by Harper Lin
A Deadly Bridal Shower
A Pink Cupcake Mystery Book 2
Harper Lin
Harper Lin Books
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Recipe 1: Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes
Recipe 2: Apple Crisp
All Books by Harper Lin
A Note From Harper
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A DEADLY BRIDAL SHOWER
Copyright © 2016 by Harper Lin.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
www.harperlin.com
Chapter One
“I don’t know why I’m so nervous.” Amelia sighed into her Bluetooth as she drove the Pink Cupcake truck down Meridian Street. Her appointment was taking her toward a house in a neighborhood she had never been to. “You should see the homes around here, Lila. They look like mansions. I don’t even want to think about the property taxes these people pay.”
Amelia smoothed the hair on the top of her head and felt the band that was holding it all back in a tight ponytail. She wondered if she should have worn something a little more professional instead of jeans and a hot-pink T-shirt that matched her truck. It was as close to a uniform as she had. Money was good, but she wasn’t at the point of company tees yet.
A year and a half ago, the Pink Cupcake food truck had been just a vague idea. What did a newly divorced woman in her mid-forties with two teenagers know about running a food-truck business?
Yet, here she was. Despite the discouragement from her ex-husband, despite the hoops the city made her jump through, and despite her harshest, most merciless critic—herself—she was sole owner of the Pink Cupcake.
The truck had been stationed in its same little spot on Food Truck Alley for over six months. Its hot-pink signature paint would have caught anyone’s eye immediately, but slowly, it was the cupcakes that were becoming the main attraction.
They were delicious combinations of unique flavors like ginger-and-orange glazed lemon cupcakes or traditional chocolate cupcakes, the size of softballs, that people were soon lining up for every day during the morning rush and lunch hour.
Business had become so good that some days, Amelia had to send Lila home early and pull the truck out because they had baked every bit of flour, spread every last scoop of icing, and used every edible decoration they had on stock for that day.
However, even with all of her success so far, this drive had her stomach in nervous knots.
“Lila, these houses could eat my house as a small appetizer.”
This stretch of Gary, Oregon, was known as Sarkis Estates. It made Amelia’s previous home with her ex-husband, John, look like a slum. But Amelia would never say that out loud and risk coming across like a snob to her employee, Lila. Actually, Lila was much more than just an employee. Right now she was playing the role of personal cheerleader.
“So what? Big houses? Big deal.”
“I think I just saw a Bentley! A Bentley, Lila! Are you kidding me?”
“Sorry, but none of those cars match the hot set of wheels you’re driving.”
Amelia laughed out loud.
The Pink Cupcake stood out like a sideshow attraction at a funeral. Small children who had been busy playing in their front yards or walking along the sidewalks would stop and wave as if they had caught part of a parade going by. Older people would look with surprise or even distaste as the hot-pink machine rolled past, but Amelia was too jittery to care.
“Gosh, for such a ritzy area, you’d think the streets would be smoother. I’ve got to drive fifteen miles an hour so as not to jostle my precious cargo.”
“Just take your time. Anyone in a hurry can pass you,” Lila encouraged. “You know I would have gone with you except that I made this appointment with the doctor months ago.”
“I wish you would have told me sooner. I would have scheduled things differently and gone with you.”
“It’s for a checkup. Nothing more,” Lila said, sounding annoyed. “I’ve been going to the doctor’s office alone for over twenty years. If I all of a sudden start showing up with an entourage, I may break my winning streak.”
“Winning streak? It’s what friends do. Besides, that way I could have brought you with me to this tasting. You made this happen, not me. Whose shoulder will I cry on if they spit out my cupcakes?”
Over the past couple of weeks, Amelia had come to consider Lila like family. She was a reliable employee whose way with numbers was proving to be invaluable. Every cent was accounted for, as Lila had promised in her interview, but she also was helping Amelia with small ways to invest back in the business to ensure a greater savings. Plus, she had a good heart.
The Pink Cupcake lumbered from side to side, bouncing groggily over each manhole cover or stuffed pothole.
“These cupcakes are never going to make it.” Amelia squeezed the steering wheel until her knuckles were white. “They are going to be stuck to the tops of the boxes.”
“No, I put tall toothpicks in each box to prevent just that from happening.”
Amelia shook her head and smiled. “You thought of everything. You’re like my guardian angel. I owe you so much.”
Today was the day her catering career either took off or crashed. She was headed to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Miller, the parents of Darcy Miller, the bride-to-be who was looking for something unusual but delicious for her bridal party.
“They are just regular people,” Lila soothed from the other end of the line.
“Yeah, regular people with Bentleys, Jaguars, and Mercedes in their driveways. You know, I bet each house has at least four bathrooms.”
“Amelia, none of that matters. You have the one thing they want.” Lila continued her pep talk. “That is, the world’s best cupcakes. They don’t have that. All their money and they have never tasted anything like your chocolate raspberry truffle cupcake or the sinfully delicious vanilla and strawberry glaze cupcake or the surprisingly simple yet elegant PB and J cupcake, my personal favorite.”
Amelia laughed out loud since Lila was the one who had thought up the peanut-butter-and-jelly cupcake.
“Surprisingly simple yet elegant? Like its creator?”
Now it was Lila’s turn to laugh.
Her eyes passed over the beautifully manicured lawns and tended flower beds. Huge trees indicated most of the homes had been there for a long time. Slowing the truck down a little more so as not to jostle the cupcakes, Amelia quickly glanced at the directions she had printed out and looked up at the next road sign.
“Okay, I think I’m…What the heck?” A low rumble like thunder could be heard over the truck engine. Amelia listened. Her first thought was to
look up. In all the old science fiction movies she’d watched with her kids, alien abductions always started with a weird hum that got louder and louder. Just like this.
“What is that noise?” Lila asked.
“I can’t believe you can hear that. I think…it’s someone’s stereo.”
The deep bass of oversized woofers was quickly approaching the truck. Amelia could not only hear the annoying sound but also felt the thumping through her steering wheel.
Looking in the rearview mirror, Amelia saw a car quickly approaching.
“Oh my gosh. I’ll give you one guess as to what darling little girl is making all that noise,” Amelia hollered, her voice nearly drowned out by the awful music.
“It sounds like the mother ship is landing!” Lila shouted.
“What is wrong with this person?”
“Is that that girl with the red Corvette?”
“And you win the million-dollar question! Yup! Dana Foster!” Amelia shouted as the car quickly sped up to her truck, honking the horn and revving the engine.
“You’d think she would have learned her lesson after having her name all over the police blotter a couple of months ago,” Lila yelled over the noise.
“Are you kidding? Any attention is good attention to a girl like her.”
“That’s a girl whose parents should have taken a wooden spoon to her behind years ago.”
“You mean Kane and Millicent Foster? Those two are never around. Always jet-setting to the farthest ends of the globe, at least that’s what I’ve heard.”
Pursing her lips and shaking her head slightly, Amelia watched Dana Foster inch closer and closer to the back of her truck, then fall back only to charge up to her bumper again.
“She’s going to cause an accident!” Amelia shouted into the phone. “I gotta go.”
“Call me when it’s over,” Lila shouted back then disconnected the line.
Amelia tried to concentrate on where she was going, but the pounding bass, the gunning engine, and the blonde yelling heaven knew what obscenities at Amelia was such a distraction that she was afraid the red Corvette was going to plow right into her. There was another girl that Amelia didn’t recognize in the car, who was laughing hysterically.
Both girls were wearing large sunglasses that made them look like exotic bugs. Their hair whipped wildly out of the open convertible top, and the passenger, pretending it was a roller-coaster ride, had both of her arms up over her head, hooting and hollering.
Finally, the solid double line in the middle of the road became a series of dashes, and the Corvette immediately swerved around the Pink Cupcake.
“Learn how to drive, lady!” Dana shouted as she stayed parallel with the truck. “You….get off the….road!”
She continued to harass Amelia, who, being more than familiar with the girl’s antics, kept her face looking pleasant and barely glanced in her direction. But while looking straight ahead and watching the road, Amelia saw what neither Dana nor her friend did. And there was an oncoming car.
“Stupid…nice truck…crazy…!”
Normally Amelia wouldn’t pay any attention to foul-mouthed, wet-behind-the-ears “new” adults, but it was obvious that the girls weren’t paying attention. Amelia pointed out her front windshield and looked toward the Corvette.
She slowed the truck so the sports car could pass, but Dana slowed down, too, just to continue her abusive tirade.
“Look out!” Amelia shouted.
Still Dana stared at the pink truck, jerking the steering wheel every time, making the engine roar as she hit the accelerator every few seconds.
“There’s a car coming!” Amelia pointed, her eyes wide.
The other driver honked but didn’t slow down.
“Where’d you learn how to drive, lady?”
Amelia stared in disbelief at Dana, back up at the other car, back at Dana, and finally at the road in front of her.
It didn’t even occur to Dana why her friend was pounding on her arm, trying to get her attention. She wasn’t laughing anymore. She was nearly crying.
Finally paying attention to the road, Dana heard the horn of the oncoming car, only to push the gas all the way to the floor, zoom past Amelia—waving her middle finger in the process—and cutting in front of her just in time to miss the other car, which swerved off the road, kicking up dust and dirt, nearly losing control.
“That girl is going to get herself killed someday,” Amelia grumbled to herself.
Chapter Two
“How did it go, Mom?” Meg came bounding out of the house as Amelia pulled into the driveway. Amelia’s daughter flipped her long, chestnut-colored hair behind her and helped her mom out of the truck.
“Well, it looks like the Pink Cupcake has its first catering job,” Amelia said, smiling down at her daughter.
“That’s great!” Wrapping her arms around her mother, Meg inched up on her tiptoes and kissed her on the cheek. “I knew you’d get it.”
“I wish I had your confidence. Now all I have to do is bake one hundred peanut-butter-and-jelly cupcakes for Darcy Miller’s bridal party, which is being held at the Twisted Spoke in a week.”
Wrinkling up her nose, Meg jerked her head back as if a fly had flown too close to her face.
“The Twisted Spoke? The place that used to be a garage? There are always a bunch of motorcycles parked outside.”
Amelia rolled her eyes. The Twisted Spoke had been a garage at one time but now was a restaurant with garage doors that rolled all the way up, making most of the restaurant alfresco. The entire décor was leather and chrome, with the Harley-Davidson logo plastered on almost every square inch of the place. Food was served on paper plates, but the beer was poured into mason jars. The clientele varied during the day from business people on their lunch hour to families enjoying a dinner of burgers, but as the sun went down each night, a different kind of people started to take up space at the bar. The kind of people with prison tattoos, cigarette breath, bloodshot eyes—and that was just the females.
“The bride wanted something different.”
“Yikes.”
“She and her fiancé both have motorcycles. It’s their thing.” Amelia shrugged. “She told me they were going to Sturgis for their honeymoon.”
“What’s Sturgis?”
“Sturgis is in South Dakota. Every year they have a big motorcycle rally, and thousands and thousands of bikers show up to, I don’t know, have a party.” Saying people went to Sturgis to “have a party” was like saying the Grand Canyon was an interesting plot of land, but Amelia didn’t think her fourteen-year-old daughter needed to know the gory details of this yearly biker event.
“I’ve seen bikers before.” Meg nodded her head.
“You have? Where?”
“The Wild One with Marlon Brando. Isn’t that what bikers are like?”
Amelia nearly burst out laughing but instead just smiled at her daughter. Let her think bikers really look like Marlon Brando. She’ll run screaming in the opposite direction when she catches sight of a real one.
“There might be one or two like that.”
“Can I help you work the truck, Mom? I promise to be good and do whatever you ask. You won’t even have to pay me.”
Amelia twisted her daughter’s long hair around her hand as they walked into the house.
“I’d love to have you, Meg, but this is the first catering job. Let me get my feet wet. The next one, I promise. I’ll even pay you.”
Meg slouched for a moment but after hearing the words “I’ll even pay you,” snapped her head up and smiled.
“Okay.”
“Where’s your brother?”
“In the dungeon, where else?” Meg chirped, bounding up the stairs to her bedroom.
Making her way to the kitchen, Amelia rubbed her head. Her temples had been throbbing since that red Corvette sped past her. Actually, Amelia couldn’t blame the reckless Dana Foster for her headache. It was stress induced.
The prepar
ation for the meeting with the Millers, the baking of sixteen perfect cupcakes, the harrowing drive to their house, the intimidation of their neighborhood, the party details and the price—Lord, the price that she’d waffled back and forth on. It all had taken its toll, but now the hard part was over. She had gotten the job. She had gotten the job for a fantastic price that would ease the burden of bills for the next two months.
“Adam!” she called toward the closed basement door.
Within a few minutes, she heard the pounding of her son’s feet going up the stairs. The door swung open, and there he was.
“What’s up, Mom?” He brushed his wavy black hair to the side. “Did you get the catering job?”
“I sure did.” Amelia’s voice was quiet.
“That’s awesome!”
“Yeah, thanks.” She reached out and mussed his hair. “Would you mind posting a Tweet for me? I’d like to get it out there. Mention it’s the original peanut-butter-and-jelly cupcake and the first catering job and anything else that might sound nice.”
“Sure. I’ll add some pictures, too.”
“Thank you, honey. I’ve got a headache a mile long. I was so nervous, my system is just relieved to have it all over.”
“When cupcakes taste as good as yours do, Mom, it should have been the customer who was nervous you wouldn’t cater their party.” Adam turned and headed back down into the basement where he practically lived all the hours he wasn’t either in school or outside skateboarding.
Adam’s comment brought tears to Amelia’s eyes, but she didn’t cry. Despite her headache, she felt too good to cry. How many nights after her divorce had she lain awake at night wondering how she was going to make ends meet if her cupcake business didn’t work out? How many times had she imagined filing bankruptcy or standing in line for welfare? She had imagined a thousand different failures and made plans to survive every one of them. Never in her wildest dreams had she planned for how to handle success. It wasn’t that Amelia had never experienced success before. It was just that this was real success that she had accomplished without her ex-husband’s help.
