Death by the Dozen

by Jenn McKinlay

  The final buzzer sounded, and the chefs all slumped back away from their creations. Glancing over the stage, Mel noticed their competition offered up a beet mousse, beet ice cream, and beet cookies. This was going to be an interesting showdown.

  The servers gathered up their entries and began to make their way to the booth where the judges sat waiting.

  The crowd shuffled restlessly on their feet, and Mel couldn’t blame them; it had been a long hour already.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are asking our chefs to remain while the judging commences. I will be introducing each chef and have them talk us through their creation while the judges rank them.”

  “From Polly’s Kitchen, let’s start with Polly Ramsey and her beet-infused white chocolate–chip cookie.”

  Mel tuned out Polly with her perky giggle. She saw Polly’s mother standing in front of the stage, trying to hiss pointers at her daughter.

  “Smile, bigger, show me those teeth, Polly!”

  Polly smiled and frowned at her mother at the same time, lost her concentration, and ended her explanation in mid-sentence. Awkward.

  “That woman should be kept in a padded cell,” Angie said, tipping her head at Polly’s mother.

  The Moonpie bakers were next, and the crowd cheered loudly after their interview.

  Next was Olivia. She was still sweating profusely and looked uncomfortable at the front of the stage. She towered over Johnny Pepper, and when she spoke into the mic, she yelled as if uncertain that it was really making her heard over the festival grounds.

  Johnny cut the interview short and waved Mel over.

  She glanced at the table where the servers were just putting out her red velvet cupcakes.

  “Lastly, we have Melanie Cooper from Fairy Tale Cupcakes. What inspired your red velvet cupcake, Mel?”

  Mel took a deep breath and studied the judges. This was it. Now she was going to get her tell. “Vic Mazzotta,” she said.

  “Oh, so you made these in honor of Vic. He was your mentor, am I right?”

  “Yes, he was. He was also my friend,” Mel said. “You know, Vic was such an amazing chef that when I was his student, we thought he didn’t tell us every ingredient he used in his recipes, because we could never get our food to taste as good as his. So as a tribute, and with the help of some of his associates, I decided to use his secret baking ingredient in my cupcakes.”

  One of the judges dropped their fork with a clatter. Mel felt her heart fall like a soufflé in her chest. It had been a bluff, but the killer had revealed herself by reacting with shock.

  Their eyes met, and Mel forgot she was still talking into the microphone. “Why did you do it? Why did you kill him?”

  Twenty-nine

  Grace Mazzotta jumped up from her seat at the table and bolted to the side of the stage. Joe DeLaura was standing there. She turned and raced for the other side, but Uncle Stan was there. She was trapped.

  “I didn’t do anything,” she protested. “You can’t prove anything. It was them!”

  She pointed at Dutch and Jordan. They looked at Grace and then at each other. Their expressions were blank, and Mel knew them both well enough by now to know that they had no idea what was happening.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Mel said. “It was you. You had Vic poisoned, you tried to poison me, and you poisoned Bertie. What happened? Did Bertie figure it out?”

  “What is the meaning of this?” Felicity Parnassus stormed the stage. She glared at Mel and Grace. “You are supposed to be tasting her cupcakes—taste them.”

  Mel gave Grace a slow smile. “Yeah, taste them.”

  “You’re bluffing,” Grace said. She backed away from the table until she was pressed up against the wall.

  “What’s the matter? Are you afraid I used the spice that you gave to Bertie to murder Vic?” Mel taunted her.

  Both Dutch and Jordan sat up higher in their seats at that.

  “What are you talking about, Mel?” Dutch asked.

  “I know what Vic left out of his written recipes,” Mel said. She fished his letter out of her pocket and waved it in the air before tucking it safely back into her jeans. “He told me in this letter, and it isn’t what you thought.”

  “But Bertie . . .” Jordan began, but Dutch shushed her.

  “Bertie gave you something that he said was one of Vic’s secret ingredients, correct?” Mel asked. Dutch and Jordan exchanged a look and then reluctantly nodded. “And he wanted you to serve it to Vic to let him know that all of you knew what his secret was. How am I doing so far?”

  With hundreds of festival attendees watching and his hopes of stardom rapidly diminishing once again, Dutch had the grace to hang his head.

  “Yeah, here’s the problem with that,” Mel said. “What Bertie gave you was poison.”

  Jordan sucked in a breath and Dutch swore.

  “So, what happened, Grace?” Mel asked. “Were you and Bertie in cahoots? That seems most likely.”

  Grace glanced away, and Mel knew she had guessed right. “You took a hell of chance. I’m guessing it was Bertie’s idea to have Jordan serve Vic the poison. How did you know Jordan and Dutch wouldn’t try it first? Or didn’t you care if they died?”

  She heard Dutch and Jordan gasp together.

  “This is crazy talk,” Grace said. “You’re just grief struck since your mentor is dead, and the stress of this contest is getting to you. Vic died of a heart attack. It hit while he was walking the grounds, and he took a wrong turn into a freezer and died. It’s just a tragedy. I’m sorry. I know you want to blame someone, but there is no one to blame.”

  Grace gave her a heartbroken look, and Mel realized the real acting talent in the Mazzotta family had been Grace.

  “You’re lying,” she said.

  “Mel, I would never have hurt Vic. He was my whole life,” Grace said. Her voice even trembled as if she was wrought with emotion.

  “Really?” Mel scoffed. “He was cheating on you. That had to hurt. And you, you were scouting new talent before he was even dead, because you knew you were going to have to replace him, didn’t you? Because you planned Vic’s death. You planned it so well that everyone did your dirty work for you.”

  “You’re delusional,” Grace said.

  “Not as much as you’d think,” Mel said. “You see, Angie here was lucky enough to have a doctor from India, and he was quite familiar with Cerebra odollam, or as they call it in India, the Suicide Tree.”

  Grace’s face went pale.

  “Yeah, I meant to ask you before,” Mel said. “How was your trip to Southeast Asia? Informative?”

  “I dedicated my life to him,” Grace snarled. “And how was I repaid? Pushed to the side and forgotten for that—a pair of tatas and taffy for brains! You’re right. I wished him dead, and I got my wish.”

  The seething rage that poured off Grace in waves contorted her features into a person Mel did not recognize. It was frighteningly easy to see this stranger as a murderer.

  “But why me? Why did you try to poison me?” Mel asked. Her voice was small and she hated that, but she had to know.

  “Because of the letter,” Grace said. Her voice was full of contempt. “I knew he had written you a letter about his secret ingredient—love. Ha, what a joke! That man only loved himself. I knew if you got the letter from his attorney, you would try to piece it all together. Why did you care so much about that miserable bastard? He wasn’t worth it.”

  “He was worth it to me,” Mel said. “What about Bertie? Why did you kill him?”

  Grace glowered at her and pressed her lips together. She was not going to say another word.

  “Let me take a wild guess,” Mel said. “He figured it out, didn’t he? I mean, he had to have been suspicious. You give him one of Vic’s secret ingredients, Jordan serves it to Vic, and he dies. You must have been counting pretty heavily on Bertie’s hatred of Vic, which was admittedly epic, to keep him silent. It didn’t, though, did it?”

  “I don’t know wh
at you’re talking about,” Grace said.

  “That night I came to your door and Bertie was there and he said, ‘You’ll think about what we discussed,’ tell me, had he already started blackmailing you?”

  Grace fumed but said nothing.

  “You know the one thing I can’t figure was why Vic was in the freezer,” Mel said. She turned to Jordan. The brunette was watching her as if mesmerized. “Jordan, what exactly did you say when you served Vic that fatal scone?”

  Jordan looked wretched. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and most of her makeup was dripping from her chin.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I said something to the effect that I didn’t need him anymore now that Bertie had told everyone that he really did withhold secret ingredients from his recipes and that the key to his perfect pastries was a simple spice from Southeast Asia. Then I asked him how it tasted.”

  The entire festival was silent, straining to hear Jordan’s words.

  She swallowed and said, “He looked confused and then he clutched his chest. He asked me what I had cooked with, so I showed him the spice jar. There wasn’t much left, so I used all of it in the scones.”

  Mel could see that the truth was really just beginning to dawn on Jordan.

  “Oh my God, I poisoned him,” she said. She started trembling and her teeth chattered. “That’s why he did it!”

  “Did what?” Mel asked.

  “He threw the plates,” she said. “I thought he was angry because I was breaking it off with him and because I knew his secret, but he did that so that I wouldn’t . . . so that I wouldn’t eat the poison. He took the bottle and staggered out of my room, and that’s the last time I saw him alive.”

  Jordan collapsed into a sobbing heap against Dutch, who looked as if he’d just been shot. Mel was sure the two of them had no idea that they’d been pawns in a game of murder.

  “So that was it. Vic knew he was dying. He knew he’d been poisoned. You know, finding him in the freezer did make it seem like he had fallen in there by accident or was trying to kill himself, but that wasn’t it at all.”

  Grace glowered at her, her nostrils flaring, and Mel could tell she wanted her to shut up. Well, tough.

  “Vic knew he was dying, he knew it was too late, so he fell into the freezer to preserve the poison in his body, didn’t he? Man, he always was one step ahead.”

  “You don’t know anything!” Grace yelled. “It’s all lies, lies, I tell you. You were always Vic’s favorite. You’d do anything to protect him even though he was a lying, cheating son of—”

  Uncle Stan stepped forward and grabbed Grace’s elbow. “Mrs. Mazzotta, you need to come with me.” It wasn’t a request.

  Mayhem broke out on the stage as everyone began to talk at once.

  Felicity Parnassus was yelling that Uncle Stan couldn’t take Grace. They had to finish the contest. People were staring in openmouthed shock as Grace was hauled across the grounds to a waiting squad car, and Olivia was demanding that the judging be finished or she was going to sue.

  Angie slid an arm around Mel’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  Mel nodded. “Better now that Vic’s killer has been caught.”

  Finally, drowning out the shouting and shocked whispers, Johnny Pepper took over the mic and began to use his charm to soothe the crowd.

  “Well, we’ve lost another judge,” he said. “It looks like the only thing I can do is jump in and finish the judging myself.”

  He leaned over toward Mel and whispered, “You didn’t actually poison those, did you?”

  “No, it was a bluff,” she said.

  “Good one,” he said. “Remind me not to play poker with you.”

  He strode over to where Felicity Parnassus stood, still looking outraged. They quickly conferred with the other judges. Jordan, still in shock, was obviously useless, so Felicity took her place while Dutch and the other judge rallied. Murmurs and quick glances were exchanged, and the four judges returned to the judges’ table and began to sample the desserts.

  The scoring cards for each dessert were handed to Felicity, who quickly tabulated the results. It was as if each of them could not get out of there fast enough.

  Felicity then handed the results to Johnny Pepper, who took up his mic and said, “Well, after much consideration, we have concluded that there is only one bakery worthy of the distinction to win this year’s challenge to the chefs.”

  Mel felt Angie grab her hand and squeeze. Having just seen Grace hauled off by her uncle Stan, Mel really couldn’t care less about the contest, but she respected that the others had devoted a week of their lives to this event. She squeezed Angie’s hand in return, although her heart was not in it.

  “The winner is . . . Fairy Tale Cupcakes!”

  The grounds exploded into a frenzy of cheers. Mel saw the DeLauras, her mother, and Tate jumping up and down. Oz and Al had appeared just in time for the announcement, and Mel watched as they shot each other high-fives. Angie hugged Mel close and shook her, she was so excited.

  Mel was happy for all of them, but she couldn’t smile and she couldn’t cheer, not when her mentor wasn’t here to share it with her when he should have been.

  She saw Joe across the stage. He was watching her with his head turned to the side as if he understood how bittersweet this moment was for her. She wanted nothing more than to run to him and bury herself in his arms. She never got the chance.

  “No, no, no!” Olivia Puckett cried, drowning out the giddy cheers. “I demand a do-over! This is my competition. Mine!”

  As Felicity Parnassus was trotting across the stage to give the large crystal bowl to Mel and Angie, Olivia leaped forward and snatched the trophy out of her hands.

  She tucked it under her arm and looked as if she were going to bolt off the stage with it. As one, the brothers fanned out; even Joe jumped down from the stage to join them, and they looked like an NFL defensive line. With a lionlike roar, Olivia jumped off the stage and made to plow through the crowd.

  “Let’s do this!” Angie nudged Mel, and they leapt off the stage after her.

  Tony tried to take Olivia out at the knees, but she bodyslammed him back into Sal and Paulie, taking them out like bowling pins. Dom made a diving tackle, but she tucked her shoulder and he rolled over her, taking Ray and Al with him. Joe and Tate linked arms to form a human chain, but Olivia grabbed Tate’s free hand and pulled them as she ran, then she did a one-eighty and cracked them like a whip, sending them sprawling.

  Mel and Angie exchanged a look. Like it or not, Olivia was impressive in her crazed state. She had managed to take out seven DeLaura brothers plus Tate.

  “Let’s get her!” Angie snarled. They made to plunge into the crowd, but all of a sudden Olivia disappeared from view.

  Mel raced into the thick of the crowd with Angie hot on her heels. In the midst of the festival visitors, they found Olivia facedown on the ground, with Oz sitting on top of her and Mel’s mother and Mrs. DeLaura each with a foot planted on her backside.

  Joyce was holding the crystal bowl, which she held out to Mel and Angie.

  “No one takes our babies’ trophy,” Joyce said.

  The moms exchanged a high-five, and Oz raised a fist and shouted, “Huzzah!”

  “Yeah, what he said!” Ginny, Joyce’s friend, raised her fist and took a long swig from her water bottle.

  “Angie!” a voice yelled into the crowd. They turned to see a tall, lanky man with his long black hair flowing over his shoulders striding toward them. It was Roach.

  Angie’s eyes bugged, but she didn’t have a chance to say anything as he swept her up into his arms and planted a kiss on her that weakened the knees of every woman watching.

  “Oh, my . . .” Ginny muttered.

  “Roach.” Angie clasped his face in her hands. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you,” he said. “I had to see you. I had to know you were okay.”

  “But I thought all of the planes in G
ermany were grounded because of the bad weather,” she said.

  “They were.” He gazed at her tenderly and said, “But you didn’t really think that would stop me, did you?”

  “Well, I . . .” Angie stammered.

  “When it comes to you, there is nothing I won’t do,” he said. He tucked her hair behind her ears and said, “So I took a train, and a bus, and a ferry, and another train and finally three flights just to be sure that you’re okay.”

  “What about your tour?” she asked.

  “It’ll keep,” he said. He glanced around at the DeLaura brothers, who were brushing themselves off; the crowd that had gone speechless at the scene before them; and finally at the crystal cup in Mel’s arms. “So, you won?”

  “I . . . yes, we did,” Angie said.

  “That’s awesome!” he said. “I’m so proud of you, babe. I knew you could do it. Let’s go celebrate!”

  “All right,” Angie said. She looked at Mel, who nodded at her that it was fine.

  “Go, I’ll see you later,” Mel said.

  Roach wrapped his arms around Angie, and they made their way toward the exit. Mel couldn’t help glancing at Tate. He looked as if he’d been sucker punched, and her heart ached for him.

  He watched as Roach led Angie away and then looked down as if he couldn’t bear it. Mel glanced at Angie and Roach. Just before they disappeared from the festival, Angie turned and glanced over her shoulder at Tate, and her eyes held a longing that made Mel’s breath catch.

  A pair of arms encircled Mel’s waist from behind and a voice said, “Yes, she’s still in love with him, but no, there’s nothing you can do. They have to figure this out for themselves.”

  Mel fell back against Joe and sighed. She wouldn’t give up his strength and support for anything. Had she really started to feel claustrophobic about them?

  She realized now that it was just fear. To have something so precious, it was easy to see why she’d want to push it away. She didn’t want to be heartbroken again like when she’d lost her dad. Vic’s death had brought that fear home to her. But wouldn’t the greater tragedy be not to have Joe in her life and never have Vic’s secret ingredient—love?