Murder by the Slice

by Livia J. Washburn

  The young man returned a curt nod and said, ” ‘Sup.”

  Phyllis had watched enough TV to think about saying, Word, dawg, just to see what his reaction would be, but she thought better of it.

  Anyway, Kirk had already turned his attention back to his mother. “I just want to get some fries—”

  Shannon didn’t let him finish. “I already said no.”

  “Fine, whatever.” Kirk stuck his hands in the pockets of his tattered jeans and wandered on down the aisle.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Shannon said to Phyllis. “Obviously, I didn’t discipline Kirk enough when he was a child.”

  Phyllis remembered what Lindsey Gonzales had said that morning about Shannon having an older son from her first marriage. She hadn’t thought about the son being that old.

  “You don’t look old enough to have a grown child.”

  “I had Kirk when I was eighteen. Young and foolish, you know. I’d gotten married right out of high school to my childhood sweetheart. I should have known better. Those things never work out.”

  Phyllis wouldn’t have gone so far as to say that. But early marriages did take an awful lot of work to make them successful, and often people just weren’t willing to put the effort into it.

  “Anyway,” Shannon went on, “what about the contest? You’re going to enter, aren’t you? Of course you are. It’ll be a lot of fun, and it’s all for such a good cause.”

  “It is for a good cause,” Phyllis had to admit.

  “It’s settled, then. I’ll look forward to trying those healthy cookies.”

  “All right.” The words were out of Phyllis’s mouth before she could stop them. She would just have to make Carolyn understand what had happened. Shannon had trapped her into agreeing.

  “I’ll see you at the meeting Friday.” Shannon smiled and pushed her cart on down the aisle, catching up with her son, who had taken something off one of the shelves to look at it. “Put that down,” Phyllis heard her say. “My God, I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”

  Phyllis turned her cart around and went the other way, blowing out her breath in a sigh as she did so. Even though Shannon had been making an effort to be nicer than usual, the encounter was still troubling to Phyllis. Not only had she gotten roped into agreeing to compete in the healthy snacks contest, but she’d had to witness the way Shannon treated her son. Even though Phyllis didn’t care for that whole pierced, tattooed, shaven-headed lifestyle, she couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the young man. There he was, over eighteen years old, and his mother was still treating him like he was seven or eight.

  Phyllis had long since learned, though, that she couldn’t change the way people treated their children, and except in extreme cases such as abuse, she didn’t even have the right to try. Teachers did what they could to help youngsters who had less than ideal home situations, but in the end, most of the time they had to just butt out and learn to live with it. To do otherwise was to risk driving themselves to distraction with worry.

  By the time she got back to the house, she thought she had come up with a solution to her problem. She put away the groceries, then found Carolyn in the living room, sitting on the sofa and writing something on a legal pad.

  “I’m still working on the handout for the parents,” Carolyn said. “Would you like to read what I have so far?”

  “Sure.” Phyllis took the pad and sat down in an armchair to read what Carolyn had written. When she had finished, she handed it back and said, “It sounds fine. You even have the information about turning in the recipes for the cookbook. I think you’ve got it covered.”

  “I hope so. Are you sure you don’t mind typing it up and designing it?”

  “No, not at all.” Phyllis took a breath. “You know, I ran into Shannon Dunston at WalMart.”

  “Really? So you had to deal with her twice in one day. Better you than me.”

  “Here’s the strange part,” Phyllis went on. “She was a lot nicer than she was this morning, and she absolutely insisted that I make that cookie recipe for the contest.”

  Carolyn looked up sharply. “What? You said you weren’t going to enter the contest.”

  “I know, but Shannon was so determined—”

  “That you gave in and said you’d do it.” Carolyn’s voice had hardened considerably.

  “Well, yes, I said I’d make the cookies, but I was thinking that I wouldn’t actually enter them in the contest. It would just be … an example of a healthy snack, I guess you could say. People could sample it, but they couldn’t vote for it. That way it could go into the cookbook.”

  Carolyn looked at her for a moment, and enough time ticked by for Phyllis to start feeling uncomfortable. Then Carolyn said flatly, “No.”

  “No what?” Was she forbidding her to enter the contest? That wasn’t right, no matter what they had said earlier about not competing.

  “No, if you’re going to use the recipe, you should enter it in the contest. There’s no point in going to that much trouble otherwise.”

  “Really, it wouldn’t be any trouble—”

  “I insist,” Carolyn said. “If Shannon insists, so can I. Obviously, you want to make the cookies, and so you should enter them. There’s nothing else to be said.” She sniffed coldly. “It’s a free country, after all.”

  This was turning out all wrong, just as Phyllis had been afraid that it would. “I don’t have to do it if it’s going to bother you.”

  “Why should it bother me? I’m certainly not afraid of a little competition, if that’s what you mean! After all, we both know I’ve managed to beat you plenty of times before.”

  Phyllis could understand why Carolyn might be a little upset, but she didn’t have to be rude about it. “As Shannon pointed out, it’s all for a good cause—”

  “Of course.”

  “Anyway, even though she was acting a lot nicer, she was still determined to get her own way.”

  “Like someone else,” Carolyn said.

  That did it, Phyllis thought. Now she was getting mad.

  “You know, this is fine,” Carolyn went on before Phyllis could say anything, “because I was just thinking about coming up with a cake for the auction after all.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t like to decorate cakes.”

  “Well, we all say things we don’t exactly mean sometimes, don’t we?”

  This had gone on long enough. Phyllis was going to put a stop to it before it got out of hand, and she was going to do that by changing the subject. She stood up and reached toward Carolyn. “Give me what you’ve written and I’ll get to work on it.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary anymore. I can do it.”

  “You don’t like using the computer—”

  “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of it myself.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Phyllis said, “but I don’t mind—”

  “No thanks.” Carolyn got to her feet and started toward the stairs.

  “All right,” Phyllis said after her. She thought but didn’t say, Be that way.

  But as Carolyn went upstairs and Phyllis sank back into the armchair to brood, Phyllis wondered how much of what she felt was really annoyance with Carolyn—and how much was the guilt she felt over breaking her word to her friend.

  Thank God for Sam Fletcher, thought Phyllis. First Eve had been irritated with her, and now Carolyn. But good old dependable Sam was still her friend.

  For the next few days Phyllis threw herself into her preparations. She baked the jack-o’-lantern cake first but didn’t let anyone see it except Sam. She didn’t fully trust Eve not to tell Carolyn about it, and of course since Carolyn had declared that she was going to make a cake for the auction, too, the old spirit of competitiveness that had existed between them for so long was back in the forefront.

  Phyllis moved some pans around in the cabinet hunting for her Bundt pan. She had two, but they were slightly different. This time she’d just bake two cakes on
e after the other using the same pan. Since one of the pans was a new silicone type, she decided to use that. It would be easiest to find another pan like it before the day of the carnival.

  Since she was using a white cake mix, she thought about adding food coloring to the cake to make it orange, too. She decided against that, however. The icing was going to have enough food coloring, and she didn’t want to run out. She probably would use a little in the cake for the auction to make it a lighter orange than the frosting.

  She lightly sprayed the Bundt pan with oil and set it on a cookie sheet. The silicone pan was too flexible to use without something under it. Even with having to use an extra pan under it, she liked the silicone pan because it was so easy to get the cake out after it had baked.

  Following the recipe on the box, she quickly blended the cake mix with eggs, water, and oil. She poured the mixture into the Bundt pan and put it into the hot oven. She set a timer and went ahead and cleaned up the dishes that she’d need again in a little while.

  After the cake had baked to a golden color and cooled enough to be removed from the pan, Phyllis repeated the process.

  Since she still had the kitchen to herself, she went ahead and whipped up a double batch of buttercream icing. She was a little surprised at how much food coloring it took to finally make the icing a perfect pumpkin orange. Keeping in mind that this was just a practice cake, Phyllis didn’t worry too much about getting the face exactly right. She used a green icecream cone for the stem, as in the magazine, but she wasn’t really satisfied with the way it looked. An upsidedown cupcake might work better for the carnival cake, she thought. That way she could make the icing on it look more like a stem.

  Phyllis put the cake in the cabinet, away from prying eyes.

  Later, after Carolyn and Eve were both out of the house, she took the cake from the cabinet where she had hidden it. Sam was upstairs in his room watching a movie on his DVD player, but he was willing to stop it to come down and see what Phyllis wanted.

  “There it is,” she told him as she waved a hand at her creation sitting on the kitchen counter. “What do you think?”

  “Looks like a jack-o’-lantern, all right. Pretty scary, eh, kids?”

  Phyllis had a feeling he was making some reference to movies or TV, but she didn’t get it. “Is that all you have to say?”

  “Well, I haven’t tasted it yet, so looks are all I’ve got to go by,” he pointed out. “But I’m sure it’s good. Everything you bake is.” He paused. “You gonna cut it?”

  “I might as well. It was just for practice, after all.” She picked up a knife. “You want a big piece, I suppose?” She knew he had quite a sweet tooth.

  “Yeah. Maybe not a piece with an eye on it, though. That’d be a mite creepy.”

  After Sam had eaten his slice of cake and proclaimed it delicious, Phyllis wrapped up the rest of it and drove over to the north side of town to share it with her grandson, Bobby, after calling first to make sure her daughter-in-law, Sarah, was going to be home. When she got there, Bobby toddled down the walk to meet her, followed closely by his pretty blond mother. Phyllis scooped the boy up into her arms and kissed his cheek as Bobby hugged her tightly around the neck with his chubby arms. “G’anma!” he said happily.

  Phyllis didn’t particularly like being called Grandma, but she would put up with it from this little boy.

  “Bring me anyt’ing?” he asked.

  “Bobby,” Sarah scolded mildly. “Is that any way to say hello to your grandmother?”

  “It’s all right,” Phyllis said. “As a matter of fact, I did bring you something, Bobby. I brought some jack-o’-lantern cake.”

  “Cake!” he said clapping his small, chubby hands together.

  Sarah had started to frown a little, so Phyllis told her, “Don’t worry, we’ll just give him a small piece.” She handed Bobby to Sarah and turned back to the car to get the covered plate she had used to carry the cake.

  “That certainly looks good,” Sarah commented as the three of them went into the neatly kept brick house. The place didn’t have the personality that the big two-story frame house where Mike had grown up did, but unless you wanted to buy an old house, you couldn’t get anything except these brick cookie-cutters anymore. And people had a right to live where and how they wanted to, Phyllis reminded herself, although as a parent it was sometimes difficult for her not to speak up and offer an opinion. Anyway, Mike and Sarah and Bobby all seemed very happy.

  Sarah got out saucers and a knife to cut the cake, then hesitated. “Do I try him with the fork?” she asked. “Or should I just let him use his fingers?”

  Bobby waved his hands in the air, wiggling his fingers as if answering her. Sarah laughed and cut several wedges of cake.

  “Why a pumpkin? It’s not Halloween yet,” she asked as she broke off a small piece from one slice and handed it to Bobby, who stuffed it in his mouth.

  “It’s a trial cake for an auction at a PTO carnival,” Phyllis explained. She hadn’t talked to Mike or Sarah for several days, and they didn’t know yet about her involvement with the carnival at Loving Elementary.

  Sarah took a bite and frowned.

  “It’s doesn’t taste good?” Phyllis asked anxiously. “I haven’t really tried it yet myself.”

  “No, it’s not that. The cake tastes just fine. Really good, in fact.” Sarah handed another piece to Bobby, who had finished the first bite she’d given him. “I was just thinking about the fact that you’re entering a baking contest again. This will be the first one since the Peach Festival, won’t it?”

  “Yes, but nothing’s going to happen,” Phyllis said, feeling a little uneasy in spite of herself. The memory of everything that had happened that day—the dead man, the paramedics, then the police and the revelation that the death had been a case of cold-blooded murder—was still all too vivid in Phyllis’s mind.

  But this was a PTO carnival at an elementary school. Nobody was going to get murdered at something like that. Phyllis forced the very thought out of her head as an utter impossibility. She took a bite of the cake instead.

  Sarah and Bobby were right. It was good, even if it was from a mix.

  Chapter 7

  Phyllis left the rest of the cake there so that Mike could have some when he got home from his shift as a Parker County deputy sheriff.

  As she turned into the driveway at her house, Sam pulled his pickup to a stop at the curb in front, where he usually parked it. Phyllis put the Lincoln in the garage, but instead of entering the house through the kitchen she left the garage door open and walked out into the front yard to meet Sam. She knew he had been going over to the elementary school to talk to the custodians about helping with the construction of the carnival booths. That was what Marie had told him to do when he called her about volunteering. The school custodians were traditionally in charge of any construction that needed to be done.

  “How did it go?” Phyllis asked.

  “Just fine,” Sam replied with a nod. “I even knew one of the fellas. He used to be a custodian up at Poolville when I was still there.”

  They climbed the steps to the porch together. As they reached the top step, Eve emerged from the house and said, “Why, hello there, you two. I was just about to sit out here for a while and enjoy the weather. It’s such a beautiful day. Why don’t you join me?”

  Eve was right about it being a pretty day. The sky was a deep blue, dotted here and there with white fluffy clouds, and the air had the sort of crispness to it, without actually being chilly, that was only found in autumn. Eve sat down in the big porch swing and patted the empty space beside her as she smiled at Sam.

  He sat down on the porch steps instead, and stretched his legs out in front of him as he leaned back and rested his elbows on the porch. He looked supremely comfortable. Phyllis sat down on the swing next to Eve and said, “Sam’s going to help the custodians at the school put together the booths for the carnival.”

  “I’ve been wanting to do somethin
g to help out with that, too,” Eve said. “As you know, I’m not a cook, but maybe they’d like to have a kissing booth. I’m sure I could run one of those just fine. Don’t you think so, Sam?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I expect you could,” he said.

  Phyllis wondered what he meant by that. Did he really think Eve was kissable? Of course, it was no business of hers what Sam thought about such matters… .

  “I’m not sure that would be a good idea,” Phyllis said. “Remember that other carnival kissing booth you volunteered at, Eve?”

  “You mean at which I volunteered?” Eve said, still and always an English teacher even though she was retired. “That commotion wasn’t my fault. You’d think all those women would have realized it was for a good cause and didn’t really mean anything when I kissed their husbands.”

  “You’d think,” Phyllis said.

  From his lounging position on the steps, Sam said, “I remember some of the carnivals at our elementary school had a dunkin’ booth set up. Kids really got a kick out of dunkin’ their teachers in a big tub of water.”

  Eve laughed. “If you’re hinting that you’d like to see me in a wet T-shirt, dear, all you have to do is ask!”

  Sam immediately turned a deep shade of red. Phyllis didn’t know whether to laugh at him or be annoyed with Eve for making such a suggestive comment. She didn’t do either, because Sam quickly changed the subject by saying, “You know, there’s been some trouble there at the elementary school lately. The custodian I know told me about it. Seems somebody got into the school and stole some computers and stuff.”

  “Broke in, you mean?” Phyllis asked.

  “Well, that’s the funny part. The sheriff’s department came out and investigated, of course, and the deputies didn’t find any sign of forced entry. Best they can figure, somebody found a way in—a door that accidentally got left unlocked or something like that. Or else they got their hands on a key somehow. The custodians say they’re careful about making sure everything’s locked up tight. So at this point nobody really knows what happened.”

  “That’s such a shame,” Eve said. “Imagine, someone stealing from a school.”