Caramel Crush

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Hi, Party On! party rental supplies for all of your party needs,” Suzanne chirped at Mel as she shoved a brochure at her.

  Mel took the brochure. Obviously, Suzanne didn’t recognize her out of the context of a murder scene. Weird. She wondered if she should introduce herself or play like they’d never met. Probably, Suzanne would recognize her eventually, so it was best to—

  “You!” Suzanne snapped and snatched the brochure out of Mel’s hands. “What are you doing here? What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing!” Mel raised her hands in the air in a show of innocence. “I just saw you from my booth and I wanted to come over and, I don’t know, see how you’re doing.”

  Suzanne gave Mel a suspicious glance as if trying to determine her trustworthiness.

  “Listen, I was just hired to bake and deliver cupcakes. I had nothing to do with what happened to your brother,” Mel said. “Believe me, no one was more horrified than me to find him like that.”

  Suzanne stared at her for another few seconds and Mel could see the resemblance between Suzanne and her father, despite his drunkenness, in the shape and color of their eyes as well as the stubborn tip to their jaw.

  Suzanne finally glanced away. She looked around the packed convention center and her shoulders drooped. They were surrounded by hundreds of brides and not one of them was going near her booth.

  “I’m sorry,” Suzanne said. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like. Well, I can, but I’m sure it doesn’t compare to the reality of being alone with the dead body of a stranger.”

  “Yeah.” Mel let out a shaky breath. Good. Suzanne was talking to her. This was very good.

  “I’m sorry I thought you killed my brother,” Suzanne said. “I was out of my head, and you were there with bloody hands . . .”

  Mel swallowed hard. That was not one of her favorite memories.

  “I was just making a delivery for a customer,” Mel said. She did not feel the need to add that Diane was her former college roommate. She knew it would only make Suzanne suspicious of her again. “Talk about your right place, wrong time.”

  “So, you bake cupcakes?” Suzanne asked.

  “I co-own Fairy Tale Cupcakes with some friends,” Mel said.

  She gestured to the booth where Marty and Olivia seemed to have forged a truce judging by the passionate clinch they were now engaged in. Ew!

  “And you? You run Party On! I’ve seen your stuff at some of the venues I’ve worked,” Mel said.

  “Yes,” Suzanne said. “We are . . . were . . . the go-to place for all your party needs. Oh, man, what am I going to do without Mike? This was his sort of thing, meeting and greeting potential customers, working his shmoozy magic on them. I can’t do this. I suck at this. And Troy, who usually works these events with my brother, well, he’s apparently got a concussion from his fall.”

  She looked depressed and on the verge of tears. Mel wondered what the heck she was doing here when she was obviously grieving. Her thoughts must have been apparent because Suzanne shrugged.

  “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to put everything that I’m feeling. It’s like I’m drowning in pain and I can’t breathe.”

  Mel looked at her grief-ravaged face. She knew exactly how Suzanne felt. When her father had died, it was Mel’s first brush with true loss. She had frequently thought the pain would consume her. Before she thought it through, she opened her arms and hugged Suzanne.

  She said the words she had heard a million times, words that didn’t hurt and didn’t help, either, but were simply true.

  “I am so sorry for your loss,” she said.

  To her surprise, Suzanne hugged her back. The woman had not really struck Mel as a hugger, so she had to assume the pain she was feeling was significant.

  When Suzanne released her and stepped back, surreptitiously wiping tears from her face, Mel looked at her and gestured to the crush of bodies around them.

  “Maybe this is too much,” Mel said.

  “I don’t know what else to do, and I’m terrified that if I don’t do something, I’m going to lose the business,” she said. “We booked this event months ago. It’s always been great for boosting our presence in the marketplace, but now I’m a pariah. No one will come near me. I can’t even get them to take my brochure.”

  “Do you have any swag to give out?” Mel asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Swag? Free stuff?” Mel asked. “We’re giving out bite-sized samples of our cupcakes at our booth. Did your brother ever give out pens, pencils, stress balls, anything, when he did these events?”

  Suzanne shrugged and then went back to her booth. Under a table were several gray packing bins. She popped open the lid and Mel saw a ton of bright colorful notepads, key chains, water bottles, and markers, all emblazoned with the Party On! floating balloon logo on them.

  “Come on,” Mel said. She hefted one side of the bin and Suzanne scrambled to lift the other. Together they dumped the contents out on her table. Mel didn’t even bother with careful arrangement. She simply spread the stuff out with her hands in a happy scatter of swag.

  Like locusts, people abruptly veered toward the table. Mel pushed Suzanne into place behind it and helped her hand out the brochures while she chatted up the business. After a few minutes it was clear that Suzanne was going to be okay and whatever taint the crowd had felt toward her was overcome by the lure of free stuff.

  When there was a lull, Suzanne turned to Mel and said, “Thanks, and I’m sorry about, well, you know. I was wrong about you.”

  “It’s cool,” Mel said. “Listen, I know it’s none of my business but I did find your brother, so I’m just wondering, do you have any idea who would have done this to him?”

  “Oh, yeah, I know who did it,” Suzanne said. Her eyes turned hard and brittle. “His fiancée, Diane Earnest, did it. She found out he was two-timing her. Hello, he two-timed everyone—did she really think she was going to be different? She killed him. I’m sure of it, and I am going to make very sure she pays for it.”

  Oh, boy.

  On that happy note, Mel said she’d better get back to her own booth. She waved at Suzanne as she left, hoping with all that she had that Suzanne was wrong. She didn’t want to believe that her friend could be responsible for a man’s death, and she couldn’t believe that she would be so selfish as to put Mel right in the middle of it.

  Mel got back to her booth to find Marty and Olivia making goo-goo eyes at each other. Gag! She sent them away to go look at competing bakeries, one of which was Olivia’s, and sat down to ponder all of the information she’d gathered.

  There was no denying that the most likely suspect was Diane. The police thought so, Suzanne thought so, even Butch had a lucid moment where he believed it was her. Mel knew her friend was ruthless, but as far as she was concerned the fact that Butch was in debt to Tyson meant someone else had a motive.

  Butch had said Mike was his best friend. Maybe he told Mike what sort of trouble he was in with his debt to Tyson, and Mike had confronted Tyson. Tyson could have had him killed to remove him as a problem. Mel thought back to Tyson’s slick suit and pushy manner. He was a man who was used to getting his way. No doubt about it.

  If that was the case then Mel knew exactly where she needed to look next. She glanced up when she caught a glimpse of someone walking into her booth. Thinking it was a prospective client, Mel put her please-the-customer smile on. When recognition finally hit, the smile relaxed and then turned into a look of incredulity. Whoa!

  Angie stood before her with her long, dark brown hair shellacked into an enormous bow, made out of her own hair, on the top of her head.

  “Spectacular, right?” Angie asked. She spread her arms wide to encompass the ginormous hair bow.

  “That’s one word,” Mel agreed.

  “I’m thinking I could
attach my veil to the base of the bow, back here.” Angie pointed to the back of her head and Mel tried not to visibly flinch.

  Anything that was happening with Diane was now going to have to be shelved, as Angie, aka bridezilla, was back!

  Nineteen

  The bridal show ended at five and it took almost no time for Mel and the crew to pack up what little was left from their display. Oz arrived to pick them up in their cupcake van and Angie hustled them all out the door. She couldn’t wait to show Tate her new hairdo.

  To Oz’s credit, when Marty had opened his mouth to yelp at the sight of Angie, Oz had caught him with an arm around his neck and a knuckle noogie to his bald head, which sufficiently diverted Marty’s attention from Angie’s outrageous hair to the knot on top of his noggin.

  Mel split off from the group, as she was being picked up by Joe. They had a date to celebrate their decision to move in together and she was looking forward to being away from all of the drama that seemed to be swirling around her. For one evening she didn’t want to think about Diane and her situation or Angie and her wedding. Freedom beckoned.

  She stood outside the Phoenix Civic Center, looking at her phone to see exactly how hot it was at six o’clock on a June evening in Phoenix. One hundred and seven degrees Fahrenheit. Lovely. Just as she began to feel the sweat gather in her boobage, Joe’s car zipped up to her side. He reached across the front seat and popped her door open. Mel scurried in before the car behind him started honking and gesturing as only Phoenix drivers can do.

  Joe flashed her a grin and squeezed her hand in his before he pulled away. As always, just the sight of him made Mel’s heart lift in her chest and suddenly the troubles that had been nipping her heels all day were left behind on the curb.

  “Hungry?” Joe asked. He loosened his tie as he drove.

  “Always,” Mel said.

  “Great. I was thinking we could have a picnic,” Joe said.

  “In Phoenix in June?” Mel was incredulous.

  “No, I thought we could drive north, get out of town a ways,” he said. “It’s a little over an hour to Prescott.”

  “Can we stop for pie at Rock Springs?” she asked.

  “Is that a real question?”

  Mel laughed and leaned across the console to kiss his cheek. It felt as if she and Joe had been working their way back to each other for so long. Even though their wedding had been a bust, they were going to move in together, and Mel felt that if they survived Angie’s wedding then their own happy ever after might be just around the corner.

  Joe asked her about her day and she told him about Angie’s hair. He laughed and asked if she’d managed to get a picture of it. She gave him a dark look and he feigned innocence, as if he really wasn’t mocking the bridezilla his sister had become.

  She asked Joe about his latest case and he gave her an overview of how it was going. He never gave her specifics, just a general idea of what the prosecutor’s office had on deck. Mel, per usual, was impressed with his quest for justice in a world where it frequently felt lacking. She wondered if that was a part of their connection, this longing to see justice served.

  “It seems like you and I are both committed to seeing innocence win out,” she said.

  “Speaking of which, how goes the situation with Diane?” he asked.

  Mel shrugged. “Hard to say. It seems everyone I meet thinks Diane did it, but I just can’t believe it. Diane is a lot of things, but I don’t think killer is one of them.”

  “A lot of people aren’t what they seem,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Mel, tell me why you’re helping Diane,” he said. “I know you think you owe her a debt, but you’ve been very vague about it.”

  “I know. I’m not trying to shut you out on purpose.”

  “Then tell me what it is,” he said. “Help me to understand why you are so sure she’s innocent when both Stan and Tara think otherwise.”

  “Been in touch with them, have you?”

  “It’s my job,” he said. “When I called Stan’s desk, Tara answered.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mel said. “How convenient.”

  “She is his partner,” he said. “Are you telling me when you called him when Manny was his partner, Manny never picked up?”

  Mel glanced out the window. She refused to answer the prosecutor on the grounds that she’d lose the argument.

  “I just know Diane is innocent,” she said.

  It sounded lame even to her, but what else could she say? Yes, Diane came across as abrasive and pushy and frequently with no filter but she really was a good, decent woman because she saved Mel’s bacon before. But if she said that, then he’d want to know how. Should she tell him? Would he understand then that Diane was more than she seemed to be, or at least she had been when Mel had known her?

  She glanced at Joe. She was going to move in with him. Did she want to start that chapter of their life together with secrets? No.

  “Back when Diane and I were roommates,” Mel began but then paused. She wanted to tell this story in just the right tone so that Joe didn’t freak out.

  “Yes?” he encouraged her.

  “Diane saved my butt,” she said.

  “You’ve mentioned that, repeatedly,” he said. “I take it it was a pretty big save.”

  “Huge,” Mel said. “Because when I say she saved my butt, I’m speaking literally.”

  Joe turned to look at her. He had that expression he wore when she was about to tell him something he didn’t want to hear but knew that he had to listen anyway. She thought of it as his pained but stoic expression.

  “All right, hit me,” he said.

  “We were at a college party,” Mel said.

  “Frat party?” he asked.

  “No, nerd party,” she said.

  “Really? Nerds have parties? Did you have to dress as Princess Leia?”

  “No, that would have been cool,” Mel said. “Anyway, there was this guy—”

  “Stop right there,” Joe said.

  “What? Why?” Mel asked.

  “Because as far as I’m concerned, you never dated anyone before you dated me,” he said.

  Mel looked at him. He was not joking.

  “Is that a guy thing?” she asked.

  “It’s a me-not-wanting-to-picture-you-naked-with-anyone-else-ever thing,” he said. When Mel was quiet, he added, “Yeah, probably a guy thing.”

  “Good to know,” she said. “But you don’t have to worry. Things didn’t go that far.”

  “Oh,” Joe said. He looked relieved. “Continue then.”

  “So, college party, my social anxiety spiked, I used very poor judgment and accepted a beverage from a guy I didn’t know,” Mel said.

  Joe was staring at the road ahead. He looked perfectly calm except Mel could see the muscle in his jaw clench and unclench and his knuckles were white where he gripped the steering wheel.

  “You got roofied,” he guessed.

  “Yep,” Mel said. “Being the niece of a police detective, you’d think I’d know better, but I was nervous. I didn’t really do the party scene, even the nerd party scene, so I was in way over my head.”

  “Where were your friends?” he asked.

  “Diane was the only person I knew at the party and she had gone to the bathroom,” Mel said. “Looking back, I’m sure the guy waited until I was alone. I probably looked completely freaked out. I might as well have had a target painted on my back.”

  “What happened?” Joe asked. His voice was steady but Mel could tell he was agitated.

  “The guy handed me a drink, challenged me to chug it, the next thing I knew I was in a bedroom with him and he was doing his best to make moves on me while I was fighting to stay conscious. Diane came busting through the door, knocked some expensive camera equipment to the floor, kicked the
guy in the privates, and hauled me out of there.”

  The words came out in a rush, mostly because it was one of Mel’s more painful personal memories, but also because she was dreading Joe’s reaction. Not that he would get mad at her but that he might think as poorly of her young naïve self as she did.

  “Huh,” Joe said.

  Mel waited but he said nothing more.

  “Um, thoughts?” she asked.

  “A few,” he said.

  “Care to share?”

  “Sorry, I’m just taking it all in and prioritizing,” he said. “Okay, first, did the son of a bitch touch you?”

  “No,” Mel said. She squeezed his arm, feeling the need to reassure him. “I was fully clothed when Diane got me out of there.”

  “Good, that’s good,” he said. “Otherwise I was going to need a name, and me and the brothers were going to go on a road trip to find the ass—”

  “Breathe,” Mel said.

  Joe sucked in a huge gulp of air and held it. Then he let it out slowly and shook himself like a dog shaking water off his fur. “I’m good now, really. Unless of course you want to give me his name . . .”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Mel said. “Last I heard he had given up big girl porn—”

  “Stop,” Joe said. “Let’s be clear, what he was doing was a litany of multiple felonies. Drugging, kidnapping, oh man, I can’t even finish this sentence or I will hunt him down and hurt him, slowly and painfully.”

  “Okay, keep breathing,” she said. She was aware that her inner girly girl was swooning at Joe’s thirst for revenge on her behalf, but she squashed her flat, knowing that she needed to get a handle on this pronto. “I heard he became an IT guy and was living in Palo Alto, where all the rich nerds go to die, with his wife and two kids.”

  “I like the die part,” Joe said.

  “The point is that Diane pulled me out of there and kept me from being the unwilling star of a college nerd boy sex tape,” Mel said. “For that, I will owe her for the rest of my life.”