“I need a cupcake; anyone?” she asked.
“Blonde Bombshell,” Dwight said. Mel and Angie stared at him. He must have sensed the silence because he looked up and added, “Please.”
Angie put her hands on her hips and stared him down. “How did you know the name of it?”
Dwight looked flustered. He gave an impatient shrug and said, “I don’t know. I read it on the sign.”
“It’s not on the sign today,” Angie said. “Have you been here before?”
“You’re crazy,” Dwight said. “I would never.”
Mel shook her head. “No, she’s right. You’ve had our cupcakes before.”
“Well, duh, they were at the reunion,” he said.
“Not the Blonde Bombshells,” Mel said. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Explain yourself.”
“Fine,” Dwight said. “If you’re going to be weird about it. Cassidy liked your cupcakes so she used to have me pick them up from the franchise downtown or hit up the cupcake van if it was in the area.”
“Cassidy liked our cupcakes?” Mel asked. She looked at Angie. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“What’s to feel?” Dwight asked. “You make a good cupcake. I mean, it’s not like it’s brain surgery.”
“And you were doing so well,” Mel said. She shook her head and went into the kitchen to retrieve a tray of cupcakes from the cooler, including a couple of Blonde Bombshells for Dwight. If anyone had ever told her they’d be allies in the search for Cassidy’s killer, she never would have believed it. She still loathed him but she could put up with him if it meant they found the killer.
When she came back, Marty was helping some customers while Oz assisted. Sort of. Mostly, he stood behind the counter glaring at Dwight. Mel would have told him to dial it back, but she liked having him there in case everything went south as it was prone to do when Dwight was involved.
She slid into a seat at the table. Dwight and Angie were paging through the pictures and Angie had a pad and pen, noting who in the crowd was wearing red lipstick.
“How goes it?” Mel asked.
“Needle in a haystack,” Angie said. She tapped the monitor. “What about that one?”
“Wrong shade. That’s too orange; it was a deep red,” Dwight said. “Like blood.”
Mel and Angie exchanged a look and they both shuddered. Dwight reached over the laptop and grabbed one of the almond cupcakes. He peeled off the wrapper and took a huge bite, getting crumbs all over Mel’s keyboard.
“Dude!” she said. She grabbed a napkin out of the holder and swiped the crumbs off the laptop.
“What? We’re on a mission here,” he said.
He clicked through the pictures. All of them were from before Cassidy’s body was discovered. It was weird. Mel saw her classmates, people she barely knew, smiling and laughing, enjoying being with one another once again. She hadn’t felt any of that. Oh, sure, she was happy to see a few of them but mostly, she could have skipped the whole thing and then she wouldn’t be sitting here with her mortal enemy going over pictures, which was so strange she might require a quick session of therapy to put it behind her.
She reached for a Red Velvet cupcake. She needed the bite of the cream cheese frosting to keep her grounded in reality. This brief step into Bizzaro World couldn’t last that long and she needed to be prepared to come back to terra firma. Cream cheese frosting would certainly help.
“That one there,” Angie said. She tapped the monitor. “Who is that?”
“Gina Findley,” Dwight said. “She’s a redhead now.”
“Oh, yeah,” Angie said. “She sat next to me in Trig. She certainly came out of her shell.”
Mel glanced at the picture. Gina was downing a shot of tequila with two other women. She didn’t recognize any of them, not even Gina. Her hair was a vibrant cranberry and her lips were a flame red. They clashed spectacularly.
“That’s not the right red,” Dwight said.
“Are you sure?” Angie asked. “It might have looked different on a wall.”
“I’m sure.” Dwight polished off his cupcake and reached for another.
Angie flipped through the pictures. One of Mel dancing with Danny popped up and Mel felt herself stiffen. Was Dwight going to have an episode over this?
“He should have married someone like you,” he said. “Everyone would have been better off.”
“Not me,” Mel said. “Joe DeLaura is the only guy for me.”
Angie reached back and gave Mel a knuckle bump. The only person as happy about her upcoming marriage as she and Joe were was Angie. It was clear Angie felt like she was finally getting the sister she’d always wanted.
Dwight ignored them and nudged Angie’s hand out of the way so he could take over the pace of the photos. He flipped through several that were of all men, then he paused on a few that showed groups of women. Mel wanted to believe he was scrutinizing their lipstick but she had the feeling he was checking out their bazooms.
After several more photos, they had only a handful of names written down and they were dubious about them as none of them had any connection to Cassidy—at least none that Dwight could think of.
Angie let out a big yawn and said, “Who needs coffee?”
Mel and Dwight both agreed. Mel slid into Angie’s seat. Dwight ran a hand over his face and then gave her side eye.
“This is weird.”
“Hunting for a lipstick?” Mel asked. “Yeah.”
“No, doing it with you,” he said. “I never would have thought . . . I feel like I owe you an . . .”
Mel waited. If he was going to choke out an apology, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
“But it was your own fault,” he said. “If you hadn’t been so—”
“Fat?” Mel asked. “Seriously?”
“I was going to say lame, seriously; you never once stood up for yourself,” he said. “But, yeah, Cassidy really hated that you were well liked and overweight.”
“What business was it of hers?” Mel asked. “I mean, honestly, what the hell?”
“The hell was that she wasn’t allowed to be overweight,” he said. “Her father was a total bastard. He made her weigh in every single night and if she gained an ounce, he fat shamed her and withheld food.”
“That’s horrible,” Mel said.
“You have no idea,” Dwight said. “Some parents shouldn’t be parents, know what I’m saying?”
“So, Cassidy hated me because I was overweight and she was taught to hate people who were chubby?” Mel asked. She was trying to process this new information. She supposed it should have made her feel less animosity toward Cassidy, but it didn’t. Just because her home life sucked didn’t mean it was okay for Cassidy to take it out on everyone else.
Dwight shrugged. “Probably. Also, you were super lame.”
Mel looked at him. He was still the big, square-jawed thug who had made her check around corners before walking down a hallway or entering a classroom. No, he’d never physically harmed her, but the words, oh, the words, had cut her so deeply.
“You were such a jerk,” she said. “Actually, you were worse than that, you were a complete ass—”
“Coffee’s here,” Angie interrupted. She gave Mel a look, and Mel tipped her chin up in defiance. She didn’t care if they needed Dwight to identify the lipstick. He was a jerk and she wasn’t sorry she had called him on it.
“You’re right,” Dwight said. He took the mug of coffee Angie held out to him. “I was an ass—worse than a jerk.”
Mel took a mug, too, and tried to hide her surprise that Dwight was owning his bad behavior. She never would have believed it.
“I have no excuse, not really, but my home life wasn’t good,” he said. Thanks to Brittany, Mel knew this to be an understatement but she said noth
ing, letting him speak without interruption. “I know it doesn’t sound like her, but Cassidy looked out for me. Her father had her on a diet from the time she was two, so her mother tried to make it up to her by packing her enormous lunches that he didn’t know about. Cassidy was so freaked out and guilty about it that she gave them to me, and it was usually the only meal I got all day.”
Mel thought of her own mother, Joyce, who showed her love through food. Mel had never known a day of hunger in her life. She couldn’t even imagine being a little kid and dealing with that.
“Hunger makes you angry,” Dwight said. “I think I spent my entire life in a rage until I signed up for the Marines. For the first time in my life, I had three squares and a safe place to sleep. The anger went away until I was deployed and then had to deal with people trying to kill me, and watching my buddies get shot and, in a few cases, die. Then the anger came back.”
“That sounds rough,” Angie said. She glanced at Mel and they exchanged a look of horror. Dwight had certainly lived a tougher life than most.
“It was, but guess who was there for me the entire time I was gone?” he asked.
“Cassidy,” Mel said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Letters, care packages, Skype talks when we could meet up online. She never went a week without contacting me one way or another. And now she’s dead.”
Mel felt her heart drop into her shoes. It was the first time she’d heard of Cassidy thinking of someone besides herself. It didn’t jibe with what she knew about the other woman, but it had been years since Cassidy had been her nemesis; did she really know her anymore?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It sounds like you lost a very good friend.”
Dwight took a loud sip of his coffee. His voice when he spoke was gruff. “Thank you.”
Brittany had told Mel what Cassidy had said to Dwight when he told her he loved her, but Mel wondered if she’d only said that because she was drunk. Had there been more between them than that one moment? Could they have been having an affair, and if so, how did Dwight feel about Danny?
“Why didn’t you and Cassidy ever . . . ?” Mel asked. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Angie sit up straight.
“Hook up?” Dwight asked. “Yeah, that was never going to happen.”
“Why not?” Mel asked. She wondered if he’d share the scene that Brittany had witnessed. If he did share such a humiliation, he was a stronger person than Mel was.
“Listen, I loved her. I was in love with her,” Dwight said. He looked pained, raw even, and for the first time in her life Mel felt sympathy for the guy who had been nothing but a tormentor to her. “But she never felt that way about me. In Cassidy’s eyes, I wasn’t husband material. I wasn’t rich or good-looking or famous. I was just—me.”
“But Danny was husband material?” Mel asked.
“She thought he was,” he said. “She said she loved him, but it was never real. He was too busy being famous and chasing his glory days to be the husband she deserved. Tucker had it right at the funeral. Danny didn’t deserve her.”
Mel and Angie looked at each other again. It was obvious Dwight had no idea about Dan and Megan. Mel was not going to be the one to enlighten him.
“Sounds like you and Tucker had a lot in common,” Angie said.
“Not really,” Dwight said. “He didn’t know her, not like I did. I was here, ready to take care of her. He was off in LA, trying to prove himself. Idiot. She was never into him.”
“He obviously moved on,” Mel said. “I mean his girlfriend, Kayla, is a supermodel.”
Dwight sipped his coffee and then shook his head. “You really are too stupid to live.”
“Hey!” Angie snapped. “I thought we were all getting along here.”
“My apologies, but that woman was not Tucker’s girlfriend,” Dwight said.
Sixteen
“But Tucker said—” Mel began. Dwight interrupted.
“He lied. That girl was bought and paid for and I’m betting she was not cheap.”
“Whoa,” Mel said. “That explains why she wasn’t at Cassidy’s funeral.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that would have cost double overtime,” Dwight said.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Angie looked down at her notepad. “I have Kayla on here as one of our red lipstick girls.”
“Let’s look at her again,” Mel said. She began to scroll through the photos. “Dwight, see if it’s the same shade.”
It took a while but Mel finally got to the picture of Kayla and Tucker. It was snapped just as they’d been walking into the reunion. She was holding his arm and walking like she was a runway model with the sucked-in cheeks and pointed stare. Her lipstick was definitely red.
“Nah, that’s not it,” Dwight said.
“Are you sure?” Angie asked. “I mean, if she is a working girl and she sees Tucker as her sugar daddy, it could very well be that she decided to off her competition. And if she’s a ‘professional,’ she might have connections who hooked her up with whatever poison killed Cassidy.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “That is a cherry red, the one I saw was darker.”
“Dang it,” Angie said. “I got excited there for a second.”
“Hey, kids,” Tate said as he walked through the front door. Mel could tell he was striving to look casual but his eyebrows were up so high they looked like they were high-fiving his hairline, which gave away the mild state of panic he was in.
“We were just doing some research,” Mel said. “And Dwight here was helping us.”
“Cool,” Tate said. He and Dwight stared at each other but neither of them greeted the other. “How about we have a short convo in the kitchen, ladies . . . now.”
“Keep looking,” Mel said to Dwight. “We’ll be right back.”
“Roger that,” he said. He reached for another cupcake.
Angie and Mel followed Tate around the service counter. Marty nodded as they passed and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll keep an eye on him.”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Mel said.
Oz just crossed his arms over his chest and fixed his stare on Dwight.
“Good man,” Tate said and clapped him on the back as they walked by. He pushed through the door and held it open for Mel and Angie. Once the door swung shut behind them, he turned on them and asked, “What is that doing in our bakery? Have you two lost your minds?”
“No,” they answered together.
“Dwight and I have come to an understanding,” Mel said.
“That he’s a Neanderthal nut job and you’re his target? Because we already knew that,” Tate said. “What on earth would possess you—”
“He saw what Cassidy wrote in the bathroom,” Mel said. “He saw it. I wasn’t allowed anywhere near it, but he barged his way in and saw it.”
“And?” Tate said. “We know what it said. Uncle Stan told us it was your name, or the first few letters of your name at any rate.”
“It was written in red lipstick,” Angie said. “Bloodred.”
Tate shook his head. “Not seeing the point.”
“The point is Cassidy has only worn one particular shade of lipstick her entire life, Pink Cashmere, which was confirmed by Dwight.”
“Meaning what? She’s not the one who started to write your name?” Tate asked. He glanced between them as this bit of news filtered in. “Oh, wow. Then whoever was wearing the red lipstick could be the killer, trying to make it look like it was you.”
“Exactly,” Mel said. “So the three of us are going through pictures from the reunion and looking at all of the lip colors, hoping Dwight can find a match.”
“That’s genius,” Tate said.
“Thank you,” Mel and Angie said together. Then they laughed.
Marty popped his head into the kitchen and said, “Hey, Mel, big, ta
ll, and scary is asking for you.”
“Thanks,” she said. She gave her friends a closed-lip smile and said, “This could be it.”
She pushed back into the shop, leaving Tate and Angie to follow. There were several customers at the counter and she smiled a greeting as she walked by. Oz was taking their order and she noticed he glanced at Dwight every few seconds as if to make sure the man didn’t move.
She studied Dwight’s face as she neared. He didn’t have the happiest of countenances to begin with but at the moment, he looked positively menacing. Uh-oh.
“What did you find?” she asked.
“This,” Dwight said.
He turned the laptop to face her and Mel could see it was zoomed in on Megan’s face. She was standing next to Cassidy and her head was thrown back with her long dark hair falling behind her. Her mouth was open in laughter and her full lips were done in a deep bloodred.
“That’s the lipstick I saw on the bathroom wall. I’m positive,” he said.
“Megan?” Mel asked. She and Tate looked at each other and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. If anyone had a reason to kill Cassidy, it was Megan.
Dwight looked as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Mel realized that he’d known Megan as Cassidy’s best friend all through school, so to see her as the prime suspect in the murder didn’t work for him.
“This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Megan and Cassidy were, well, they hadn’t been close lately but Megan was always there. I mean, she was Cassidy’s maid of honor at her wedding.”
“The same wedding where Megan found out that Cassidy shotgunned her chance with Danny?” Angie asked.
Dwight frowned. “How did you hear about that?”
“Everyone knows about it,” Mel said. At least she was pretty sure if they hadn’t before, they would soon, probably when Megan was arrested for murder.
“It’s not like it sounds,” Dwight said. “Megan had no interest in Danny, so Cassidy was just doing her a favor to keep it from becoming awkward.”
“And you called me too stupid to live?” Mel asked. “On what planet is a woman not interested in Danny Griffin?”
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