Going, Going, Ganache

by Jenn McKinlay

  Again, he looked so much like her dad that Mel felt a sudden need to confess all. Thankfully, Brigit and Hannigan joined them at that moment, preventing her from an awkward bout of full disclosure.

  “Nope,” she said. “Not a thing.”

  Uncle Stan gave her a level look, and said, “He’s a good guy, Martinez, you know, if you need to know that.”

  Mel thought it spoke pretty well of Uncle Stan to give her a thumbs-up on Martinez when she knew very well that he and Joe were pretty tight.

  “Duly noted,” she said, and he nodded.

  “I’m ready now,” Brigit said.

  “Excellent,” Uncle Stan said.

  Stan looked at Brigit with what Mel assumed was supposed to be a bolstering smile, but it came out more like he was battling indigestion.

  Mel marveled at the way every man who came into Brigit’s orbit seemed to feel the need to take care of her. Even Uncle Stan wasn’t immune, as he attempted to make taking her in for questioning seem like a routine errand and not the big deal that it was.

  Brigit was one of the toughest women Mel had ever met. She certainly didn’t need to be coddled, but there was something about her, a refined ladylike grace, that brought out some latent sense of chivalry from the men in her life.

  Mel wondered if that was why Sam had been unable to let her go. He had given up his career as a hard journalist to be with her. Did he regret it? Especially when he realized she would never love him like she loved Hannigan?

  What could have happened between them that had the police interested?

  The door shut behind Uncle Stan and Brigit, and the pretense the others had been maintaining of working evaporated like hot steam.

  “Why do you think they want to talk to her?” Justin was the first to ask the question on all of their minds.

  “I don’t know,” Mel said as they all looked at her. “My uncle didn’t say.”

  “Well, I’m going to the station,” Hannigan said. “I’ll make sure she has the best representation money can buy.”

  “What?” Amy asked. “You’re going to help her?”

  “Of course,” Hannigan said. He turned to look at the young art diretor. “I’d do the same for any of you.”

  “But she caused your wife’s death!” Amy shouted. “How can you run to her side like a whipped dog?”

  Hannigan’s face flushed scarlet, but Amy’s eyes glittered with jealous rage. She was well past caring if she offended him or not.

  “Mind your manners,” Hannigan snapped. “I’m your boss, and you’d better not forget it.”

  Amy opened her mouth to argue, but Justin nudged her hard in the side, jarring some sense into her, and she shut her mouth.

  “And for the record, let me be perfectly clear: Brigit did not cause my wife’s death,” Hannigan said.

  They all watched him. Sylvia and Bonnie looked as if they were frozen in place. A small frown creased Angie’s forehead and Mel knew that Angie was as surprised by what Hannigan said as she was . . .

  “Yes, Brigit wrote an exposé that brought ruin to my wife’s family, but frankly, it was long overdue. They were a miserable, corrupt bunch, and justice needed to be served. And yes, my wife took her life shortly after the article came out, but the truth is, she had a history of mental instability, and she probably would have done it anyway.”

  Hannigan paled as he spoke, and at the end of his disclosure, he looked like a dishcloth that had been wrung out and left to dry. He turned to Mel and gave her a nod.

  “I trust you’ll get it done,” he said.

  He gestured to the kitchen, and Mel assumed he meant the baking of the cupcakes for the gala. It wasn’t stated in the form of a question, and the door banged shut behind him when he left.

  “Well, you heard him,” she said, since no one resumed motion after the door shut.

  Everyone pitched in immediately—everyone except Amy, who took off her apron and dropped it onto the table with no regard for the baking materials in front of her. Flour went one way, sugar went another, and when a bottle of vanilla extract looked about to pitch over, Angie grabbed it.

  “Going someplace?” Angie asked her with a scowl.

  “Home,” Amy said. “I’m done.”

  “Oh, what’s the matter?” Bonnie asked. “Are you sore because the boss chose his longtime love over you?”

  “Shut it, Tons-o-Fun,” Amy said. “I can’t help it if I suddenly have a sick headache.”

  “You could lose your job over this,” Justin said. He didn’t sound as though he thought this was a bad thing.

  “Oh, please. Brigit is going down for Sam’s murder,” Amy said. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth as if she’d blurted the words out unintentionally. Mel suspected otherwise.

  “What are you saying?” Sylvia asked.

  “Nothing,” Amy said with a shrug. “But I’ll be surprised if any of us have jobs when it’s over. In fact, I think my time would be better spent looking for a new job than decorating cupcakes.”

  “What did you do?” Justin asked. His eyes were narrowed in suspicion.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Amy said as she strode to the door.

  “Amy, if you set Brigit up—” Justin’s voice was a low growl.

  “A murderer doesn’t need to be set up,” Amy snapped. “She just needs to be caught.”

  She pushed through the swinging door into the bakery, leaving them all staring after her.

  “She’s evil!” Bonnie hissed.

  “She’s a woman scorned,” Sylvia said. “Which makes her very dangerous.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a little old school?” Mel asked. “I mean, I would like to think women have evolved beyond that, emotionally.”

  “Does she look like the poster child for emotional maturity to you?” Angie asked.

  “Good point,” Mel conceded.

  “I’m going to make sure she left,” Angie said. “Be right back.”

  “All right,” Bonnie said. “Let’s try to get as much done as we can. I don’t want to attempt to decorate one thousand cupcakes tomorrow right before the gala.”

  Sylvia, Justin, and Bonnie began to buzz around the kitchen. Mel and Bonnie coordinated the use of the oven so that the flow of the kitchen took on the atmosphere of an assembly line.

  When a half hour had passed and Angie hadn’t reappeared, Mel poked her head into the front of the shop to see what was happening.

  Marty was behind the counter assisting a customer while Angie and Tate were cleaning up the tables and booths. Well, Tate was cleaning while Angie tagged along after him, joking and laughing.

  Tate paused in his cleaning to lean close to Angie and whisper something low in her ear that made her blush a pretty shade of pink. Mel was hit low and hard with a burst of jealousy that stunned her.

  “About time, huh?” Marty asked.

  Mel forced her gaze away from her friends and looked at Marty. He took one look at her face and made a clucking sound with his tongue.

  “Now, don’t be like that,” he said. “They’re still your friends. They’ll always be your friends. They’re just finally discovering each other.”

  “But I’m going to be shut out of it,” Mel said.

  She knew she sounded pathetic, but there it was. She was afraid that when Tate and Angie became a couple, they’d forget all about her. They might prefer to be alone instead of getting together for their weekly old-movie night. And what if they turned into one of those groping couples, who every time they were within a few feet were pawing at each other, oblivious to everyone around them? She’d hate that.

  “Well, I should hope so,” Marty said, sounding alarmed. “I’m not a prude, but there’s a reason couples are generally twos and not threes. Besides, you won’t lose them. Your friendship runs too deep for that.”

  “How do you know?” Mel asked.

  “Look at all that you’ve been through,” Marty said. “No one has bailed yet.”

  “Good point,” Mel
said. “You know, I just want my kitchen back. I want my bakery back. I want Sam’s murder solved, and I want things to be normal again.”

  Marty looked at her. Angie giggled at something Tate said, and Marty looked at them and then back at Mel, and asked, “When exactly has anything ever been normal around here?”

  Twenty-six

  The front door opened and in strolled Oz and his friend Lupe. They wore all black, from their fingerless gloves to their Vans, and they carried their skateboards tucked under their arms.

  “Afternoon, my peeps,” Oz said. “Lu, will you take my board for me?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll bring it back after your shift.”

  “Cool,” he said.

  They exchanged a complicated handshake, and then Lupe took his board, tossed the pink fringe that hung over her face out of her eyes and zipped out the door.

  “I rest my case,” Marty said. “There is nothing normal about this place.”

  “Okay, you’ve got me there,” Mel said. “Still, I’ll breathe easier once Sam’s killer is caught.”

  “I bet it’s someone he wrote about,” Oz said as he joined them behind the counter. “Rich people don’t think the rules apply to them. I bet someone put a hit on him.”

  Mel looked at Oz through narrowed eyes. “Don’t tell me, let me guess: you recently had a Godfather movies marathon?”

  “‘You think that would fool a Corleone’?” Oz asked with a grin.

  Mel shook her head and then smiled at Marty. “Nope, not normal. Angie, quit flirting. We have work to do.”

  Angie jumped and spun around. When she saw all three of them watching her and Tate, she turned an even deeper shade of pink.

  “I was not flirting,” she grumbled as she began to walk towards them.

  Tate grabbed her by the apron strings and pulled her back. Then he whispered something in her ear that made Angie squeal.

  “Oh, ugh, she just made a girly-girl squee noise,” Oz said.

  “Yep, it’s sickening,” Mel agreed.

  “I think it’s cute,” Marty said, and both Mel and Oz looked at him as if they thought he’d been body snatched, and he groused, “What?”

  “Whew, for a second there, I thought we’d lost him, too,” Oz said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a little sentimental,” Marty said. “It wouldn’t hurt you, you know.”

  “Nope, not me,” Oz said. “Girls are nothing but drama. I have no room for drama in my life.”

  “Lupe doesn’t seem full of drama,” Mel said.

  “That’s different,” he said. “She’s just a friend.”

  Mel looked over Oz’s shoulder at Angie, who joined them. Angie gave her a small smile, and Mel marveled at how much softer Angie seemed now that she and Tate were coming together as a couple. She had a sweet serenity to her that Mel had never seen before.

  Angie looked like she could be wearing haute couture while she spent her days planning charity events. Mel could almost see Angie fitting in with the Harpers’ country-club lifestyle. Next thing she knew, Angie and Tate would be the subject of an article for SWS.

  Mel’s eyes went wide at the thought. Not just because it was alarming to think of her friends in that light, but because of the story they would make.

  She couldn’t help but wonder how someone like Sam would twist the fact that Angie came from a loud Italian family with many brothers and Tate was an only child and heir of old money. Add in the facts that they had been friends since childhood, that Tate’s fiancé had been murdered while Angie was the former arm candy of a notorious rock star, and you had some juicy reading. And a story like that could do some serious damage to a relationship just getting its footing.

  What would Tate or Angie do if their relationship were dissected for the public at large? Mel knew her friends well enough that they would stand together. They were like that.

  But what if they weren’t? Could a poison-filled story be the final straw and cause one of them to commit murder? A shudder ran up Mel’s back from the base of her spine to the nape of her neck.

  Ever since they’d found Sam’s body, she had thought the murderer had to be someone he knew. And the dynamic at the magazine was such that she really thought it was one of his coworkers—okay, she was convinced it was Amy. She still was for that matter, but now she had to wonder. Had Sam’s murderer been seeking revenge because of one of his stories?

  Mel’s social set did not really run in that circle—well, with the exception of Tate, who only attended the command performances his mother insisted upon. If there was anyone in the know about SWS and the people they had written about, it was Tate’s mother, Mrs. Harper.

  “Angie, we have to finish these cupcakes today,” Mel said. “Would you mind overseeing what’s happening in the kitchen for a bit?”

  “Not at all,” Angie said, and she disappeared through the swinging doors with a wide smile.

  “She’s got it bad,” Oz said with a shake of his head. “I’m going to wash up, and I’ll be right back.”

  “I await your return with bated breath,” Marty said.

  Mel ignored them and approached Tate while he was wiping down the last booth. The bells jangled on the door, and Mel glanced over to see that Marty greeted the customer. She needn’t have worried. It was an attractive woman in her mid- to late fifties, Marty’s specialty.

  “Tate,” Mel said. “I need some help with an errand after work tonight. Are you available?”

  He glanced at her. “My calendar is clear, boss.”

  “Cool, I’ll see you then,” she said.

  Mel went back to the kitchen. It was time to do a serious survey of what was left to do for tomorrow. They had finished most of the cupcakes and were baking the final ones now. Decorating the last of the cupcakes was going to be priority one for the evening and morning.

  “Bonnie, I’m thinking we can decorate everything except the ganache on the gluten-free chocolate cupcake and the whipped cream on the pumpkin cupcake,” Mel said.

  “Agreed,” Bonnie said. “The buttercream lattice on the apple pie cupcake and the cream cheese on the pistachio-fig can be done today. Also, what about the brown-butter honey frosting on the corn cupcake?”

  Mel thought about it for a moment. “I really would like to make it fresh tomorrow. But we’ll need to brown the butter and then put it in the fridge to solidify. That’s a bit of an extra step.”

  “I’ll brown the butter today and refrigerate it overnight,” Bonnie said. “It can soften tomorrow while we prep the ganache. The whipped cream on the pumpkin we can put on right before we leave for the gala.”

  Mel gave her a tired smile. “I think we may just pull this out.”

  They spent the rest of the day baking the final cupcakes and frosting the cupcakes that were ready. Justin surprised everyone with his heretofore unknown piping abilities, and he took over the apple pie cupcakes, making them look like adorable mini–apple pies. Mel had Sylvia and Angie roll the edge of the cream cheese–frosted pistachio cupcakes in crushed pistachios and then place slices of fresh fig vertically into the icing. The pinkish hue of the fig with its sliver of dark peel was very festive.

  They had cooked into the early evening when Mel declared they were done. The magazine people left, looking exhausted. Amy had never returned to the kitchen, and Hannigan had called only to tell them that Brigit had been released and he was taking her home.

  No one had said as much, but Mel thought the relief amongst the others was palpable. She didn’t think it was just concern for their jobs or the desire not to be employed by a murderer, but rather, she suspected, they had a great deal of respect for Brigit and didn’t want her to go to jail.

  Mel and Angie cleaned the kitchen while Tate closed up the bakery. When the doors were finally locked and the day was done, Tate popped back into the kitchen.

  “All right, Mel, I’m all yours. What needs doing?” he asked.

  Angie looked between Mel and Tate, and Mel included
her when she said, “Just a quick errand. Do you want to come with us, Ange?”

  “Where are we going?” she asked. Her voice sounded suspicious, and Mel knew it was because she was not as gullible as Tate.

  “You’ll see,” Mel said.

  “Does it have to do with the gala?” Angie asked.

  “Yep,” Mel said.

  Sure, it was a stretch, but she didn’t want to give too much detail or Tate might balk, and she had a feeling she needed him to get the Harpers to talk to her.

  Mel ran upstairs to feed Captain Jack and get her purse while Tate and Angie locked up. They all met beside Mel’s car, which was parked in the lot near the cupcake van.

  She was tempted to ask Tate how he’d slept last night. She didn’t imagine the transition from a king-size bed with sand-washed, 1200–thread count silk sheets to a flannel-lined sleeping bag was an easy one. She resisted. He was going to be sore enough at her when he figured out where they were going.

  Twenty-seven

  Tate didn’t go into a full-on hissy fit until Mel turned onto the winding road that led to his parents’ house.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “Mel, I can’t be here.”

  “You have to,” she said. “I need to talk to your mother, and you’re my entrance pass.”

  “But I haven’t seen my parents since I quit the business,” Tate protested. “I wanted to wait until I got my feet under me a little bit more. You know how my father is.”

  “Yes, which is exactly why I need you with me,” she said. “You distract him, and I’ll question your mom.”

  “Question my mom?” he asked. “About what? Mel, have you lost your mind?”

  “I need to ask her about the people and events covered in SWS,” she said.

  She pulled into the circular drive.

  “Why would my mother know or care about anything in that magazine?” Tate asked.

  “Your mom knows anyone who is anyone,” Angie said from the backseat. “I have to agree with Mel on this one.”

  “And why are we doing this?” Tate asked.