Caramel Crush

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Uncle Stan, there’s a b—bo—” Mel began, but the words did not come easily.

  “Don’t say it,” Uncle Stan ordered.

  “What?”

  “Do not say what I think you are about to say,” he said.

  “But I have to, there’s a bo—”

  “No!”

  “Uncle Stan,” Mel cried. “I need you.”

  He heaved a sigh that sounded as if it came all the way from his well-scuffed loafers.

  “It’s a body, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yeeeeees,” Mel answered on a wail that quickly turned into a second bout of blubbering.

  “How is this possible?” Stan cried. “I’m a homicide detective and I don’t turn up this many dead bodies. Where are you?”

  “I’m in the warehouse of Party On!, the party supply company near the Scottsdale Airpark,” Mel said. “No one is here, just me and the—”

  “You!” a voice cried from across the warehouse. Mel glanced up to see three people, one woman and two men, all wearing the same black polo shirts Mike was wearing, storming toward her. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Uncle Stan, you might want to hurry,” she said.

  “Roger that,” he said. “Stay on the line so I know you’re not in danger. Dispatch will send over the nearest squad car in the area.”

  “Thanks,” Mel said.

  “Hey, lady!” the woman yelled at her. “I asked you a question.”

  “Stop!” Mel said. “I have the Scottsdale PD on the phone. The situation has been called in and I need you to stay out of the area.”

  “Scottsdale PD?” the woman asked. “On whose authority? I’m Suzanne Bordow. I own this company. If anyone is calling the police for any reason, it’s me calling on you for breaking and entering.”

  “Stan, what do I do?” Mel asked.

  “Keep them away from the scene. We need it to remain as untouched as possible,” he said.

  “Listen, there’s been an incident, and I need you to leave the warehouse area,” Mel said.

  “Incident?” Suzanne asked. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

  “Melanie Cooper, I’m a cupcake baker,” Mel said.

  Suzanne shook her head. She had the same dark curls as Mike and Mel felt her gag reflex kick in as she pictured Mike’s blood-soaked hair. She glanced down at her hands.

  “Oh my god, is that blood?” one of the men standing beside Suzanne asked.

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is,” Mel said. “That’s why you need to . . .”

  “Troy!” The other man shouted the first guy’s name and jumped toward him as he went all limp and slid to the ground as if someone had let the air out of him.

  “Whose blood is that?” Suzanne demanded. Her eyes were wide and she glanced from Mel to the ball pit, where Mike’s hand was still visible, smashed up against the Plexiglas. And since Mel had cleared out half of the ball pit, so was his bashed-in head.

  “When I found him, I accidentally got some blood . . . Oh, urgh.” Mel’s urge to upchuck kicked in again, and she had to swallow swiftly to keep from barfing.

  “Mike!” Suzanne cried. “That’s my brother Mike!” The anguish in her voice made Mel’s heart hurt. The man who had failed to catch his coworker before he hit the floor reached out to Suzanne but she shook him off.

  There was no other word for the sight of Mike in the ball pit except grisly, and Mel felt really badly that his sister had to see him like that. Suzanne glanced back at Mel as if the shock was making her slow to put the pieces together. “That’s Mike’s blood on your hands.”

  “Yes, but I was just delivering cupcakes when I found him, I swear,” Mel protested. Suzanne did not appear to believe her. In fact, judging by the crazy light in her eyes, things were about to get ugly. Mel spoke into her phone, “Stan, I need backup, repeat, I need backup.”

  “We’re on our way,” he said. “Hang tough, kid.”

  “You killed my brother!” Suzanne cried. Without any warning, she launched herself at Mel and took her down hard onto the cement floor. Even the smattering of happy, bright colored balls didn’t block the impact enough to keep Mel from having the wind knocked out of her.

  “Help!” she gasped into the phone before it fell from her grasp.

  Six

  Suzanne grabbed Mel by her short-cropped hair, knotting it between her fingers as she pulled Mel to her feet.

  “You killed him!” she screamed. “You killed my brother!”

  Two uniformed officers burst into the warehouse at that moment. One of them was talking into her shoulder radio; the other had his hand hovering over the firearm on his hip.

  “Hold it; no one move,” the officer with the itchy trigger finger said.

  Mel raised her hands into the air. Suzanne released her and strode toward the male officer, while the female officer pulled on blue latex gloves and hurried to the ball pit to examine Mike Bordow. After mere moments, she turned back to her partner with a shake of her head.

  “She killed my brother! Look, she has his blood on her hands!” Suzanne shrieked.

  The officer pulled his gun and pointed it at Mel.

  “I can explain,” Mel said. “I’m Detective Cooper’s niece and this stuff happens to me all the time.”

  “Good, then you can explain it to the detectives when they get here,” the officer with the gun said. He inched his way around Mel and cuffed her hands behind her back.

  “Is this really necessary?” she asked.

  “For the moment,” he said. “Everyone clear the area. Now.”

  “But my brother,” Suzanne protested.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we need to seal the area for the investigators,” he said.

  “I’m telling you what happened,” Suzanne snapped. “She killed him.”

  “I didn’t,” Mel said. “I swear.”

  Troy was roused from the floor and hauled out of the warehouse by his coworker while Suzanne and Mel were escorted after them back into the hallway of offices. Suzanne and her employees waited in one room, while Mel was led to another. The officer positioned himself in the hallway, making sure no one left their room.

  Mel couldn’t wait for Uncle Stan to arrive and read these uniforms the riot act for cuffing his niece. As she sat in a hard chair in what appeared to be a conference room, she longed for her phone so she could call someone, anyone, okay, mostly her boyfriend, Joe, to comfort her during this horrible ordeal.

  She glanced at the clock on the wall. Stan had said they were on their way. His office wasn’t that far away from the airpark. Surely he would arrive in a matter of minutes and get her sprung from this travesty of justice.

  When the minute hand had moved past the thirty-minute mark, Mel was pretty sure that Stan was still pissed at her for Manny leaving the department and this was the way he was going to make her pay. Lovely.

  She rose from her seat, went over to the wooden door, and gave it a solid kick. There was no way she was going to sit here for another minute, while her shoulders stiffened up from the awkward position and her hands were still caked in a dead man’s blood.

  No one responded, so she began kicking the door in a steady rhythm that she hoped was like an obnoxious dripping faucet, or a relentless woodpecker, or a kid dribbling his basketball up and down the street, until it started to beat on the brain of anyone within hearing distance.

  The door was opened right as she was about to kick it again and her foot shot forward and connected with the navy trouser leg of a short, curvy woman. The woman wore her dark hair in a fat bun on top of her head, her dress shirt was white and completely wrinkle-free, she wore a badge on her belt, and the sour look she gave Mel made her think the woman enjoyed her line of work entirely too much.

  “Oh, sorry,” Mel said. “You should warn a person before you open t
he door.”

  “You shouldn’t kick doors like a three-year-old having a tantrum,” the woman returned.

  “I wasn’t kicking it because I was mad,” Mel said. The excuse sounded lame even to her own ears. Damn it. “Is Detective Cooper around?”

  “He’s busy at the scene,” the woman said. “What do you need?”

  “To get out of these cuffs, to wash the blood off my hands, to go home, take your pick,” Mel said. Okay, now she sounded like a three-year-old, but in her own defense, it had been a rough morning and she was not at her best.

  “Have a seat,” the woman said. “You’ll go when we say you can go.”

  Mel lifted her eyebrows. No one from the Scottsdale PD had ever spoken to her so harshly except Manny when they had first met. She glanced at the name on the woman’s badge. T. Martinez.

  No freaking way.

  “You know Manny Martinez?” she asked.

  The woman gave her a look that said perhaps Mel wasn’t as stupid as she’d thought. “He’s my cousin. I’m Tara Martinez.”

  “Of course you are,” Mel said. Now the woman’s hostility was all coming into focus.

  “And you are Melanie Cooper, former love interest of Manny. You remember him, tall, good-looking detective who just moved to Las Vegas, transferred to the Vegas PD, in fact,” Tara said. “Who does that? Who moves away from all of his family to go shack up with some cupcake baker and her kid?”

  “That is not my fault,” Mel said.

  Tara narrowed her eyes at her. “Of course it is. You could have made him stay, but did you? No. You had your eyes set on a bigger prize, an assistant county attorney. How is good ol’ Joe DeLaura anyway?”

  “Fine,” Mel said.

  “Terrific,” Tara said. Her sarcasm was as sharp as the edge of the cuffs digging into Mel’s wrists. “And I’m sure Joe will be thrilled to hear all about this.”

  With that, Tara slammed the door in Mel’s face. She wouldn’t have thought the day could get any worse. She’d been wrong. So very wrong.

  “Really, Uncle Stan?” she asked when he appeared in the conference room fifteen minutes later. “Forty-five minutes I’ve been sitting here. I get that you’re annoyed with me, but seriously?”

  “Mel, I need you to let the crime scene technicians look you over,” he said.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “To prove that you didn’t have anything to do with Mike Bordow’s murder,” he said. He reached into his shirt pocket and fished out a roll of chalky antacid tablets. He popped one in his mouth and ground it between his molars as if it were the antidote to a venomous snakebite.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “The vic’s sister is raising a hell of a stink about finding you here,” he said. “Your bloody hands were not helpful.”

  “Do I need a lawyer?” Mel asked.

  Uncle Stan pressed his lips together. He clearly was torn between helping her out and divulging facts about the case.

  “It’ll be easier if you let them snap some pics and take some swabs,” he said. He lowered his voice. “You can track your moves this morning?”

  “Oh, yeah, I was at Bordow’s house and talked to the guard at his gate, then I was at his country club and talked to the hostess, and I was on the phone with my client Diane before I got here and found him. Why?”

  “The medical examiner puts his death at before seven o’clock this morning, putting you nowhere in the area at the time of death,” he said.

  “I was at the bakery with Tate and Marty. I didn’t even leave there until after eight o’clock.” Mel felt her body sag in relief. Then she glared at him. “You could have led with that, you know.”

  He gave her his first smile of the day. “Now we’re even.”

  Mel gave him a hurt look. “I didn’t think you were that vindictive.”

  Uncle Stan sighed. He turned her around and released her from the cuffs. Then he chafed her wrists between his big callused hands, reminding her so much of her dad it made her heart hurt.

  “I’m not,” he said. “It had to be handled this way so that I couldn’t be accused of cutting you a break because you’re my favorite niece.”

  Mel smiled. “I’m your only niece.”

  “Doesn’t make it any less true,” he said. He opened his arms wide and Mel stepped in for one of his patent-worthy bear hugs.

  He was built big and wide just like her father. He even wore the same aftershave. When Uncle Stan hugged her, it was just like having her dad with her, and she squeezed him extra tight, grateful for the comfort that only Uncle Stan could give.

  “So, it was by the book to keep things on the up-and-up?” she asked. She leaned back and studied his dear jowly face.

  “Mostly,” he said.

  “What do you mean mostly?”

  “My new partner really doesn’t like you,” he said.

  “That came out loud and clear,” Mel said.

  “I’m sure you’ll win her over.”

  “Did you know your right eyebrow always rises a little bit higher than your left when you lie?”

  “It does not,” he protested.

  Mel gave him a look and then turned and headed out the door to go retrieve her purse and her phone. She caught Uncle Stan feeling his right eyebrow in the reflection of the window glass in the door, and she smiled.

  While they walked down the hall, Mel described exactly what had happened to the best of her ability. She acknowledged that the vomit in the ball pit was hers and Stan patted her back, letting her know it was understandable.

  He handed her the cell phone she’d dropped and Mel gave him a grateful smile. She glanced at the display and noticed she had a call from Diane, two texts from Tate, and a call from Joe.

  “Does he already know?” she asked Stan. She knew she didn’t have to clarify that she meant Joe.

  “I called him on the drive over,” Stan said. “If he’s coming from downtown Phoenix, he should be here any minute.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Stan,” she said.

  “No problem,” he said.

  He led her over to the crime scene technicians. One of them looked at her hands. Because they’d been behind her back, Mel hadn’t been able to remember how much blood she’d gotten on her hands. It was a relief when she looked to see that it was just her fingertips where she’d moved aside some of the balls that had his blood on them.

  The medical examiner looked her over from head to foot. Then he reached into a plastic case and handed her several alcohol-soaked wipes.

  “No spatter, no signs of an altercation. On the security cameras you’re seen arriving hours after he was killed,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re free to go.”

  “Thanks, Hank,” Stan said.

  “Yes, thank you,” Mel said. “And sorry about the vomit.”

  Hank Whitaker was tall and thin with gray hair that stood up in a mad-professor sort of way on the top of his head. He wore dark-rimmed glasses and his tie was askew, as if it just couldn’t manage to stay centered.

  “I’ve dealt with worse,” he said.

  Mel began to vigorously scrub at her hands, using the entire handful of wipes Hank had given her. When she was finished, she tossed them into a hazmat container, which the crime scene techs would throw their gloves and such into.

  She saw Detective Martinez standing by the shelves where Mel had left her things. She walked around the yellow crime scene tape that had already been put up and went to the shelf to collect her purse.

  As she put her phone in her handbag, she stared at the bright pink bakery box. She wasn’t certain what the ramifications of showing it to Uncle Stan would be. Would he think Diane was somehow involved in this? Was she? Mel shook her head. Diane was an intense personality but she refused to believe she was capable of murder.

  “
Hey, baker, what do you have there?” Detective Martinez asked.

  Mel frowned. She didn’t want to think of this woman as Detective Martinez, as that title was reserved for her friend Manny.

  “My purse, Detective Tara,” Mel said. She made a show of opening her bag and checking the contents.

  Tara pursed her lips. She was a handsome woman rather than pretty, but with her hair down and a smidgen of makeup she could pass for attractive. Of course, she would also have to off-load the tractor-trailer full of attitude she seemed determined to haul around with her. Not that Mel was judging or anything.

  “Yeah, right, and what’s that next to it?” Tara asked. She was talking to Mel in a high-pitched singsong voice, the sort that was meant to be condescending and irritating at the same time, which it was.

  “Why, look!” Mel returned in the same singsong voice. “It’s a box full of cupcakes.”

  She paused to dramatically slap her hand on her forehead. Tara curled her upper lip, looking like she wanted to take a bite out of Mel’s hide. Mel ignored her.

  “Oh, silly me, while tossing my cookies upon finding a body in the ball pit, I completely forgot that the only reason I’m even here is because I was hired to bake some cupcakes. Gee, it’s a good thing you’re here, Detective Tara. Whatever would we do without you?”

  Tara crossed her arms over her chest. Now a low growl was coming from deep in her throat.

  “Listen, baker, just because you’re dating a county prosecutor and you’re my partner’s niece, don’t think I’m going to go easy on you,” Tara snapped. “I find it highly suspicious that you were the only person here and you were the one to find the body. That big-blue-eyed, blond thing you’ve got going might work on everyone else but it isn’t going to work on me.”

  “Really?” Mel asked. “And here I was thinking you must have a crush on me given the way you’ve been so eager to tie me up and get me alone and all.”