Death by the Dozen

by Jenn McKinlay

  “In there,” Mel said.

  Maria and Dom exchanged a look and then stiffened their spines, and as one, they pushed through the door into the room where Angie was being treated.

  Mel heard a protest, but then Dom Senior spoke and there was no more argument. Dom was a large man, standing well above six feet. His sturdy build and harsh features, topped by a bushy gray mustache and matching eyebrows, gave anyone who considered arguing with him a moment’s pause.

  Mel craned her neck, trying to see over the DeLauras’ heads, but no luck. The circle of medical staff surrounding Angie blocked any view she might have gotten, and the door closed before she could get even a glimpse of her friend. One glance at the crew around her, and she noticed she wasn’t the only one trying to get a peek.

  “Oh, to hell with this,” Tate said. He looked half crazy with worry. “I’m her husband. I’m going in.”

  No one stopped him, and he slipped through the door right behind her parents.

  Mel looked up to see Joe striding back down the hall toward them. It was at a time like this, when her whole planet was thrown into chaos, that she really appreciated the sense of order Joe brought to any situation.

  From his blue striped tie and crisp dress shirt to his shiny wingtips, Joe looked every inch the man in charge. It occurred to Mel that someday he probably would be the chief district attorney or maybe even the attorney general for the state. Where would she fit in his life then?

  She shook her head. Now was not the time for unsubstantiated panic about her relationship, and she suspected she was only going there because thinking of Angie was becoming unbearable.

  “Any news?” Joe asked as he slid into her side and scooped her close with one arm about her waist.

  “Not yet,” Mel said. “But your parents are in there.”

  “How did they look?” he asked.

  “Scared.”

  “Where’s Tate?” he asked.

  “He’s in there, too,” she said. “Given that he’s her husband and all.”

  “You know he’s in love with her,” Joe said.

  Mel turned to study him. His voice had sounded odd, as if he were trying to sound more casual than he felt. Did Joe worry about her relationship with Tate? He had never said anything before.

  She was about to open her mouth to explain that she knew how both Tate and Angie felt, the fatheads, but the swinging door opened and all thought fled from Mel’s mind as she braced herself for any news.

  Tate was the first to step out followed by Dr. Patel.

  Looking limp, Tate looked at Mel and nodded. “She’s going to be all right.”

  Cheers erupted from the DeLaura brothers, and Joe snatched Mel up into his arms and hugged her tight enough to crack a rib. He set her down and joined the huddle of brothers as they pounded one another on the back. Mel could see them all making surreptitious wipes across their eyes to hide their tears of relief.

  Tate opened his arms and she hugged him close. They hadn’t lost Angie. She was going to be okay. Maria and Dom Senior came out of the room and joined their sons, then Maria reached out and pulled Angie and Tate into the group.

  “You’re family, both of you,” she said in a voice gruff with emotion as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Don’t ever forget it.”

  Mel and Tate exchanged a glance and joined in the hugging. It felt good after the strain of the past two hours to pull these people she had known since she was a child close and hug them.

  Dr. Patel glanced at their group, looking relieved. Mel imagined having both Tate and Dom Senior hovering would make even the best doctor nervous.

  “Are you Mel?” Dr. Patel asked.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “She’s asking for you,” he said.

  “You can talk for just a minute, but then I’m moving her up to the ICU,” he said.

  “All right,” Mel said.

  She squeezed Joe’s hand as she broke away from the group and went into the room. They had changed Angie’s clothes, and she was wearing one of the hospital johnnies that opened in the back and flattered no one.

  Her dark hair fanned out across the pillow, but her normally olive skin tone now looked to be a sickly shade of gray against the white sheets. She was hooked up to several machines, one of which was the electrocardiogram.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Are you kidding?” Angie asked through dry lips. “‘My life is as good as an Abba song. It’s as good as “Dancing Queen.” ’ ”

  “Seriously?” Mel asked on a snort that turned into a choked sob. “You’re quoting Muriel’s Wedding to me now?”

  Angie opened her mouth as if she was about to sing. Mel held up her hand to stop her. “No, save your strength. Is there anything you need, or is there something I can get you?”

  “I want my jammies,” Angie said. “The blue ones with the cupcakes all over them.”

  “Done.”

  “What time is it?” Angie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mel said. “It must be past noon.”

  Angie’s eyes went round. “What are you doing here?”

  She arched her back as if she would sit up, but she didn’t have the strength, and the nurse nearby caught her and pushed her back down.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” the nurse said. “You are to stay put.”

  “Mel, you have to get down to the festival,” Angie said. “You have to compete today, you can’t forfeit.”

  Mel hadn’t even thought about the festival. With Angie so ill, the contest had less than no importance for her.

  She waved her hand. “Angie, I don’t care about that stupid competition. The only thing that matters to me is that you’re okay.”

  “Really?” Angie asked. “Well, I care. So I am telling you as your best friend and business partner that you need to get your butt down there. Pronto.”

  “Angie, I really don’t think—” Mel began, but Angie interrupted her.

  “Obviously,” Angie said. She grabbed Mel’s hand as they began to wheel her out of the room, forcing Mel to walk with her or be dragged. “Because if you were thinking, you’d realize that whoever poisoned me is trying to stop us from winning the competition, and you should be down there at the festival figuring out who it was.”

  The rolling bed was rounding a corner, and Mel couldn’t hang on. Angie’s fingers slipped through her grasp, but she heard Angie call out, “Start with Olivia!”

  Nineteen

  “I’m not going,” Mel said. “I’m not leaving her. I’m sure it was just the aftereffects of the poison making her think someone from the competition tried to poison her. I mean, that’s paranoid, right?”

  Joe was silent. The entire family had moved up to one of the ICU waiting rooms. Only two people were allowed in at a time to see Angie, so they were taking turns.

  Sal, Dom, and Ray were the only DeLaura brothers with families of their own, and their wives and children soon joined the vigil.

  Dom’s little girl looked just like him with a sturdy build, chocolate brown eyes, and thick black curls. Given the strength of the DeLaura DNA, it meant she also looked just like Angie. She was as cute as could be, and Mel could hardly stand to look at her.

  “Mel, I think Angie might be right,” Joe said. “My friend at poison control was stunned by what I described, and he said a substance that was so obscure with such a short reaction time was most likely a deliberate poisoning.”

  “Oh my god.”

  Joe took her hand in his and squeezed her fingers hard as if bracing her for more bad news.

  “And Mel, I have to be honest, I don’t think the poison was meant for Angie. I think it was meant for you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you’re the baking genius behind the team that is Fairy Tale Cupcakes,” he said. “If this is a competitor, it makes sense that they’d go after you.”

  “The prize is ten thousand dollars,” Mel said. “Yeah, it’s a lot but certainly not worth murdering th
e competition.”

  “That would be true if it was just ten thousand dollars that you are competing for, but it isn’t. This is a very prestigious competition with a lot of cash, and the competitors all know that the Food Channel is always looking for new and fresh talent. Winning this would be a coup for anyone who had dreams of Food Channel stardom.”

  “I just don’t see it,” Mel said.

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree,” he said. “But I do think Angie is right. We need to get down there.”

  “We?” Mel asked.

  “You don’t think I’m letting you out of my sight, do you?”

  “I don’t want to leave her,” Mel argued.

  “I’ll be here,” Tate said as he joined them. “I’m not leaving her, and I’ll call you if there is anything, even a case of hiccups, to report.”

  “I—”

  “Go,” Tate said. “It’s the best thing you can do for her. She’ll rest easier if she knows you’ve gone. Besides, with this crew waiting, you won’t get in to see her for at least a few more hours.”

  “So, it’s settled,” Joe said. “Excellent.”

  Mel did not like the dark expression that shadowed his features. With his jaw set and his brow lowered, he looked like he wanted to do some damage.

  “You know the contest started fifteen minutes ago. We’ve probably already been disqualified.”

  “Well, let’s go see if we can talk some sense into those judges.”

  Scottsdale Osborn Hospital was across the street from the San Francisco Giants Stadium, well, their spring training stadium. Mel’s father had taken her and her brother, Charlie, every year to spring training games. Mel had always loved the red brick and green trim, and she could never pass it without thinking of her dad and missing him. Today it seemed particularly poignant.

  As if sensing her distress, Joe laced his fingers with hers as they crossed the street and strode past the ball park and the Civic Center Library to the festival grounds.

  Mel flashed her VIP badge at the perky volunteer. Joe just gave her his best dimpled smile, and the flustered woman let them in without hesitation.

  “How do you do that?” Mel asked. “It’s like a superpower.”

  Joe grinned at her and she shook her head. The man could charm a girl right out of her apron with a smile like that.

  She felt her stomach knot up with a sick feeling of dread as they approached the challenge to the chefs staging area. She tried to brace herself for the gloating satisfaction she would see on Olivia’s mug, because no matter how you looked at it, Mel was late and she was pretty positive that alone put her out of the competition. There was no way she could make a dessert out of whatever ingredient they’d hit them with when there was only a half an hour left to go and she didn’t have her sous-chef.

  The staging area was in its usual full-throttle chaos as Mel and Joe approached. The judges were circling, and Mel watched as Dutch stopped by what was usually her station. Today it was occupied by someone else. Naturally, since she and Angie hadn’t shown up, it had been given to a different competitor.

  Mel squinted at the booth. A large man with a very bad haircut was slicing and dicing and sending Joanie, their runner, off the stage to fetch something. Oh, man, they even gave their runner away? That seemed cold.

  Joanie was pounding down the stairs and jogging past Mel when she stopped and gaped at her. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I just thought I’d—”

  “Get up there,” Joanie interrupted her and gave her a shove toward the stage. “He needs you, the boy is in way over his head, but he’s fighting to keep you alive. Now git!”

  Mel looked back at the station. Recognition zapped her like a knife in a toaster. “Oz? Is that Oz?”

  She turned a wide-eyed glance at Joe, who looked equally surprised and a lot impressed. “Well, go help him!”

  Mel gave Joe a quick kiss and ran up the steps onto the stage.

  “Oz!” Mel called. “I can’t believe you, what possessed you to attempt this?”

  “Tony called the bakery and told me about Angie, and I didn’t know what else to do to help out. I know how important it is to her to beat that cow,” he said with a glare over at Olivia.

  “Oz, I . . . you . . . you’re awesome.”

  “Thanks, but are you going to help me here or what? The clock is ticking louder than Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve countdown, and I’m starting to panic,” he said.

  It was true. His round face was beaded up with sweat, and his chef’s coat was too tight and looked the worse for wear.

  “I’m in!” Mel jumped into the kitchenette beside him.

  “Oh, thank the culinary gods!” Oz sagged against his cutting board.

  “All right, what’s the mystery ingredient, and what are you cooking with it?” she asked.

  “You ready for this?” Oz asked. He held up a string of red chili peppers. “Are we having fun yet?”

  Mel broke into a grin. “Oh, yeah, we are. What’s your plan?”

  The timer buzzed on the oven, and Oz hustled over to it. He took out a pan of cupcakes and popped them in the cooler. “Well, we’re called Fairy Tale Cupcakes, so I figured I’d make the chocolate chili cupcakes my abuela made when I was a kid.”

  “Oh, Oz!” Mel grabbed his face and planted a kiss on his shaggy head. For a nanosecond his eyes appeared from between the hanks of the hair that usually hung over them, and they were wide with surprise. “It’s perfect, you know that, right?”

  He flushed with pleasure and began to stammer, “B-But now I’m stuck. I don’t have the skills to plate these.”

  “I’m your sous-chef,” Mel said. “I’ll work on the plating. You just finish what you started.”

  Oz blew out a breath. “Okay. Hey, how is Angie?”

  Mel smiled at him. “Well, after this, she’s going to demand that we give you a raise.”

  “But I’m interning. You’re not paying me anything,” he said.

  “We’re going to have to rethink that,” Mel said. “Now, let’s do this.”

  Oz snapped back into action. The boy had skills—of that, there was no question. His cupcakes had cooled, and he was carefully unwrapping them. In a pot on his small stove top he had melted a chocolate candy coating. Mel watch as he used a long wooden skewer, stabbed the top of a cupcake, and dipped it into the chocolate. He moved quickly, dipping each one and placing them carefully on wax paper.

  When he removed the wooden skewer, Mel carefully placed a whole chili from the strand onto the top of the cupcake. When they were done, Oz put them into their small refrigerator to set the chocolate.

  Mel helped herself to the leftover chocolate candy and set to making intricate swirls of chocolate on the dessert plate and then sprinkling tiny amounts of chili flakes amidst the whirls and curlicues.

  The warning bell sounded. They had one minute to go. Oz pulled out the cupcakes with their hardened chocolate shells and placed one onto each plate. They looked amazing.

  They exchanged a high-five and a half hug just as the alarm sounded for the end of the competition.

  There were a couple of cupcakes leftover, and Mel was dying to see how Oz’s cupcake tasted. Even if they were lousy, she was so proud of him for jumping in to help, she boxed the leftovers and couldn’t wait to bring one up to Angie to show her.

  The servers took away their entries, and Mel and Oz departed the staging area. Joe was waiting and he asked, “How did it go?”

  Mel opened the box to show him, and his eyes got their usual sugar-crazed glaze on them.

  “Are those chocolate chili?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Mel answered. He reached for the box, but she smacked his hand away.

  “I’m saving these for Angie. Oz, I want you to take the rest of the day off,” she said. “You went above and beyond. I can’t wait to tell your guidance counselor about how you saved the day. Hey, how did you get them to let you compete for us anyway?”

  “I found
Angie’s VIP tags at the shop,” he said. “So, I had those, and then some crazy blonde lady threatened to have her husband shut the festival down if I wasn’t allowed to represent the bakery.”

  “Ginny,” Mel said. “Huh, I’ll have to thank her.”

  “I want to sleep for two years,” Oz said. “How do you people do this? God, they’re going to judge those cupcakes. What if they’re a bust? I can’t stand to watch.”

  “Go,” Mel ordered. “They’re going to be great. I know it. You saved us, Oz.”

  He flipped her a lopsided grin and loped off through the crowd toward the exit.

  “You’re really not going to let me try one?” Joe asked.

  “Well, maybe one, back at the shop. I have to see if the bakery is okay. I’m going to keep it closed today. I want to get back to the hospital and check on Angie.”

  “Tony just called to report. She’s still in the ICU, but she’s doing fine,” Joe said. “I didn’t tell him about Oz. I thought you might want to share that story.”

  Mel smiled. “It is a good one.”

  Together they clasped hands and made their way back to Old Town. Mel noted that Oz had put a sign on the door saying that because of a family emergency the bakery would be closed. The doors were locked, the lights were off, and all seemed calm. She really had to hire that boy on permanently.

  “Hungry?” she asked as they climbed the stairs to her apartment.

  “Are you offering me a cupcake?” he asked.

  “How about a chicken sandwich and then a cupcake?” She unlocked her door and pushed it open.

  “O . . . ah!” Joe’s answer turned into a yelp as a white ball of fury flew out of the open door and latched on to his pant leg.

  “Captain Jack!” Mel shoved the cupcakes into Joe’s arms and unhooked the kitten from the fabric of his pants. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry, little guy. I forgot about you.”

  Joe looked at her over the box. “New boyfriend?”

  “Angie and I found him in the Dumpster last night trying to eat a cupcake that was bigger than him,” Mel said. She held the white ball of furious fur under her chin and tried to soothe him. “It’s okay, buddy, you’re all right. I’ve got you.”