Going, Going, Ganache

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Not my fault,” Mel said.

  “I know, but, honestly, you’re not getting any younger, honey, and you have a good guy now. Maybe you need to start looking at the next phase of your life.”

  “Like getting married and having babies?” Mel asked.

  There was enough coffee for a cup now. She hurriedly poured herself one and put the carafe back.

  “Your younger brother, Charlie, is married and has two gorgeous boys,” Joyce said.

  “Are we competing?” Mel asked. “I was unaware.”

  “Obviously, because if you were competing, I’d have grandbabies from you by now,” Joyce said.

  “Mom,” Mel said. It came out as a ten-syllable whine, but she was powerless to stop it.

  “Don’t you want marriage and babies?” Joyce asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mel said. And there it was. She really didn’t know.

  Joe staggered into the kitchen. He had bed head, and his eyes were puffy with sleep. His T-shirt and long flannel pants were wrinkled, and he cradled Captain Jack in one arm. He let out a yawn and Mel felt her heart trip over itself at the sight of him. She loved him, of that there was no question, but was she ready for “until death do us part”? She didn’t know.

  “Listen, Mom, I have to go,” she said.

  Joe’s eyebrows shot up, and Mel gave him a pained nod.

  “All right,” Joyce said. “Well, call me later and tell me what’s happening; otherwise my friend Ginny and I will be over to see you.”

  Mel smiled. Her mom didn’t even candy-coat the threat.

  “I promise,” Mel said. “Love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Joyce said. “And give my love to dear Joe.”

  Mel ended the call and dropped her phone on the counter. Usually she used milk and sugar in her coffee, but today she felt like she needed to mainline the caffeine, so she drank it unforgivingly black.

  “Mom, huh?”

  “Ugh.”

  “Does she still call me ‘dear Joe’?” he asked. He was grinning.

  “Yes,” Mel said. “Every time she mentions your name, in fact.”

  “I like your mom,” he said.

  He had fed Captain Jack and poured his own coffee. Now he looped an arm around Mel’s waist and pulled her close so that they leaned side-by-side against the counter while they sipped their coffee.

  Mel knew it was a moment of peace in what was otherwise going to be a very long, very difficult day. She tried to memorize the feeling of calm, knowing that she was going to miss it later.

  By ten o’clock that morning, that feeling of calm was no more than a poignant memory. The bakery had reopened. Unexpectedly, a crowd of gawkers awaited the unlocking of the doors, and Mel wondered what they were hoping to see. A chalk outline on the floor?

  Marty made it pretty clear that they were in the cupcake business not the corpse business. The more ghoulish of the gawkers left, but the rest consoled themselves with cupcakes.

  The SWS crew met up in the kitchen. They had the sunken eyed, weary look of zombies, and Mel had a feeling that not one of them had slept the night before.

  “Are you sure you’re all up to this?” Mel asked as they gathered around the steel table.

  Ian Hannigan stood by the door with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “We’re fine,” he said. “What do we need to do to have the cupcakes ready by the gala on Saturday?”

  “Get baking,” Mel said.

  The lack of enthusiasm was not unexpected. Her own desire to bake had been curbed by finding Sam in the alley yesterday; still, she had a business to run.

  “Listen, I’m happy to do the baking for you,” she said. “I don’t think anyone would fault you for canceling the boot camp.”

  “No, we can do this. We will do this. For Sam,” Brigit said. She was wearing jeans and a form-fitting, long-sleeve jersey shirt in ruby red. Even casually dressed, Brigit exuded a stylishness that was impeccable.

  “I really don’t see Sam giving two hoots about whether we make cupcakes or not,” Justin said.

  “That’s not the point!” Brigit snapped. She looked as if she was going to say more, but she didn’t. Instead, she took her purse outside. Mel had a feeling she was going for a cigarette break.

  “Go ahead and start, Mel,” Hannigan said. “I’ll talk to her.”

  Mel and Angie had planned to treat the cupcake boot camp just like one of the baking classes they held periodically. With Ian and Brigit outside, that left Justin, Sylvia, Bonnie, and Amy in the kitchen.

  In no time, the room was filled with the sounds of ingredients being poured and spatulas scraping the sides of bowls, and the whir of mixers.

  “Baking always makes me feel better,” Bonnie said to Mel as she paused beside her.

  “Me, too,” Mel said. “I was in culinary school when my dad died. I think it helped me to work out my grief.”

  Bonnie stared at her for a moment, and Mel wondered if she had just shared too much.

  “My mother passed when I was sixteen,” Bonnie said. “I have four younger brothers and sisters. I became the family cook. It helped. I always felt as if my mom was in the kitchen cooking with me.”

  Mel nodded. She could see that. Joyce drove her crazy, no question, but she could imagine that she might feel her mother’s presence in her kitchen, primarily because the kitchen had been her mother’s base of operations when she and Charlie were kids. It was where she had interrogated them over homemade plates of Rice Krispies Treats and chocolate milk.

  “Excuse me, is the batter supposed to be winding its way up the beater?” Sylvia asked. She was using a hand mixer, and it looked as if her cupcake batter was doing a “creature from the bottom of the bowl” sort of thing as it rose up and tried to strangle the beaters.

  “Yikes!” Justin said. “‘Well it’s kind of a—kind of a mass. It keeps getting bigger and bigger.’”

  “The Blob,” Mel said, identifying the movie quote.

  “Nice,” Justin said.

  “I think it needs more milk,” Angie said from across the table. “Otherwise you’re going to have a pet.”

  “Would it be housebroken?” Sylvia asked as she looked into her bowl. “That would be a step above my last two husbands.”

  Everyone was silent, and then Angie started to laugh, which set off the rest of the room. It was a good sound. The only one not laughing was Amy.

  The back door opened, and Hannigan and Brigit walked in. Her eyes were red, and Mel didn’t think it was cigarette smoke that had made them that way.

  “How many husbands have you had, anyway?” Amy asked. She looked sourly at Hannigan and Brigit. It was easy to see she was feeling jealous and angry and looking for a target. Lucky Sylvia.

  “Oh, let me count,” Sylvia said while Angie worked on her batter. “The first one I married because he was gorgeous. Never marry a man for his looks. Beauty fades.”

  Justin snorted. “I’ll remember that.”

  “The second one I married for his money. Never do that, either. If you spend like I do, the poor bastard will be broke in a year.”

  Amy let out a huff of disgust as she dumped her dry ingredients into a large bowl and sifted with more vigor than was required.

  Bonnie, on the other hand, had lowered her head and was hiding her smile.

  “The third one I married because his children were so cute, and I thought I might like to be a mama.” Sylvia shook her head. “Come to find out, I don’t like children.”

  Brigit and Hannigan took the remaining seats at the table. Together they began mixing the ingredients that had been measured out, and Mel noticed that they moved together as if in a dance, where each partner knows the other so well they flow together seamlessly.

  “The fourth one—”

  “Fourth? You have got to be kidding me!” Amy said.

  “I married him because he was younger, and I thought it would be exciting,” Sylvia said. “It was like being married to a toddler. He did n
ot understand the things an older and wiser man would.”

  “Four? How did you find four husbands? You have had more than your fair share of husbands,” Amy said. She was glaring at Brigit and Hannigan, but her attack was at Sylvia. “You are a husband hog!”

  Sylvie shrugged. “So, I married yours and mine. I think you owe me a thank-you for marrying the clunkers.”

  “I refuse to work like this!” Amy said. “All of this chatter and nonsense. It’s just stupid.”

  Justin and Bonnie exchanged a surprised look.

  “I think it’s fun,” Bonnie said. “I never knew those things about you, Sylvia. It’s fascinating.”

  “You would think so, you cow,” Amy snapped. “You married your high school sweetheart and have no life. I’m sure anyone’s sordid existence is more interesting than yours.”

  Mel felt a hot burst of anger spark inside of her. She had no doubt that Amy felt free to insult Bonnie because Amy was a size zero while Bonnie was more in the double digits. Amy undoubtedly believed that a woman’s worth was equivalent to the number on her scale, and the smaller the better.

  “Shut up, Amy,” Justin said. “You have no right to be nasty to Bonnie just because you’re a miserable twig. Have a cupcake and stop being such a b—”

  “Justin!” Hannigan cut him off. “That’s enough.”

  Justin looked unrepentant.

  “Everyone hates me,” Amy wailed. “They have since the first day I showed up at the office.”

  “With that enormous chip on your shoulder, is it any wonder?” Brigit asked. “Really, I can’t imagine why Sam hired you. You have no respect for anyone’s work. You act as if you’re the magazine’s savior simply because you’re young.”

  “I do not,” Amy protested. “Sam was mean to me. He belittled my writing and edited it so much that it wasn’t even recognizable.”

  Brigit rose from her seat and stared Amy down.

  “That’s because it was terrible. Frankly, your journalism chops are weak. I told Sam that, and he agreed. He wouldn’t let you get away with the crap writing you were doing, he forced you to be better, and you hated him for that.”

  “I did hate him,” Amy said. “But only because he forced me to sleep with him to get this job, which, as it turned out, is a joke.”

  Seventeen

  Everyone in the room stared at Amy in wide-eyed disbelief.

  “What?” she asked. “Wasn’t it my turn to share?”

  “I don’t believe you,” Brigit said.

  “Well, you’d better,” Amy said. “Because I have the smutty text messages from him to prove it.”

  “You’d better not do anything that discredits Sam’s standing in the journalism community,” Brigit said.

  “Or what?” Amy asked.

  “I’ll ruin you,” Brigit said.

  She said it with such cold, calculating precision that Mel had no doubt that she could do it and that she would do it if provoked.

  “What’s the matter?” Amy taunted her. “Are you jealous that your boy preferred my”—she paused to cast a nasty look at Bonnie—“size zero?”

  With that she shoved her mixing bowl away from her and strode out the kitchen door.

  “I’d better go and talk to her,” Hannigan said.

  “Don’t you dare give in to her,” Brigit said. “She is slandering Sam. We can’t let her get away with that.”

  “Precisely why I’m going after her,” Hannigan said.

  “What are you going to do?” Brigit asked. “Give her a promotion?”

  Hannigan looked as if she’d slapped him. “What exactly are you accusing me of?”

  “You’re going to cave in to her hysterics and keep her on, aren’t you?”

  “What would firing her do for us?” he asked.

  “It would improve the art department,” Justin said. Both Brigit and Hannigan glared at him. “Oh, that wasn’t an open question? Sorry.”

  “I’m going after her,” Hannigan said. “If what she says is true, that Sam had her sleep with him for her job, then she could come after us with a lawsuit that would kill the magazine.”

  “Since when do you care about the magazine?” Brigit asked.

  “I’ve always cared,” he said.

  “Oh, save it,” Brigit snapped. She made shooing motions with her hands. “Go after the little girl. I hope you’re very happy together.”

  “Brigit!”

  Hannigan looked like he would have yelled at her if there wasn’t an audience, an audience that was riveted watching them.

  “Go! Just go!” Brigit yelled. She stalked across the kitchen, opened the door to Mel’s office, and slammed it so hard behind her that it rattled on its hinges.

  Hannigan let loose a string of colorful curses and then followed Amy out the kitchen door.

  “I think that was a bad call,” Sylvia said.

  “What do you mean?” Angie asked.

  The kitchen door banged open and Marty glared at the group.

  “Will there be any more forthcoming drama from here?” he asked. “Because in case you people haven’t noticed, we’ve got a business to run, and I can’t keep coming up with excuses for why there is so much noise coming from the kitchen.”

  “Sorry, Marty,” Mel said. “I’ll try to keep it quieter.”

  “What have you been telling people?” Angie asked.

  “That our chief baker likes to watch soap operas while she cooks, which was working until those two idiots came running through the bakery, making me look like a big, fat liar.”

  “Which you are,” Justin said as he scooped batter into a cupcake pan.

  “I prefer embellisher of facts, if you don’t mind,” Marty said.

  “My mistake,” Justin said. He looked like he was trying not to laugh.

  Mel and Angie took the first batch of cupcakes and put them in the convection oven.

  “Just so we’re clear,” Marty said.

  The door swung shut behind him.

  “I think the drama is only just beginning,” Bonnie said. “We are going to have to work a lot faster if we’re going to get these cupcakes done by the gala, and we can’t have people just leaving in a snit.”

  “Sounds like we’re not done with the drama,” Angie said. “The investigation into Sam’s death is ongoing and, with what Amy said, I have a feeling it’s going to get messy. Not to mention, there is obviously some serious tension between Hannigan and Brigit.”

  She said Brigit’s name in a whisper, and they all glanced cautiously at the door to Mel’s office. It didn’t fly off of its hinges in an explosion of upset, so Mel figured she couldn’t hear them.

  “What is the deal between Hannigan and Brigit anyway?” she asked. “There is a hostility there that you usually only see between—”

  “Lovers?” Sylvia supplied.

  “Well, yeah,” Mel said.

  “Back in the day, when they were all doing hard news,” Justin said. “Hannigan and Brigit were lovers, which was complicated.”

  “Why?” Angie asked.

  “Hannigan was married,” Bonnie said. Her tone made it clear that she didn’t approve, and Mel saw the flash of the other woman’s wedding ring in the kitchen light.

  “It happens,” Sylvia said. “Especially when you are in a foreign country and think you may not get home.”

  “It never happens to me,” Justin said, looking put out.

  “That’s because you don’t do hard news,” Bonnie said. Justin just looked at her and she turned bright red. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Justin grinned at her. “You’re forgiven.”

  “The way I heard it, Brigit wanted Hannigan to leave his wife so that they could be together, but Hannigan turned her down,” Bonnie said. “That’s when she left newspapers and started working for magazines on the brink of extinction. She has a real gift for turning them around.”

  “Thank you,” Brigit said from the open doorway to Mel’s office.

 
Everyone in the kitchen jumped and Bonnie let out a little shriek, which she quickly turned into a cough.

  “Just so you know,” Brigit said. “Your office walls apparently carry sound instead of shutting it out.”

  Sylvia, Bonnie, and Justin all hung their heads in the perfect posture of shame. Mel nudged Angie, who was beside her, and they quickly hung their heads, too.

  “It’s all right,” Brigit said. “After all, any of that is easy enough to find on the Internet gossip sites.”

  Mel looked up at her and saw that she looked older than she’d seen her till now. The fine lines around her eyes and mouth seemed deeper, and they didn’t appear to be laugh lines but rather looked like they’d been caused by stress.

  Mel had seen the beginnings of lines forming around her own eyes, but she had been okay with them because they looked like they were caused by joy. She had the overwhelming urge to fetch Brigit a cupcake.

  “Sam’s death is going to drag it all up again, I suppose,” Brigit said with a sigh. “Detective Martinez said as much. I suppose I should get prepared for when they dig into my relationship with Hannigan.”

  “Maybe they won’t go there,” Bonnie said.

  Angie rolled her eyes at Mel. Angie had been dragged into the limelight during her relationship with Roach. She knew what it was like to open the curtains in the morning and have a photographer hanging upside down from a rope tied to the eaves while trying to get compromising pictures of her.

  “Oh, they’ll go there,” Brigit said. “Especially, since I’m responsible for his wife’s death.”

  No one moved. Mel thought it looked as if they were playing a game of freeze tag and everyone had been nailed except Brigit.

  “When you say you’re responsible . . .” Justin trailed off.

  “Oh, not like that,” she said. “I didn’t stab her or shoot her, as tempting as that was. No, I used my gift for investigative journalism and I wrote an exposé on her family.”

  Mel noticed that both Bonnie and Justin made O’s with their mouths and that Sylvia’s eyes went wide. She didn’t know if it was because they all were surprised by Brigit’s candor or because her reporter’s skill was something fearsome to behold.