Wedding Cake Killer: A Fresh-Baked Mystery

by Livia J. Washburn

  Now that was behind them, and she could turn all her attention to preparing for Eve’s wedding.

  “So what’s on the agenda for today?” Sam asked.

  “We have to get all the Christmas lights and decorations taken down, boxed up, and put away,” Phyllis said.

  “Some folks leave ’em up until after New Year’s, you know.”

  “Yes, but most people don’t have a wedding in their house on New Year’s Eve.”

  “You’ve got a point there,” Sam admitted. “We had help from half the neighborhood puttin’ ’em up. With just us, it’s liable to take a while to get them all back down.”

  “All the more reason to get started,” Phyllis said as she stood up.

  Sam’s prediction proved to be true. The three of them worked all day getting the lights and decorations back in the boxes they had come from. Some of those boxes were stored in various closets, while the boxes of white lights were left out for the wedding decorations. Sam had to carry others up a ladder and into the attic that could be accessed through the garage. At least they had good weather for it. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day had been cloudy and blustery, but this day after Christmas was crisp, cool, and sunny, a perfect winter day in Texas.

  “Is it the British or the Canadians who call this Boxin’ Day?” Sam asked as he carried a box of lights up the ladder in the garage.

  “Goodness, I don’t know,” Phyllis said. She was holding the ladder to make sure it didn’t slip. “I think it’s the British. Or maybe it is the Canadians. Or both. I mean, Canada was part of the British Empire.”

  “Could be,” Sam said as he slid the box through the opening under the rafters. “Whoever it is, I think they’ve got the right idea.”

  “I’m not sure it has to do with boxing up Christmas decorations.”

  “You could Google it and find out,” Sam suggested.

  “I could,” Phyllis said, “if there was any reason to do that.”

  Sam disappeared through the opening. She heard him moving around up there in the storage space. He emerged a few moments later and started down the ladder. She stepped back to give him room when he reached the bottom.

  “You’re getting all dusty,” she said. She brushed at his thick salt-and-pepper hair. “And cobwebby.”

  He grinned. “That’s all right. Anybody as old as I am ought to be a little dusty.”

  Phyllis didn’t point out that they were practically the same age. And she certainly wasn’t gathering dust.

  By late afternoon, all the lights and decorations were boxed up, although quite a few of the boxes still had to be carried up into the attic. They were stacked in a corner of the garage, out of the way, and Sam said, “I’ll take those up there tomorrow. You ladies can get on with your plans for the wedding. I know you’ve still got a lot to do.”

  “The cake is the main thing,” Carolyn said. “We’ve never attempted anything quite that big before.”

  “It’s going to be interesting,” Phyllis agreed.

  After much discussion, they had decided it would be best to keep the cake as simple as possible, in the hope that there would be less of a chance for anything to go wrong. The plan was that it would be a layered white cake with smooth white icing sitting on a floating-tiers cake stand. Those layers would be wrapped with see-through silver snowflake ribbon with a smaller blue satin ribbon behind it that would show through. In the original design, the cake topper would have sat on a nice blue bow. They had planned on putting plastic snowflakes on the top and second layers, leaving the bottom layer plain but sitting artfully on some tulle and scattering more snowflakes on the table around the cake. This had seemed like an appropriate touch since the wedding was taking place during the winter, but Eve had bought a cake topper just a few hours earlier that required them to rethink the cake plans. This cake topper had a twisted glass heart with doves, flowers, and a bride and groom. After much more discussion, they decided to keep the simple smooth frosting, but they would put touches of hearts and flowers with the frosting to match the topper.

  “I think we should have a cake tasting,” Phyllis continued. “I’ll bake some cakes tomorrow morning, and we can get together with Eve and Roy tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Why do we need to do that?” Carolyn asked. “Cake is cake.”

  She had made that same comment several times while they were making up their minds what to do, and Phyllis supposed it was true, at least to a certain extent.

  “I know, but I still think it would be a good idea to let Eve and Roy know exactly what they’ll be getting.”

  “I don’t think they’re really worried all that much about the cake.” Carolyn shrugged. “But it doesn’t matter to me.”

  Sam said, “And any excuse to eat cake is a good one, as far as I’m concerned.” They had left the garage and come into the kitchen while they were talking, and now he leaned a hip against one of the counters. “I don’t think Roy is worried about much of anything. He’s about as calm as any fella I’ve ever seen who was gettin’ married in less than a week.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t he be calm?” Carolyn asked. “He’s getting a fine woman in Eve.”

  “Oh, no argument about that,” Sam said. “But any time a fella’s fixin’ to settle down, certain thoughts have to be goin’ through his mind.”

  “Like giving up his freedom?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Carolyn sniffed. “Yes, like the freedom to scratch himself and throw his dirty clothes on the floor is so important and will be such a sacrifice for poor Roy.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant . . .”

  “No, what you meant is that all men are allergic to commitment, even at Roy’s age. Good grief, it’s not like he’s tying himself down for the next thirty or forty years. He’s not going to live that long!”

  “I suppose not,” Sam said, looking like he wished he had never brought up the subject.

  Phyllis took pity on him and said, “From what I can tell, they’re both very happy and looking forward to being married, and I’m glad for them. So, cake tasting tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock?”

  “I’ll be there,” Sam promised with a grin.

  Eve and Roy ate supper with the three of them at the house that night. Roy tended to like eating out—he had gotten used to it during all those years when he’d been single, he said—but he seemed to enjoy these home-cooked meals, too.

  “I hope you don’t think I’ll be able to feed you like this,” Eve commented during the meal. “My cooking skills don’t even come close to matching up with Phyllis’s and Carolyn’s.”

  “You know I’m not worried about that,” Roy told her. He smiled. “I’m marrying the total package.”

  With his silver hair, easy smile, and casual good looks, Roy was an attractive man, no doubt about that. He was semiretired from a company in Houston that did consulting work for the oil and gas industry. Since the jobs he did now were all on the computer, he was able to keep his hand in, as he put it, and work from anywhere, including Weatherford. All he had to do was log in to the company’s network.

  Sam had found out all of that by talking to Roy, who hadn’t been very forthcoming about his past with any of the others. Sam had also discovered that Roy had been married once before, to a real estate agent who had passed away following a short illness. It was good that he wasn’t a lifelong bachelor. Being married to Eve might have been a big adjustment for him. To Eve, of course, with several husbands in her past, being married was a normal state of affairs.

  “We’re going to have a cake tasting tomorrow afternoon,” Phyllis said. “If that’s all right with the two of you, naturally.”

  “I don’t think we have any plans in the works,” Roy said. “Do we, Eve?”

  She shook her head. “No. At this point we’re just waiting for New Year’s Eve. All our arrangements have been made.”

  “Where are y’all goin’ on your honeymoon?” Sam asked.

  “The Bahamas,” Eve said. �
��I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve never been there.”

  “How about you, Roy?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve been there,” Roy replied. “The place is beautiful this time of year. Actually, it’s beautiful any time of year.”

  “You don’t have to fly through that triangle to get there, do you?” Carolyn asked with a frown.

  Eve said, “You’re thinking of the Bermuda Triangle, dear. They’re totally different places.”

  Carolyn shook her head. “Oh, well, Bermuda, Bahama, I always get those two mixed up.”

  “What about the Virgin Islands?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, I think we’d all be out of place there,” Eve said. She wiggled her eyebrows like Groucho Marx and made both Sam and Roy burst out in laughter. Phyllis smiled. Carolyn was the only one who didn’t seem amused.

  Phyllis picked up her glass of iced tea and said, “Here’s to your honeymoon. May it be a wonderful trip that you never forget.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Roy said.

  Chapter 4

  The delicious aroma of cake baking filled the house the next morning. Phyllis didn’t have just one cake in the oven, though. She had three baking, each a little different from the others. She used a basic sour cream cake recipe and split the batter evenly into three bowls, adding almond extract in one, coconut in another, and lemon extract in the last. She thought Eve and Roy ought to have the final say.

  Sam came in from the garage where he had been working, carrying the remaining boxes up to the attic. He had assured Phyllis that he didn’t need her to hold the ladder and had promised that he would make sure it was steady and well braced before he started up it. She had been a little worried about him despite those assurances, and while she was working in the kitchen she’d been half listening with one ear for the sound of any trouble.

  “That’s done,” he reported, brushing dust off his hands. “And I got to tell you, with those cakes cookin’ and the smell risin’, that attic has never smelled better.”

  “You’ll have to wait for this afternoon to try them,” Phyllis said. “They’ll be cooled off by then, and I’ll have some frosting on them. Anyway, we can’t very well sneak a taste before Eve and Roy. It’ll be their cake, after all.”

  “You’re right. I’ll just enjoy the smell between now and then.”

  Phyllis laughed. “Help yourself to that.”

  “I put up the ladder. Any more chores you need done?”

  “Not right now.”

  “All right. Holler if there’s anything I can help you with.”

  She couldn’t have asked for a better tenant, Phyllis thought as Sam left the kitchen. He was always helpful and invariably friendly. He got in a bad mood from time to time—who didn’t?—but they never lasted for very long. Yes, he had been a good tenant, a good friend . . . and sometimes more. With all this wedding talk, the possibility couldn’t help but crop up in her mind every now and then . . .

  But no. After Kenny’s death, Phyllis had been convinced that she would never marry again, and nothing had changed her mind on that point. Did she love Sam? Probably. She certainly enjoyed spending time with him and having him around, and she could no longer imagine this house, and her life, without him in it. But she couldn’t help but think that being married might change things.

  No might about it, she told herself. Being married would change things between them, and there was no guarantee that the change would be for the better. She was happy the way things were. Why risk that?

  Carolyn came into the kitchen and broke into Phyllis’s train of thought. “That’s certainly a wonderful smell,” she said as she bent down to look through the window in the oven door. “What do you have in there?”

  “I just used a plain vanilla sour cream cake and added different extracts,” Phyllis replied. “It’s a fairly dense cake and should be easy to frost. We’ll let Eve pick which flavor she likes best. And Roy, of course.”

  “Roy’s going to go along with whatever Eve says, and you know it. He’s just like all the other men in the world—no real opinion about anything.”

  Phyllis wasn’t so sure about that generality, but she figured Carolyn was right about Roy agreeing with whatever Eve decided. He had gone along with her decision to come back here to Phyllis’s house after their honeymoon, even though originally he had wanted them to rent an apartment until they could find a place of their own. It was important to Eve to be in a house, though, and in the end Roy hadn’t been stubborn about it.

  Later, Phyllis took the cakes out of the oven and used a wooden toothpick to check each of them, pushing the toothpick down into the center of the cake and then pulling it out to see if any batter clung to it. When the toothpick emerged cleanly from all three cakes, she knew they were done and now just needed to cool before she put the frosting on them. She had already mixed up the buttercream frosting and had it in the refrigerator waiting to be spread on the cakes.

  As Eve and Roy left to go to lunch and do some shopping, Phyllis reminded them, “We’ll have the cake tasting around two, so don’t eat too much. Leave plenty of room for cake.”

  Roy patted his stomach and grinned. “Won’t be a problem,” he assured her.

  While they waited for the cakes to cool and cleaned the living room, Phyllis and Carolyn talked about the other decorations they planned to put up for the wedding. Eve had found some pretty blue-and-white curtains to replace the ones in the living room. They went ahead and took down the old curtains, cleaned the windows, and put up the new curtains after ironing all the wrinkles out.

  Later they would move most of the furniture out of the living room and put it in the garage. White lights and tulle tied with ribbon would go up the banister. Bows would be placed on the backs of the rented chairs at the end of each row along the center aisle. Flowers and candles would finish the decorating. They could use most of the decorations from the shower in the dining room to set up for the reception.

  Roy’s prediction proved to be accurate. He had no trouble sampling all three cakes, and neither did any of the others. And Carolyn was a prophet as well, because when Eve pointed to the coconut-flavored cake and said, “That’s my pick,” Roy nodded without hesitation.

  “That’s the one I liked the best as well,” he said. “Proving once again that great minds think alike.”

  Standing where only Phyllis could see her, Carolyn rolled her eyes and nodded as if to say, I told you so. That really wasn’t necessary, because Phyllis had never doubted it.

  There was a short discussion about the punch, and it was decided that a piña colada punch would go well with the cake, and the groom’s cake would be the same batter as the cupcakes at the shower, with a chocolate buttercream icing. Roy had had one of the cupcakes when he and Sam came back from bowling and really liked it.

  That was the last real decision that had to be made. The flowers were already ordered and would be delivered on the morning of the wedding. Phyllis would bake the cake that morning; then she and Carolyn would frost it and decorate it during the afternoon, so it would be ready for the wedding, which was scheduled for five o’clock. The dresses that Eve, Phyllis, and Carolyn would wear to the ceremony were upstairs, hanging in their closets. As Phyllis cleaned up after the cake tasting, she took a deep breath, both physically and mentally.

  They weren’t ready yet . . . but they would be. She had absolutely no doubt of it.

  * * *

  On the evening of December 30, Phyllis had baked the chocolate chocolate chip groom’s cake, and it was cooling in the refrigerator. She would bake the wedding cake first thing in the morning. Now she was relaxing, sitting in the living room reading a nice thick historical novel set in medieval times . . . the era, not the theme restaurant, as she had told Sam earlier when he asked what she was reading. He was in one of the other armchairs with a Western paperback. Phyllis liked the fact that they could sit there, each reading quietly but aware of the other’s presence, without feeling the need to talk. Every relationship
needed that sort of comfort zone, she thought.

  Carolyn was upstairs, and Eve and Roy had gone out for dinner. They had been gone for quite a while, and Phyllis expected them back soon. Then for the last time, Roy would kiss Eve good night and go back to the motel where he had been staying for the past few weeks. Phyllis didn’t know where they intended to spend their wedding night, and it was none of her business.

  For now she was happy to just sit in the same room with Sam and read, but a few minutes later, that changed. She heard car doors outside and looked up from her book, saying, “That must be Eve and Roy.”

  “I reckon so,” Sam said, still engrossed in the tale of the Old West he was reading.

  His concentration was broken, too, though, when the front door was thrown open and Eve hurried in.

  “Turn on the television,” she said with a note of alarm in her voice. “I need to see the weather forecast.”

  Phyllis had been so busy for the past few days that she hadn’t paid any attention to the forecast, which could be a mistake in a state known for its changeable weather. The remote control was on the small table beside her chair. She picked it up and turned on the TV set, switching quickly to the cable station that carried the satellite radar feed and the forecast from the National Weather Service.

  “Uh-oh,” Sam said. “That doesn’t look too good.”

  Roy came into the house behind Eve, who obviously had hurried ahead of him. “What about it?” he asked. “Is it going to snow?”

  “Shh,” Phyllis said as she looked at the radar image on the screen with its broad bands of pink signifying frozen precipitation stretching across Oklahoma.

  “—spread southward across the Red River overnight,” the disembodied voice on the TV was saying. “The atmospheric disturbance now located over New Mexico will move eastward and combine with the overrunning of warm air aloft over cold air at the surface to produce widespread areas of freezing rain, sleet, and snow during the day tomorrow. This mix of frozen precipitation will extend from the I-35 corridor into East Texas with an expected accumulation of one to three inches. Accumulations will be lighter and scattered west of the I-35 corridor.”