Caramel Crush

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Stop!” Mel interrupted.

  Ray blinked at her.

  “That’s not why I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “I need your help with another matter.”

  Ray took a bite of his cupcake and then looked thoughtfully at her while he chewed. Mel continued frosting the cupcakes in front of her, allowing him a chance to mull over her request. He took a sip of his coffee, still considering her.

  “Does Joe know about this?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Would Joe be okay with this?”

  “Probably not,” she admitted.

  A slow smile spread across Ray’s face. He really did live for making his brother crazy.

  “Explain.”

  “I need someone to hook me up with Tyson Ballinger,” she said.

  Ray let out a low whistle. “And by hook up you mean what, exactly?”

  He looked disapproving. He might enjoy yanking Joe’s chain but Mel knew he would protect his brother from harm, even of the heartache kind, with his dying breath.

  “I think he has information that I need,” Mel said. “I need to talk to him.”

  Ray nodded. He reached for the second cupcake and polished it off along with the coffee. Mel continued decorating.

  “Be straight with me,” he said. “Is the business in trouble?”

  “No,” Mel said. “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Personal gambling problem?” he asked.

  She shook her head. He looked dubious.

  “You can tell me,” he said. “I won’t judge you.”

  “I think Tyson might have some information about who murdered Mike Bordow, the owner of Party On!, and I want to ask him some questions,” she said.

  “Mel,” Ray groaned. “You don’t ask Tyson Ballinger questions—ever. In fact, you don’t even enter a room that he’s in unless you want him to clean out your pockets so thoroughly, there isn’t even lint left in them.”

  “I need to talk to him,” Mel said. “I saw him threatening Butch Bordow. It sounded like he planned to take his company, but here’s the thing: The company financials check out. I had Tate look into it. There is no way with the profit they are making that Tyson stands a chance of taking away the company, so why was he threatening Butch?”

  Ray looked at her. “And your plan is to what? Just ask him this? You really think he’s going to tell you jack?”

  “That’s why I wanted your help,” Mel said. She looked at him from under her lashes and gave him her best coquettish look.

  “Yeah, I’m not my brother, that so doesn’t work on me,” he said.

  “Fine,” Mel said. “Look, I have to find out who murdered Mike Bordow—it’s a long story—and I need to talk to Tyson. Can you make this happen or not?”

  Ray pushed the empty plate toward her. “Good thing I have plenty of time to hear the whole story. Now if I just had some more cupcakes and coffee to go with it.”

  Mel met his gaze. She knew he was going to help her, but she was going to have to tell him everything about Diane, the favor from college that she owed her, the breakup cupcakes, and finding the dead guy. The brown eyes that met hers were so like Joe’s. Mel knew that despite his thug-like appearance, Ray was a good man. She trusted him. She could live with telling him everything.

  “Deal,” she said. She took the empty plate and headed back into the cooler.

  Twenty-four

  “Why are we meeting here?” Mel asked Ray. “Shouldn’t we be in a parking garage somewhere?”

  “Nah,” Ray said. “Ballinger has a train fetish. Weirdo.”

  Mel sat on a picnic table in the middle of the McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park. Hordes of children ran back and forth across the field, which sat in the center of a one-mile train track. Two different miniature locomotives, used for taking people on rides, with several passenger cars attached chugged around the park.

  At mid-afternoon, it was busy and loud and full of parents and children, riding the trains, playing on the playgrounds, looking at the displays of model trains in the building that housed them, touring the parked historic engine, and riding on the carousel.

  Mel had taken her nephews here when they were little and at the height of their Thomas the Tank Engine obsession. It was a beautiful park. She glanced at the ring on her finger. She couldn’t help but wonder if she would be returning here if she and Joe had children of their own. The thought made her break out into a sweat.

  “Steady there,” Ray said. He jerked his head to the right. “Here comes Ballinger.”

  Mel glanced in that direction, trying not to be obvious, but then her head swiveled of its own accord as she took in the man in the grubby denim overalls with a red bandana tied around his neck and a striped train engineer’s cap on his head. He looked nothing like the man who had threatened Butch Bordow at the Triple Fork Saloon when she was with Mick, and yet it was undeniably him with his carefully trimmed mustache and substantial girth.

  “Wow, just wow,” she said.

  “Right?” Ray asked. “Has he no sense of style? Who dresses in a getup like that?”

  It was scorching hot even though they were under the shade of a large tree. Ray had sweat trickling down the sides of his face and he still wore his thick leather jacket.

  “I can’t imagine,” Mel said.

  “DeLaura, I heard you wanted to talk,” Tyson said.

  He was a grizzly of a man and Mel felt the same sense of caution that she had the last time they’d met up.

  “You sure you have time?” Ray asked. “Aren’t you engineers on a schedule?”

  “Hilarious,” Tyson snapped. “Never heard that one before. I’ll have you know I do this for my kid, so shut up.”

  Ray raised his hands in surrender. “Whatever.”

  Tyson looked at Mel. “I know you.”

  She felt like hiding behind Ray, sweaty leather jacket and all, but she didn’t. Instead, she stood up and held out her hand.

  “I’m Melanie Cooper,” she said. He frowned, trying to place her. “I’m friends with Diane Earnest.”

  His gray eyebrows shot up, so he knew the name. He looked at Ray. “What’s this all about?”

  “Word is Butch Bordow owed you money for gambling debts,” Ray said. “Now his son is dead. Coincidence?”

  Tyson leaned in close to Ray. A vein was throbbing in his temple just beneath his engineer’s hat. Ray met his furious face with a bored look. Mel had to give it to him, the one time she had faced down Tyson at the saloon, she’d almost peed her pants.

  “What are you trying to say, DeLaura?” Tyson snarled.

  Instead of backing up like any sane person would, Ray leaned forward. He looked like a junkyard dog, all bared teeth and bristling with hostility.

  “What do you think I’m trying to say?” Ray asked. “Did you kill Mike Bordow?”

  Mel glanced between them. It was a lot like the staring contests she used to have with Tate and Angie when they were kids, except these two looked like they wanted to punch each other for the win. She figured she’d best step in before there was a brawl.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Ballinger,” Mel said. “I think we are off to a bad start here.”

  She gave Ray a look and he eased back just a little. Tyson did, too, and Mel took a steadying breath.

  “You and I have met before,” she said. “I was in the Triple Fork the other day and I saw you talk to Butch Bordow.”

  Tyson ran his finger over his mustache. “Oh, yeah, that’s where I know you from. You’ve got some balls standing up to me.”

  Mel nodded. This felt like very high praise coming from Tyson, so she went with it.

  “It’s clear Butch owes you some money and, well, after you left the bar, Butch did say that he thought you might have had Mike killed to get even.”

  “What?” Tyson roared.
“Butch Bordow is a lying sack of sh—”

  “Hey, lady present,” Ray interrupted.

  Tyson growled at him but Ray didn’t back down.

  “I didn’t have anyone killed,” Tyson said. “I don’t need to do that. I use other people’s weakness and stupidity to ruin them financially and their company becomes mine. It doesn’t get any easier than that. Sheesh, I’m not the mob.”

  “So then your plan is to take away Party On!?” Mel asked.

  Tyson stepped back. “What’s this to you, anyway?”

  “I told you, I’m friends with Diane Earnest,” she said.

  “The fiancée who probably killed him,” Tyson said.

  “She didn’t,” Mel said.

  “Yeah,” Tyson snorted.

  “Look, it’s important,” Mel said. She was feeling desperate. She could feel Ray watching her intently, and she could only imagine what he was thinking. “I owe Diane Earnest a debt. The only way I can repay her is to find out who killed her fiancé.”

  Tyson studied her. “If it’s money you owe this Diane, we could talk about what collateral you’ve got and do a deal.”

  “No, Mel,” Ray said. He sounded fierce. Mel reached over and squeezed his forearm with her hand. She appreciated the support but she had to get some sort of information out of Tyson before this meeting ended.

  “It’s not money,” Mel said. “I wish it was that simple.”

  Tyson’s expression softened as if he understood that there were much worse things to be in debt for besides cold hard cash.

  “I can’t help you then,” he said not unkindly.

  Mel nodded. This had been a long shot at best. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Sure.” Tyson jerked his head at Ray. “DeLaura.”

  “Ballinger.” Ray returned the nod.

  Tyson turned to leave, took two steps, but then turned back around, his gaze meeting Mel’s. “Word of advice?”

  “Okay.”

  “Stay away from this situation,” he said. “There’s stuff . . . Well . . . a pretty girl like you should steer clear is all.”

  Mel and Ray watched silently as he crossed the park and disappeared into the building that housed the clubs that maintained elaborate model train displays.

  “Did you get anything out of that?” Ray asked. He wiped the sweat off his face with his forearm.

  “Only the feeling that Tyson Ballinger knows more than he’s saying,” she said.

  “What’s our next play?” Ray asked.

  He pushed off of the table and led the way through the park to the parking lot. They had to stop at the train tracks and wait while one of the trains passed with several families all jammed onto the ride. Mel smiled when Ray waved back at the kids who waved at him as they passed.

  “Don’t have one,” Mel admitted. “I think I am forever going to be in debt to Diane. She’ll be doing time in prison for a crime she didn’t commit and asking me to bake cupcakes with metal files in them.”

  Ray laughed and Mel gave him a look letting him know she didn’t think it was funny. He laughed harder.

  “I can see why Joe is smitten with you,” he said. “You’re a kick in the pants, Melanie Cooper.”

  “Thanks, I think,” she said.

  They crossed the hot pavement and climbed into Mel’s car. She turned on the engine and blasted the air conditioner. Ray turned his vents so they blasted right onto his face and chest.

  “What if . . .” Mel paused. The thought was only half formed and she wasn’t sure how to say it so that it sounded as plausible out loud as it did in her head.

  “Yeah?”

  “What if Tyson is telling the truth and he didn’t kill Mike to punish Butch?” she asked.

  “Then your friend is in a whole lot of trouble because who had a motive to kill him besides the woman he was cheating on?”

  “Exactly,” Mel said. “This whole thing has been aimed at Diane from the start, but it doesn’t make sense. She was having breakup cupcakes delivered. Clearly, she was moving on. She had no reason to kill him. In fact, it really ruined the amount of gloating she was planning to do.”

  “So, who else had a motive? Tyson’s MO is to take people’s companies, not kill anyone.”

  “But that’s weird, too.” Mel chewed her lip in thought. “Tate checked the financials for Party On! and they’re doing fine. In fact, they are on the brink of breaking out, so how could Tyson have a financial investment in the company unless someone sold him a chunk?”

  “Meaning Mike Bordow could have just paid Tyson to make Butch’s gambling debts go away,” Ray said. “In which case, why is Mike dead? Why didn’t he pay Tyson?”

  “Exactly,” Mel said. “Unless, Mike chose not to pay Tyson to bail out his father but rather planned to expand the company, like he told his girlfriend Nicole, using Diane’s money and marketing ability. Maybe Butch wanted Diane’s money for himself and when Mike blocked his father from taking her money, there was a fight between father and son.”

  Ray nodded. “Dear old dad might be the killer then.”

  The thought made Mel queasy, but who else could have crushed Mike’s skull? That was the act of a person who was desperate. Butch was desperate to pay Tyson before Tyson ruined him and left him penniless. Mike could move on with the company with Diane’s money and not be hampered by his father’s debt if he cut him loose. Could Butch have murdered his own son to get his hands on the money? It was all wild speculation but she felt like she was getting closer to the truth.

  “I need to talk to Butch again,” Mel said.

  “He’s not going to tell you jack,” Ray said.

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Yep, blackmail,” Ray said.

  “Oh, I don’t think blackmail is in my wheelhouse,” Mel said. “I’m better off just asking him what’s what.”

  “And he’ll shut down and you’ll get nowhere.” Ray cracked his knuckles and then stretched his fingers. “Good thing you have the help of a master.”

  He turned to look at her and grinned. It was a smile rife with that deadly DeLaura charm and Mel knew without a shadow of a doubt that if Joe found out about this, he would be livid.

  Knowing this, she said, “Explain.”

  “Simple,” he said. “We call Butch, we tell him we know what he did, and then we have him meet us at Party On! for a payout so we don’t rat him out. If he shows, we know he did it.”

  “That easy?”

  “Of course,” Ray said. “All the best plans are.”

  Mel was racked with indecision, but her desire to prove Diane innocent and be free of her control was too strong to resist.

  “All right.” She glanced at him, and knowing full well she shouldn’t trust the gleam in his eye, she said, “Let’s do it.”

  Ray and Mel sat in his black Porsche Carrera, of course, in the adjacent lot from the Party On! warehouse store and waited. Ray had instructed Butch to meet them at nine o’clock. No cars were in the lot and the lights were off. Thankfully the area was well lit, so Mel knew they’d be able to see Butch if he used either the front door or the side entrance.

  “What time is it?” she asked Ray for the fifth time in as many minutes.

  “A minute after the last time you asked me, making it seven minutes until nine,” he said. To his credit, he sounded more amused than irritated.

  “Why isn’t he here yet?” Mel asked. “If you were being blackmailed, wouldn’t you get to the designated meeting place early?”

  “Depends upon how scared I was of the blackmail,” Ray said.

  “Do you think you scared him?” Mel asked.

  “No idea,” he said. “I sent a text.”

  Mel turned and looked at him. “You sent a what?”

  “A text,” Ray said. He gestured with his thumbs as if the concept of texting had
to be acted out for Mel.

  “I thought you were going to call him,” Mel said. “You know, make with the scary voice and freak him out. A text, really? What sort of emoji do you use for that? Why not send him a candy-gram? I mean, would you do what a blackmail text told you to?”

  “Depends upon the text,” Ray said.

  Mel dropped her head into her hands. They were doomed. This whole thing was doomed. She was going to be an indentured servant to Diane forever.

  “Hold up,” Ray said. “Someone is creeping along the outside of the building.”

  Mel glanced up to where he pointed. Sure enough, she could just see someone easing around the side of the building. A wedge of light appeared and Mel saw the silhouette of the person as they slipped inside. It definitely looked like a man.

  Mel opened her door and Ray grabbed her arm. He pulled her back inside and reached past her to close the door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

  “Inside,” Mel said. “We have to confront him and get him to admit what he did.”

  “No, no, no,” Ray said. “Now we call the police and tell them that a big, fat mouse is in our trap.”

  “But we have no proof,” Mel said. “We need a confession. Heck, we’re not even sure that’s Butch.”

  “The police can figure that out,” he said. He took out his phone and opened his contacts.

  His voice had a that’s final note to it. Mel gave him a look of disbelief. Ray DeLaura had known her for more than twenty years. Surely he knew better than to try that tone with her.

  “Why don’t you want to go in there?” she demanded.

  “Because that’s a job for the police,” he said.

  “And you are so respectful of the boundaries of the men and women in blue,” Mel said. The note of disbelief in her voice could not be missed.

  “Mel, there was a dead guy in there,” Ray said. He said it as if it was the most obvious reason in the world not to go in there.

  “I know,” she said. “I’m the one who found him.”

  He gave her a horrified look and all of a sudden it clicked.

  “Oh, wow,” she said with a sharp laugh. “You’re afraid to go in there.”