Sprinkle with Murder

by Jenn McKinlay

  Angie reached across the table and put her hand over his. “We’re your friends,” she said. “Of course, we supported you—we always will.”

  Tate met Angie’s gaze, and a tiny smile tipped one corner of his mouth.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  As they gazed at each other, Mel had the weird sensation of being an outsider looking in. She’d never felt that way with the two of them before. It was always the three of them, bonded together, against the world.

  She had the sinking feeling that it was because she was a suspect. Even though Tate had firmly and vocally denied any possibility that it could be her, she still felt tainted by suspicion, and she didn’t like it one little bit.

  Then Tate reached across the table and took her hand in his free one, and his kind eyes skimmed over her face.

  “Thank you, too, Mel,” he said. “I can’t even imagine how awful this morning must have been for you. I’m so sorry.”

  “I only wish I’d gotten there sooner,” she said. “Maybe I . . .”

  Tate’s cell phone rang, interrupting her. He let go of their hands while he fished it out of his pocket. He glanced at the screen and said, “It’s my father. I have to go. I’ll call you later.”

  They both nodded.

  He rose from the booth, but then turned around and looked steadily at Mel. “Don’t beat yourself up. There was nothing you could have done.”

  Mel nodded and watched him go.

  Angie glanced at her. “What are you thinking?”

  “That there was nothing I could do this morning, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help now.”

  “How?” Angie asked.

  “I’m going to find out who had a grudge against Christie.”

  “Excellent,” Angie said. “Where do we start?”

  “Not we. Me.”

  Angie huffed, but Mel was firm. “You’re not a suspect. I am. I don’t want you dragged into this.”

  “But,” Angie protested, sounding just like her brothers.

  Mel cut her off. “No buts. You need to be there for Tate.”

  Angie looked as if she’d argue, but then relented.

  “So, who are you going to talk to first?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Mel said. “The hostile one, Alma.”

  After saying good night to Angie, Mel climbed the back stairs to her apartment above the shop. It was a tiny studio apartment, but it kept her from having to pay rent on a residence as well as the shop. She had a tiny kitchenette, a modest living room that doubled as her bedroom, and of course, there was a petite bathroom as well.

  She opened her refrigerator and took out the fixings for a salad. As much as she loved her sweets and could eat frosting by the bowlful, sometimes she just had to chomp on some greens to keep her body from completely congealing into a large, sugary mass.

  She diced an already broiled chicken breast and several jalapeno-stuffed olives. She dumped them on a bed of romaine lettuce and grated some fresh Parmesan. She drizzled oil and vinegar over the top and carried the bowl to the café table in the corner of the apartment. She put the bowl to one side and opened her laptop.

  She had a wireless router in her office below, allowing her access to the Internet up here. She took a bite of salad while she waited for her laptop to connect.

  It was fine to say that she was going to chat up Alma, but there were some problems. First, she didn’t know Alma’s last name. Second, she was pretty sure the studio would be closed for a few days, so it wasn’t as if she could track Alma down there. Third, she had no idea what sort of reception she’d get from Alma if she did track her down.

  Still, she was betting Christie would have a Web site, and she figured that, as a designer, Alma must be listed on the site somewhere.

  Mel used Google to search “Christie Stevens Designs,” making sure to put the words in quotation marks so the search engine would follow the exact word string. She couldn’t hazard a guess as to how many Christies or Stevenses or even Christie Stevenses inhabited the Internet, but she knew that if she narrowed it to any Web page that specifically listed Christie Stevens Designs, then she’d get a match.

  Sure enough, she got several hundred hits. A quick scan showed that many of the hits were for articles written about Christie’s work, or for items of hers for auction on eBay, and so on. But the first hit did the trick, and Mel clicked the link to Christie’s home page.

  The Web page opened to a picture of her Scottsdale studio with a link to her Los Angeles studio. Mel scanned through Christie’s bio and the virtual fashion show of her latest designs. She clicked on the About Us link, hoping that would profile the other designers, but no. There was nothing but Christie’s glaring white smile from page to page to page.

  Mel was sure that Phoebe and Alma had said they were designers. Why weren’t they mentioned? Surely, they had to have been given credit for their work. Maybe they were just apprentices. Either way, Mel was out of luck since she hadn’t gotten any listing on Alma or even verification of her existence on Christie’s site.

  She sat back in her chair and thoughtfully chewed on her salad. There had to be a way to track her. She went back to Google’s main search page. She tried several variations of Alma and Christie Stevens until finally she found a blurb in a newspaper from Lubbock, Texas. It read that Alma Rodriguez had taken a job with Christie Stevens Designs. There was a picture of a lovely girl with a bright smile and laughing eyes. The caption was Alma’s name, but Mel had a hard time reconciling the smiling girl in the photo with the black-clad, dour woman she had met. Is that what working for Christie had done to the poor girl?

  Now that she had Alma’s name, she grabbed the phone book by her bed and looked her up. There were four pages of Rodriguezes listed. Six had the first name Alma. Mel ruled out the ones that had addresses on the west side of town. That would be too far a commute. She pulled out a map and marked the three that were located closest to Christie’s studio. She called the first one. A recorded male voice told her to leave a message. She called the second one.

  On the third ring a terse voice answered, “Yeah?”

  “Alma? It’s Melanie Cooper, from the cupcake bakery,” she said.

  There was a beat of silence and then, “What do you want?”

  Mel took this to mean she had the right Alma. The surlitude certainly matched the Alma she knew.

  “I want to talk to you about Christie,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “The police believe that her death wasn’t an accident,” Mel said.

  “Yeah, I know. Shocker.”

  Mel took a deep breath in through her nose. Alma’s hostility was beginning to grate on her nerves.

  “I’d like to talk to you about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have some questions.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “Look,” Mel said, her patience at an end. “She was engaged to my best friend. He’s really messed up about her death, and I’m trying to help him. Now, do you think you could meet me for a cup of coffee or not?”

  “Tate Harper is your friend?”

  “Yes.”

  Alma was silent and then growled, “When and where?”

  “How about Java Jive at nine o’clock tomorrow?”

  “Fine,” Alma agreed, and hung up. She sounded as enthusiastic as a person committing to a colonoscopy.

  Mel stared at the phone in her hand. She wondered if she should call Phoebe, too. Then again, Phoebe seemed to be taking Christie’s death much harder than Alma. Perhaps she should give her some time and find out what Alma had to say first.

  She hung up the phone. She would have liked to call Tate, but she didn’t want to disturb him. She couldn’t imagine what he was feeling.

  Her thoughts skimmed over the day. She flashed on finding Christie’s body, dealing with her mother and Uncle Stan, and the empathy she felt for Tate. Then she thought about Joe and how angry she’d been at him.

  She swabbed the bottom of her salad bowl with the last chunk of chicken, cleaning up the cheese and dressing before popping it into her mouth. />
  She knew her anger with Joe had been disproportionate to the conversation they’d been having. It really wasn’t his fault that he viewed today’s events from the mind-set of a prosecutor. Angie always said he was known as a junkyard dog in the courtroom, which was why he was so successful. Mel just hadn’t expected him to turn that part of his persona toward her.

  She didn’t need to be told that it looked bad for her to be the one who found the body. And she knew that it was her own guilt, the fact that she had really disliked Christie, that made her feel oversensitive to being fingered as a suspect. As if she could be guilty just because she really didn’t want her friend to marry such an egomaniacal harpy. Sheesh, now she felt guilty for thinking badly about Christie.

  She wondered if she should call Joe to apologize. She rejected the idea immediately. First of all, what would she say? And second of all, he still made her nervous, and she really wasn’t up for making a stuttering, stammering ass of herself.

  She’d wait until they bumped into each other someday, and hopefully, the awkwardness would have passed. It could be months or even years until she saw him again. Unless, of course, she was arrested for murder; then she’d be seeing him again all too soon. The thought did not comfort.

  She shut off her laptop and took her salad bowl to the sink.

  If she was meeting Alma at nine, she’d better get some shut-eye. She rinsed her bowl and glanced out at the street below. Old Town was just settling in for the night. It was almost ten o’clock. The restaurants were serving their last customers and art galleries had already closed. A few bars were scattered amidst the quaint shops, and they would stay open until two in the morning.

  It had taken Mel a few months to adjust to the noise that came with living in the middle of one of the most popular nightspots in the Valley of the Sun, but now she wondered if she’d be able to sleep without it.

  She pushed aside the lace-trimmed curtain that covered the window above her kitchen sink. The streetlights illuminated the cobbled walkway below, and she saw an elderly couple walking hand in hand towards the public parking lot around the corner. A group of young men—she guessed by their AF attire that they were college students—were headed in the other direction.

  She was about to let the curtain fall when she saw another person, standing half in the shadow of the overhang across the street. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but judging by the way her hair prickled on the back of her neck, she knew the person was watching her.

  She wanted to jump back from the window, but a latent cautious streak made her pause, as if everything were perfectly normal. Her heart was knocking around in her chest like a newly caged animal desperate for escape. She inhaled through her nose and slowly exhaled from between pursed lips. She let the curtain fall with her exhale as if it were part of a yoga posture.

  Who was out there in the dark watching her?

  What could they want with her? Was it a cop? No, a cop would come to the door. Was it a burglar? Ridiculous. Who would rob a cupcake bakery when there were so many art galleries and jewelry stores in the area?

  She could feel her fingers tremble. This was ridiculous. It was probably just a smoker who had wandered away from one of the restaurants to maintain the state-mandated twenty-foot distance between himself and the door.

  She was just overwrought from finding Christie’s body today, and obviously it was making her paranoid and twitchy. She thought about peeking through the curtain again but rejected the idea. Of course, there was no reason she couldn’t take her trash out and see who might be loitering on the street. Just to reassure herself, of course.

  Mel grabbed the half-full bag of trash from under the kitchen sink. She opened the fridge and stuffed in some expired boxes of takeout just to make the bag seem fuller. She took her house key from the hook on the wall and let herself out the back door.

  A quick glance at the alley below told her it was empty. She would simply throw her bag in the Dumpster and then stroll around the building to see who might be lurking. It had to be done; otherwise she’d never sleep tonight.

  She hurried down the stairs, slipping her key into her pocket as she went. She tossed the bag into the Dumpster. It made a crunch as it hit the other bags already inside, and the stench of sour milk hit her nose like a punch. She eased the metal lid down to keep it from banging.

  She wiped her hands on the back of her jeans and took a deep breath. Fairy Tale Cupcakes was housed in its own building, and she had a very narrow walkway on either side of it that gave her access to the front of the building. She went down the left side of the building because there was more light on that side.

  Halfway down the walkway, the street became visible. She stared at the spot where she had seen the person skulking in the shadows. It was too dark to tell if anyone was there now. She slowed her pace to give herself more time to study the spot.

  “Hey!” a man yelled, and Mel jumped, bumping into the wall at her right.

  A woman, clutching a cowboy hat in her hand, sprinted by the alley with a laugh as the man chased after her with a grin.

  Mel was thrilled to see they were having a good time. Really.

  She shook her head and strode forward. Enough. She wasn’t going to be some timid little mouse. She stepped onto the well-lit sidewalk and started to cross the street.

  A hand grabbed her elbow just as a trolley bus rolled by. Mel whipped around to slug whoever had grabbed her, and discovered it was Joe DeLaura.

  “Are you nuts?” he yelled. “You almost walked right in front of that bus.”

  That reminded Mel of her purpose, and she yanked her arm out of his hold and darted across the street.

  “Mel, where are you going?” he called after her, but she ignored him.

  No one stood under the awning. Damn it! She had been so sure.

  She jogged up and down the sidewalk but there was no one. At the corner, a small courtyard was closed off by an iron gate. Mel noticed the gate was still swinging, as if someone had run through it. She glanced into the courtyard shared by three little shops. They were closed for the night and the cobblestoned space was empty.

  “Do you have a death wish?” Joe yelled when he caught up to her.

  She glared at him.

  “Sorry, probably not a good day to pose a question like that, huh?”

  “You think?”

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “I thought I saw someone watching me.”

  “What?” Joe’s gaze met hers. “Where? When?”

  “You forgot who,” she said. She turned away from the courtyard feeling bitterly disappointed. She didn’t know why, but she felt that catching the person watching her shop was important, very important.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “I assumed if you knew who, you would have said as much.”

  “Oh.” She’d have to give him that one, but she wasn’t happy about it. She crossed the street and checked the front of the bakery. The door was shut and locked, and none of the windows were smashed. She circled the building.

  Joe shadowed her. She was torn between being irritated with him and grateful for the backup. She knew he wasn’t going to go away until his questions were answered. Well, he’d just have to wait. First, she wanted to check her building. She didn’t know what she was checking for, but she knew she’d sleep better if she had a clear picture of the building in her mind.

  Once she finished checking all of the nooks and crannies, Mel stopped at the bottom of the stairs to her studio apartment and turned to face Joe.

  “So, what are you doing here at this time of night?”

  “Would you believe I had a hankering for a cupcake?” he asked.

  Nine

  “No,” Mel said. She wanted her voice to sound stern and huffy, but instead it came out giggly and amused. How very annoying.

  In her own defense, it was hard to stay mad at a man who looked at her from beneath a thick fringe of lashes and whose crooked smile let her know he was feeling chagrined.

  “Well, it w
as worth a try,” he said. “Actually, I was in the area having dinner with a colleague, and I thought I’d stop by and apologize. I realized, when I got back to my office, that I sounded accusatory towards you, and I didn’t mean to be. It’s just the nature of my work to always be looking for the guilty party.”

  “Angie ripped you to shreddle, didn’t she?”

  “I’m going to have scars,” he confirmed.

  “Serves you right,” Mel said with a laugh. “But thank you for the apology.”

  Silence fell between them. The soft glow of a distant streetlight illuminated the back of Joe’s head and Mel had a hard time making out his features, but she knew he was looking at her, studying her.

  “Mel, if you think of anything about today, about finding Christie, that you think is relevant, I want you to call me.”

  “Okay,” she said. She took the card that he fished out of his pocket.

  “This is going to be a very high-profile case,” he said. “Beware of the press and anyone else who asks you questions.”

  “I assume that ‘anyone’ means anyone but you,” she said.

  His grin flashed white in the night. “You assume correct.”

  There was nothing left to say, yet Mel was reluctant to climb the stairs to her apartment.

  “Joe?” a woman’s voice called from the alley. It was followed by the unmistakable sound of high heels clacking against the cement walkway towards them.

  The woman stepped into the light, and Mel wasn’t sure what struck her first: her twig-thin figure in a curve-hugging skirt and blue silk blouse, the copper highlights in her long, wavy mahogany hair, or her full lips painted a lovely plum color and set perfectly in her heart-shaped face.

  She looped her hand around Joe’s elbow as if she needed him for balance, but Mel suspected it was really more a possession is nine-tenths of the law sort of thing. Mel knew that move. She’d used it herself.

  “Susan,” Joe said with a smile, “meet Melanie Cooper. She owns Fairy Tale Cupcakes with my little sister, Angie.”