The Cakes of Monte Cristo

by Jacklyn Brady

  “Why?”

  “Oh, Rita, don’t you see? Philippe died there, right after he bought that place.”

  The look on her face broke my heart but suddenly the fog began to lift. “Philippe died two years after he bought the building,” I reminded her gently. “And he didn’t die because of the necklace.”

  “You don’t know that. The only reason Philippe was able to buy that house was because old Miss Cassie had just died and her family was eager to unload the property.” She snorted softly. “I suppose we know why. And then Philippe died. And suddenly there you were holding that . . . thing in your hands and I knew what had happened.”

  I chose my words carefully. “Was Miss Cassie’s death suspicious?”

  “No. She was old and she’d lived a long, full life. But her husband died in a traffic accident only a few years before her.”

  “People die all the time, Miss Frankie. It’s natural and it’s inevitable. Miss Cassie might have died, but if she was old . . . well, it happens.” I sounded uncomfortably like Sullivan had the night before, but I tried not to think about that.

  “Philippe’s death wasn’t natural,” Miss Frankie snapped. “Don’t you dare try to claim that.”

  I shook my head emphatically. “No, it wasn’t. But his death had nothing at all to do with the necklace. You must know that’s true.”

  “What I know is that my son died at that house while that necklace was hidden there.”

  “That’s true, but—”

  “But nothing, Rita. That necklace is cursed. It’s not just Philippe’s death either. Look how close the two of you came to getting divorced. And all the nasty business that’s crossed your path since you took over? No, my family has suffered because of it and I won’t have anything else happen because you’re too stubborn to get rid of it. Promise me you’ll destroy it.”

  Her vehemence made more sense to me now, but that didn’t mean I agreed with it. She was watching me expectantly, but I wasn’t about to make a promise I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—keep, so I detoured around it. “I can’t do anything with the necklace,” I said. “I don’t have it. The police took it into evidence.”

  Relief slowly washed across Miss Frankie’s face as my words sank in. “You don’t have it?”

  “I don’t.”

  She sank back in her chair. “Well, thank the Lord for that.”

  Okay, so I’d probably have it back in a day or two. That information was on a need-to-know basis, and I saw no reason that Miss Frankie needed to know anything about it. Besides, I hoped that by the time the necklace was in my possession again, I’d have thought of a way to dispel the rumors of a curse.

  “Just try not to let your imagination run away with you,” I said. “Sure, we’ve had some bad luck, but we’ve had good things happen, too. What about Edie’s baby? And Sparkle finding her brother? You can’t count either of those things as bad luck.”

  Miss Frankie tilted her head to one side. “I suppose you’re right. I’m just so relieved that you’re all safe.”

  “And we are,” I assured her. “Absolutely.”

  “You don’t know how much better that makes me feel.”

  Guilt stirred around inside and made me squirm, but I kept a smile on my face. “Good. I’m glad.”

  “I can’t wait to tell that reporter. Once he knows you don’t have the necklace any longer, he’ll have to leave us both alone.”

  The guilt in my stomach turned sour. “You’ve been talking to a reporter?”

  “No, but he’s been calling since early yesterday morning. What’s his name?” She tapped her chin with one finger. “Carlo, I think. Carlo Mancini.”

  The same reporter Zoey had mentioned. Of all the nerve. “You haven’t given him an interview, have you?”

  “Of course not. I don’t talk to the press. But he left a message saying that he would be calling you. Have you talked to him?”

  “Not yet, but I will. He tried to reach me yesterday. So far I’ve managed to avoid him. What does he want?”

  Miss Frankie got up and went back to the fridge, seeming more like her old self. She pulled out an egg and cracked it into a small bowl, adding a splash of milk. “I’m sure it’s about the necklace,” she said as she whisked the egg and milk into a froth. “And the feud, no doubt. That whole thing will be stirred up, too, I’m sure.”

  I started to nod before her words had a chance to sink in. “Wait a minute. What? What feud?”

  “Between the Toussaints and the Merciers, of course. There’s been bad blood between the two families since Armand and Beatriz died. But that’s silly, really, since the two families are actually one.” She pulled out a pan and put it on a burner. “Not that they have ever thought of themselves in that way.”

  “Right. So the two families are feuding? Like the Hatfields and the McCoys?”

  Miss Frankie poured her mixture into the pan and seasoned it with salt and pepper. “Not exactly. It’s not as if the two families have been killing each other off. But there have certainly been disagreements and bad feelings. The Merciers feel that they were betrayed. The story is that Delphine attempted to get the necklace back from Gustave Toussaint more than once before she died.”

  “Obviously she failed.”

  Miss Frankie nodded. “Are you sure you aren’t hungry?”

  I shook my head. “I guess it makes sense. If the Toussaints believed that they’d been cursed, I guess they’d be upset.”

  “Relations between the two branches of the family became more strained with every failure. Delphine had worked up quite a hatred for the Toussaints by the time she passed.”

  “And from there the . . . misunderstanding escalated to talk of a curse. How do you think the necklace ended up in the staircase at Zydeco? How long has it been there, and who put it there?”

  Miss Frankie stirred the eggs in the pan and lowered the heat. “I imagine it was someone who thought that hiding it could stop the curse.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But if that was the case, why hide it in the house? Why not throw it into the river like you told me to do? Squirreling it away seems like an odd choice for someone who really believed the necklace was cursed. That should make you feel better about it.”

  Miss Frankie frowned at me over her shoulder. “Why should it?”

  “Because obviously whoever hid the necklace wasn’t concerned about dropping dead. It sounds like he or she was more worried about the wrong person finding it.” My phone let out a soft chime, and instinctively I glanced at the screen. When I saw the time, I let out a little yelp and stood. “I didn’t realize how late it was,” I said. “Sorry, but I need to get to work.”

  Miss Frankie walked me to the front door, asking a few questions about the work and our progress, but I could tell she wasn’t really interested. I hated seeing her so worried, but I had no idea how to set her mind at ease. I’d start by convincing Carlo Mancini to leave her alone. Somehow. I was almost certain a plan for doing that would occur to me at some point.

  After that, time would tell. Eventually, after I repeatedly didn’t die in a freak accident, Miss Frankie would realize that the necklace wasn’t bringing me bad luck. Until then, however, I’d have to be more cautious than usual. In her current state of mind, even a hangnail might send her over the edge.

  Fifteen

  The call from the police came that afternoon. I’d been up to my eyeballs in work all day, first holding a staff meeting so we could get our ducks in a row before the Belle Lune Ball next week, then returning business calls and setting appointments with potential new clients, and finally getting the opportunity to offer Calvin a part-time job until after Mardi Gras. After the holiday, we’d see about letting him stay on.

  On the plus side, I was so busy I hadn’t had time to think about curses or feuds. Another plus was that Zoey had cut the stacks of paper on Edie’s desk
substantially. Maybe I could actually stop worrying about keeping someone at Edie’s desk until she came back.

  I’d just finished a preliminary phone consult with a potential client when Zoey popped into my office, wide-eyed and breathing hard. Her hair was clean and shiny, her eyes clear and bright. I liked thinking that the job was having such a positive effect on her. “It’s the police,” she whispered, as if she was afraid someone would hear her. “It’s about the necklace. It has to be. Anyway, it’s a woman. The cop, that is. She wants to talk to you.”

  I wasn’t sure why Zoey was so excited, but I was starting to think that necklace was going to be the death of me—just not in the way Miss Frankie thought. “Thanks,” I said. “Did you get a name?”

  “Of—? Oh!” Zoey’s head snapped this way and that as she glanced at her desk and back at me. “You mean of the lady who’s calling? I think she told me, but I don’t remember. Did I mess up?”

  I shook my head and reached for the receiver, pausing when I saw that two lines were lit. “Which line?”

  Zoey inched forward and scowled at the phone on my desk. “Line two. I think. No, I’m sure. Line two.”

  Okay, so maybe Zoey wasn’t fully up to speed yet. But she was doing okay, and okay was a whole lot better than her predecessors had done.

  I picked up the call with my perkiest “Rita Lucero,” expecting that Zoey would go back to work. To my surprise, she waited just inside the door while I listened to the officer’s spiel about how the police no longer needed the necklace. I tried to put off retrieving it until after next week’s craziness was behind us, but the woman was insistent that I pick it up right away. Maybe she’d heard about the curse.

  I arranged to pick up the necklace by the end of business, then hung up the phone. Zoey was still hovering by the door, so I turned a smile on her. “All taken care of. Is there something else on your mind?”

  She shook her head uncertainly. “No. I guess not. Only—” She took a deep breath and let her next words out in a rush. “You’re not going alone, are you? Because I don’t think you should.”

  “I was planning to. Is there some reason I shouldn’t?”

  “Well, yeah!” She came a few steps into my office. “I mean, think about it. That necklace is worth a lot of money and a whole bunch of people are interested in it. It’s probably not smart to just walk around with it in your purse. You should take somebody with you.”

  The independent side of me wanted to ignore her advice, but Miss Independence had never owned anything valuable in her life. Besides, Zoey seemed to be clearly angling for an invitation to go along—and since she had found the necklace, maybe I owed it to her.

  “You want to come?” I said with a grin. “That’s all right with me.”

  “Me?” Zoey’s eyes filled with horror. “No. I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—what I mean is, you ought to take somebody . . . you know . . . strong.”

  “You mean like a bodyguard?” She looked so serious, I tried not to laugh. “Do you really think that’s necessary?”

  “Somebody broke into the Vintage Vault and tried to steal it, didn’t they?”

  I’d been making that same argument for a couple of days, but now that Zoey was using it against me, I felt myself waffling. “We don’t know that for sure. The necklace probably wasn’t even an issue.”

  “But it was,” Zoey protested. “You know it was.”

  I shut down my laptop and stood. “The thief might have been after the necklace, but the police don’t think so. And I’ll be fine. Nobody will even know I’ve picked it up.”

  Zoey gave me a stern look. “You should take Ox. Nobody would try anything if he was with you.”

  “Ox has too much to do,” I said. “Actually, so do I, but somebody has to go and I guess I’m elected.” I crossed the room and put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s nice of you to worry about me, Zoey, but nobody is going to try anything. I’ll be fine. How are you coming with the notes from the staff meeting? Are you having any trouble?”

  “I’m almost finished,” she said, her mouth puckering with disappointment. “I’ll e-mail a draft to you as soon as I have it.”

  “Sounds great,” I said, and moved past her on my way to the design room.

  Zoey trailed me into the brightly colored room, where the rest of the staff was hard at work. The minute she stepped through the door, she hustled over to Estelle’s worktable. Estelle was trying to restabilize one of the dress form cakes on its metal stand, a task which apparently required a great deal of concentration. She didn’t notice Zoey until the frustrated girl shifted her weight a couple of times and let out a heavy sigh. “Aunt Estelle, I need to talk to you.”

  Thanking my lucky stars that Zoey had stopped worrying about me, I went to the kitchen for a white sheetcake and a tub of buttercream so I could start sculpting a pair of mule-style shoes. Eventually, I’d cover the shoes with emerald green fondant and adorn them with fondant peacock feathers, staging them at the foot of the peacock feather dress cake, accompanied by a peacock feather fan and matching hat.

  Normally, I would have put off this step until closer to the event, but with five dress cakes and their accessories to finish in less than a week, we had to do everything that could reasonably be done in advance. The schedule we’d put together in the staff meeting called for all five cakes and their edible accessories to be completed by the middle of next week so we could spend the remaining few days cooking for the banquet itself. Time was quickly running out.

  Ox was rolling a sheet of brown fondant large enough to become the skirt for a 1930s ladies’ business suit while Isabeau fussed over a matching sheet that she was molding onto a tube of rice cereal treat to create one sleeve for the jacket.

  Sparkle absently flicked a spike on her leather choker with one black-tipped finger while she studied the placement of the black fondant beads I’d created on the evening gown cake. Dwight hummed tunelessly as he calculated the first cut in a stacked cake that would ultimately become dress form cake number four.

  The sheer volume of work ahead of us threatened to overwhelm me at times, and as I watched the staff, all busy and focused and (mostly) silent, I felt a wave of near-panic wash over me. Don’t get me wrong, the staff is great. When it’s time to work, they work and work hard. But they rarely do so without talking. The fact that they weren’t chatting while they rolled and cut and painted and molded made me wonder if I’d walked into the wrong design room.

  I loaded up everything I needed from the kitchen and carried it back into the design room. The crew that had been so hard at work only a few minutes earlier had stopped working completely and every eye in the room was trained on me. Every eye except Ox’s. He was still rolling fondant with steely determination.

  I stopped in my tracks. “What?”

  “You’re going to pick up the necklace,” Isabeau said accusingly. “And you’re not even going to take somebody else with you?”

  I shot a look at Zoey, who lifted her chin and stared back at me. “I just thought they should know since you wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Nobody likes a tattletale, Zoey,” I said lightly, annoyed but not wanting to offend the sensitive girl. “And the rest of you can calm down, too. I’ll be fine. It’s no big deal.”

  Estelle put both hands on her hips and glared at me. Her curls had escaped the yellow kerchief she’d used to restrain them, and her round cheeks turned an alarming shade of red. “Zoey wasn’t tattling. She’s concerned about you—and she’s right to be. There are too many people who know that that necklace has resurfaced.”

  Isabeau nodded, sending her perky blond ponytail into gyrations. “And a whole lot of people who want to get their hands on it.”

  Even Sparkle piped up from her corner in the shadows. She gave me a stern look; or maybe it was just the black liner around her eyes and the black lipstick on her mouth that made her look so d
isapproving. “Much as it pains me to admit this, I agree. You shouldn’t go alone.”

  I tried to laugh off their concerns. “You want me to put somebody else at risk from the curse? Wouldn’t that be irresponsible?”

  Dwight scratched absently at his beard guard then moved on to a particularly wrinkled spot on his T-shirt. “I don’t think they’re actually worried about the curse,” he said, glancing from one coworker to another in turn.

  Obviously, they’d been talking while I was out of the room and apparently they all knew about the alleged curse.

  “I think they just want to make sure you’re safe,” he went on. “If the necklace is all that valuable, somebody might want it.” He stopped scratching. “Is it? Valuable?”

  “It must be. Somebody already tried to steal it once,” Isabeau reminded me.

  “She has a point,” Sparkle said.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” I protested limply as I continued on to my workstation. I put down the load of stuff I’d grabbed from the kitchen and frowned around the room.

  Ox looked away from his work for the first time. He stretched out a few kinks in his broad shoulders and put his hands on his hips, accentuating his resemblance to Mr. Clean. “You might as well just do what they want,” he said to me. “You’re not going to convince them. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “It’s not that big a deal,” I said. “And besides, that would mean taking two of us away from the work here. Doing that would put us even further behind schedule.”

  “Not if you took Calvin,” Estelle said. She turned to Ox before I could respond. “Didn’t you say he’d be coming in this afternoon?”

  Ox gave me a sympathetic look and went back to work. “Yeah. He called a little while ago and said he’d be here at four to fill out the paperwork.”

  “Then there you go,” Isabeau said, as if she and the others had settled something between them. “Take Calvin.”