Caramel Crush

by Jenn McKinlay

  It just didn’t make sense. Why would Diane have hired Mel to bake specialty breakup cupcakes and have Mel personally deliver them so she could give Diane the blow-by-blow of the dumping if she was planning to kill Mike first? Showing her animosity toward the man with the “It’s over” cupcakes was not a well-thought-out move, and if there was one thing Mel knew about Diane it was that she always thought everything through. Everything.

  From the clothes she wore, to the jobs she took, to where she invested her money, Diane was an overthinker of the first order. Playing chess with Diane was the most excruciating way to spend a rainy afternoon Mel had ever had the misfortune to experience. She’d rather stand in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles than watch Diane agonize over her strategic maneuvers.

  Bottom line: If Diane was going to murder Mike Bordow, it would have been planned to the tiniest, pickiest detail and would likely involve poison. Mel just couldn’t see Diane smashing a person’s head in no matter how miffed she was. That was entirely too messy. Also, she would make it look like an accident and not some rage-fueled bashing of his skull.

  Having come to this conclusion, Mel looked up Cheryl Earnest’s current address. With luck, she still had no idea that Mike Bordow was dead and Mel could spring the news on her and see how she took it.

  Cheryl’s address came up on her phone in an instant and Mel engaged her GPS navigation to talk her through the directions. As luck would have it, she lived in a swank neighborhood not too far from Nicole’s. Mel frowned. She wondered how convenient that had been for Mike Bordow.

  She knew she should feel bad that he was dead—no one deserved to have their cabbage squashed—but still, what a pig!

  Who sleeps with their bride’s mother and bridesmaid? Was there anyone else with whom Mr. Loose Zipper was canoodling? Seriously, what if one of them wanted him all to herself and found out about the others? She might have killed him in a fit of rage, which, judging by the sight of him, seemed pretty likely.

  A shudder rippled through Mel’s body from the top of her head to the tip of her tailbone. The sort of rage and strength that it would take to do what had been done to Mike Bordow was not something she would have associated with a woman scorned. Not that a woman couldn’t crack a guy’s melon if she was motivated, but it seemed more like something a man would do.

  She pondered what other men were in Diane’s life and she immediately thought of Elliott Peters. He was a scrawny, IT-nerd type, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have enough muscle to crush Mike’s head and toss him into the ball pit. Mel swallowed hard. The way Elliott looked at Diane, it was clear to her that he was smitten with his boss. How did Diane not know?

  Or did she know? Had she discovered that Elliott cared for her in a way the personnel department would frown upon, and had she used that knowledge to get Elliott to do her dirty work for her? And if she had, then had she set Mel up to find the body? Was that what the whole breakup cupcakes plan had been about? Putting Mel in the position where she could say she was on the phone with Diane at the time Mike was found?

  Mel shook her head. No, it didn’t make sense. Diane wouldn’t have had her drive all over Scottsdale to Mike’s house and his country club, trying to track him down. She would have sent Mel right to his place of work. And even that made no sense because anyone Mike worked with might have found him before Mel did. And where had everyone been when she arrived? She had never gotten a good explanation for why the company had been wide open with no one on the premises that morning.

  With that, Mel started her car and followed the directions to Cheryl Earnest’s house. It was a short drive and her neighborhood, while still in the pricier bracket, was not as nice as Nicole’s. Mel parked in front of the ranch house, hoping Cheryl was home and that she hadn’t yet heard the news.

  She strolled up the concrete walkway, wondering how she could start this conversation. She had only met the woman once and while it had been a memorable meeting for her, she doubted that Cheryl would have spared any brain cells to retain the look or name of her daughter’s college roommate.

  She pressed the button by the front door and waited. The sound of barking, not big-dog barking but rather ankle-biter barking, filled the air. Mel braced herself for a tiny fur ball to come flying at her, and wondered if the dog would smell Captain Jack on her and chomp her just for principle’s sake.

  “Toots, stop,” a voice commanded.

  The barking didn’t waver, not even a little, so it was easy to see who was actually in charge of this abode. The door was pulled open and Mel barely got a glimpse of the person before she bent over and scooped up a tiny little black-and-brown dust bunny of a pooch.

  “Toots, enough,” the woman said as she straightened up and looked at Mel. “Can I help you?”

  The ten-plus years since Mel had seen Cheryl had not been kind. While it seemed at a glance that she hadn’t aged a day, with the same curvy figure, long blond hair, and wide-eyed gaze, there was a sheen to her skin that was unnatural and everything looked extra tight. Mel wondered if Cheryl’s face would split right open if she grinned too wide or, heaven forbid, laughed.

  “Hi, Ms. Earnest,” Mel said. “I don’t know if you remember me.”

  “The name is Mrs. Kelly,” Cheryl corrected her. “Earnest was three husbands ago.”

  “Oh,” Mel said. “Sorry.”

  She studied Cheryl’s face. She didn’t know if Cheryl was angry at the wrong name or if her pencil-filled eyebrows always looked irritated; maybe it was just today. Did she draw on her eyebrows according to mood? It would be a nice early warning system if she did, but Mel suspected this was not the case.

  Toots barked at Mel as if chastising her for the name blunder and Mel held out her fingers to the little puppy. If she couldn’t win over Cheryl maybe she could get to her through the dog. Toots bared her teeth and snapped at Mel.

  “She doesn’t like you,” Cheryl said.

  “Sorry,” Mel said. Although what she was apologizing for she had no idea. It must be that knee-jerk thing most women did: When confronted with a puzzling situation and all else failed, apologize. Ridiculous but true.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Cheryl shrugged. “She hates everyone except me. Right, baby?”

  Cheryl lifted the oversized hamster up and began to make kissy noises. Toots licked her face and Cheryl smiled. Much to Mel’s relief her face did not split wide open. Still, it looked painful and she was relieved when Cheryl turned back to her and her smile disappeared.

  “So, what do you want?”

  Mel blinked. “I’m Diane’s old college roommate, Melanie Cooper, and I wanted to talk to you about her wedding.”

  Cheryl tipped her head to the side to study Mel. She frowned, or at least Mel thought it was a frown. It was hard to tell since her face muscles didn’t really move that much.

  “I don’t remember you,” she said. “Huh, I don’t think I even knew Diane had a roommate.”

  Given how little attention Cheryl had paid to the moving-in process, this did not shock Mel. On the upside—and unlike Nicole since Cheryl didn’t remember her—she didn’t remember her as the fat girl, either. So there was that.

  “We roomed together for two years,” Mel said. “Right up until Diane took that internship in New York.”

  “Oh,” Cheryl said. She looked confused. “Diane went to New York?”

  That was it. Mel was going straight to her mother’s house later and telling her how very grateful she was that she got Joyce Cooper in the mama lottery. Honestly, her mother could drive her batty with her worrying and lecturing, but at least she cared, she showed up, and she was invested.

  The woman standing in front of Mel right now had shown more interest and affection for the hairy rat in her arms than she did her daughter. Truly she was an insult to mothers everywhere.

  “Yes, she had an internship,” Mel said.

 
“Who knew?” Cheryl shrugged. Cheryl turned and led the way into the house. “Well, come on in, roommate. If you’re going to ask me what Diane wants for her wedding, I have no idea. She and I had a bit of a falling-out the other day, and she’s not speaking to me at the moment.”

  Mel followed Cheryl into the opulent house. Gilt picture frames, velvet wallpaper, crimson velvet furniture—bleck, the interior looked like one of the tackier décors from one of the Real Housewives shows. Honestly, it was amazing how little taste or sense of aesthetic those people had.

  Cheryl led the way to a formal sitting room on the left of the front door. The nicest thing Mel could say about it was that with floor-to-ceiling north-facing windows, it had a wonderful source of natural light. This feature was greatly diminished by the animal-print fabrics that swathed every piece of furniture, and as she sat on the squashy leather love seat she tried to keep her gaze confined to the glass coffee table, which was one of the least eye-popping pieces of furniture in the room.

  Cheryl sat across from her with Toots on her lap. Toots had stopped barking but every now and again she stared at Mel from under a tuft of eyebrow and growled, showing her little rice teeth. Mel tried not to take it personally.

  Instead, she fixed her gaze on Cheryl and said, “I hate to be blunt, but I don’t see any other way to get to the point, so I am hoping you’ll answer a question for me.”

  Cheryl shrugged and stared at Mel as if she found her to be the most tedious person alive. Fine then.

  “Is the reason Diane stopped speaking to you because she found out that you slept with her fiancé, Mike?”

  Thirteen

  Cheryl’s expression didn’t change, but Mel saw her pupils dilate. Since she had learned from her uncle Stan that dilation of the pupils is a good indicator of lying as it signified that the brain was working hard, usually in a panic to come up with a convincing lie, she didn’t feel that she needed Cheryl to confirm or deny the accusation.

  Still, she waited to see what Cheryl would say. Maybe it would give her a clue as to whether Cheryl had a reason to whack Mike. Perhaps he had threatened to tell Diane about their fling and Cheryl had panicked and killed him. Although Mel didn’t sense that Cheryl cared enough about Diane to do that, it was still a possibility.

  “Diane is very high-strung,” Cheryl said. “I have no idea why she’s not speaking to me.”

  Mel stared at her. Hard. “Yes, you do.”

  Cheryl huffed out a breath and pressed a hand to her chest in a protestation of innocence that Mel believed about as much as she did that Cheryl was a natural blonde. Not.

  “Save it,” Mel said. “I already know that you were sleeping with Mike.”

  “Is that what Diane told you?” Cheryl asked.

  The look she sent Mel was sly, as if she knew Diane would never admit such a thing. The expression made Mel want to slap her. What sort of a mother was she? Mel shook her head. That was a no-brainer. She was an odious one.

  “No, someone else did,” Mel said. She studied Cheryl. The woman was clinging so hard to her youth, she was leaving claw marks on her twenties. Vanity was her weakness. All Mel had to do was hit her right where she lived. “But you know, now that I’ve seen you, I really don’t see how it’s possible.”

  Mel gave a scoffing laugh that said in no uncertain terms that she didn’t think Cheryl was capable of snagging Mike. She rose to her feet, signifying that she was done here.

  Cheryl’s eyes went wide. She looked at Mel in frustration, as if she didn’t know how to play it. Obviously she had been planning to admit nothing and revel in everyone’s suspicion that she had slept with her daughter’s fiancé, but now Mel was throwing her a curve ball by not believing the gossip.

  “It is more than possible,” Cheryl said. She stood and assumed a red-carpet pose with her back straight and a hand on her hip. “Mike wanted me. In fact, he pursued me until I finally gave in just to get him to leave me alone.”

  “Yeah, right,” Mel said. She giggled as if that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard, then she let her gaze run over Cheryl from her head to her feet. “Sorry to waste your time. I’ve got to go.”

  She turned on her heel and made for the front door. Cheryl scurried after her with Toots in the crook of her arm in a football hold. Mel was almost to the door when Cheryl grabbed her arm and spun her around.

  “It’s true,” Cheryl said. She tossed her hair and looked at Mel from under her false eyelashes. “I slept with Mike, several times, and it was fantastic. He said he’d never been with anyone so good.”

  Mel looked at her. “Um, let me just say, ew.”

  “Ah!” Cheryl drew herself up and shifted Toots in front of her as if the toupee with teeth could protect her from Mel’s scorn. The little rodent must have felt her mama’s rage, because she started to snarl with her little lip curling up on one side.

  “So, that is why Diane isn’t speaking to you,” Mel said. She needed confirmation before she left. “She found out about you and Mike, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, she walked in on us the other day. It was quite the dramatic scene as she pitched a complete hissy fit. She vowed never to speak to me again,” Cheryl said. “Like I haven’t heard that before.”

  “Well, I imagine she will be speaking to you soon. Or maybe not so much her as the police,” Mel said. “Mike Bordow was found dead this morning. Murdered.”

  “Oh my god,” Cheryl said. Her jaw dropped open and she looked down at Toots as if she was checking to see how she was taking the news. “She did it.”

  “What?” Mel asked.

  “Diane, she killed him,” Cheryl said. “And all because of me.”

  Mel frowned. That wasn’t really what she had been going for, so she asked, “How do you know she did?”

  “Because in the middle of her hysterical tirade she said she was going to shank him with one of his party favors,” Cheryl said.

  “Shank him?” Mel asked. At least this was a different method than the one actually used.

  “Yeah, she was crazy mad and then her assistant, that Elliott guy, dragged her out of there, kicking and screaming,” Cheryl said. “The next thing I knew I got a text that the wedding was off. Not a big surprise. I can see where having her mother steal her man could drive her to murder.”

  “Diane didn’t murder him,” Mel said.

  Cheryl looked at her as if she was too stupid to live, and Mel turned away from her and opened the door to leave before she said or did something that she knew she would regret. Well, maybe not regret but something that would likely not help the situation.

  “Melissa, wait,” Cheryl said.

  Mel paused. She didn’t correct Cheryl’s use of the wrong name because when Uncle Stan came by it would actually help if Cheryl didn’t mention that she’d been here. And if she used the wrong name that might buy Mel some time.

  “What?” Mel asked. She glanced over her shoulder, not bothering to turn all the way around.

  “How high-profile of a case do you think this is?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, a gorgeous young businesswoman murdering her wealthy fiancé because he was sleeping with her mother. Do you think it’ll be covered by the news? If I’m going to be on TV, I’ll need a new wardrobe, a makeover—ah, I wonder if I have time for hair extensions and a Botox session.”

  Mel narrowed her eyes at Cheryl. Yep, a tiny dribble of drool glistened in the corner of Cheryl’s mouth. The woman was actually salivating at the thought of being famous, never mind that it would come at the expense of her daughter’s freedom and possibly her life. What the hell?

  “No,” Mel snapped. “I don’t think anyone is going to give two hoots about this situation or about you. You are a truly horrible, disgusting human being.”

  Cheryl stepped back from Mel as if she’d tried to bite her. Even Toots must have
registered the anger in Mel’s voice, because she buried her head against her mama’s chest and shivered.

  Mel turned and strode away from the house. She was so furious, she was pulsing with it. Poor Diane. What a horror show her mother was. No wonder Diane was so driven and, frankly, socially defective. If that person had raised Mel, she shuddered to think how she would have turned out.

  She climbed into her car and turned it on. It was now mid-afternoon and the sun was reaching its peak baking point. Mel pulled away from the curb and drove down the street to park in the shade of a large mesquite tree. She left the car running and the air conditioning blasting while she took out her phone and called her mother.

  “Hello,” Joyce answered on the second ring.

  “Hi, Mom,” Mel said.

  “Mel, you sound mad. Are you okay? Is everything all right with you and dear Joe? You didn’t break up again, did you?” she asked.

  Mel laughed. Her mother had been calling Joe “dear Joe” since the day Mel had started dating him. Joyce had known that Mel had sustained a crush on Joe since she was twelve years old and like any good mom, it had been her fondest wish that Mel get her Prince Charming. No one had suffered more than Joyce at Mel and Joe’s on-and-off-again status over the past year and a half.

  “No,” Mel said. “Joe and I are fine. Better than ever, in fact. We even have a date tonight.”

  “Oh, good,” Joyce said. “So what’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Mel said. “I just . . .”

  “Just what, honey?”

  “I just wanted to thank you for being the best mom a girl could ever ask for,” Mel said.

  “Oh.” Joyce’s voice was soft as if she was too surprised to speak. “Well, thank you. I feel very lucky that I got to be your mom.”

  Mel felt her throat get tight. She knew tears were in the offing if she didn’t get a grip, so she cleared her throat and said, “I’d better go. I’m driving.”

  “Melanie Cooper, you hang up right this second. You know how I feel about phone use in the car,” Joyce said. And they were back to normal.