“I’m sorry I yelled,” Joe said. “No, actually, I’m not. In fact, I feel like yelling a whole lot more.”
His volume started to go up, and Mel could feel her own temper kicking in.
“Stop!” she said. “We are not together anymore. You have no right to tell me what I can or can’t do.”
“I have every right,” Joe argued. Mel opened her mouth to argue, but he held up his hand in a “stop” gesture. “Maybe not as your boyfriend but as the prosecutor in a very delicate case, you bet I do.”
“My eating at a restaurant that is open to the public has nothing to do with your case,” she said.
“Really?” he asked. He glowered at her but Mel refused to knuckle under to his glower. “Then explain to me why you were alone in a room with the son of a man who is likely responsible for a woman’s death and why even Vincent the son was warning you to be careful, that his father is evil, and that you could very well be a target.”
“Ah,” Mel gasped. “How do you know all that?” She patted her clothes. “Do you have me bugged?”
For the first time a tiny smile lifted the corner of Joe’s lips. He scowled, forcing it back.
“No, we have the restaurant under surveillance,” he said. “We have for ages. How do you think Stan and I knew you were there?”
“Oh,” Mel said.
Joe crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. “I must say you and Vincent certainly seemed to hit it off over pâte brisée.”
“I had no idea he had been to culinary school,” Mel said. “Small world, huh?”
“Mel, just because he can roll out a piecrust doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous,” Joe said.
“But you heard what he said, his father made his mother a promise on her deathbed to keep him out of the family business,” Mel said.
“Yeah, and because Frank Tucci is known for being a man of his word, I totally believe he did just that. Not. Just because we can’t find any criminal activity in Vincent Tucci’s past doesn’t mean there isn’t any. What the hell were you thinking going there for lunch?”
“I wanted to help Angie,” Mel shouted. She couldn’t help it; her nerves were shot.
“How?” Joe shouted in return. “By getting yourself killed?”
“No, by using my connection to the restaurant to see if it was likely that Angie was the target,” Mel yelled. “The woman is losing her hair, Joe, I had to do something.”
“Hair grows back,” Joe argued. “But once you’re dead, you’re dead. You took a horrible risk. You have no idea what Tucci’s goons could do to you.”
Mel thought about Tommy the Knuckle and shivered. “I do know. Manny told me about his associates.”
Joe was quiet for a while. “So, how did it go last night with Manny here?”
His voice sounded overly casual as if he was trying very hard to sound ambivalent.
“It was great,” Mel said. She wasn’t sure what made her do it, but the devil flew into her and she added, “You know, minus the lack of sleep.”
Joe’s brows lowered over his eyes. “Lack of sleep?”
“Yeah, we were up most of the night, if you know what I mean.” Mel turned away from him so he couldn’t see her smirk.
“No, I don’t,” he said. “Define ‘up.’”
Mel glanced over her shoulder at him. She let her gaze lower to the portion of his anatomy that had the ability to rise up, so to speak. But instead of answering him, she strode into the kitchen to attend the dishes she had neglected over the past few days.
As she opened her small dishwasher, she began to whistle. She could see Joe begin to mutter and pace in her peripheral vision. A part of her felt bad for teasing him, but the part of her that was still sore at him for being so insufferably bossy did not.
Finally, he stopped muttering and leaned over the counter and demanded, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Mel put the last glass in the dishwasher and closed it. She turned to face him. He looked punchy, tired, and utterly drained. She was pretty sure he’d lost at least ten pounds, and the bags under his eyes looked like they were packed and ready to head to the nearest deserted island they could find. She was enjoying nothing about this.
She leaned over the counter, meeting him halfway and putting them just inches away from each other.
“No, I’m not,” she said. “It hurts me to see you like this, and I’m mad at you for pushing me away when I could help you.”
He looked at her as if to say, Oh but no.
“I could,” she insisted. “At the very least, I’d make sure you were eating and sleeping.”
Joe’s warm brown eyes grew soft. “So, I don’t have to worry about you and Manny?”
“You know you don’t,” she said. She shook her head. “The cameras in the bakery would have made it perfectly clear that we slept in separate booths last night.”
Joe had the grace and good sense to look down and away. “Yeah, I knew that.”
“I figured you did,” she said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have teased you. Manny’s a good man.”
“He is,” he said.
“But I’m otherwise engaged,” she said.
“Engaged?” he asked. “Interesting word choice.”
Mel felt her face get hot. “I just meant that I’m not available right now.”
Joe smiled. “I like it the other way better.”
“Really?” she asked. “So, if I asked you to marry me right now, would you?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”
It was Mel’s turn to glower. She hadn’t really expected him to hustle her out the door to the nearest JP, but she had thought he’d be okay with the general idea of marriage. Then again, maybe when he’d said no a few weeks back, it hadn’t been just about this case. Maybe Joe really didn’t want a happy ever after with her.
“Really? Too dangerous?” she asked. “Tell me this, Joe, when is it not going to be too dangerous?”
“Mel, you know I never wanted to end things between us. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
“Not from a broken heart, apparently.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You caught me off guard there. Of course I want to—”
“Save it,” she snapped. “You know what I think? I think you don’t want me but you don’t want anyone else to have me, either.”
“Not true,” he protested. “My only thought has been to keep you safe by any means possible. I never wanted to hurt you. Hell, I never wanted to break up with you. I wanted to marry you. Remember? It was a go right before you dumped me.”
“Oh, let’s go there again,” she said. “You know I was working through some stuff. I’m over it now.”
“Are you?” he asked. “Then why do you take stupid risks and scare the beejezus out of me?”
“Lunch today had nothing to do with you,” she shouted. She had hit her boiling point in frustration. “I was trying to help Angie.”
“So you said, but how does putting yourself in the line of fire help Angie?” he asked. “Unless you think that being the one who gets killed will spare her, in which case isn’t that a hell of a way to get out of being with me?”
Now they were both yelling—again. Captain Jack leapt onto the back of the couch and began to lick his foreleg. He looked disgusted with the both of them.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “Here’s some reality. You don’t really want to be with anyone, and you’re always going to play the ‘my life is too dangerous’ card just to keep me, or anyone, away. Fine, then. I think we’re done here. In fact, I want my key back and this time I mean it.”
She held out her hand, knowing full well that Joe kept her key on his key ring.
He looked staggered by this, and Mel thought she might have gone too far. But that w
as crazy, right? Because they were broken up and fighting and despite any feelings they had for each other, the nature of his work meant he would never feel safe being married to her or anyone, or so she suspected.
Probably she should have insisted he give her key back weeks ago, but there had been this crazy little flame of hope inside of her that he would change his mind and come back to her. Now she knew. A relationship was never going to work between them, because every time Joe took on a scary case, and as a prosecutor when wouldn’t he, he was going to dump her. Mel couldn’t live like that. If they were going to be together, he had to be all in.
“Fine,” he said. “If that’s how you want it.”
“It is.”
Joe pulled his key ring out of his pocket and unfastened her key from it. When he handed it to her, their fingers brushed, and Mel felt the same pop of awareness she always felt when she came into contact with Joe. It made her want to cry, but she refused. She’d shed enough tears over Joe DeLaura.
He didn’t seem inclined to move, so Mel took a deep breath and stepped around the counter. She marched to the door and unlocked it. Joe followed her, slapping his disguise back on as he went. Mel was relieved. It was a lot easier to say good-bye to redneck Joe than her Joe.
He paused in front of her. She noted that even behind his beard, his jaw jutted out, looking stubborn behind the synthetic hair.
“For the record, I don’t give two hoots what you think you know about me, I’m still not calling it quits between us,” he said.
Mel felt her heart flutter around in her chest until she smacked it with a mental flyswatter. No. She was not doing this again.
“Good-bye, Joe,” she said.
He stepped through the door and she closed it after him. Immediately, she wanted to yank it open and throw herself at him, but she didn’t. She supposed her strength of character should make her feel better, but it didn’t.
Twenty-six
After she had calmed down, Mel headed back down to the bakery. She figured some good old-fashioned baking therapy was in order.
Did she feel bad about what was happening between her and Joe? Yes. Did it feel worse than what had already been happening? No, not really.
She stomped into the kitchen to find Angie there alone. The cupcakes she had left with Angie were all done, and she appeared to be beating the heck out of a lump of fondant, working a bright pink color into it.
“Everything okay in here?” she asked.
“It is now,” Angie said. She motioned to the swinging door that led to the front of the bakery, and Mel noticed that a long board was wedged across it, barring anyone from entering or leaving.
“Okay, then; want some help?” Mel asked.
“You’re not going to tell me to take it down?” Angie asked in surprise.
“Nope, I think I know exactly how you’re feeling,” Mel said.
“Crowded,” Angie replied. “Shadowed, pinched, squeezed, suffocated.”
“Harassed, nagged, scolded, and squelched,” Mel added.
Angie paused in kneading the fondant and looked at Mel with her eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Do tell,” she said.
“Mom and I had lunch at Frank and Mickey’s over on Hayden Road,” Mel said.
“Mel!” Angie squealed. “That’s—”
“Frank Tucci’s place,” they said together.
“Yeah, I know,” Mel said.
“What were you thinking?” Angie asked.
“Now, don’t you start,” Mel said. “I’ve had all the lecturing I’m going to take from your brother.”
“Oh,” Angie said. Her eyes and mouth making perfect O’s in her heart-shaped face.
“I made him give me the key back to my apartment,” Mel said.
Angie dropped the fondant and came around the worktable and hugged Mel.
“Oh, sweetie,” Angie said as she squeezed her tight. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” Mel said. “It was overdue.”
When Angie stepped back to study Mel’s face, her own eyes were red and watery, and Mel found herself comforting her friend.
“It’ll be okay,” Mel said. “Someday.”
Angie reached across the table, picked up the fondant, and said, “Have at it. I’ve found it very therapeutic to slap it around a bit. It’s even better if I mold it into one of the brothers’ or Tate’s face and then put my fist in it.”
Mel laughed. “You might be onto something there. I’ll just go scrub up.”
She washed up at the sink and then met Angie by the table, where she took a sizable ball of fondant out of a tub. Angie handed her the green food coloring, and Mel went to town working the color into the fondant until it was a solid bright apple green.
They worked in silence with Angie rolling out her fondant and then forming the shapes she needed for their order of specialty cupcakes. These were to have green fondant draped over a high mound of buttercream frosting with pretty pink roses on top.
Since some people were fondant resistant, Mel always put it over a good amount of buttercream. Although Mel ordered the fondant from a specialty company that created a marshmallow-flavored fondant with a firm consistency, some customers still balked at the taste. She couldn’t argue because they were the customer, but also she knew fondant was an acquired taste.
The door banged and then there was a curse. Given the tone, Mel guessed that it was Marty.
“Angie, open up!” he bellowed. “I need to talk to Mel.”
“What makes you think she’s back here?” Angie yelled back.
“I saw that her car was back in its spot in the parking lot,” he said. “Plus, a certain incognito DeLaura stopped by and bought a dozen cupcakes. It looked like a bout of pathetic comfort eating to me.”
Mel sighed. Joe had bought cupcakes. Why did this endear him to her? She needed to stay mad at him. She gave the green ball of fondant a nose and two eyes, and then she punched it right in the kisser.
“Better now?” Angie asked.
“Maybe,” Mel said.
“Can I let Marty, just Marty, in?”
“Yeah, he’s okay,” Mel said. “But if he starts lecturing—”
“Give him the heave-ho,” Angie finished for her. “Got it.”
She crossed the room and lifted the wooden two-by-four from across the door. Once she had propped it against the wall, she called out, “Okay, Marty, you and you alone may enter.”
The door was pushed cautiously open, and Marty appeared around the edge. He glanced between the two of them as if to make sure they weren’t going to throw anything at him.
“It’s okay, Marty,” Mel said. “You have clearance.”
“Did you hear that?” Marty called back over his shoulder into the bakery. “I have clearance.”
Mel could hear some disgruntled grumbling from the other side of the door, which she was pretty sure came from Tate and one of the brothers.
Marty strode into the kitchen and then gave Mel a desperate look. “Mel, you have to do something!”
“About what?” she asked.
“That conspiracy lunatic from the zombie walk is in the bakery, and he’s spouting more of his usual crazy talk,” Marty said. “He says he has a reporter coming to meet him here and that he has proof that Kristin was a zombie before she was killed.”
Mel bolted for the door. There was no way she was having a reporter come here to talk about that. If Joe was angry about her going to lunch at Frank and Mickey’s, he would be bezonkers if the bakery was the setting for an article about Kristin’s murder.
She spotted Chad the second she entered the bakery. His zombie attire was gone but he was ever the hipster in skinny jeans, blue Converse sneakers, and a brown tweed coat. His hair was styled so that it stuck up in a point on the front of his head, and his black-frame
d glasses were perched on his nose, giving him a studious appearance. Mel wondered if they were prescription or just a prop.
“Chad, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“Meeting a reporter from the New Times,” he said. “I’m going to give her an exclusive about the murder.”
Mel slid into the booth across from Chad. She sensed that she needed to handle this in the most tactful way possible.
“How about a cupcake, Chad?” she asked.
“No, I’m good,” he said. He peered past her at the door, and Mel forced herself not to turn around and look.
“Really?” she asked. “Because we’re sort of in the cupcake-selling business and not so much the meeting-a-reporter-for-an-interview business.”
Chad slid his gaze back to hers. He must have sensed she meant it, because he nodded.
“I guess a chocolate chip mint cupcake would be all right,” he said.
“Great,” Mel said. She’d actually been hoping he’d refuse so she could show him the door, in the nicest possible way, of course. She glanced over at the counter and caught Marty’s eye. “One mint chocolate chip.”
“Roger that,” Marty said. He made a face that led Mel to believe he, too, was disappointed in Chad’s choice to stay.
“Chad, were you thinking of having another zombie walk next year?” Mel asked.
He shrugged and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Assuming the government hasn’t infected us all with this zombie plague.”
“Why would the government do that?” Mel asked. As soon as the words left her mouth she knew it was a bad move.
Chad’s eyes lit up like a sports commentator given an open mic. He was practically salivating with the opportunity to have his own monologue of stupid.
Mel held up her hand in a “stop” gesture. Chad looked like he swallowed his tongue. Marty delivered his cupcake, and Mel pushed it towards him.
“Listen, for you to have another zombie walk, you need the story about the zombie bride to go away, far, far away,” she said. “No one is going to go to a zombie walk where people get shot.”
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