Mel and Joyce laughed as he strode ahead of them into the kitchen.
“Hey, if you marry Uncle Stan, you don’t even have to change your name,” Mel said.
“Easy, tiger, we’re just dating.” Joyce laughed and wrapped her arm around Mel’s waist and hugged her close. “All joking aside, are you sure you’re okay with it?”
Mel thought about the ten-plus years since her father had been gone. Who had stepped in to fill his spot? Who had looked out for Mel, Charlie, and Joyce? Uncle Stan. Not only was she okay with it, it seemed positively perfect.
“More than okay,” she said. She hugged her mom back. “I think it’s the best news ever.”
* * *
• • •
Mel and Oz arrived back at the bakery to find Marty had it all under control. Mel retreated to her office to plan some of her specialty orders while Oz took over the kitchen to get to work on the cupcake of the day for tomorrow.
A copy of The Palms was sitting on Mel’s desk. She stared at the retro cover, thinking how horrible it was that the written word had contributed to the deaths of four people. Whatever the motivation of the killer, anger for being in the book or not, it shouldn’t have ended this way for Blaise or Elise or the driver or caterer.
She wondered if she should call Cassie and tell her the theory she’d told Uncle Stan. She knew Cassie was staying away from the shop, but if she was like Mel and thought it was only people who were angry about being in the book that she had to look out for she might let her guard down in front of someone she shouldn’t.
Mel took her phone out of her purse and called Cassie’s cell. There was no answer. Huh. She ended the call and decided to call the store directly.
The phone rang eight times and then rolled over to voicemail. Mel glanced at the clock. It was late afternoon on a weekday. The bookstore should be open. Maybe whoever was working the front counter was busy helping a customer. She ended the call without leaving a message. She waited thirty seconds and she called again. Voicemail again. She called Cassie’s number again. No answer.
A sense of unease began to make her skin feel too tight. There was no reason for the phone to go unanswered at the store or for Cassie to leave her personal phone unattended unless something was very, very wrong. If the killer really was looking for revenge for being left out of the book, wouldn’t the publisher of the book be next on their list of victims?
Mel wondered how Stan was doing cross-checking names of residents of the Palms against people who hadn’t been mentioned in the book. Given that he had to match the nickname Elise used to the person’s real name and then discover who didn’t have a nickname, it could take ages. While it had seemed that everyone in the Palms had made a cameo in the book at least, Mel was certain there had to be some people left out. She thought back to the book signing and then she felt her stomach drop into her feet.
Janie Fulton. The petite woman with the big glasses who had lived a few houses down from Elise, whom Elise had clearly not remembered and whose name Elise had even spelled wrong at the signing. That was the sort of person who might be looking for revenge. Was it Janie—who had seemed so nice, even forgiving the misspelling—who had killed everyone she felt slighted by?
Mel was out of her chair and holding her car keys before she’d fully decided to run over to the bookstore and check on things.
Oz glanced up when she entered the kitchen. The look on her face must have registered her worry because he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Probably nothing,” she said. “But I’m going to stop by Cassie’s shop, A Likely Story, just to be sure.”
“Why?”
“No one’s answering the phone over there.”
“Could be with a customer.”
“Probably, but I can’t shake feeling that something isn’t right,” she said. “Be a champ and call Uncle Stan for me?”
“Aw, what?” Oz protested.
“Ask him to check on the whereabouts of Janie Fulton, a Palms resident,” Mel said. “And tell him where I’m going, please.”
“I know what you’re doing,” he said. “You don’t want to call him and get yelled at, so you want me to do it for you. Listen, give me a second and I’ll go with you.”
Mel looked at the oven. The industrial batch of cupcakes he had baking wouldn’t be done for another fifteen minutes. She didn’t think she could wait that long. Not to mention the fact that she would never, ever put Oz in a situation where he could be harmed.
“No, you finish up here. I’m sure this is nothing, and I’m just being paranoid,” she said. “But call Stan anyway, and look at it this way: I’ll owe you one.”
“Boss—” he began to protest, but Mel slipped through the back door, cutting him off.
Mel hurried across the alley to the parking lot where she parked her car. She slid into the driver’s seat. A Likely Story was on the other side of Old Town, which was mercifully only a few blocks away. But on the chance there was something wrong and she needed to hustle Cassie to an emergency room or something, Mel wanted to have her car. Unfortunately, she had to navigate three traffic lights, a stream of tourist pedestrians, and then find a parking spot before she could get to the bookstore.
She thought about the night of Elise’s stabbing. Had she seen Janie after the signing? Had the woman been lingering in the resort, waiting to get Elise alone? She couldn’t remember. She vaguely remembered an unhelpful staff person in the bar when they’d been looking for Elise, but the woman hadn’t looked like Janie and her name tag had read Laura.
On impulse, she called Christine’s salon while she waited at a red light.
“Christine’s, how may I help you?”
“Hi, this is Melanie Cooper. Is Christine available?”
“No,” the voice said.
Mel sighed. She loved what Christine could do with hair, really she did, but the impenetrable line of defense she had going with her staff was exhausting.
“Samantha, then. Is she there?”
“This is Samantha.”
“It is? Great, listen, you just did my makeup for a wedding,” Mel said.
“Yes, I remember,” Samantha said. “You’re the one with the skimpy eyelashes.”
“Um . . . yeah, that’s me,” Mel said. “Do you remember that we were talking about Elise Penworthy’s murder?”
“Of course I do,” she said. “What bride talks about murder on her wedding day? So weird.”
“Yes, we established that,” Mel said. She tried to keep her impatience out of her voice. “I was wondering if Christine or you remembered the name of the person Elise said was stalking her.”
“Nope.”
“Okay, well, does the name Laura mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“All right, how about Janie?”
“No.”
“Could you ask Christine?”
Samantha made a put-upon sigh. “Hold on.”
The light turned green and Mel hit the gas, cruising towards the bookstore as fast as she dared.
“She said it could have been Janie maybe,” Samantha said. “But it’s a definite no on Laura.”
“Okay, thanks. You’ve been a big help.” Mel ended the call as she found a spot at the corner and parked.
Nestled between a café and an upscale interior designer, the bookstore was well situated for foot traffic. Mel didn’t hesitate but went right to the door, finding it locked. She stepped back. The sign on the door clearly stated that they should be open. Mel tugged the overly large handle again, as if it might open if she pulled on it differently. It didn’t.
She cupped her hands against the glare and pressed her face against the glass. The lights were on in the store, but she didn’t see anyone standing at the register or moving around.
She decided to check the back. Maybe whoever was on duty had just popped outside
to take a break. She jogged past the interior designer and slipped down the narrow alley that separated this group of shops from the next. The access road that ran behind the businesses was for delivery and garbage trucks and was barely wide enough for those.
Mel hurried to the staircase in the middle of the building. It was empty, so there went her theory of an employee on a break. She climbed the short staircase and tugged on the glass door. To her surprise it opened. She wasn’t sure if she should enter or not. She didn’t want to terrify anyone who might be at work, but she didn’t want to walk away if there was a situation happening and someone needed help. Dilemma.
Mel decided to sneak in and take a peek. If everything was normal, she would back out the way she’d come and pretend she’d never been here.
The back door opened into a hallway, which had two restrooms. At the end of the hall on the right was the door that opened to the offices, the workroom, and the stockroom. Mel crept to the end of the hallway. She glanced out at the store in front of her. It was empty, eerily so.
It was then that she noticed the horrible smell in the shop. She wondered if it was a gas leak. Maybe that was why the shop was closed. But why would the back door be open, and wouldn’t they have closed the neighboring shops? Besides, it wasn’t a sulfuric gas smell; it was acrid.
Mel couldn’t place it, but she knew it was noxious, the sort that could give a person a powerful headache if they were exposed to it for too long. Perhaps that was why the store was closed, but again, why was the back door unlocked? It didn’t make sense.
The hinky feeling in her belly twisted, and she glanced at the door to the offices. It was closed. During all the visits she’d made to the bookstore, she’d never seen the office closed. She pressed her ear against the wood. She could hear someone shuffling about the room, then there was a thump.
It wasn’t a good thump. It was the sort of noise made when a person kicked something. Hard.
Instinct propelled Mel forward. Without overthinking it, she pounded on the door. The side of her fist met the thick wood with three solid bangs.
“Cassie, are you in there?” She raised her voice. “It’s Mel. Cassie, answer me.”
Where there had been shuffling before, there was now an absence of noise. It reminded Mel of how the songbirds went quiet when Captain Jack slipped out of the house to stalk them in the backyard. It was as if they thought if they made no noise he would simply turn around and go away. He never did, and Mel wasn’t about to, either.
Twenty-three
She raised her fist to bang on the door again. She connected once, but then the door was yanked open and her fist slipped through the open air to drop awkwardly to her waist as the smell that had been toxic before now made her eyes water.
She blinked as she took in the scene before her. Standing in front of her holding a long match was a tiny little bird of a woman, as fragile and as plain looking as a sparrow. With glasses that were too big for her face, she tipped her head to the side as if trying to figure what Mel could possibly be doing here.
“Janie,” Mel said.
The horror of what she had interrupted made a shiver run down her spine. The stench was clearly an accelerant like turpentine, and a quick glance past the small woman showed Cassie bound and gagged and propped up on a pile of what appeared to be pages torn from a book. Mel didn’t have to work too hard to guess which book.
Janie holding a match clinched the ugly truth. Janie was planning to kill Cassie by lighting her on fire using copies of the book from which she’d been left out. Mel thought she might throw up.
It was cold comfort that she’d been right. The killer was not someone in the fictionalized tell-all, but rather a person who wasn’t. The killer was this petite little woman who looked like she couldn’t harm a mosquito, never mind kill four people in cold blood.
Janie with an ie instead of a y. Janie, who hadn’t even merited a mention in the tawdry tale Elise had penned. Janie, who clearly wanted to be noticed, to matter, to be counted, and who in her fury at being ignored had turned to murder.
Mel studied her. There was a detachment in her eyes that was more alarming than any rage she might have displayed.
“You’re the cupcake baker,” Janie said. “Elise liked you.”
“Liked is such a strong word,” Mel said. She didn’t think being a friend of Elise’s was such a good thing at the moment. “I mean I hardly knew her.”
A thump sounded from behind Janie. Mel knew it had to be Cassie. Was she hurt, wounded, bleeding from an injury Mel couldn’t see, while Mel stood here making chitchat with Crazy Train?
“How about we go grab a cup of coffee and you can tell me all about your years living in the Palms?” Mel asked.
“No,” Janie said. “You should leave.”
She began to close the door and Mel knew that she couldn’t let her. She stepped forward, using her foot to wedge the door open. She peeked over Janie’s head and saw Cassie, struggling with her bonds, her eyes streaming from the harsh smell that wafted up from the papers piled around her.
“Oh, Janie, no,” Mel said. “You can’t do this.”
Janie’s back went rigid. “Yes, I can. I can do whatever I want, and you want to know why? Because I’m insignificant, I don’t matter, no one ever notices me. I’ve been able to kill them all, but no one ever suspected little Janie Fulton.”
“That’s not true,” Mel protested. “You do matter.”
“Sure I do,” Janie said. Her voice was bitter. “Do you know how many times I hired that same car service? Fifteen. Do you think that driver remembered me? No. And how about the caterer? She made the food for seven of my parties. Seven. And yet she couldn’t remember that I love cheesecake. And that photographer—”
“Blaise?” Mel clarified.
The look Janie gave her said duh more clearly than words.
“What could he have done to deserve what you did?” Mel asked.
“He was just like the others, telling tales to Elise about everyone in the Palms,” Janie said. “Elise would meet up with her little spies all over town in trendy bars and restaurants, and they’d tell her everyone’s dirty little secrets. Well, I knew secrets, too, loads of them. Do you think they ever included me? Do you think they ever invited me to join them?”
Mel said nothing, knowing there was no right answer here.
“They never even noticed me.”
“I notice you,” Mel said.
Janie blinked at her and then she let out a belly laugh. An actual laugh of amusement that shook her slight frame. It was genuine humor, which made it all the more disturbing.
“You notice me because I am not taking it anymore,” she said. “You notice me because I am making everyone who slighted me, who left me out, suffer for it.”
Mel saw Cassie struggling to get free. Maybe if she could overpower Janie she could get to Cassie and get them both out of here before Janie torched the place. She took a step towards the tiny woman, but Janie lifted up her other hand. In it was a lighter. She flicked it on and held the match over it.
Mel raised her hands in the air as if Janie had a gun on her. She wondered if she blew hard enough if she could put the lighter out. She didn’t want to risk it. What if she blew the flame right onto the match? The fumes in here alone might be flammable and the next thing she knew they’d all go up in a big fireball. Not how she’d ever thought she’d go. Frosting overdose? Sure. Human torch? Not so much.
“Can we talk about this, Janie?”
“No.”
Mel saw Cassie frantically wriggling. She must have suspected that Janie was at her breaking point. Mel knew they were out of time. She knew she only had one shot.
“What’s that?” She pointed with her left hand over Janie’s shoulder. It was the oldest misdirection in the book, probably because it worked. When Janie whipped her head in that direction, Mel sn
atched the lighter out of Janie’s hand, squashing the flame with her palm.
“Yeow!” Mel shouted. The lighter’s hot metal top seared her hand, and she flung it across the bookstore.
“Hey!” Janie shouted and ran for the lighter.
Mel chased after her. She figured it was more important to keep Janie from the lighter than to untie Cassie. Janie dropped to the floor and was scrabbling after the lighter when Mel grabbed her by one foot. Janie used her other foot to kick at Mel, but she refused to let go, knowing if Janie got the lighter she would torch the place in an instant.
Panic made her heart pound in her chest. She’d been trapped in a fire once before. She’d seen what a fire could do to a person and she remembered well the burn of smoke in her lungs. There was no way in hell she was living through that again.
“Let me go!” Janie whipped around and took a swing at Mel. Her fist just missed Mel’s nose.
“Stop, Janie!” Mel yelled. “It’s over.”
“No!” Janie cried. She renewed her efforts to kick Mel and her free foot came within a hair of smashing Mel in the temple.
A hand appeared between Mel’s face and Janie’s shoe and she glanced up to see Tara Martinez, who wasted no time but dropped to the ground, lodging her knee into Janie’s back.
“Looks like you owe me one, Cooper,” Tara said. Then she grabbed a pair of handcuffs off of her belt and wrestled them onto Janie.
Mel let go of Janie’s foot and slumped to the ground. Thank god. Janie might be petite, but the tiny birdlike woman fought like a hellcat. No wonder she’d managed to bind up Cassie.
Cassie!
Mel rolled onto her side and pushed up to her feet. She raced for the office, but Uncle Stan was already there, untying Cassie and helping her to her feet. He’d removed the gag from her mouth and Cassie was sucking in great gulps of air.
“Mel!” Cassie cried her name and then staggered towards her.
Mel hugged her close and then leaned back to study her face. “Let’s get you some fresh air, okay?”
Wedding Cake Crumble Page 21
