Deep in the cooler, Mel didn’t hear the back door open, so when she stepped out, she gave a small yelp to find Angie sitting at the worktable, surrounded by three of her brothers, Tony, Al, and Paulie.
“Ah!” Mel jumped and put her hand over her heart. “Give a gal a warning shout, guys.”
“Sorry,” Tony said.
Being the nerd inventor of the family, he was fiddling with some small electronic device. To Mel, it looked like a sort of house arrest anklet. That couldn’t be good. She raised her eyebrows at Angie, who was puffy eyed, red nosed, and pale looking.
“Oh, Ange,” Mel said. “I thought you were going to stay home for the rest of the day.”
“I was,” she said. “But I had to make some more of the payments for the wedding.” She paused to hiccup and then continued, “So I figured I’d do it over the phone. I called the limousine service . . . and—”
Angie stopped talking. It was as if her voice had given out and she couldn’t form the words. Mel studied her face. She glanced at the brothers. They were all looking at their sister as if they didn’t know what to do. Growing up with seven older brothers, Angie really wasn’t much of a crier, so when she did leak out of her eyeballs, the boys were understandably paralyzed by the sight.
“Can someone tell me what happened?” Mel asked. She was fighting to keep her voice even and not sound impatient. It was a struggle.
Al cleared his throat. “The limo company wasn’t answering their phone, but when Ange did get through, she found out that the driver they’d hired was—”
Al stopped. Just like that. As if his voice had vanished, too.
“Was what?” Mel cried. “Double booked? Sick? Missing? What?”
“Dead,” Paulie said. “Bludgeoned to death with a tire iron.”
Four
Mel’s legs gave out and she sank onto the nearest stool. Angie let out a wail that sounded as hysterical as an abandoned kitten on an iceberg in the Arctic.
“Dead?” Mel repeated as if it were a motion requiring a second.
“Yeah,” Tony said. “They found his body last night outside the company’s garage. It looked like a robbery, so the police have been investigating it as such, but now—”
Mel blinked at him, waiting for him to finish his sentence.
He glanced back down at the gadget in his hands.
“Now what?” Mel asked Angie.
Angie scrubbed her face with her fist and sucked in a steadying breath. “Now they think it might have been murder and that it has something to do with Tate and me getting married.”
“‘They’ being Uncle Stan?” Mel asked.
“Yeah, he seems to feel that it’s too coincidental and that there is someone out there with a grudge against Tate or me and they’re trying to stop our wedding.”
Mel shook her head. “Not to state the obvious, but wouldn’t it be easier to go after you or Tate directly?”
The brothers collectively gasped.
“I didn’t say I wanted that to happen, just that it would be more expedient than murdering everyone involved in their wedding,” Mel said.
“That’s what I said,” Angie agreed. “But Uncle Stan and Tate were pretty freaked out, so now I have them.” She hooked her thumb at her brothers. “They are going to watch me right up until the ceremony to make sure nothing happens to me.”
“What about Tate?” Mel asked. “Who’s watching him?”
“Stan has assigned plainclothes policemen to watch all of our vendors and Tate,” Angie said. Her voice wobbled and she looked at Mel and said, “I can’t believe this is happening.”
Mel rose half out of her seat and hugged her friend. “We don’t know that it’s directed at you two. It could still be coincidence.”
“Not to be negative,” Tony said, “but my calculations on the probability of this being a random happenstance are fifty to one.”
Mel would have asked him how he arrived at that conclusion, but math was not her gift and he’d likely offer up some complicated algorithm that would just make her feel dumb. Tony was the only person she knew who actually did math equations for relaxation. Weirdo.
“But everyone loves you and Tate,” Mel said. “Who could possibly want to stop your wedding?”
“Christie Stevens’s family,” Al said. “Her father has hated Tate since she was murdered and I wouldn’t put it past that guy to hire some muscle to ruin Tate’s life in revenge.”
Mel’s eyes went wide. Tate’s former fiancée had been murdered a couple of years ago. She hadn’t liked Christie but she’d never wished death on the woman. Besides, her murder had been proven to have nothing to do with Tate. Why would someone be out to get him now?
Mel paced the kitchen. She didn’t like this. She didn’t like it at all. As much as she disliked Tony’s stats, the coincidence was unsettling. Then she had a disturbing thought. She glanced at Angie and wondered if she should say anything. Maybe it hadn’t occurred to her yet, but then again, if plainclothes officers were being assigned to everyone attached to Tate and Angie’s wedding—
Mel didn’t get the chance to take the thought any further.
The doors to the kitchen slammed open with a bang. Tony and Paulie assumed fighter’s stances, while Al wrapped his arms around Angie and dragged her to the floor.
“What the hell?” Angie cried. “Al, get off of me!”
“I can’t work like this!” Oz cried.
He stomped into the kitchen and Mel noticed a petite little redhead with delicate features right on his heels. Oz whipped around and bent low so that they were eye to eye, or more accurately in Oz’s case, eye to hair, since he wore his bangs over his eyes all the way to his nose.
“This area is off-limits!” he barked at the woman.
For anyone else, this would have been a terrifying sight. Oz had a lip ring, tattoos all over his arms, and when standing straight he was easily six feet, four inches. The redhead did not look impressed in the least.
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him with flinty gray eyes. “Where you go I go.”
“Argh!” Oz roared. He spun around and looked at Mel. “Help me.”
“I wish I could,” Mel said. “But since I have no idea what the problem is it’s hard to know where to jump in.”
“The problem is her!” Oz roared.
The redhead took her badge out of her pocket and was holding it on display for everyone to see. “Officer Hayley Clark. I’ve been assigned to keep watch over Mr. Ruiz.”
“Oz, the name is Oz,” Oz corrected her.
“Whatever you say, Mr. Ruiz,” Officer Clark said. She glanced around the kitchen and Mel got the feeling she was looking for access points from outside and doing a risk assessment.
When she noticed Al, still holding Angie in a huddle, she bent low and asked, “And who do we have here? Do you need help, miss?”
Al let his sister go, and Angie struggled back into her seat. She huffed out a breath and looked at Officer Clark and then at Mel. “Why can’t I have her? She’d be so much less annoying than these three.”
Mel shrugged.
“Officer Clark, this is Angie DeLaura, the bride, and these are her brothers Paul, Al, and Tony,” she said. “I’m Melanie Cooper, Stan’s niece, and part owner of the bakery.”
“You’re Mel?” Officer Clark asked. Mel nodded and Officer Clark gave her a thorough once-over. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Between Uncle Stan and Detective Tara, she doubted it was anything good.
“I take it you’ve been assigned to Oz because he’s the official baker for Angie and Tate’s wedding,” Mel said.
“Exactly,” Officer Clark said. “Detective Cooper doesn’t want to take any chances that there may be another . . . incident.”
“This is ridiculous,” Oz protested. “I mean, look at me. No
one is going to come near me.”
“Able to stop a bullet with your bare hands, are you?” Officer Clark asked. “Or maybe you can distract the assailant with some of your pretty baked goods.”
Mel saw a telltale red streak up Oz’s cheeks under his fringe of hair. She wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment or anger, but either way, he was her employee and she had his back.
“Officer Clark, may I speak with you for a moment?” she asked. She jerked her head in the direction of the bakery.
The woman glanced between her and Oz, then she pointed at Oz and said, “Do not leave this room.”
He looked like he was about to argue, but Paulie picked up the rubber frosting spatula Mel had been using and popped it into Oz’s mouth. Oz gagged and then mumbled something through the frosting, and Paulie gave him a bug-eyed look.
“You don’t argue with the Five-O, man.”
Oz raised his hands in frustration, but he didn’t say anything else.
Mel pushed through to the bakery, where Marty was helping two older ladies pick out their cupcakes. She paused to frown at him. He was wearing a cowboy hat with a red bandanna around his neck. It didn’t go with his navy blue bakery apron and she wondered if she’d missed one of the town’s Old West days or something.
She stared a bit too long and as his gaze met hers his please-the-customer smile slid into a look of worry. Mel gave him a tight smile and led Officer Clark to the far corner of the bakery.
“About Oz,” Mel began.
Officer Clark braced her feet and crossed her arms over her chest. For a petite thing, she sure threw up a good impression of a brick wall.
“Is there any reason to think he might be a target?” Mel asked.
“He’s making the cake for the wedding, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. Detective Cooper was very clear that anyone involved in the goods and services of the wedding was to be monitored twenty-four-seven until the big day,” she said.
“But is there any reason to think that Oz in particular has been targeted?” Mel persisted. If anything happened to Oz, she knew that none of them would be able to live with it.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss the case with you,” Officer Clark said.
Mel blinked. “But it involves me.”
“Not really,” Officer Clark said.
“What do you mean, ‘not really’?” Mel asked. Her voice was getting higher with her agitation and out of the corner of her eye she saw Marty’s face whip in her direction. “These are my people. The bride and groom are my best friends, Oz is my employee, and I went to high school with Blaise. How can you say it doesn’t involve me?”
“Because as far as we can tell, you are not a target, and since you’re not a target you have nothing to do with this case, so I will not be discussing it with you,” Officer Clark said. She spoke slowly as if intentionally giving Mel time to absorb every word. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my assignment.”
She turned on her heel and marched back to the kitchen.
“Uncle Stan told you to say all that, didn’t he?” Mel shouted after her. “Well, you can tell him it is so my business and I’m not just going to sit back and—”
Officer Clark pushed through the doors into the kitchen without even acknowledging Mel’s tirade. Rude.
The ladies left and the bakery was quiet for the moment. Mel saw Marty watching her from under his bushy eyebrows.
“What?” she snapped.
He raised his hands in a surrender gesture. “Nothing.”
“It is my business,” Mel said.
“Whatever you say, boss,” he said.
He was being way too calm for her normally cantankerous employee. He gave a booth in the corner side eye. Mel glanced over to see two men in casual attire sitting there. She glanced back at Marty.
“What’s with the ten-gallon hat?”
“Disguise,” he said.
“It’s not going to work,” she said.
“I know, but those two goons keep showing up wherever I am. I was hoping to throw them off,” Marty said.
“With the hat?”
“It’s a good disguise,” he protested.
“Yeah, really effective,” Mel said. “Why don’t you just tell your daughters to back off?”
“I have, but they’re convinced I’m knitting with only one needle.” He looked sad, which garnered him more sympathy from Mel than his usual feistiness did.
“Oh, Marty,” she said. “What can I do?”
“Let’s just try to keep everything on the down-low, yes?”
Mel nodded and he glanced at a slip of paper on the table. “Oh, I forgot to tell you, you got a call from a Cassie Leighton. She said it was urgent.”
Mel took the slip from Marty’s fingers. There was a return call number on the bottom. Cassie and Mel went back a few years. When Mel had opened up her bakery, Cassie was already established locally as the owner of A Likely Story, a small independent bookstore and indie press that had been around for over ten years.
Being two of the few female small business owners in Old Town had made for an insta-bond they had never tainted with jealousy or power struggles. Instead, they always had each other’s backs at the monthly local business owners’ meetings and never let the other get disregarded or abused.
At this moment, Mel knew she had two choices. She could go try and talk to Oz and calm him down or she could call Cassie back. Given that Officer Clark looked like she was going to handle the Oz situation whether he liked it or not, Mel decided to call back Cassie.
She circled the counter and picked up the business phone. Marty watched her for a moment but a surge of customers coming through the door distracted him, giving Mel some peace.
Cassie answered on the third ring. “A Likely Story, this is Cassie, how can I help you?”
The greeting came at Mel like gunfire. Cassie was upbeat and friendly, but today she sounded stressed.
“Cassie, it’s Mel at Fairy Tale Cupcakes. I got a message that you called,” she said.
“Yes! Mel, I’m in trouble and I need your help,” Cassie cried.
Mel felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle and she glanced at her arm to see goose bumps pucker her skin. Weird.
“Sure, what is it?” she asked.
“I need you to cater a last-minute event for me,” Cassie said. “I’m so sorry for the short notice, but I’ve got a book signing for Elise Penworthy tomorrow night. My original caterer can’t make it, and I need someone who is amazing and talented and brilliant and, most especially, fast.”
“Elise Penworthy?” Mel asked. “Isn’t she the author who wrote a fictionalized—not—account of all of the shenanigans she witnessed during her years living in the snooty Scottsdale neighborhood called the Palms?”
“That’s the one,” Cassie said. “With the book of the same name that I published for her. The preorders alone are in the thousands, we have a sold-out ticketed event for five hundred people for tomorrow night, and the book’s been optioned for a movie. Mel, I need you!”
“Five hundred cupcakes by tomorrow night? Cass, if it was any other week, we’d be all over it,” Mel said. “But Angie and Tate are getting married next weekend and, well, there’s been some—”
Angie appeared beside her, snagged the phone out of Mel’s hand, and said, “We’ll do it.”
Mel jumped and stared at her friend. Angie’s eyes were smudged by rings of watery mascara, her face was still pale, and the end of her nose red. Mel glanced over her shoulder and saw the brothers standing there. She glanced back at Angie. Mel could hear Cassie talking on the phone but couldn’t make out the words.
“Yes, it’s Angie,” she said. “Thanks. No, we have plenty of time before the wedding. In fact, this is perfect because it will give me somethin
g to do.”
Mel nodded. Now she understood. Angie wanted to bury herself in this last-minute job so that she didn’t have to think about Blaise, or their driver, or anything else.
“All right,” Angie said. “I’ll let you work out the details with Mel. And, Cassie, can you save me a copy of the book? Thanks.”
Angie handed her the phone and Mel asked, “Are you sure? This could be an all-nighter.”
“Positive,” Angie said. “I need this. Take the order and let’s get to work.”
Five
Champagne cupcakes. Five hundred of them. And per Elise Penworthy’s specifications via Cassie, they needed to be absolute perfection. Sure, no pressure.
Mel called Joe to let him know she wouldn’t be home for dinner. Joe took the news well, arriving at the bakery kitchen with a stack of pizzas from Oregano’s Pizza Bistro and their shared cat baby, Captain Jack.
The brothers took three of the pizzas and parked themselves at a table in the front part of the bakery, which was now closed for the evening. They dragged Tate and Angie with them as the brothers refused to let either of them out of their sights until their wedding. Also, they needed reinforcements because everyone knew if Tony was left alone with the pizzas, they would vanish in one inhale. The skinniest of the DeLaura brothers, Tony also had the biggest appetite.
“Where’s the rest of the crew?” Joe asked Mel as he maneuvered her into her snug office with a pizza in one hand and Captain Jack in the other. Mel took Captain Jack and nuzzled him before letting him run around her office, which was really more of a glorified closet.
Joe sat in the only chair, her desk chair, and pulled her onto his lap. He reached over her to flip up the top of the pizza box and then handed her a slice—green olive and sausage, her favorite—before taking one for himself.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Still sad,” she said. “It’s like this ache in my chest that’s relentless. I can’t believe I’ll never see Blaise smile or laugh again, and I didn’t know him as well as Tate and Angie.”
Wedding Cake Crumble Page 4
