Going, Going, Ganache

by Jenn McKinlay

  “She’s down there,” Angie said.

  Mel winced as she raised her head to glance at the floor. Amy was knotted up in an apron, and Sam was standing over her, looking like he’d happily jump on her if she fluttered so much as an eyelash.

  “Customers,” Mel said as she sank back down. “What happened to our customers?” No one said a word, and even through her rapidly swelling eye Mel could see that they were all actively avoiding her glance.

  The front door banged open and Tate’s concerned face appeared. “Mel, are you all right? Angie texted that you’d been punched in the face.”

  “I’m fine,” Mel said, easing herself up into a seated position.

  Ian Hannigan appeared beside Tate, and Mel removed the ice pack Marty had put on her eye so he could appreciate the damage.

  Both Tate and Hannigan cringed and glanced away.

  “Yeah, this boot-camp thing we’ve got going,” Mel said. “It’s not really working out for me.”

  “What happened?” Hannigan asked. He leaned back and glared at his staff.

  “I’ll tell you—” Brigit started, but Amy cut her off.

  “Don’t listen to her—” Amy said.

  “Amy popped Mel right in the face!” Sam said.

  “I was trying to hit her!” Amy protested, pointing at Brigit. “She had me in a headlock.”

  “She deserved it,” Brigit said.

  The rest of the magazine staff nodded in agreement like a bunch of bobbleheads all in motion at the same time. Then they all started in at once. It turned into a chorus of yelling that made Mel’s head pound.

  Out of her good eye, Mel saw the door to the bakery open and the familiar faces of Mary and Rob Mitchell, with their children Danny and Emily, appeared. The family of four took one look at the melee in front of them, and quickly backed out of the bakery.

  That ripped it. Mel threw her bag of ice onto the black-and-white tile floor like it was a hand grenade. The plastic bag popped open and ice flew everywhere.

  “That’s it!” she yelled. “You are driving away my regular customers and ruining my business. This insanity can’t go on. Now, what are you people going to do about it?”

  Everyone went silent and stared at her, but Mel didn’t care.

  “Well, I know what I’m going to do,” Marty said with a glare at the magazine staff. “Go get a mop.”

  “Given that I’m not even sure of what’s happening . . .” Tate began, but Hannigan shook his head at him and his voice trailed off.

  Hannigan jerked his head to the side, and he and Tate went and conferred in the corner.

  “What’s going on with them?” Marty asked Angie.

  “No idea,” she said.

  “I didn’t realize they were friends,” Brigit said.

  “As far as I know, they only met a few days ago,” Angie said. She handed Mel a glass of water and an over-the-counter pain pill.

  “Tell me the truth,” Mel said. “How bad does it look?”

  “Oh, why’d you have to say, ‘Tell me the truth’?” Angie asked.

  “You look like you’ve got a pumpkin sprouting out of your face,” Marty said as he went by with the mop.

  “Fabulous.”

  “Hey, there’s a Halloween costume idea,” Angie said. “We can paint it orange, and you can go as the Great Pumpkin.”

  “More like the great lumpkin,” Justin said.

  “Shockingly, this is not making me feel any better,” Mel said.

  “Do you want to look in a mirror?” Sylvia asked. “I bet with some foundation we could even it out, and it will hardly be noticeable.”

  “Pass on the mirror, but thanks,” Mel said. “I’ll let you know about the makeup when I have to go out in public.”

  Bonnie had gone into the kitchen with Marty, and she returned with another bag of ice and handed it to Mel. “Keep that on your eye. You’re going to need it.”

  Tate and Hannigan left their corner, stepped around Marty, who was mopping up the ice, and approached the group.

  “Listen up,” Tate said. “There are going to be some changes.”

  “Well, this should be great,” Brigit said. “What are you going to have us do next?”

  Tate ignored her. “Ian—Mr. Hannigan—has agreed to disrupt his very full schedule in order to join the boot camp and oversee things.”

  “What?” Brigit asked. She turned to face Hannigan. “You wanted this all along, didn’t you? You just want to—”

  Mel popped up on shaky legs and stared over Hannigan’s shoulder at Brigit. Mel shook her head very slowly, trying to get her message across to Brigit and not give herself a thumper of a headache.

  Brigit looked as if she was going to shake her off like a pitcher on the mound refusing the catcher’s signal. Mel shook her head again, and Brigit blew out an exasperated breath.

  “Great,” Brigit said through gritted teeth. “It will be just great to have you aboard.”

  “She’s lying,” Amy protested from the floor. “She doesn’t want you here. She—”

  Before she could get another word out, Mel stumbled into her, knocking her sideways with a knee to the back.

  “Ow, hey!” Amy protested.

  “Sorry, that sucker punch you hit me with is making me dizzy,” Mel said. Then she gave Amy her best scary face to keep her quiet. It must have worked, because Amy swallowed hard and looked decidedly nervous. Mel figured her eye must look even worse than it felt, which was saying something.

  “Well, this should be an . . . interesting experience, for the magazine staff to have you on board for the community service gala. Ian Hannigan decorating cupcakes. Who would have thought?” Brigit said. Her face gave away nothing. It was as smooth as ice and just as cold.

  Ian glanced at her in surprise. “Well, would you look at that?” he asked. “Hanging out in a bakery has already begun to sweeten your disposition.”

  Brigit gave him a smile that was all teeth.

  “Mel, I think you should have someone look at your eye,” Tate said, bringing the attention back to Mel and her face. “Angie, will you go get her purse?”

  “I can’t leave. We don’t have time,” Mel protested. “If we’re going to get these cupcakes baked and looking fabulous by Saturday, we have to start now. We’ve lost entirely too much time as it is.”

  She wasn’t intentionally trying to rebuke the boot campers, but she knew it came out that way anyway. Frankly, her face hurt too much to care.

  “Don’t worry,” Bonnie stepped forward. “I can get things started. You go get your face looked at.”

  “What are we going to do with her?” Sam asked as he pointed at Amy, who was still wrapped up in an apron.

  “Ms. Pierson will be under my direct supervision from now on,” Hannigan said.

  Brigit gave out an undignified snort.

  “You have a problem with that?” he asked her.

  “None at all,” she said. “Bonnie, dear, lead us to the kitchen.”

  “Don’t worry,” Angie said to Mel as she tucked her pocketbook under her arm. “Marty and I can handle this bunch.”

  “Come on.” Tate ushered her out the front door. “Do you have your keys? My car is out of commission.”

  “Sure,” Mel said. She rooted around in her bag, realizing that it was in desperate need of a cleaning, until she found her key ring. She handed the keys to Tate, and they made their way to her sporty little red-and-white Mini Cooper.

  “What happened to your car?” she asked. Tate drove a silver Lexus and, as much as she loved her Mini Cooper, there was a certain luxury in his car’s fine-grain leather seats that her face—okay, her whole body—could have wallowed in right now.

  “Nothing is wrong exactly,” he said. He opened the passenger door and helped her in. He came around the front and took the driver’s seat, but said nothing more. Mel would have pressed him for more information, but her head hurt, so she rested back against the seat and let Tate take her to the nearby urgent-care office,
where she really hoped they had better pain meds.

  Mel returned in the afternoon to find that Bonnie had everything under control. The magazine crew had been baking all day, and the camera crew was busy at work, filming and snapping pictures. Mel had combed her short hair forward in an attempt to cover the darkening purple lump on her cheek. Unfortunately, it also impaired her vision on the one side.

  Once the magazine people left, Marty, Oz, Angie, and Tate shooed her out of the bakery, promising to clean up the mess. Mel let them. Mercifully, Joe had texted her that he was working late, so she would be on her own for the evening.

  Mel was fine with that, as it saved her from having to explain about her eye. She had a feeling that, no matter how she tried to tell the story, Joe was not going to be happy about it. She couldn’t blame him, but she really didn’t want to hear it.

  The thought of resting her weary face on her pillow and snuggling with Captain Jack was about the only thing that was going to save this horrible day.

  Mel woke up early. The lump on her face hadn’t gone down, so she styled her hair once again in her new over-the-eye-socket manner. It made her look like one side of her head had been caught in a strong wind. It couldn’t be helped.

  She hurried down the steps of her apartment to the bakery below. She wanted to get the coffee started before the boot campers showed up, and to make sure that the bakery was tidy for another day of filming.

  She turned on the landing with her keys in her fist to unlock the back door, when she saw something out of the corner of her good eye that drew her attention like a fly on frosting. It was a hand, palm up, just visible from around the corner of her building.

  Mel sucked in a breath. She felt her heart hammer in her chest. She stood frozen for a split second while her brain processed what it saw.

  Then she ran. She skirted the side of the building, hoping to find a drunk passed out from a night of partying at one of the clubs nearby.

  No such luck. At a glance, she recognized Sam Kelleher, wearing his usual dress shirt and narrow tie, but now he lay in a pool of blood, his eyes were wide open and unblinking, staring up at the side of the building as if looking for help.

  “Oh, no no no no,” Mel whispered. She pressed her fingers to his neck, hoping for a pulse. His skin was cold and stiff to the touch. She shifted him slightly, hoping she was wrong, but one glance at the back of his crushed skull and she knew she wasn’t wrong. He was dead.

  Mel’s body convulsed as if a huge fist were squeezing her rib cage and forcing the air out of her lungs in gusts. She swallowed hard and bowed her head. A convulsion wracked her frame from the back of her neck all the way to her toes.

  The sound of voices broke through the horror that enshrouded her, and Mel saw that some of the boot campers had arrived and were waiting out front. She tried to yell, but her throat was tight, making it impossible to get any sound out.

  She gulped in some air and tried again. It was still a weak effort, more a puff of breath than a holler for help.

  Someone glanced around the side of the building as if debating coming around the back because the front was locked up. He took a few steps in, and Mel recognized the outline of Justin.

  “Mel?” he called as he walked towards her. “What’s going on? The door is locked. Hey, who’s . . . ?”

  His voice trailed off as he stared down at his colleague, and the color drained from his face as he took in the sight of the blood and Sam’s stiffened form.

  “D-do you have your phone?” Mel asked, clearing her throat to make room for the words around the lump that was lodged in her larynx. “We need to call the police. Sam is dead.”

  Eleven

  Justin fumbled with his phone while Mel stayed beside Sam. She felt as if she was guarding him from harm, even though whoever had done this to him was obviously long gone.

  “No, stay back!” Justin said as he held his phone to his ear. He started walking up the narrow alley that separated Mel’s bakery from the jewelry store next door.

  “What the hell?” a voice asked from behind her, causing Mel to jump and spin around.

  “Angie, you scared me,” Mel said. She pressed her hand over her chest as if checking her own heart rate.

  “Is that . . . ?” Angie’s voice trailed off, and her brown eyes grew huge.

  “Sam Kelleher,” Mel said. “I just found him. Justin is calling the police.”

  “Don’t tell me to stand aside, Justin!” Brigit’s voice echoed against the brick walls. “I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know now.”

  “Brigit, don’t,” Justin ordered, but she pushed past him and strode towards Mel and Angie.

  Mel thought about standing in front of the body but knew it would do no good. Brigit’s gaze fastened on the scene before her, taking it in with a reporter’s thorough scrutiny. She slowly sank to her knees beside Sam and smoothed the line of his tie with a tenderness that made Mel’s heart hurt.

  “Oh, Sam, no,” she whispered. Her voice was drenched with grief, as if it were drowning under the onslaught of so much pain.

  “What’s going on?” Ian Hannigan strode down the alley. He was dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, but he still emanated authority.

  He stopped beside Brigit and swore. Then he knelt down beside her and stared at Sam. His voice was choked when he asked, “Is he all right? What happened?”

  “He’s dead,” Mel said. “I don’t know what happened. I went to unlock the back door, and I saw his hand.”

  She swallowed the bile that lurched up her throat in an acidic rush.

  “The police are on their way,” Justin said.

  Brigit leaned forward as if she might hug Sam’s inert body, but Hannigan held her back.

  “No,” he said. “The police will want him untouched.”

  A siren broke through the stillness of the morning. The other boot campers had come down the alley and stood in a cluster. Bonnie was weeping on Sylvia’s shoulder while Amy stood with her arms crossed over her chest.

  Hannigan and Brigit stayed with Sam’s body as if keeping vigil while Justin moved to stand with Mel and Angie. He wrapped an arm around each of them, and Mel was happy to lean into his warmth. She noticed that Angie did the same, and for a moment it was like having Tate with them.

  “Are you two all right?” he asked.

  “No,” they said together. Justin pulled them in closer, and it helped.

  Mel heard the sound of several cars pulling up out front and figured the police had arrived. She wished she’d thought to have Justin ask for her Uncle Stan. He was a career detective on the Scottsdale PD, and she knew he’d want to know about this. She needn’t have worried.

  When she glanced down the alley, it was Uncle Stan in the lead, looking so much like her dad that her breath caught. In seconds she was enfolded in a bear hug that almost popped her eyes out of their sockets, which was particularly painful to her swollen eye.

  “Can’t breathe, Uncle Stan,” she gasped. He eased his grip a little.

  “Mel, when dispatch said there was a body here . . .” Uncle Stan’s voice trailed off, and when she stepped back to study his face, Mel was pretty sure he’d just aged five years. Then he yelled, “What the hell happened to your eye? And why didn’t you answer your cell phone?”

  “I stepped into the middle of a girl fight and got clobbered. It looks worse than it is. As for my phone, I left it in my apartment,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  Uncle Stan nodded, then reached out and grabbed Angie with one meaty arm, hugging her in a spine crusher.

  “You’re my favorite DeLaura,” he growled. “Don’t scare me like that.”

  “Sorry, Uncle Stan,” Angie said. She looked a little watery, and she hugged him back hard.

  “Stan, we need to get these people out of here,” a man’s voice said.

  Mel looked beyond Uncle Stan to see his partner standing behind him. Surprise made her mouth form a small O. The detective met her gaze.

&nbs
p; “We meet again, Melanie Cooper,” he said. “Nice eye. Girl fight, huh? Why don’t I ever get those calls?”

  Mel hadn’t seen Detective Martinez in months. They’d met when he’d been investigating a murdered scam artist, who also happened to be the first man her mother had dated in over thirty years. It had made quite an impression upon him, no doubt.

  “Detective Martinez,” she said. “I thought you were with the Paradise Valley PD.”

  “Yeah, I transferred,” he said. “More action in Scottsdale.”

  “Apparently,” Mel said, and she glanced at Sam’s body, where the uniforms were moving Hannigan and Brigit back from the body.

  “Who found him?” Uncle Stan asked.

  “I did,” Mel said. Her voice sounded small, and she coughed as if to clear her throat.

  “You okay?” Martinez asked, suddenly serious. His black eyes studied her face, looking for any sign that she was about to break down. Mel wasn’t built that way.

  She gave him a sharp nod, and said, “I’m good. No worries.”

  It was a complete lie and, judging by the way his right eyebrow lifted, he knew it.

  “Mel, can you get everyone into the bakery?” Stan asked. “We need to clear the scene.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Coffee?”

  “By the gallon,” Stan said.

  Mel ushered everyone into the bakery. It did not appear that they would be opening today. She had Angie call Marty and Oz and tell them to take the day off. Angie then called Tate, but he didn’t answer, so she left a message for him.

  Bonnie took over brewing the coffee while the rest of the group sat at the steel table. Brigit and Hannigan both looked wrecked, and Mel realized that the history that ran between them and Sam wasn’t just adversarial. Sam had meant a lot to both of them.

  Mel glanced at Angie. She couldn’t help but think that, if she ever found Tate or Angie’s body bludgeoned in an alley, a part of her would die. Angie met her gaze, and Mel knew she was thinking the same thing.

  “Tate’s not answering his phone,” Angie said.

  “He could be in a meeting,” Mel said. “Let’s wait a bit, and if we don’t hear from him, we’ll call his office.”