“When did this happen?” Mel asked.
“A few days after my bachelorette party,” Diane said. “I was upset. The party had been a disaster. Nicole got trashed. She started to talk about Mike in ways that made it clear she knew him better than she should.”
Diane leaned forward, clasped her hands on her desk, and rubbed the pale patch of skin on her left ring finger, where her engagement ring used to be.
“I was so humiliated.” She gave a humorless laugh. “But that was nothing compared to the moment my mother corrected one of Nicole’s anecdotes about Mike’s favorite naked role-playing game. It was clear my mother had had her own turn at dressing up like a French maid—such a cliché—for my husband-to-be.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mel said. She couldn’t even imagine such a horrifying moment. Not for the first time she was fervently glad Diane had excluded her from this train wreck of a wedding.
“Yeah, well, I came back here and told Elliott and he offered to punch Mike right in the nose,” Diane said. She glanced toward the door with a small smile. “When I turned down his offer, he asked me if Mike was just that sort of guy, a cheater, or if there might be something more going on.
“That hadn’t occurred to me, so he suggested we tail Mike to Nicole’s and listen in on their rendezvous; maybe we would learn more. That’s when I got to listen to their barnyard-style lovemaking, and in the afterglow when she asked him when he was going to leave me for her, he said he couldn’t because he needed my marketing skills to save his business, which was in trouble.”
“How did Nicole handle that?” Mel asked.
“Not very well,” Diane said. “She cursed him out and threw some breakables at him—we heard them smash—and then she screamed at him for sleeping with my mother, at which point he mentioned five other women he was banging and then he broke up with her.”
Mel stared at her. “And you didn’t share this with the police?”
“Well, I didn’t want to get in trouble for stalking or whatever,” Diane said.
“What if it wasn’t true?” Mel asked. She thought about the GAAP statements versus the tax returns that Tate had shared with her.
“What do you mean?” Diane asked. “I heard them doing the wild thing with my own ears. It was true.”
“No, not that,” Mel said. “The company. What if it wasn’t failing?”
“You mean he lied to Nicole?” Diane asked. She looked thoughtful. “I hadn’t really thought of that. I just assumed—ha—I assumed the lying rat bastard was telling her the truth.” They shared a look that said, Oh, the irony.
“Did Elliott tape these conversations?” Mel asked.
“No, we just listened and then we hurried out of there before we got caught.”
“Pity.”
“Why? How would that help?”
“Because Mike broke up with Nicole, which is not what she said to me, meaning we have a woman-scorned situation, and wouldn’t that give her a motive to kill him?”
Diane’s mouth slid open in surprise. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“It gives her a stronger motive than you,” Mel said. “She was rejected, whereas you were doing the rejecting, which makes her more likely to want to see him dead in a crime-of-passion sort of way.”
“You know, I actually thought about going through with the wedding,” Diane said. “I thought to myself, he’s just sowing his wild oats while he can, he’ll settle down once we’re married and have a family. But then Elliott pointed out that if Mike was marrying me for my money then he might think I’d be okay with his taking my modest fortune and investing it into his failing company. That ripped it.”
“Let me see if I understand this. You found his marrying you for business more offensive than his cheating on you with a bridesmaid and your mother and five other women,” Mel said. There was absolutely no way she could keep the disbelief out of her voice.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Diane said. “But in this business, as you know, it’s all who you know, who you’re connected to, and what favors you can call in for your clients. I thought a party planning company would be an asset. Besides, I really did convince myself that the cheating would stop once we were married.”
“What if it hadn’t?” Mel asked. “What would you have done if you discovered he was still pawing at every young thing that came onto his radar after you were married and probably would for the rest of your lives?”
Diane blew out a breath. “Don’t think less of me for this, but I would have learned to live with it.”
Mel felt her eyebrows shoot up. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I’m thirty-three years old,” Diane cried. “Because I want more than this.” She gestured to the office around them. “I love this, don’t mistake me, but I want kids and a house in the burbs and a good-looking, wealthy husband who wants those things, too. And my biological clock is frigging ticking so loud I can barely sleep at night.”
“So, you would settle?” Mel asked. “You would settle for a guy who treats you badly because you want the status of wealthy wife and mother with the picture postcard family?”
“Don’t judge me, Miss Just-got-engaged-to-an-assistant-district-attorney,” Diane snapped.
“Joe loves me for me. He’d never cheat and he’d never use me for my connections—if, you know, I had any,” Mel argued.
“Well, bravo for you,” Diane said. Her face was pinched with bitterness, and Mel would have felt sorry for her but Diane was too furious to elicit any pity. “I guess some of us just aren’t lucky enough to keep our men from straying.”
“But that’s just it! It’s not your job to keep him from straying,” Mel said. “There’s nothing wrong with you if your man is a two-timing jerk. It’s him, his issues, not yours. Bottom line, he was not the man you thought he was and he was the one with the problem—the problem being that he was never worthy of you to begin with and clearly had a malfunctioning zipper on his pants.”
A tear ran down Diane’s cheek and she brushed it away with the back of her hand. Mel would have hugged her but she suspected it wouldn’t be welcome at the moment.
“Look, I think I’ve taken this as far as I can go,” Mel said. “I’m going to drop by the station and tell my uncle everything I’ve learned, and I think the police can handle it from here.”
“No!” Diane cried. “You can’t abandon me now. You’ve discovered more than the police have and I know you can figure out who really killed Mike. I need you, Mel. Besides, you owe me.”
“You know, I’m getting really tired of you reminding me about that,” Mel said.
“I know and I’m sorry,” Diane said. She didn’t look sorry at all. “But I’m desperate. I don’t want to go to jail for a crime I didn’t commit.”
Mel hesitated. She really didn’t want to do any more digging into the death of Mike Bordow. The whole situation was seedy and gross, and she felt like she needed a shower because it made her feel so grubby.
“Your life would have been ruined by that big-girl sex tape,” Diane said. “Think about the humiliation that I saved you from.”
Mel closed her eyes for a second. Why did some friendships seem to cost so much and others so little? She could never imagine Angie or Tate holding a situation where they had saved her over her head while demanding payback.
“Fine,” Mel said. “I’ll keep trying to find out who murdered Mike, but once I do I don’t ever want to hear about the sex-tape fiasco ever again. We are square. Agreed?”
Diane nodded. “Absolutely.”
Mel rose to her feet. She was done here except for one more thing.
“You know,” Mel began, “outside this office is a man who is very much in love with you. I knew it from the first day you walked into the bakery together. Maybe he doesn’t look like the cover of GQ, but his heart is sure in the right place, and does
n’t that count for so much more?”
Diane’s gaze flitted to the glass, where Elliott was clearly visible in his office across from hers. He was hunched over his computer, frowning at the screen while he pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“I’ll be in touch if I find anything out,” Mel said. “In the meantime, steer clear of the press, Nicole Butterfield, anyone in the Bordow family, and for pity’s sake, if you decide to go full-monty badonkadonk with your IT guy, do it away from the windows.”
“I will,” Diane promised. Her gaze never met Mel’s, however, as she was too busy staring at the man across the hall as if seeing him for the first time.
Twenty-two
Mel knew that given how Elliott felt about Diane, he should be at the top of her suspect list. Diane’s insistence that he was with her working on an account was the lamest alibi ever. Because who better than the guy who was in love with the dead guy’s fiancée to be the one who helped the dead guy get that way? But Mel just couldn’t see it.
Elliott was with Diane when she came into Fairy Tale Cupcakes and ordered the breakup cupcakes. He had no reason to whack the fiancé, since he knew Diane was going to be free of him in a matter of days. Unfortunately, this led right back to Diane. Now at least Mel could offer up Nicole as an alternative to Diane as the prime suspect, but the theory of Nicole as a scorned-woman killer, well, it was going to be a tougher sell than Diane as the cheated-on fiancée. Still, it was a start.
Mel was stopped at a light when her phone started to buzz. She glanced at the display. It was Angie. Guilt twisted inside as she knew she had been an absentee maid of honor lately. She had to take this call.
Mel checked her side and rearview mirrors. The road was clear, and she flipped on her signal and pulled into a parking lot. She parked under a shady tree and answered her phone.
“Hey, Angie, what’s up?” She made her voice sound extra cheerful, hoping to defuse any tension.
“My . . . eh . . . wedding . . . eh . . . is . . . eh . . . ruined . . .” Angie sobbed.
Oh, boy, bridal meltdown number fifty-two was clearly happening right now. Mel pinched the bridge of her nose. She needed to be there for Angie; that was what good maids of honor did. She let go of her nose and blew out a breath.
“What’s happened?”
“I . . . eh . . . can’t . . . eh . . . talk . . . about . . . eh . . . it,” she sobbed.
“Okay,” Mel said. She wasn’t sure what Angie wanted her to do if she couldn’t talk about it. “Where are you?”
“At the bakery.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Mel said. “Don’t fret. We’ll figure this out.”
“We can’t,” Angie wailed. “It’s all ruined. Ruined!”
Mel ended the call and drove at light speed back to the bakery. What could have happened? Did the venue cancel, the photographer, the baker—oh, wait, that was her. The wedding was three months away. What could have happened to make Angie so hysterical?
She parked in the back lot and hurried across the alley and into the kitchen of the bakery. Oz was there, with both mixers running, and the Hobart convection oven was full of cupcakes being baked. Mel paused to breathe in the smell. Was there anything more soothing than the smell of freshly baked cake? No, she was sure there was not.
Feeling calmer, she asked Oz, “Where’s Angie?”
“Locked in there,” he said. “She got that package, let out a scream, grabbed a tray of Cherry Bomb Cupcakes, and bolted for the bathroom. She hasn’t come out since.” He lowered his voice as if he was sharing a deep, dark secret, and said, “I think she’s crying.”
He pointed first at a big brown box on the side table and then at the door of the staff bathroom. He was wearing his chef’s hat and his hair was pulled off of his face and tucked under the brim. She could see his brown eyes were wide with concern.
“Freaked you out, didn’t she?” Mel asked.
“Why do you say that?” Oz asked. He crossed his arms over his chest, trying to look cool, which he clearly was not.
“Because you have every piece of equipment going in the kitchen at the same time,” Mel said. “Typical chef’s way of coping with uncomfortable situations. Bake.”
“It is?”
“Definitely,” Mel said. Then she punched him lightly on the arm. “See? You’re a natural. You even respond to a crisis like a chef. There is no problem that can’t be cured with food.”
“Well, there isn’t,” Oz said as if he was stating a universal truth. “Which is why I didn’t stop Angie when she took all of my cupcakes.”
Mel nodded. She’d have done the same.
“So, are you going to see what’s in the box that set her off?” Oz asked.
“You didn’t look?”
“Hell, no.” He shook his head.
“I’m afraid.”
Oz gave her a stern look.
“I know, I know,” she said. “It’s my job as best friend and maid of honor. Fine.”
Mel approached the box and carefully flipped the top, which had been cut open, as if she expected a snake to pop out. Nothing happened. She leaned over the box and peered inside. Nestled in pretty silver tissue paper and packaged in individual boxes were Angie and Tate’s wedding invitations.
The thick pearly cardstock caught the light from the window and Mel caught her breath. They looked beautiful. The letterpress—a style of relief printing using a printing press, which Angie had gone on and on about as the only acceptable way to have her invitations done—really did look fantastic against the thick glossy paper.
They were done in two colors: pewter for the fine print, and a pretty aqua blue for the script, which was Tate and Angie’s names, and for the graphic in the bottom right corner of a bicycle built for two, which looked to be riding off the card and into a happy life. Mel grinned.
They were perfect. They were so Tate and Angie. The colors looked terrific, everything was centered, and the matching RSVP cards were in the box along with all of the envelopes for both. Hmm. What could have made Angie have a bridal episode? Mel looked at the card again. She reread the text.
“Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?” Oz asked. He looked alarmed, as if Mel might scream and wail and lock herself in the bathroom, too.
She gave him a grimace. “There’s a typo on the invitation.”
“How bad?”
“Pretty bad,” Mel said.
Oz joined her and peered over her shoulder. He read the card. He frowned.
“I’m not seeing it,” he said.
“Read it from right to left,” Mel said. “Proofreader’s tip.”
“Oh!” His eyebrows went up. “Oh, crap.”
“Yeah, somehow they put in request the honor of your presents instead of presence,” Mel said. “It makes them sound like they’re schilling for stuff.”
“Oh, poor Angie. It’s even worse because she used to be a teacher,” he said. “You can’t have typos when you used to teach. Bad form.”
“Okay, there’s no need to panic. We need to focus on damage control,” Mel said. She went over to the bathroom door and knocked. “Angie, honey, are you okay?”
A sob was the only response. Mel glanced at Oz, who cringed and hurried back to his mixers.
“Angie, I can see why you’re upset, but maybe the company that made these can do a rush order of new ones.”
“It’s no use,” Angie cried. “These invites have to go out in three weeks. We’re doomed. The wedding is doomed.” Mel heard her sobbing and it hurt her heart. “Tell Tate I’m sorry, but I can’t marry him.”
“Angie—”
“No, just leave me alone, Mel, please.”
Mel knew that tone in Angie’s voice. There was no talking her out of her self-imposed bathroom exile. She was going to have to call in the big guns.
She took out her phone and began to search her contacts.
“Are you calling T-man?” Oz asked.
“Nope,” Mel said. “It’s time for the real deal: the Moms.”
Both Mrs. DeLaura and Mrs. Harper arrived twenty minutes later. Maria DeLaura, a mature version of Angie, was in her usual jean capris with her gray hair styled in casual waves framing her heart-shaped face. Emily Harper was also dressed in her standard knit sleeveless top and pearls over a matching knee-length skirt. Mel met them in the front of the bakery so she could talk to them before ambushing Angie in the bathroom.
“Wow, that was quick,” Mel said.
The moms exchanged glances and then Maria said, “We took an Uber.”
Mel glanced from Maria DeLaura to Emily Harper and back. “An Uber? Wow, um, you two were hanging out?”
The women exchanged a look, and then Maria snorted and Emily grabbed her arm and started laughing. They looked like they were in on some sort of private joke, and Mel noticed that Maria was tilting to one side and Emily was going with her.
“Oh my god, are you two drunk?” she cried.
“Whoop, drunk ladies in da house!” Marty popped up from behind the counter, where he’d been stocking the paper supplies. When he caught sight of who was on the other side of the counter, his mouth formed a little O. “Sorry! Afternoon, Mrs. D, Mrs. H.”
“Isn’t he just the cutest thing?” Maria asked Emily.
Emily squinted at Marty. “I don’t know, turn it around.” She made a twirly gesture with her hand. “So we can check out the back door.”
Marty clapped his hands to his bald head, clearly not used to being sexually harassed in the bakery. Maria cackled and Emily hooted, and Mel felt her temples compress into what she suspected was going to be a doozy of a headache.
“Marty, go put some coffee on,” she said. “Ladies, if you could take a seat?”
“Hang on,” Maria said. Then as Marty walked away, she sang, “Bow chicka wah wah.”
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