny for some reason?”

  Ox turned to give her a warning glare. “Do not go there.”

  “I’m just saying it would be weird,” Isabeau countered. “Does anybody hate the two of them?”

  Okay. I’ll admit the question intrigued me. “Not that I know of. But as far as I know, nobody hates me either, yet several people have said the van looked like it was trying to hit me.”

  Estelle gave Ox and Dwight a stern look. “See?” As if my comment proved her point. “What if Isabeau is right? What if somebody has it in for Moose and Destiny? What if Moose is still in danger? Somebody ought to warn him.”

  “Somebody should keep her nose out of other people’s business.” Ox was speaking to Estelle, but he looked right at me. “It’s none of our concern.”

  “How can you say that?” Isabeau demanded. “This whole thing started when somebody tried to kill Rita. They could still be after her. I think that makes it our business.”

  Ox disagreed, and said so in no uncertain terms. But the conversation started me thinking. What if they were right? What if someone had tried to kill me with those prescriptions? What if Moose really was in danger? Even after the conversation moved on to safer topics, I was still chewing on the idea. I knew I was going to have to do something, but I couldn’t just walk away from work. I finally finished my petunias for the Oakes baptism cake, and then spent the afternoon tinting fondant a pale shade of blue, rolling it out until it was barely an eighth-inch thick, and then cutting a hundred ovals with a cookie cutter. Tomorrow, I would attach the medallions to all three layers of the cake and add detailing to the petunias, and do some piping work, but overall I was pleased with my progress and glad that, in spite of everything, I’d managed to catch up. That would show Ox how focused I was!

  At seven that evening, I locked up behind the rest of the staff, after looking up Moose’s home address in the Magnolia Square Business Alliance directory. I was reluctant to intrude on their grief so soon, but I felt I owed Moose something for saving my life. I couldn’t just let him walk around oblivious to the possibility of danger.

  The Hazens lived in a small white frame house in a depressed neighborhood off Opelousas. Cars lined both sides of the street and yellowing lawns sat border to border with yards overgrown with weeds. I spotted their house easily, thanks to the two motorcycles in the driveway and a third on the lawn. This neighborhood was more similar to the one I’d grown up in than the one I lived in now, but my inherited Mercedes was out of place. I nosed it into an empty spot a block from the house and walked back.

  My bruises had faded a bit and so had some of the stiffness and swelling, but that didn’t mean I looked ready to go out in public. The surreptitious glances I got from two middle-aged women chatting at the end of a driveway made that abundantly clear.

  Now that I was here, I started having second thoughts about my plan. Maybe I should keep my nose out of it. Maybe Winslow would warn Moose to be careful. Or maybe he’d warn him to be careful of me. I had a negative gut feeling about Winslow, and I’d learned to listen when my gut started talking.

  Taking a deep breath for courage, I climbed the steps and rang the bell. I heard voices, and a few seconds later, Scotty Justus opened the door. His graying ponytail was lopsided and his yellow Hawaiian print shirt and khaki shorts seemed oddly cheerful for a man whose daughter had just died.

  His looked me over with grief-glazed eyes. “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know if you remember me,” I said. “I’m Rita Lucero. I run the cake shop just down the street from the Chopper Shop. I’m the one who . . .”

  Scotty dipped his head slightly. “I know who you are. You found Destiny this morning. What do you want?”

  All the openings I’d practiced on my way across town evaporated in the face of his anger and pain. “I—I just wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss. I know you must be devastated.”

  Scotty gave me an odd look. “Yeah, you could say that. Look, I’m sure you mean well but this isn’t really a good time.”

  He was right. I shouldn’t have come. I stammered an apology and turned to go as Zora swept up behind him and came to my rescue. I was surprised to see her there, especially after the way she’d talked about Destiny at the alliance meeting, but Scotty seemed comfortable with her, so who was I to judge?

  She’d changed out of the blue tie-dye and now wore plain black slacks with a flower print shirt. Her hair was held back by a couple of mismatched barrettes. “Goodness, Scotty, don’t keep Rita standing outside on the porch all evening.” She nudged him out of the way and ushered me inside to a small kitchen. Moose sat at the table in front of a spiral pad filled with notes and numbers.

  I couldn’t read the notations, but I knew what they were. Death is not only emotionally devastating, it’s also a lot of work. There are calls to make and people to notify. Travel plans to coordinate and a funeral to organize. The obituary to write and countless forms to fill out. I guess it’s a good thing, in a strange way. Having something to do can keep grief from swallowing your mind whole.

  Moose held his head in both hands, his pain palpable even from a distance. Zora motioned me toward a chair across from him. Scotty stalked to the fridge for a beer.

  Zora sent Scotty a fond smile and put a hand on Moose’s shoulder as she passed. “It was sweet of you to come by, Rita,” she said. “Especially considering everything you’ve been through the past couple of days. How are you feeling?”

  What could I say to that? I was alive. That just about said it all. “I’m fine,” I said softly. “I just wanted to come by and offer my condolences.”

  Moose’s eyes flickered up. Scotty uncapped his beer.

  Zora smiled and said, “I’m sure they both appreciate that. I know I do. I was just about to make a pitcher of sweet tea. Can I interest you in a glass?”

  I didn’t want her to go to any trouble, but a glass of tea would give me something to do and a reason to stay until I could warn Moose. “That would be nice. Thank you.”

  “Not a problem.” Zora set about putting a kettle on the stove and filling a pitcher with ice. “This has been the craziest few days, hasn’t it? First the accident with you and Moose, and now Destiny. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  Scotty scratched at the label on his beer, peeling little strips of it and tossing them onto the table. “That makes two of us.” He let out a heavy sigh and locked eyes with me. “I know one thing, though. You never should’ve given her those pills. If you hadn’t, she might not have overdosed.”

  I blinked in surprise. “But I didn’t give them to her! That prescription disappeared from my office Tuesday afternoon.”

  A deep frown creased Moose’s face. “Are you accusing Destiny of stealing them?”

  Well . . . yeah. But faced with their sorrow, I thought it best to keep my suspicions to myself. “I don’t know who took them,” I said. “Destiny came by to help with the collection, just like we talked about. She wasn’t feeling well, so I told her to go home and promised her she could help with something else. After she left, I realized the pills were missing, but I didn’t see her take them or anything. Have the police determined they’re what killed her?”

  Zora shook her head and again answered for Moose and Scotty. “We don’t know what happened yet. There will be an autopsy, but all signs point to an overdose.”

  Moose grunted and slid down on his tailbone. “She didn’t steal those pills, you know. She’d changed. Cleaned up. That last time in rehab—” His voice caught and he dropped his gaze again. “Those old issues were finally behind her.”

  I looked at Zora and Scotty for their reactions to that. Scotty’s expre
ssion gave nothing away, but I suspected that Zora knew the truth. She shook her head almost imperceptibly, so I thought she must have seen my surprise. Even though I’d been vague about her addiction yesterday, I wasn’t so sure that keeping the truth from Destiny’s family would be a kindness. It would come out eventually. But Zora knew the men better than I did, so I deferred to her judgment.

  “Look,” Scotty said. “It’s no secret Destiny used to have trouble with drugs and alcohol. She struggled with addiction for a long time, mostly because of how her mother raised her. In a way, I blame myself, too. I was never home when she was little. Wasn’t welcome there, if you want to know the truth. I took the easy way out and avoided the hassle. I regret it now. Destiny wasn’t one to leave old hurts behind. Maybe if I’d been around more . . . I don’t know. Maybe I could have saved her.”

  Zora abandoned the pitcher of tea on the counter and came to sit beside Scotty. “You can’t blame yourself,” she said. “You did what you thought was best. And you were here for the last year of her life. You did what you could.”

  Scotty’s lips curved in an attempt to seem grateful for the encouragement, but his eyes were wounded and sad, and guilt created dark shadows in their depths. “For all the good it did me. Or her. I could have done more. I should have done more. I never should have let her open the shop on her own yesterday.”

  “She didn’t usually work in the morning?” I asked, finally spotting a chance to say what I’d come for.

  “No,” Zora said. “It was unusual.”

  Moose’s face was so still, it could have been carved from stone. “A buddy of mine ordered the fight on pay-per-view last night. Scotty and I went to watch it and stayed out late. This morning Destiny knew we’d be hurting so she told us to sleep in.” He caught back a sob and said, “God help us, we took her up on the offer.”

  I could have said a lot of things about living with regret after someone you love dies, but I didn’t think Moose and Scotty wanted platitudes. They didn’t help, and often they made the grieving person feel worse.

  I tried to keep my voice soothing and asked, “Was she working alone this morning?”

  Moose nodded. “We didn’t have any repairs scheduled. I didn’t expect it to be busy. I thought she could handle it, you know? Since she got out of rehab, she was trying hard to be more useful. Used to be she’d just show up whenever she felt like it and left the same way. I let her play around with the books some, but mostly she just spent the money.” His sharp laugh turned into another choked sob. “I know how you disapproved of that, Zora, but she wanted to help so I let her. She loved shopping, so I let her do that too. I just loved to see her smile.”

  Zora got up and went back to making the tea. “Gracious, Moose, how you make it sound! I didn’t disapprove. I just worried about you and Scotty. And about Destiny. I always thought she just needed a firm hand. It’s a shame her mother never gave her one.”

  I wondered if Destiny’s mother deserved so much of this blame, or if Scotty had been bad-mouthing her to Zora to alleviate his own feelings of guilt. “Is Destiny’s mother still alive?”

  Scotty nodded. “I called her this morning. She’ll be here in a couple of days.” He swiped his cheek with the back of his hand. “Destiny was such a sweet little thing when she was little. Even-tempered. Obedient. So full of life. I don’t know all that happened, but she sure had to navigate some rough seas in her lifetime. Then she finally decided to get herself on the right course and this happened. I don’t get it. Why her? Why now?”

  “I wish I knew,” I said. “Sometimes there are no answers.” I knew it would hit hard when he learned the truth about her apparent relapse, but I decided to leave the subject of Destiny’s drug use for now. “I don’t want to pry, but doesn’t it seem odd that someone tries to run me down one night, and Destiny dies of an overdose less than forty-eight hours later?”

  Zora turned quickly, dropping a spoon into the sink. “Surely you don’t think the two things are connected?”

  “I don’t know how they could be,” I admitted, “but the timing makes me wonder. Can you think of anyone in the neighborhood with an axe to grind, maybe over the alliance?”

  Moose lifted his eyes slowly. “You think whoever tried to hit you is connected to the alliance?”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “It’s really the only connection between Destiny and me.”

  Zora put one hand on her chest. “Do you think someone is after all of us?”

  I didn’t want to ignore a potential threat, but neither did I want to start a full-scale panic. “What if the driver of the van wasn’t aiming at me on Monday night? What if the same person showed up this morning at the Chopper Shop expecting to find someone else?”

  Moose stared at me without blinking. “Like me? You think somebody meant to hurt me?” The quiet man I’d come to expect disappeared right in front of my eyes. Moose shot up, knocking over his chair and slamming his massive fist on the table. “You think somebody killed Destiny because of me?”

  “I didn’t exactly say that—” Okay. Sure. That’s what I’d been thinking, but his anger made me a little nervous.

  “It was that asshat with the blown clutch,” he said to Scotty. “What was his name? I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”

  Scotty hooked an arm over the back of his chair. “John. Or Jack. Last name started with an S.”

  “Wait!” I said, raising my voice a notch. “It’s just a theory. I might be completely off base.” Please don’t run out and rip somebody in half. I looked to Zora for help, but she was clearly shell-shocked.

  “Or that other guy,” Moose said. “The one I caught hitting on Destiny last week. Or that little pissant from Second Chances. Keon. That kid’s nothing but trouble.”

  That got my attention. “Keon Fisher?”

  Moose looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was in the room. “Yeah. That’s him.”

  “You think he might have wanted to hurt you? Why?”

  “It’s a long story. But yeah.”

  Go ahead, I urged silently. I have time. He wasn’t in the mood to share, and I could sense the natives growing restless, so I said, “Look, I’m not trying to stir things up. I just wanted to make you aware so you can be cautious until the police figure out what really happened.”

  “That shouldn’t take long,” Scotty growled. “All they have to do is arrest that idiot Felix Blackwater. Say what you want, Moose, I know he’s the one who drove that van, and he’s had it in for Destiny for months.”

  “Except that Felix was there when the van came at us,” I reminded Moose. This wasn’t going exactly the way I’d planned it. “I know that Felix tried to have Destiny removed from the alliance,” I said. “But you know he wouldn’t try to hit one of us. He’s not the violent type.”

  “The man is an idiot. Certifiable. You know why he really wanted Destiny out of the way? He thought she was using again. Claimed that he saw her buying something on the streets a couple of nights before the meeting.”

  Uh-oh. “He told you that?”

  Moose nodded. “He was waiting for me at the shop when I pulled in, said Destiny was a menace. A threat to polite society and all the kids around here. He said that if he ever saw her buying again, he’d call the police.”

  “But you didn’t believe him.”

  “Hell no. She told me what she’d been doing, paying for some cookie dough she bought from a school fund-raiser. Some menace, huh? Next thing you know, Felix will be wanting to put schoolkids in jail as drug dealers.”

  I admired his loyalty even if I did think it was misplaced. After all, I’d seen Destiny flying high as a kite. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t adding up. Could Moose really be so wrong about his wife?

  Zora carried the pitcher to the table and went back for glasses. “I have to admit, Felix is a bit of a pill. Why, just last year he complained about the clothes women wear to my yoga classes. He said some of their outfits were too revealing.” She
pulled a lemon from the fridge and quartered it. “He wanted me to post notices requiring my clients to wear clothing he considered appropriate. Can you believe it?”

  “The man’s a freak,” Scotty said with a sharp nod of his head. “Crazy as a loon. What did Destiny ever do to him, that’s what I want to know.”

  I didn’t know Felix well, but he’d never seemed like the vindictive type either. Though I couldn’t deny that he’d been determined to remove Destiny from the alliance, if it was because she was using drugs again, why not say so? Why blow smoke in everyone’s face by claiming it was about missing meetings?

  “Felix wasn’t the only person at the meeting who thought Destiny should lose her seat in the alliance,” I reminded them.

  Both Moose and Scotty frowned at that.

  Zora poured tea into four glasses and then dropped heavily into a chair. “I think Aquanettia was behind it all.”

  Was she serious?

  Moose scowled as he reached for his tea. “You could be right. I mean, the two of them weren’t exactly friends, were they?”

  Scotty ignored the glass Zora pushed toward him and took a long pull from his beer. “They fought over a bunch of silly shit. Aquanettia’s stupid dog barks all the time. It drove Destiny nuts. She threatened to call the pound. Aquanettia told her she’d see her in hell first.”

  “I know you think it was nothing,” Zora said, “but people can get violently angry over things that seem like nothing to somebody else. I read once about a guy who killed his friend over a game of Monopoly. And you can’t deny that dog is annoying.” She turned to me and explained, “He’s a little bitty thing, named Gilbert. Yips all the time. And he didn’t like Destiny at all—probably because Aquanettia didn’t. Dogs pick up on that sort of thing.”

  Maybe so, but I couldn’t imagine Aquanettia going off the deep end over a dog.

  I tried to remember where Aquanettia had been when the van came around the corner. I was almost certain she’d still been upstairs, but I supposed she could have hurried down the back stairs, fired up the Second Chances van, and gone after Moose . . . but why? For marrying Destiny in the first place? Even if Destiny had been using again, nobody had any reason to hurt Moose. Maybe I was trying to make something out of nothing. None of it made any sense to me, and I felt silly for coming by in the first place. I finished my sweet tea, offered my condolences again, and beat an escape. It was time to take Ox’s advice and leave well enough alone.