Sprinkle with Murder

by Jenn McKinlay

She gestured for them to follow her, and the three of them headed out the back door. Mel locked it behind them and led the way down the alley, across Brown Street, and into Civic Center Park. She stopped beside a fountain that sprayed in a large bubble, and hoped the noise would keep their conversation from being overheard.

  “What do you know?” Mel asked Tate.

  “There was arsenic in the cupcake.”

  “That’s impossible!” Angie said.

  They were standing huddled in a small circle. The sun was setting, and it would soon be dark. The evening hadn’t cooled off yet, but Mel felt a chill walk across her skin with icy fingers.

  “So that’s why they were searching the bakery,” Mel said. “To see if I had arsenic mixed in with my chocolate chips.”

  “It gets more interesting than that.” Tate leaned closer. “My attorney has connections at the police department and at the medical examiner’s office. Get this: The initial autopsy showed no trace of arsenic in the contents of Christie’s stomach.”

  “What does that mean?” Angie asked.

  “It means it wasn’t arsenic that killed her,” Tate said.

  “Then why are they searching my bakery?” Mel asked.

  “Because something killed her, but they have no idea what,” Tate said. “It may or may not have been in the cupcakes.”

  “Someone tampered with my cupcakes,” Mel said. She thought back to Alma and her five-year contract. There was a lot of anger there, and Alma certainly had motive and opportunity.

  “It could be anyone,” Angie stated. “Tate, do you know who was at the photo shoot? And who Christie was dealing with for the wedding? Did she lock anyone else into a contract they were unhappy about?”

  “She had a big fight with Jay Driscoll, the photographer, the day of the shoot. He’s high fashion and she used him for a lot of her layouts, but he was balking about doing our wedding. He didn’t like her having ownership of the pictures.”

  “I know how he felt,” Mel muttered.

  “You should have come to me,” Tate said. “I would never have made you sign over ownership of your cupcakes.”

  Mel could see the hurt in his eyes. He was right. She should have gone to him, and then they wouldn’t be in this mess.

  “Just like you should have told us that you didn’t remember proposing to Christie,” Angie snapped.

  “Point taken,” Tate admitted. Angie looked somewhat mollified.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Angie asked, looking between them.

  “I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing,” Mel said. “I’m going to keep talking to people. And next on my list are Jay Driscoll and Terry Longmore.”

  “The designer?” Angie asked.

  “Yes, she and Christie had a rivalry that was apparently quite intense,” Mel said. “I’m going to drop by her design studio and see what I can find out.”

  A small smile played on Tate’s lips.

  “What?” Mel asked.

  “ ‘I just find it hard to believe that you’re a man,’ ” Tate quoted.

  “ ‘Because you found me attractive as a woman?’ ” Angie finished.

  “Okay, what’s with the Victor/Victoria references?” Mel asked. They stared at her until she got it. “Oh, Terry Longmore is a man.”

  “Who dresses like a woman,” Tate said.

  “Maybe I’ll start with the photographer,” Mel decided.

  Jay Driscoll had a studio on the outskirts of the artsy section of Old Town Scottsdale, on Fifth Avenue between a pet groomer and a guitar store.

  Mel propped her Schwinn Cruiser bicycle against the side of the building and locked it to the handrail that led up the short staircase. She had been thinking of how she would approach the photographer. Obviously, she wanted to know how he had felt about Christie, but how was she going to get him to confide in her?

  She’d just have to wing it. She pulled open the door and stepped inside. Like Christie’s studio, this one was a study in minimalism with white walls, a black granite reception desk, and no chairs. Obviously, lingering was not encouraged here.

  “Hello?” she called. Her voice echoed in the cavernous space, and she had a brutal flashback to the morning she found Christie’s body.

  She glanced nervously around the main room. Huge black-and-white portraits of models in haute couture covered the walls. She glanced nervously across the brown concrete floor. There was no sign of a body.

  She felt a coating of sweat bead up under her long-sleeved T-shirt, and she pushed the sleeves up to her elbows, more to give herself something to do than to relieve her sudden case of the sweats.

  “Marlena!” a voice called from behind a frosted glass wall, and Mel felt her shoulders drop in relief. “Marlena!”

  Footsteps echoed on the hard floor as a man dressed all in black pushed open a red door in the frosted glass wall and stepped into the room. He was spider thin, wearing black cowboy boots, skinny black jeans, and a black silk dress shirt that was untucked. His hair was thick and gray, and styled in a wispy way that reminded Mel of Richard Avedon. He had a large, clunky camera hanging from a strap around his neck. Jay Driscoll.

  His gaze raked Mel from head to toe. “You’re not Marlena.”

  “No, I’m Melanie Cooper,” she said and extended her hand. He ignored it. “I was hoping to speak with you, Mr. Driscoll.”

  He let out a put-upon sigh. “Let me save us both some time. You’re tall, but you’re too heavy to be a runway model. What are you? A size eight or a ten? I can’t work with anything over a four. And, frankly, although the boyish hairdo does fabulous things for your eyes, you’re too ordinary-looking to be a print model. Pretty, yes, but ordinary. You really need to have fuller lips or a needle-thin nose—you know, something that makes you look exotic. And besides, aren’t you a little old to want to be a model?”

  Mel felt her jaw drop. Was this guy for real? He looked past her as if the missing Marlena might be hiding behind her. She resisted the urge to kick him in his shapeless backside, barely.

  “Actually, I have no interest in being a model, but thanks for the blow to my self-esteem. Really, I appreciate it,” she said.

  He shrugged as if to say “whatever,” and asked, “Then why are you here?”

  “I came to ask you some questions about Christie Stevens.”

  That got his attention. He looked at her again, but now he was wary.

  “Who are you?”

  “Melanie Cooper.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “No,” she said. “Just a friend.”

  “Well, I have nothing to tell you. I already spoke to the police. I don’t know anything about what happened to her that night. When I left the studio, she was fine.”

  “What time did you leave?” Mel asked.

  “Just before midnight,” he said. “My assistant, Marlena, was with me.”

  “Did you see any cupcakes at the photo shoot?” Mel asked.

  “Cupcakes? No, I never eat those things,” he said. “They’re all fat and sugar, death in a paper cup. Why are you asking me about cupcakes?”

  He looked at her as if she were deranged, and then a light flickered in his pale gray eyes.

  “It’s you,” he said. “The cupcake killer.”

  “The what?” Mel asked. “I am not!”

  “I read about you in the paper,” he said. He lifted his camera and stared at her through the lens. “You’re the childhood friend of the groom, who wanted him back so desperately that you poisoned the cupcakes you were hired to bake for the wedding, and killed her.”

  “I did not!” Mel protested. She covered her head with her arms and turned away to keep him from getting a good picture.

  “Stand still,” he ordered. “A good picture of you could net me a small fortune.”

  “From high fashion to paparazzi, is that how you want your career to go?” Mel asked.

  The room became silent, and she glanced over her shoulder. Jay Driscoll lowered his camera with a look of self-loathing on his face.

  “Were you booked to take Christie’s wedding photos?” she asked before he reconsidered.

  “Yeah,” he
said. He didn’t sound happy about it.

  Mel knew she was going to have to pretend to be empathetic in order to gain his trust. Although at the moment, she felt that Christie and Jay were a match made in egocentric heaven.

  “Look, I’m asking questions because the police think I had something to do with her death. I didn’t.”

  He studied her through narrowed eyes, but Mel couldn’t tell if he believed her or not.

  “She asked me to sign a contract giving her ownership of the cupcakes I designed for her wedding, which I was very unhappy with,” Mel said. “I mean, to sign over my own creations . . .”

  “Exactly!” Jay snapped his fingers. “I tried to explain to her that the photographer retains the rights to wedding photos, but she was having none of it.”

  “Did you consider refusing her?” Mel asked.

  “I started to . . .”

  He paced away from her to stand in front of a life-sized print of a model, looking very Audrey Hepburn in a chemise dress and big hat, on the streets of what Mel recognized as Paris.

  “Lately, my career has been subdued,” he said.

  Mel figured that was a euphemism for “in a nosedive.”

  “The magazines are looking for younger photographers because they think they’re more innovative. Ha! They have no appreciation for the history of fashion.”

  Mel was quiet, hoping he would continue. He turned back to face her, and he looked uncertain, almost afraid.

  “If I’m not Jay Driscoll, fashion photographer, then who am I? Christie knew I’d been passed over for several large shoots, and my agent said I desperately needed the publicity to get back in the game.”

  He ran a well-manicured hand through his wispy hair, making it stand on end even more.

  “I begged Christie to let me retain copyright of at least a few of the photos to put on display or use in my portfolio. She laughed at me and refused. In the end, I had to agree to her terms and hope she placed them in a magazine of note and gave me the credit.”

  “Your agent was okay with this?” Mel asked.

  “Desperate times,” he said with a small smile.

  Mel still didn’t like him very much, but she did feel for him. He had been in an untenable position, much like her own. Obviously, however, Christie’s murder was not to his advantage, because now he didn’t even have the hope that his photos might garner him some attention.

  Hmm. She would have preferred to keep him on her suspect list, but it just didn’t seem likely, unless, of course, it had been a crime of passion. She tried to picture Christie and Jay together, but couldn’t quite manage it.

  The front door opened and in sashayed a young woman, no more than twenty-two, Mel would have guessed. She wore a bright yellow sarong-style dress that enhanced the deep coffee color of her skin and her waist-length black hair. She had the requisite full lips of a wannabe model and a brilliant white smile.

  “Ah, Marlena,” Jay said, and opened his arms. The girl entwined herself around the man old enough to be her grandfather, and Mel felt any sympathy she’d built for Jay Driscoll evaporate like dew on a hot summer morning.

  “This is Melanie Cooper, the cupcake killer,” he said.

  Marlena looked at Mel with wide eyes.

  “Not really,” Mel said. “I just happened to be the one to find the body.”

  “It wasn’t surprising that someone harmed her,” Marlena said in a charming French accent. “She was not right in her mind, and neither were her assistants.”

  “True,” Jay agreed. “Do you remember that crazy scene about the weight-loss patch?”

  Marlena nodded.

  Jay looked at Mel and said, “In the middle of the shoot, she and her assistant left for what was it, a half hour, to go put on some crazy appetite suppressant patch.

  “We’d ordered in pizzas from Oreganos, and they were terrified that they’d eat too much if they didn’t control it. The whole shoot ground to a halt because Christie wouldn’t let me take a picture without her approval. It was mental.”

  Which certainly sounded like the Christie Mel had come to know. The question was who had been driven to murder by the high-maintenance bride-to-be?

  Jay must have read her thoughts, because he looked directly at her and said, “It wasn’t me.”

  His stare was unblinking, but Mel wasn’t quite sure she believed him.

  Thirteen

  “That’s it! ” Angie declared. “Do you have any idea how lucky you are that Driscoll didn’t snap your picture and sell it for big bucks? You’re too well known now. You have to let me help you.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Mel said, and blew out a breath. They were sitting at the steel table in the kitchen, enjoying a quick coffee break between customers.

  “It’s not just about you being a suspect anymore,” Angie continued. “This is our business that we stand to lose. Besides, Tate is my friend, too, and I want to help.”

  “Okay,” Mel said.

  “I mean, I have skills,” Angie said. “I can ask questions, and believe you me, I can get answers.”

  “You’re in.”

  “I—what?” Angie asked.

  Mel laughed. “I need you to pretend to be a very wealthy bride-to-be. Are you up to it?”

  “Are you kidding?” Angie rose from her seat and pretended to have a bouquet in hand while walking like a bride down the aisle and singing, “Da-da-da-dum.”

  Mel laughed. This might just work.

  Terry Longmore Designs was located in downtown Phoenix in an industrial warehouse off Seventh Street, south of the Interstate. There was plenty of parking around the building, which looked like it had been hit by every single tagger in the metro area. Mel studied the vivid graffiti and noticed the initials T, L, and D were worked into the loops and swirls of the neon spray paint. Very hip.

  Her phone vibrated, and she flipped it open. “Hello.”

  “Passing you,” Angie said.

  Mel glanced up and saw Angie drive by in her red Mini Cooper. They had switched cars, thinking that Angie’s white Honda would be less noticeable, and given that Mel was going to be sitting outside the building in it, she was all about not being noticed.

  “Remember to leave your phone on in the outside pocket of your purse,” Mel said as she watched Angie park and climb out of the car. “That way I can hear your conversation.”

  “Got it,” Angie said.

  She had dressed the part of the ingenue bride. She let her long black hair tumble down her back in thick waves. With her mother’s four-carat emerald cocktail ring on her left hand and a gray organdy over yellow cotton dress, designed by Yoana Baraschi and borrowed from Angie’s sister-in-law, she looked every inch the wealthy young woman shopping for her wedding gown.

  They had called Terry Longmore yesterday and arranged a meeting. The plan was for Angie to work Christie into the conversation and see how Terry reacted. Mel wanted to know if he had a motive for killing off his competition. If he acted suspicious, Mel and Angie had agreed that Angie should leave immediately.

  Sitting outside the large block of concrete and steel, Mel wondered if she should have gone in with Angie or, even crazier, sent her mother.

  She lifted her field glasses and watched as Angie approached the bright orange door to the right of several steel garage doors. She pressed the doorbell, and Mel heard an annoying buzzing sound come from her phone. Well, at least the phones were working.

  “Who is it?” a voice asked from the intercom.

  Angie pressed the Talk button and answered, “Angie DeLaura.”

  “Oh, you’re punctual,. How very Miss Manners of you.”

  The door in front of her unlocked with a click, and Angie pulled it open and stepped inside.

  Mel lowered the glasses. She hated that she couldn’t see Angie. It made her nervous. Not that she thought Terry would harm Angie, but what if he was the killer? What if he figured out what they were up to? Angie could be in danger. Mel lifted her phone and was about to yell, “Abort! Abort!” when she heard Angie talking.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Longmore,” she said. “Don’t take
this the wrong way, but you look like you’d be more comfortable working on cars than clothes.”

  A deep laugh echoed out of Mel’s phone, followed by a pleasant male voice. “Don’t let the ripped jeans and Nas car T shirt fool you. I design a hell of a wedding dress. However, you probably expected to see me in a ball gown and tiara,” he guessed.

  “Er . . . more like a spangled halter with fishnets and stilettos,” Angie said.

  He laughed again. “I’ll have to keep that in mind for the next time we meet.”

  Mel felt herself smiling as she listened. Terry Longmore certainly had charm.

  It was silent for a moment, and then Mel heard him say, “Contrary to popular opinion, I’m not really a cross dresser.”

  “Then why . . . ?” Angie’s voice trailed off as if she was unsure of how to phrase her question.

  “Why does everyone think I am?” he finished for her.

  Mel found herself leaning closer, wanting to hear his answer.

  “When I first started designing, I did primarily men’s clothes. But frankly, it’s boring. You never get to play with fuchsia satin if you’re creating for men. So, I started play ing with women’s wear.”

  Mel heard the sound of footsteps, and assumed they were walking while Terry continued talking.

  “I became so caught up in the creations, I forgot about comfort, and during a disastrous photo shoot, one of my models challenged me to wear my own design.”

  She heard Angie giggle, and she looked at the phone as if it had hiccupped. Angie didn’t giggle.

  “I took the challenge and discovered I couldn’t walk, couldn’t sit, and couldn’t pee. Suffice to say, lesson learned. Well, Sadie, the model, thought it was so funny, she called the photographers at Vogue and had them do a shoot with me in the damn outfit, and after that, we did another shoot in a few of my new comfortable, wearable designs. Since then, I’ve always made a prototype for myself to test drive, and it’s given me a rep as a cross dresser, which I can live with for all of the free publicity.”

  “A friend of mine used to be in marketing,” Angie said. “I believe she would say that was very savvy.”

  If Mel didn’t know better, she would think Angie was flirting. Nah, it couldn’t be. Angie didn’t flirt. She was just playing her part really, really well.