Caramel Crush

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Again, Ms. Earnest, what were you about to say?” Tara continued to badger Diane.

  Stan moved to stand beside Tara. “Excuse me, how do you do, ma’am? We haven’t been introduced. I’m Detective Stan Cooper and this is my partner, Detective Tara Martinez.”

  Angie looked at Mel and mouthed the name Martinez with a questioning face and Mel nodded.

  “Hello,” Diane said. “I’m Diane Earnest and this is my head of technology, Elliott Peters.”

  No one shook hands but they all nodded at one another—well, everyone except Tara. She was too busy glaring, a look that now included Stan as well.

  “I understand you were engaged to Mike Bordow,” Stan said.

  Diane nodded.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” Stan said. He looked sincere and that was all it took to reduce Diane to a blubbering mess.

  She started to cry and this time Mel had no doubt that the tears were genuine, and she felt herself soften toward her bossy, demanding friend. This surely hadn’t been how Diane had planned the day to go.

  “Thank you,” Diane said. “I was in the process of breaking off the engagement, but I never . . . I would never have wanted any harm to come to him.”

  “Where were you this morning?” Tara asked.

  “At home and then I went into work about nine o’clock,” she said.

  “Did anyone see you before nine?” Tara asked. Her words had the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire and Mel noticed that they all jumped a little bit when she spoke.

  “No, I was alone, but I didn’t do anything wrong,” Diane said. “I didn’t harm Mike.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tara said.

  She looked unmoved and Mel found herself really disliking the little terrier. As soon as they left, she was going to call Manny in Las Vegas and tattle on his snippy little cousin. So there.

  “I wouldn’t hurt him, I swear,” Diane insisted. “Tell them, Mel.”

  Feeling Tara’s dark gaze turn to her, Mel glared right back. “Nope, she would never.”

  The staring contest continued for a moment and then Uncle Stan cleared his throat.

  “Perhaps this conversation would be better held at the station,” he said. “Ms. Earnest, if you’d come with us?”

  “Am I under arrest?” she asked. Elliott stepped closer to her as if he could shield her from the detectives.

  “Do you need to be?” Tara countered.

  “We’re just going to have a conversation, and we’d really appreciate your cooperation,” Stan said. “Nothing to worry about, I promise.”

  Mel noticed that his right eyebrow was higher than his left and she had to squash the urge to tell Diane to run for it.

  “Well, I suppose that would be all right,” Diane said.

  She looked hesitant and Mel suddenly remembered that whether she liked it or not, she owed Diane for saving her bacon back in college.

  “I’ll have a friend of mine meet you down at the station,” Mel said. “He’ll get you through this.”

  Uncle Stan gave her an incredulous look, but Mel jerked her head in the direction of his partner and she did not feel one iota of guilt for helping Diane out. She had a feeling Tara was the sort of detective who decided who was guilty and then worked the case to make it true, unlike Uncle Stan, who worked the case to find the guilty party.

  Since Tara had such a chip on her shoulder about Manny and clearly a thing for Joe, Mel would not be at all surprised to see her take her unhappiness out on Diane, since she was Mel’s friend and client. Mel couldn’t let that happen.

  “Thanks, Mel,” Diane said.

  “Don’t mention it,” Mel said. “In fact, don’t say anything until Steve gets there.”

  Tara looked like she wanted to smash Mel’s cupcakes. If Mel hadn’t had her good sense kick in right in the nick of time she would have dared her. Luckily, she just smiled, a closed-lip passive smile that made it more than clear whose side she was on.

  “We’ll talk later,” Uncle Stan said.

  He gave Mel a look that told her she was not going to enjoy the conversation. Mel would have felt bad about disappointing him, but she didn’t like his new partner. She didn’t like that Tara blamed her for Manny leaving Scottsdale and she didn’t like the way she looked at Joe. If they were going to have a conversation, they could start with her.

  “Fine,” she said. She tipped her chin up and turned her cheek toward him.

  Uncle Stan shook his head and kissed her cheek as if he knew the conversation was not going to go the way he planned and now he was dreading it. Mel was okay with that.

  “I’ll drive you,” Elliott said to Diane, and his tone made it clear it was not open for discussion.

  Again, he put himself between Diane and the detectives and Mel liked that about him. He wasn’t easily intimidated but she supposed he’d have to be like that if he worked for Diane.

  “We’ll see you there shortly,” Stan said.

  He led his partner out the back door. Mel could tell by her stiff-legged gait that she was unhappy with the way things had gone. Too bad.

  When the door shut behind them, Diane hugged Mel close. Mel hugged her back, thinking it was just Diane being her usual overly exuberant self.

  While they were locked together, however, Diane whispered, “Someone is setting me up. You have to find out who is trying to frame me for Mike’s murder. Promise me.”

  She released Mel as quickly as she’d grabbed her and when Mel would have spoken, Diane shook her head ever so slightly. Not knowing what else to do, Mel gave her the tiniest of nods.

  Diane flashed her a relieved smile and with that, she swept out of the bakery with Elliott in her wake.

  “What’s going on?” Angie asked as she sank onto a stool beside their large steel worktable.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Mel said. “But I think I may have just agreed to find out who killed Mike Bordow.”

  Nine

  “No,” Angie said. “Absolutely not. I forbid it.”

  “What?” Mel frowned at her friend. “You can’t forbid it.”

  “Yes, I can. I’m your friend. ‘You find out who your real friends are when you’re involved in a scandal,’” she said.

  “Are you quoting Elizabeth Taylor to me? That’s not even from a movie. I think that’s a foul.”

  “Whatever. Now listen, we have bigger things going on than your old college roommate and whether she whacked her fiancé or not,” Angie said.

  “We do?” Mel asked. Mostly she did it because she knew it was going to make Angie’s eyes bug right out of her head. Not nice, she knew, but she’d had a really rough day and she wasn’t really in the mood to play nice right now.

  “Ah!” Angie gasped, giving her a wide-eyed stare. “Today is the day we go to the dressmaker for my final fitting.”

  Mel crossed the kitchen to the coffeepot. Bless Marty’s heart, it was full of piping hot go-juice. Why did she have to go to the dressmaker’s? Wasn’t that something Angie could do on her own?

  “You are coming with me, aren’t you?” Angie asked. “You promised.”

  “I know I did,” Mel said. She kept her back to Angie so she wouldn’t have to see the hurt in her friend’s eyes. “But that was before the dead body du jour.”

  Mel could feel the waves of sad confusion pouring off of Angie all the way across the kitchen. She lowered her head and sipped her coffee. She turned around and strode across the kitchen into the former closet she had remodeled into an office.

  “Listen, I have to call Steve,” she said. “We’ll talk later.”

  “Okay,” Angie said. “Sure.”

  Mel closed the door behind her without ever really looking at her friend. She moved around her desk, ignoring the piles of paperwork that needed to be dealt with, and sat in her cushy rolling office chair. She didn’t even open he
r laptop or pull out her cell phone. She simply leaned against the back of her chair and drank her coffee, wishing this day had rolled out differently.

  She didn’t want to have images of Mike Bordow’s dead body burned onto her retinas for the rest of her life; she didn’t want to have to get involved with Diane’s messy situation, nor did she want to spend her afternoon at a bridal salon, watching her best friend get pinned and primped for her big day when Mel’s own big day should have happened a few months ago.

  Ack! That was it. That was the thought she hadn’t allowed herself to think since they’d returned from opening their first franchise in Las Vegas a few months ago. She was supposed to be married to Joe and she wasn’t, and even while she was having a great time dating him, because they’d never really seemed to manage that before, she really wished she was Mrs. Joe DeLaura and she was a teeny tiny bit jealous that Angie was getting married and she wasn’t.

  There, she admitted it. Funny, she thought a little self-honesty would make it easier to bear. It didn’t. It just made her feel bad about herself. Huh.

  There was a sharp knock on the office door but before Mel could invite the person in, it banged open with enough force to bounce off of the interior wall.

  “Hey!” Mel yelped.

  Two heads, one bald and shiny and one long and shaggy, peered around the doorframe.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” Marty, the bald one, said.

  “Yeah,” Oz, the shaggy one, added.

  Mel sighed. Marty was her main counter help and culinary student Oscar Ruiz was her baker in training. Much as she wanted to shove them out of her tiny office and shut and lock the door, she knew for the morale of the bakery, she needed to hear them out.

  “What?” she asked. “Did I not use enough buttercream on the Blonde Bombshells?”

  “Do not make light of this, young lady,” Marty said. His bushy gray eyebrows were pulled together in a stern V, indicating he meant business.

  “Yeah,” Oz repeated.

  Mel glanced at her young chef. Without his toque on, his black hair hung in a fringe down past his nose, making it impossible to see his eyes or know what he was thinking. He must have just arrived, as he was still in jeans and a Ramones T-shirt and was clutching his skateboard in one hand.

  “Okay,” Mel said. She held her hands out wide. “What’s the matter?”

  “You are a terrible friend,” Marty said.

  Mel snapped her head back. Ouch!

  “Angie needs you,” Oz added. “And you’re letting her down.”

  “Um, is this about the dress-fitting thing?” Mel asked. “Because I’ve been to the dressmaker’s like three times.”

  “So what?” Marty asked.

  “So, I think I’ve done more than my share of bridal duty,” Mel said. “There is other stuff going on, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah, we heard,” Oz said. “Another dead body, big deal.”

  “Big deal?” Mel croaked.

  “Angie is only getting married once,” Marty said. “While your track record for finding bodies, well, let’s just say this probably won’t be your last.”

  “You need to get your priorities in order,” Oz said.

  Mel stared down at her coffee. They were right. She was being a selfish jerk.

  “Mel, you and Joe will have your day,” Oz said. His voice was kind and not judgy, but it was also very firm.

  Mel glanced up at the behemoth who was her sous chef. His large stature and enormous hands hid the fact that he was gifted in the culinary arts and was capable of sculpting the most delicate butterflies out of the thinnest fondant. The other truth about Oz was that he had the purest heart of anyone she had ever known. If he was calling her out on her behavior, he was right.

  “Is Angie out there?” she asked.

  “No, she left for her fitting,” Marty said.

  Mel stood, grabbing her coffee and her cell phone. The bridal shop was just two streets over. She’d call Steve Wolfmeier for Diane while she hoofed it.

  “Fine, I’m on my way,” she said. The two idiots beamed at her and Mel found herself reluctantly smiling back. When she reached the doorway, she paused to kiss them each on the cheek, causing both of them to blush ridiculous shades of pink. “Thanks, guys.”

  “Just go,” Marty said. “Before she has another episode of bridal self-doubt and scraps her gown and makes the poor dressmaker cry.”

  Oh, good grief, Marty was right. What had she been thinking letting Angie go solo to her fitting? She ratcheted her pace up to a jog and bolted out the door, shouting, “Call me if you need me!” as she went.

  Mel ran down the sidewalk, passing the tattoo joint on the corner at the speed of a blur.

  “Hey, hold up there, Mel!” Mick Donnelly popped his head out the door of the place. He had just opened up shop, so the steady buzzing of needles inking skin wasn’t as loud as usual since there were no customers as yet.

  “No time to chat, Mick,” Mel said. She did slow down a bit so she could explain. “Angie. Dress fitting. Emergency.”

  “Gotcha,” he said. At well over six feet tall, fully inked, and chock-full of funky body jewelry, Mick would have scared the dookey out of Mel if she didn’t know that he had a passion for opera and coconut cupcakes.

  Mel resumed her pace, but Mick called her back.

  “Hey, do me a solid?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Tell Angie the wedding tattoos she wants are on the house,” he said. “My little gift to the bride and groom.”

  Mel’s eyes widened. This was news. But instead of grilling Mick like she wanted to, she just nodded and said, “Okay.”

  With a wave, she hurried toward Scottsdale Road and Marshall Way, hoping to get to the dressmaker’s before Angie had another bridezilla moment as Marty had predicted. While waiting for the crossing light to turn into the walking person instead of the stop hand it was now, she took a moment to call Steve. His phone rolled over to voice mail after one ring, so she left a detailed message about what was happening and told him to call her if he had any questions. The walking person appeared and she bolted across the street.

  She rushed through Old Town, passing a coin collector’s shop, a Native American art gallery, a tiny café, and a Western-wear shop before she banged into Madame Amour’s bridal salon. Judging by the expression on the face of Madame Amour, she was just in time.

  Madame Amour, whose real name was Kimberly, was kneeling beside the hem of Angie’s gown with a pin cushion strapped on her wrist and the look of someone who was seriously debating stabbing herself in the eye with her own pins to end the agony she was being forced to endure.

  Angie had her back to Mel and didn’t see her come in. Also, she appeared to be consumed with her own reflection and her unhappiness with what she was seeing, which was obvious in the way she flounced her skirt and frowned, looking petulant.

  “I don’t know what I want but this isn’t it,” she said.

  Now Kim looked like she might stab Angie instead.

  “I think we should change it to an empire waist,” Angie said. “You know, very Sense and Sensibility.”

  “A quality that is sorely lacking here right now,” Kim said around the pin she had clamped between her lips.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?” Angie asked.

  “Nothing,” Kim said. She rose from her knees and looked at Mel. She took the pin out of her mouth and jabbed it into her wrist holder. “Talk to her before I throw her and her gown out.”

  Mel watched Kim stomp away.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Angie cried.

  Kim didn’t answer, which was probably for the best.

  “Oh, Angie,” Mel sighed. “You look amazing. Tate is going to die, simply keel over on the spot dead when he sees you.”

  Angie glanced up at her reflection
and saw her friend. “Mel! You’re here!”

  “Of course,” Mel said. “Where else would I be?”

  “Helping your other friend, Diane,” Angie said. She sounded the teensiest bit put out.

  “Oh, you mean the one accused of a murder she didn’t commit,” Mel said. Her gaze met and held Angie’s in the mirror as she attempted to stare her down.

  “Dress fitting, wrongly accused, dress fitting, wrongly accused,” Angie said as she held her hands out as if they were a scale. “All right, I can see where you might have had to help her first.”

  “Thank you,” Mel said. “Now, what is going on with your dress, which is perfect by the way? Why are you planning to change it?”

  “I saw a picture in a magazine—” Angie began, and Mel interrupted.

  “Okay, that’s it, no more magazines for you,” she said. “We have to make a rule, once you pick flowers, you can’t look at any other flowers. Once you choose the music, no more listening to any other music. This whole ceremony is about commitment; you need to start committing.”

  Angie opened her eyes wide. “Hey, you’re right. It’s like every decision is a test putting me one step closer to being committed to Tate. Huh, I never thought of it like that.”

  “Does it help?” Mel asked. She was hoping it did instead of making her friend’s anxiety even worse.

  “Maybe . . . No.”

  Angie let loose a sigh that sounded as if it came all the way from her pretty pink toenails. Then she sank onto the ground in a pouf of organza and silk. With her big brown eyes and long brown curls, she had the look of a fairy-tale creature who had been plopped into the middle of a bridal salon.

  Her gown was simple with a fitted bodice, halter top, and a pretty poufy skirt that was embroidered with white silk thread all along the hem in an eye-catching pattern of vines and leaves entwined with flowers.

  The dress complemented her skin tone and her curvy figure, making it look innocent and sexy all at the same time. This was no small achievement for a dress but Madame Amour had nailed it. Mel didn’t wonder why Kimberly felt the need to walk away from Angie and her bridezilla moment. It was a perfect dress.