Sprinkle with Murder

by Jenn McKinlay

  “We have some more questions.”

  “All right,” Mel replied.

  Detective Rayburn walked around the kitchen. He peered into the empty bowl of her pink mixer, and Mel wondered if he was foraging for food. Maybe she should offer him a cupcake. Would that constitute bribery? Wait . . . what would she be bribing them for?

  “Mel?” Uncle Stan interrupted her thoughts, and she suspected he’d said her name more than once.

  “Yes?” She forced herself to focus on him.

  “There was a box of cupcakes found in Ms. Stevens’s studio,” he said. “The markings on the box indicate that they came from your shop. Do you have something you want to tell me?”

  “Oh, God, you talked to Mom, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “I’m concerned about you,” Uncle Stan said.

  “Did she tell you that I’m in love with Tate?” Mel asked. “Uncle Stan, do not believe her.”

  Rayburn paused in his search of the kitchen to listen to their conversation.

  Uncle Stan raised one bushy eyebrow, which encouraged Mel to continue. “Mom has had it in her head that I’ve loved Tate since we were kids. I don’t, I never have, I never will.”

  She watched as Uncle Stan seemed to relax just the littlest bit at this news.

  “So you were at her shop to go over the flavors of cupcakes you’d baked?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Mel said, feeling relief that someone was finally listening to her.

  “Did you bring them over this morning?”

  “No, two of her employees came by and picked them up yesterday.”

  “Which employees?”

  “Two young women named Alma and Phoebe.”

  Uncle Stan’s eyebrows moved again, and she’d have bet her secret for moist cupcakes (use oil, not butter) that he was thinking about Alma’s surly attitude. He made a note in his pad.

  “What were some of the flavors?” Rayburn asked.

  Mel felt him walk behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder; he was examining the area around her triple-basin steel sink. She knew it was unreasonable, but she was not liking him very much.

  “There were five different kinds, a chocolate cupcake with cherry filling, a lemon coconut . . . um . . . can I ask why you’re interested in this?”

  Uncle Stan opened his mouth to answer when he was interrupted by a voice at the door.

  “He probably wants the recipe. He’s the only detective I know who relaxes by watching the Food Network.”

  Mel spun around. Joe DeLaura was standing in the doorway. His dark blue suit fit him perfectly and added to his aura of authority. Detective Rayburn straightened up at the sight of him.

  “What can I say? Kitchen wizardry runs in the family,” Uncle Stan said as he reached out to shake Joe’s extended hand.

  “Oh, please, I’ve tasted your meat loaf. It’s only good for use as a doorstop,” Joe said.

  Uncle Stan looked put out and Mel laughed, feeling the tension in the room evaporate.

  Uncle Stan adjusted his belt around his middle as he said, “Need I remind you who invited the new fire chief over to his house for a barbecue and then lit his backyard on fire?”

  To Mel’s surprise, Joe laughed out loud, and she was momentarily distracted by how handsome he was. His laugh was deep, and she felt it rumble through her own chest, causing her to smile even though she was clearly not in on the joke.

  She couldn’t help but notice that once again, Joe had appeared just when she needed him.

  “So what brings you here?” Uncle Stan asked.

  “Cupcakes. Well, that, and it’s my turn to check up on Angie,” Joe said. “Don’t tell her I said that, though, or she’ll get cranky. Hey, have you tried their Blonde Bombshell? It’s amazing.”

  Mel felt herself flush with pleasure, but Uncle Stan exchanged an uncertain look with Rayburn and then nodded.

  “Joe, can I have a word with you?” he asked. “Outside?”

  “Sure,” he said and turned to Mel. “Tell Ange to save me one of those raspberry things out there. You’ve got a crowd, and they’re going fast.”

  “Will do.” Mel tried not to feel abandoned when they disappeared, leaving her with the gangly detective.

  Rayburn asked her about the flavors of the cupcakes she’d made for Christie, when she’d made them, and if she had a list of ingredients. He also asked if she had any more, and she went into the walk-in to check. There were a few of each. She showed the detective and then watched in horror as he pulled on gloves and bagged the cupcakes. This could not be good.

  When Joe came back, he didn’t look as if he’d been laughing. She felt nervous again, as if something was happening but no one was telling her exactly what.

  “I think we’re done here, Mel,” Uncle Stan said. “If you think of anything I ought to know, call me.”

  “I will,” she said as she gave him a quick hug.

  “I’ll walk this disgrace to the culinary arts out,” Joe said, and then turned back. “Don’t forget my cupcake.”

  “Oh, right.” Mel went to the display case. She tried to see through the window, but they went the other way. Damn

  “What’s going on?” Angie asked, not bothering to hide her concern.

  “I don’t know,” Mel answered. “They had a lot of questions about the cupcakes I made for Christie.”

  “That can’t be good.”

  “No,” Mel agreed. “Lucky thing Joe showed up.”

  “Lucky, my foot,” Angie said. “As soon as Uncle Stan said it was business, I called Joe.”

  “You did?”

  “Heck, yeah.What’s the point of having an assistant district attorney brother if you can’t call him in a crisis?”

  “I don’t know if this qualifies as a crisis, but I appreciate it.”

  “I hate to say it, but I’m getting a bad feeling about all of this, Mel,” Angie said.

  Mel looked at her and noticed that her large brown eyes looked flat-out scared. It made a shiver run up Mel’s spine, but she shook it off. This was ridiculous. She hadn’t done anything but bake some cupcakes and be the unfortunate one to find Christie. Surely everyone could see that?

  When Joe returned, he looked as if he’d just witnessed a three-car pileup with no survivors.

  “Mel,” he said, “can I talk to you?”

  “Sure.” She followed him back to the kitchen.

  “The medical examiner’s preliminary findings are that Christie died of unnatural causes,” he said.

  “What?” Mel asked stupidly.

  “She was a thirty-two-year-old female in excellent health with no preexisting conditions. Young women don’t just drop dead. They’ll be doing a full autopsy to discover the exact cause of death, but right now they suspect foul play was involved.”

  Mel sat down hard on one of the stools. She couldn’t believe this. Christie had not been one of her favorite people by any stretch of the imagination, but murder? That seemed an awfully harsh way to go for being a self-involved egomaniac.

  Joe sat on the stool beside her. She took comfort in his presence. He was the righter of wrongs. He’d always been like that. When any of his brothers got into a scuffle, Joe, born smack in the middle of the seven boys, was the one who stuck up for the underdog and negotiated a truce. It was small wonder that he had become a lawyer.

  Mel couldn’t help but wonder who he believed was the underdog here, however, her or Christie?

  “What’s going to happen?” she asked.

  “In a nutshell, the detectives will investigate, the medical examiner will tell them what he discovers, they’ll compile a suspect list, and when they gather enough evidence, they’ll make an arrest. Then my office will prosecute the case, hopefully putting the murderer behind bars.”

  “Seems pretty clear-cut,” Mel said.

  “It should be, but it never is.”

  “Joe, am I going to need a lawyer?” she asked. Her voice sounded fainter than she would have liked, so she cleared her throat.

  “Do you think you need a lawyer?” he countered.

  Mel glanced at him and noticed his usually warm brown eyes were narrowed in c
oncentration as he studied her. He could not possibly think that she did it!

  She jumped to her feet. “I did not harm Christie!”

  “I never said you did,” he replied, jumping to his feet, too.

  They faced each other with just a foot of space between them. Mel was so furious she was surprised she wasn’t letting off sparks. First her mother then Uncle Stan, and now Joe—they all thought she was a suspect. It cut deep, and she was out of Band-Aids.

  “Get out,” she snapped. If he thought this badly of her, then she didn’t want him around, no matter how much she liked him.

  “Listen,” he said. His voice was placating, but Mel was having none of it.

  “No!” she snapped. She turned on her heel and stomped to her office. She slammed the door so hard it rattled on its hinges.

  She heard Angie’s voice through the door. It was muffled, but she could tell that Angie was irate. She heard Joe reply, but couldn’t make out his words. It helped to know that her friend was on her side. She refused to acknowledge how much it hurt for Joe to think that she might be a murderer. It just showed that he didn’t know her at all, not even one little bit.

  She sat at her desk, and a picture of Angie, Tate, and herself stared back at her. It was from last Halloween when they had gone as the Three Stooges. She looked at Tate with his faux bald head—he’d been Curly—and she felt as if a giant hand was squeezing her chest. To lose his bride to a murderer, what must he be going through right now?

  She dug her cell phone out of her purse. She needed to call him. His phone rang and rang and rang and went to voice mail.

  “I’ve already tried three times.”

  Angie stood in the doorway.

  “Did Joe tell you what the medical examiner thinks?”

  “That Christie was murdered?” Angie asked. “Yes.”

  “Did he tell you they think I did it?”

  “He didn’t have to,” Angie replied. “You found the body. It’s not a big shock that they’d look at you.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “Yours, duh,” Angie said. “I’m just saying, of course they’re going to look at you and, of course, they’re wrong.”

  “Thank you, but it doesn’t change the fact that someone did murder Christie.”

  “Do you think they’re considering Tate?” Angie asked.

  “He is . . . was her fiancé,” Mel said. “I think they’d have to.”

  “It wasn’t Tate,” Angie said.

  “I know”

  “Then who?”

  “How should I know?” Mel asked. “I barely knew the woman.”

  “No need to get snippy,” Angie answered. “I was just throwing it out there.”

  “Yeah, well, a few too many people are looking at me for answers I don’t have,” Mel said. “It’s making me cranky.”

  “So I see.”

  Mel gave her a look, but Angie just raised her eyebrows, the picture of innocence.

  “You know who had a perverse reaction to Christie’s death?” Mel asked.

  Angie shook her head as she sank into the seat opposite the desk.

  “The creepy-looking girl who came to pick up the cupcakes.”

  “Alma? I’d think death would be right up her alley. Probably it’ll inspire her to greater heights of ghoulish fashion design.”

  “She wasn’t surprised,” Mel said, remembering the girl’s callous reaction. “In fact, she almost seemed to have expected someone to murder Christie.”

  “You met with her for half an hour and you were ready to do her an injury,” Angie pointed out. She reached up and tightened the band that held her thick hair in a ponytail on top of her had. “Can you imagine if you worked with her day in, day out?”

  “So, you think it may have been someone in the design studio?”

  “Maybe,” Angie replied. “I suppose it depends on what kind of boss she was.”

  “I wonder if I could ask Alma,” Mel said. “Or maybe Phoebe; she worshipped Christie.”

  “There’s an accurate account,” Angie’s sarcasm was thicker than cream cheese frosting, but Mel ignored her.

  “If I talk to both of them, I might get a better idea of what she was like to work for,” Mel said.

  The bells on the front door jangled, and Angie hopped up from her seat.

  “The first thing you should do is talk to Tate,” Angie said. “He’ll have more information, plus you don’t want to go digging up stuff on his fiancée that might hurt him.”

  Mel watched her go. She hated to think that this situation might put her friendship with Tate in jeopardy. Still, she couldn’t have people thinking she was capable of murder. If everyone was looking at her, then they weren’t looking at whoever really did it. And if they weren’t going to, then someone had to, and since it was her neck in the noose, it looked like it was going to be her.

  Eight

  Unable to concentrate, Mel went to help Angie in the front of the shop. When she caught sight of their customers, however, she tried to scurry back to the office to hide. She would have made it, too, if Angie hadn’t seen her and grabbed her arm, locking her into place.

  “Hi, Mel,” Dom DeLaura said. He was frowning. Next to him, wearing a matching grim expression to go with his mailman uniform was Ray DeLaura. They were Angie’s two oldest brothers, and Mel was only surprised that the other five weren’t in attendance as well.

  “Hi, Dom, Ray,” she said. A swift glance at Angie and she could tell the conversation was not going well.

  “We came by to check on Angie,” Dom said. “In light of recent events, we were thinking she might want to reconsider giving up her teaching position at Pueblo Elementary.”

  “One call to the district and you could have your job back,” Ray said.

  “I don’t want my job back, I’m happy here.”

  “But we heard from a reliable source that there’s been trouble, that one of your customers died,” Dom said. “I can get you back on staff at the school immediately.”

  “Who died?” Angie spluttered. Apparently, she was giving a go at playing stupid. Mel wondered if it would work better for Angie with her brothers than it had with her own mother.

  “You know, that bride, Christie what’s-her-name,” Ray said. “We heard she choked on a razor blade in one of your cupcakes.”

  Angie and Mel exchanged an outraged look. That was South Scottsdale for you. News traveled fast, especially if it was unsubstantiated, rumor-filled gossip.

  “Did you hear this from Joe?” Mel asked. She felt betrayed, although why, she couldn’t imagine. Joe DeLaura had a right to blab to whomever he wanted.

  “No.” Ray shook his head. “You know how he is. He wouldn’t verify anything. No, this was from Xiuhau Lee. She delivered takeout to the detectives and heard them talking. She told me about it when I dropped off her mail.”

  “You don’t want to be involved in this, Angie,” Dom said. “You could have a nice career with the district.”

  Dom was on the school board, and he had pull. Mel knew that he and the other brothers liked Angie being a teacher. She was surrounded by kids and rarely met any men. It kept their lives free from worrying about her having any kind of a life.

  “I had a wonderful career with the district, and now I have a new and equally wonderful career here,” she said.

  “But . . .” Ray interrupted.

  “No buts,” Angie snapped. “Listen, Christie did not die from one of our cupcakes, and there was no razor blade. She was my best friend’s fiancée. I don’t know what happened or how or why, but I do know that it doesn’t matter if I’m a teacher or a cupcake baker. Either way, I’m involved because I care about my friend. Now either order some cupcakes or make like a tree and leave!”

  Dom’s eyebrows shot up, and Ray looked like he was going to yell back. Luckily, the front door chimed and a group of high school kids walked in and filled the tables. The brothers were forced to take their arguments and their cupcakes to go.

  Mel and Angie watched as they left in Ray’s mail truck.

  “I’m only surprised it took them this long.” Angie sighed. In response to Mel’s unasked quest
ion, she said, “And no, I have no interest in leaving the shop to go back to teaching.”

  Mel wisely let it go, for now.

  She tried calling Tate three more times that day. He never answered, but at eight o’clock, just as she was flipping the Open sign to Closed, he appeared, looking haggard and spent.

  She opened the door wide and he stumbled in. Angie took one look at his face and went to get him a cup of coffee.

  Tate slid into a booth by the window and Mel closed the blinds, giving them privacy from any passersby. Angie returned with the coffee, and Tate nodded his thanks.

  “How are you?” Mel asked as she and Angie slid into the booth seat across from him.

  “It doesn’t seem real,” he said. “I keep thinking that it’s a nightmare and I’m going to wake up, but then, I don’t.”

  “Is there anything we can do?” Angie asked.

  “I wish. Her parents are beside themselves. She was their only child.”

  “The police were here,” Mel said.

  Tate looked up at her. He looked confused. “Here? Why?”

  “Uncle Stan didn’t say as much, but they were gathering evidence.” She was unable to keep the hurt out of her voice.

  “Evidence of what?”

  “Tate, they suspect foul play. They think Christie was murdered.”

  “What? But why? Who would want to harm her?”

  Mel exchanged a look with Angie before she forged ahead. “Apparently, me.”

  “You?” Tate shook his head. “But that’s ridiculous. You would never harm anyone, and certainly not the girl I am . . . was about to marry.”

  The verb tense seemed to throw him, and he turned his head to stare at the blinds while he gathered his composure.

  Mel studied his profile and felt the warmth of his friendship, of his absolute faith in her, bubble up inside of her. He believed in her. It meant more to her than she could ever say.

  “Tate, I hate to ask, but do you know anyone who might have been angry with Christie?”

  He looked at her. His face was a picture of confusion. Then he sighed. It rumbled up from deep inside of him and blew across the table.

  “Look, I know Christie was not the easiest person,” he said. Mel felt Angie stiffen beside her. She hoped Angie had the good sense to keep her opinion to herself. “And I know you two might have had doubts about my marrying her, but I really appreciate the fact that you never said anything.”