The Cakes of Wrath (A Piece of Cake Mystery)

by Brady, Jacklyn

  “Almost,” Sparkle clarified with a sharp glance. “I caught the tray before it fell.”

  I sighed and lowered my voice to make sure the others couldn’t overhear us. “Yeah. Thank goodness. But what’s next? Seriously, Sparkle. It really is getting out of hand.”

  She looked like she wanted to argue with me, but I held up a hand to stop her.

  “I can’t tell you what to do away from work. If you really want to bug Edie about her choices on your own time, I can’t stop you. But you’re not making any headway, so what’s the point? In fact, you’re probably just making her more determined to do it her way.”

  Sparkle chewed the corner of her lip and kicked the heel of her black leather lace-up boot against the stool. “She’s not thinking about the baby.”

  “Of course she is. She’s just not thinking the way you want her to, and she never will if you keep pushing. You know how Edie is.”

  Sparkle didn’t say anything for a full minute, and I thought she might have actually heard me. But she’s as hardheaded and stubborn as Edie is, which is why we were having these issues in the first place. And her next words made it clear she wasn’t backing down at all. “If Edie won’t listen to me, she might listen to the baby’s father. You should go talk to him and tell him what she’s doing.”

  I let out a brittle laugh. “Even if I knew who he was,” I said, “my answer would be no.”

  “He has the right to know.”

  “But it’s not my place to tell him. I’m not getting involved. Period. End of story.”

  “So you’re just going to sit back and let Edie screw the kid up?” Sparkle’s voice echoed off the walls of the design room and I think everyone in the room stopped working again and looked over at us.

  I lowered my own voice even further. “You don’t know that’s what she’s doing. I know you have issues about the way your mother raised you, but you can’t just assume that Edie’s situation will work out the same way.”

  Sparkle rolled her eyes and stood. “You can’t assume that it won’t.”

  “You’re completely missing the point,” I said. I may have added an eye roll of my own. “It’s none of our business. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong. It’s not your call. Or mine. Just let Edie figure it out, okay? You worry about your own stuff, I’ll worry about mine, let Edie worry about hers. Everybody will be happy.” Yeah, right. But as fantasies go, I thought it was a pretty good one.

  Sparkle suddenly became fascinated with the sleeves of her hoodie. “I heard from my brother a couple of days ago,” she said after she pushed one sleeve up and adjusted it until she was satisfied. Her voice sounded kind of dreamy and faraway, as if she was thinking something through as she spoke. “I wrote to him after you and I talked. I wanted to see if River remembered it all differently, you know? I thought maybe I was off base. But I’m not, Rita. He wrote back and he agrees with me.”

  “Even so . . .” I said.

  She tilted her head and looked at me from the corner of her eye. “He’s coming here next week. It’s his birthday, and he’s going to see Liberty and Bob. Don’t ask me why. Anyway, he’s going to stop and see me for a couple of days. Maybe I’ll ask him to talk to Edie.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “No. Wait. I know it’s not.”

  “But he’s a guy. He knows how they think.”

  “That’s not exactly a compelling argument.” I cast about for a new way to tell her to back off—one that wouldn’t send her off into a creative funk—but nothing came to mind.

  And maybe I could have figured out a way to get through to her, but a loud scream tore through the air and got everyone in the design room racing toward Edie’s desk. Ox made it through the door first, with Dwight right behind him. Estelle and I hit the door at the same time and engaged in a brief skirmish over which one of us would get through next.

  She won by a hip.

  Isabeau and Sparkle raced in behind me, and Pearl Lee brought up the rear. I barely heard Edie over the chaos. She said something about a crash, or maybe it was broken glass, in the employee break room. In any event, we were off again with the whole herd thundering toward that room.

  This time I managed to skim through the door a hair in front of Estelle, which may not have been the smartest move. I felt a whoosh of hot air coming in through the broken window a second before Estelle plowed into my back.

  I stumbled a little, almost fell over one of the tables, and grabbed the back of a chair to hold myself upright. “What happened?”

  Ox gestured toward something on the floor, the crowd parted, and I saw a large rock surrounded by shards of glass. “What? How did that—”

  “Somebody chucked that rock through the window,” Dwight said. “Probably kids.”

  “But why would anybody do that?” Isabeau asked, pushing past Sparkle and Estelle to stand beside me.

  “I’ll bet whoever it is, is still out there,” Edie cried, shaking a finger in the general direction of the front door. “I’ll bet we could catch them if somebody moves fast enough.”

  Ox accepted the challenge and the rest of us followed like lemmings. Dwight and Ox seemed prepared to kick some ass. I was busy calculating how much it would take to repair the window and what a claim for damages might do to our insurance premium. I rushed out onto the front porch just as Dwight and Ox took off after a group of laughing teenagers wearing baggy pants and sweatshirts at the other end of the block.

  “Don’t hurt anybody,” I shouted after them.

  Isabeau put a hand on my shoulder and tried to reassure me. “It’s okay. Ox knows what he’s doing.”

  “I hope they catch the little creeps,” Estelle mumbled, and turned toward the door. “I’m going back inside. It’s too hot out here.”

  Edie followed her and Sparkle trailed them slowly. I was all set to go with them until I saw someone else hurrying away from Zydeco. He was wearing a bright yellow Hawaiian print shirt and khaki shorts, and he cast a furtive look over his shoulder before slipping into a building about a block away. Suddenly I had the uneasy feeling that Dwight and Ox were chasing the wrong culprits.

  “Don’t hurt anybody,” I shouted again and raced down the stairs to follow them. I just hoped that I could catch up with them before they did something stupid.

  Twenty-five

  Thankfully, the teenage boys had disappeared before Ox and Dwight could find them. Ox and Dwight seemed disappointed but I was relieved. Maybe those kids were the rock tossers, but I was reluctant to accuse anyone without proof.

  If only Detective Winslow felt the same way.

  Back at Zydeco, the guys dug through hurricane supplies in the storage shed, looking for the piece of plywood cut to cover that particular window, while I placed a call to our insurance carrier. An hour later, they had the broken window covered, I had a claim in process, and we were all back at work.

  Not surprisingly, though, it was hard to stay focused. I kept wondering if Scotty really had thrown that rock through the window. My “evidence” against him was circumstantial at best, and it seemed like an odd way for him to threaten me, but it was effective. I couldn’t deny that seeing him right after the window broke had spooked me.

  I wasn’t the only one who had trouble staying on task either. We all stayed late, but we spent more time talking about who threw the rock and why than we did actually working. Needless to say, we didn’t get much done for the rest of Monday.

  We were all back bright and early the next morning, though, trying to make up for lost time. The rest of the staff was anyway—I spent all morning looking for someone to repair the window, and talking to a handful of people at the insurance company. Thankfully, Edie and Sparkle spent most of the day ignoring each other, which meant that when I finally joined the others to work on the wedding cake, I actually got a few hours of uninterrupted work time.

  We locked up on time that evening and everyone walked to the Dizzy Duke for a drink, except Edie, who went home to put
her feet up and look through baby books.

  I was hoping Gabriel had found time to do a little sleuthing and that he’d have information for me, but he wasn’t behind the bar when I arrived. I found out later that he had the night off. I was disappointed, but reminded myself he’d call or stop by if he had anything to report.

  After ordering a margarita, I spent a while chatting with the rest of the staff. We talked about everything but work, starting with our current favorite TV shows and recent movies and music before moving on to meatier topics.

  Everyone had something to vent about. Ox told us that his father had received a diagnosis of high blood pressure and shared a few stories about the older man’s struggle to change his lifestyle. Isabeau confided that her parents were separating after thirty years of marriage, and had a few choice words about her father’s new girlfriend. Estelle confessed that the police had picked up her niece for shoplifting and told us about her sister’s struggle to cope.

  As the evening progressed and liquor flowed, the conversation turned into a game of one-upmanship, something we frequently “played” over drinks. Even Sparkle got into the game, telling the others about her childhood, the questions about just who her parents were, and how she wasn’t even sure where her brother was at the moment. I noticed she didn’t mention his impending visit, but I kept my mouth shut.

  I wasn’t in the mood to play “Who’s Got it Worst?” and Dwight, whose relationship battles with his older sister were the stuff of epic legend, was uncharacteristically silent as well. He ran his fingers through his shaggy hair repeatedly as he listened to the others, and he seemed distracted or maybe worried.

  After about an hour, I started making noises about leaving. To my surprise, Dwight stood when I did and offered to walk back to Zydeco with me. I urged him to stay with the others, but he insisted that he was ready to go home, so we said our good-byes and stepped outside into a night thick with fog that had rolled in off the river.

  We walked in companionable silence for about half a block, which was when curiosity got the best of me. “You seem quiet tonight,” I said. “Do you have something on your mind?”

  Dwight glanced at me and shrugged one bony shoulder. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Is it anything you want to talk about?”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” He kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk and watched it skitter away before he spoke again. “What’s going on with Sparkle and Edie lately?”

  The question surprised me. I’d been imagining a bunch of different possibilities ranging from money trouble, to a sick family member, to a possible new girlfriend. I hadn’t expected him to be worried about his coworkers. “It’s just stuff,” I said. “Sparkle thinks Edie’s making a mistake, not telling the father about the baby. Edie doesn’t appreciate Sparkle’s opinion. They’ll work it out.” I smiled as I said the last part, but I wasn’t sure which one of us I was trying hardest to convince.

  Dwight scratched the stubble on his chin. “Sparkle thinks Edie should tell the baby’s father.”

  I cut a glance at him. “Yeah.” I got a squidgy feeling in my stomach and hoped Dwight wasn’t about to admit to being the guy. I just knew that would make everything at Zydeco worse. But if that was it, then Edie had lied to me about her one-night stand and I didn’t want to think she’d done that. Deciding I’d rather know now than be blindsided later, I jumped in with both feet. “It’s not you, is it?”

  Dwight jerked backward and brayed a laugh. “Me? No! What made you ask that?”

  I grinned at the stunned look on his face. “Just making sure. Apparently, you already know what’s up with the two of them. So what’s really on your mind?”

  He spent some time raking his hair and rubbing his chin and then finally asked, “Do you think Edie’s going to stay after the baby is born?”

  Squidge. “I do,” I said. “Why? Don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Probably, I guess. It’s just that everything’s going to change when the kid comes. You know it will. Have you thought about what you’ll do if she wants to leave?”

  Squidge-squidge. “Of course I have, but I really don’t think that’s going to happen. She’ll need her job more than ever once she’s a single mother.”

  Dwight slowed and I adjusted my pace to match his. “I’ve been wondering if we should start looking for someone else. Just in case, you know?”

  I gasped in shock. “You think I should be looking for Edie’s replacement? But she hasn’t given me any indication she wants to leave.” Not since the night she told me she was pregnant anyway, and I tried hard to forget about that. “I know there were a few things she thought of as problems in the beginning, but we’ve worked them out.” A new thought occurred to me. I stopped walking entirely and grabbed his arm. “Or do you know something I don’t know?”

  He shook his head quickly. “She hasn’t said anything to me. I just know how my sister was after my oldest niece was born. One day she was all set to go back to her job, the next day she didn’t want to leave the baby, even for five minutes. It made my brother-in-law nuts. But what if Edie has some”—he waved a hand around, searching for the right word—“some epiphany? What if she and her mother work things out and she decides to move home?”

  That question hit me like a fist in the stomach. That was a possibility I really hadn’t considered. Feeling agitated because of Dwight’s train of thought, I started walking again. “Do you really think that could happen?”

  “Of course it could. Family’s family. She’s pissed at her mother now, but that could change with one phone call. My sister stops speaking to me at least once a year. I call and tell her what I jerk I was. She forgives me, and we’re good until the next time I make her angry. That’s how family works.”

  Maybe some, but not the one I’d grown up in. But Dwight could be right. If Miss Frankie had her way, Edie and her mother would make up before the baby came. Of course I wanted that, too, but would Edie bail on us if she had her family’s support? I didn’t want to think so, but what I knew about being a mother could fit on the head of a pin. Ditto for what I knew about being a daughter.

  We’d reached Zydeco’s driveway and turned down it together. I could see my Mercedes in its usual spot and Dwight’s battered Jeep a few spots over. The Mercedes looked a little off balance, but I chalked that up to the fog and the odd shadowy shapes it and the moon created together.

  “Well, you might be right,” I told Dwight. “But I’m not going to start interviewing Edie’s replacement yet. Even if she wants to stay home with the baby, she’s far too practical to do something rash. I’m pretty sure she’d go nuts in a week if she and her mother tried to live under the same roof.”

  “Flat.”

  I did a double take over his odd response and laughed. “Yeah. A week flat.”

  Dwight shook his head and pointed at the Mercedes. “No, I mean I think you have a flat tire.”

  I looked again at the Mercedes and saw that he was right. The front tire on the driver’s side was flat as a pancake. I swore under my breath and threw my hands up in the air. Angry tears burned my eyes and a giant lump of self-pity filled my throat. “Are you kidding me?” I squawked. “Enough is enough already. What am I supposed to do now?”

  “I can change it for you,” Dwight offered. “It’s no big deal. You have a spare, right?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It was Philippe’s car. Whatever he had is what I have.” I like to think of myself as strong, competent, and independent, but cars are outside my area of expertise. When I was a kid, Uncle Nestor took care of all the car stuff. If he was too busy, one of my (male) cousins would do it. Aunt Yolanda and I barely had to worry about putting in gas and turning the key. Once I got married, Philippe took over, and I’d gone back to Uncle Nestor’s when we separated. I barely remembered where to find a jack, much less how to put it together. And looking at that tire after the week I’d had just about did me in.

  Dwight must have sensed my confusion. I don’t know what ga
ve it away—maybe the rush of tears streaming down my face? Anyway, he held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. I handed over my keys and tried to shut off the waterworks.

  While Dwight ducked into my trunk, I sat on the bumper of his Jeep to wait for the verdict.

  “Bad news,” he said a few minutes later. “There’s no spare in here.”

  “Of course there isn’t,” I grumbled, diving deeper into my pity party. “That would be too easy. I guess I need a tow truck or something?”

  Dwight pulled his head out of the trunk and joined me on the Jeep’s bumper. “I’ll give you a ride home,” he said. “And I’ll pick you up again in the morning. Tomorrow we’ll call a friend of mine who owns his own shop not far from here. He’s a great guy and honest. And he has good prices. He’ll get that tire patched up in no time.”

  I wiped my eyes and worked up a tremulous smile. “Thanks.”

  “Not a problem,” he said. “That’s what friends are for.”

  That brought on a fresh round of tears. I gave a loud and, I’m sure, unattractive sniff. Dwight got up, reached into his glove box, and handed me a wad of napkins. They looked clean enough, so I wiped my eyes and blew my nose, trying to pull myself together. “I’m sorry,” I said, hiccupping softly. “It’s been a rough week.”

  “Yeah. So I gathered.” Dwight sat beside me again and nudged me gently with a shoulder. “For what it’s worth, we’re all on your side. Everybody here knows you’re not a drug dealer and we know you didn’t have anything to do with that woman Destiny’s death. We all know it’s just a matter of time before the police figure it out, too.”

  I think I always knew they believed in me, but hearing him say it aloud was truly music to my ears.

  “I hope you’re right,” I sniffed. “But with Detective Winslow on the case, I’m not so sure.”

  “He’s a jerk,” Dwight agreed. “What did you do to get on his bad side?”

  “I wish I knew. Treating me like his number one suspect makes no sense. There’s no real evidence against me, and the only motive is something he made up. But nothing I do or say seems to make any difference.”