At the Drop of a Hat Read online

  “Sorry, fellas, girl time,” I said. “Harry, would you make sure everyone has a drink?”

  “It’s Harrison,” he corrected me, but the corner of his mouth was turned up in a half smile. “Sure thing.”

  Once the bedroom door was shut, Viv held out a hatbox to Ariana. She gasped and clutched it close.

  “Is it done?” she asked.

  Viv nodded and Ariana put it on the bed to pull the lid off. She unpacked it from its nest of tissue paper, and a soft sigh escaped her lips. The discolored and torn parts had been replaced and the hat looked as glorious as it had on the day Ariana’s mother had worn it in her own wedding.

  “Let’s see how it fits,” Viv said. She moved to stand behind Ariana and helped her put it on her head.

  Ariana walked to the tall standing mirror in the corner, and she put her hand to her throat as if trying to hold back the tears as she looked at her reflection.

  “It’s perfect,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Viv gave her a wide warm smile. I knew the moment Viv caught the scent of lily of the valley that seemed to slowly seep into the room because her gaze met mine and tears were shining in her eyes.

  “Here, let’s see it all unfurled, yeah?” Fee asked and she spread the embroidered train out behind Ariana. It was gorgeous.

  “You did a great job,” I said to Viv.

  “I had a lot to work with,” she said.

  The scent that reminded us so much of Mim flared and then began to dissipate.

  “She approved,” I said to Viv.

  “I hope so,” she said. She looked a bit forlorn and I wondered at it.

  Wearing a pale blue chemise that shimmered when she walked and having her hair done in a half-up, half-down style, Viv had an almost otherworldly beauty about her. Then again, maybe that was just the distance I always felt with her these days. It made me sad and frustrated even as I tried to give her some space. I couldn’t help but wonder why Viv seemed to be shutting me and everyone else out.

  I almost started to grill her, but I didn’t want to spoil the evening. Fee and Ariana were checking out the hat from all angles and Ariana looked so happy that it was impossible to stay in a bad mood.

  A knock sounded on the door and then Harrison’s voice called through the thick wood, “Ginger, not to alarm you, but there’s a buzzer going off in the kitchen.”

  “Dinner!” I cried. “Box it up, girls.”

  I slipped through the door and back into the main room. Harrison was the only one there as the other men had gone into the sitting room to watch some sporting event on television.

  “Would you call everyone to dinner?” I asked him.

  He didn’t say anything, just stared at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. Then he gave me a slow smile that had wickedness in every dimple. “Just taking it all in. You’re like a domesticated wild animal in that apron.”

  “Be careful, Harry, I still have claws,” I said.

  He laughed. “I’m counting on it.”

  He turned and left the room and I blew out a breath. The man could seduce the common sense right out of a girl if she let him. Luckily, I was made of sterner stuff or so I kept telling myself.

  Once everyone was seated, Viv helped me haul the dishes out to the table and bus them as needed. She sat at one end of the long table with Alistair on one side of her and Nick on the other. I sat on the other with Harrison on one side and Andre on the other. Stephen and Ariana squeezed in between Alistair and Harrison while Fee sat across from them. It was definitely snug but no one seemed to mind. As far as hostessing went, thank goodness Viv and I had dined at Nick and Andre’s often enough to know what we were doing.

  We got through the soup and salad course. Jean’s roasted vegetable soup with walnut and sage pesto wowed them, but yes, I was happy to take the praise.

  Then it was potted shrimps with pickled cucumber. Amazing. Everyone had their own little casserole dish and I was pleased to see them all scraped clean.

  Andre and Nick were in rare form entertaining everyone with their latest bits of gossip. Ariana and Stephen talked about their upcoming wedding, to which we’d all been invited. And Alistair updated everyone on Mariska’s arrest. Her partner, Jarrett, had been able to work out a deal for testifying against her. Although she had nothing to do with Russo’s death, she had hampered the investigation, let an innocent woman be wrongly accused and had assaulted me. She was definitely going to be doing some time. I put my hand to my throat, remembering the feel of her fingers cutting off my air, and I knew I didn’t feel sorry for her, not even a little.

  Lastly, we settled in for the roast beef with individual Yorkshire puddings and rosemary roasted potatoes. Again, I basked in the compliments. A girl could really get used to this, let me tell you.

  I began to clear away the last of the dishes and the others went back to the sitting room. Harrison stayed behind to help me. Once the table was cleared, he set to making tea and coffee.

  “So how are you feeling, Ginger?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “You heard the doctor at the A&E; no permanent damage was done.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of how you’re feeling right now,” he said. He gestured to the kitchen’s piles of dishes. “This must have taken you most of the day.”

  “Yes, it was quite an undertaking,” I said. Then I grinned at him. “But when I lose a bet, I pay up.”

  He turned away from the teapot, which was steeping, and the coffeepot, which was brewing. He stepped closer to me but I refused to back up.

  He looked down at me, and his green eyes sparked with mischief. “How is Jean by the way?”

  “She’s go—” I sucked in a breath. “How did you know?”

  “I came by earlier to tell you that you didn’t have to go through with it,” he said. “I was worried it was too much for you after . . .”

  His voice trailed off and his fingers traced the place on my neck where the bruises from Mariska’s fingers had finally faded. His touch almost made me lose my power of speech but I cleared my throat and forged on.

  “You saw me sneak her in, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said. Then he laughed. “Very clever.”

  “Are you going to tell the others?” I asked. I really hated to lose my kitchen cred so fast. I knew full well that with my lack of culinary prowess, time would out me soon enough.

  He considered me for a moment. “Well, I might be persuaded to work out an alternate payment on the wager.”

  “Oh,” I said. He was staring at my mouth, and I felt my ears start to ring as my blood pressure spiked. I think he intended to kiss me, and there was not a single part of me that was against this payment option.

  “I’m sorry, Alistair, but I can’t,” Viv said.

  It took all of my brain capacity to look away from Harrison to where Viv had just stormed into the room. Alistair was right behind her, looking bewildered.

  “It’s just dinner, Viv,” he said. “I’m not asking for a lifetime commitment here. But I know what I felt when I kissed you and I know you felt it, too.”

  I grabbed Harrison’s arm. I glanced at him and knew he was thinking the same thing I was. Which was mostly that their timing was lousy but also that we didn’t want to witness whatever this was and how could we get out of there without them noticing us.

  “Yes, it was an amazing kiss,” Viv said. She sounded like she was going to cry and I felt my chest clutch. “But here’s the problem—I’m married.”

  I gasped. Viv turned and saw Harrison and me standing there. With a cry, she ran into her bedroom and slammed the door.

  I turned to look at Harrison. The first thing I noted was that he did not look surprised. I let go of his hand and stepped away from him.

  “Oh, my God, you knew,
didn’t you?” I asked.

  His silence, as the expression goes, spoke louder than words.

  Be on the lookout for more Hat Shop Mysteries, coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime! In the meantime, turn the page for a preview of the next book in Jenn McKinlay’s New York Times bestselling Cupcake Bakery Mysteries . . .

  DARK CHOCOLATE DEMISE

  Available April 2015 from Berkley Prime Crime!

  “He looks really good in there,” Angie DeLaura said. “Peaceful even.”

  “You can’t say that about everyone,” Melanie Cooper agreed.

  “It’s all about the casket,” Tate Harper said. “You want to choose a lining that complements your skin tone in the post mortem.”

  Mel and Angie turned and gave him concerned looks.

  “How could you possibly know that?” Mel asked.

  “The funeral director at the mortuary told me,” he said. He threw an arm around Angie. “Since we’re engaged and all, maybe we should pick out a double-wide so we can spend eternity snuggling.”

  Angie beamed at him and giggled. Then she kissed him. It did not maintain its PG-13 rating for more than a moment and Mel felt her upchuck reflex kick in as she turned away.

  She was happy for her best friends in their coupledom, really she was, but sometimes, like now, it was just gag worthy.

  “Really you two, how about a little decorum, given the gravity of the situation?” she asked. She knew she sounded a bit snippy but honestly, some days they were just too much.

  “Of course, you’re right,” Tate said. “Sorry.”

  He and Angie untangled themselves from one another. He smoothed the front of his shirt and straightened his jacket while Angie fluffed her hair and shook out her skirt. Duly subdued, the three of them stood beside the casket that held their friend and employee Marty Zelaznik.

  Marty looked particularly spiffy in his white dress shirt and his favorite bold blue tie. His suit was black and Angie had tucked a blue pocket square into his breast pocket so that just the edge of it was visible. His features were relaxed and his bald head was shiny as if it had been waxed to a high gloss.

  “Hey.” Oscar Ruiz, a teen known as Oz, who worked alongside Marty in the bakery Fairy Tale Cupcakes that Mel, Angie and Tate owned, joined the trio by the casket. “So, we’re going with an open lid, huh?”

  “We think it’s for the best,” Mel said.

  “His tie is crooked,” Angie said. “We should fix that.”

  “Yeah, and his makeup is a little on the heavy side,” Tate said. “He has angry eyebrows.”

  “Anyone have a handkerchief?” Mel asked. “A little spit will take care of that.”

  At this, Marty’s eyes popped open and he sat up in his coffin and glared. “What am I five? You are not spit-shining me!”

  “Ah!” Angie yelped and leaped back with her hand clutching her chest. “Gees, Marty, you scared me to death!”

  “Nice one.” Tate laughed as he and Oz high-fived and knuckle-bumped Marty.

  “What? Did you think I was really dead?” Marty asked, sounding outraged.

  “No!” Angie snapped. “I thought you were napping. You had a little drool in the corner of your mouth.”

  “I was, but that doesn’t mean you get to swab my decks,” Marty said as he shifted around and rubbed the dried spittle off of his chin. “You know, I have to say it’s pretty comfy in here. I may have to look into putting a deposit on one of these for the future.”

  “Way in the future,” Mel said.

  Marty glanced at the four of them. “So when do we leave for the zombie walk? I want to catch a few more Z’s. Oh, and by the way the undead look you’ve all got going, yeah, I don’t want to wake up to that ever again.”

  Mel glanced at her friends. Tate and Angie were doing the undead bride and groom. In requisite tux and white wedding gown, they had topped off their look with gray makeup and faux partially rotted flesh. Tate had a fake knife lodged in his skull while Angie had an axe sticking out of her back. They had already taken bogus wedding photos that Angie was seriously considering making their official wedding portrait.

  Being single and thinking this was going to become a permanent state, Mel had decided to go as an undead chef complete with her toque, double-breasted white coat and checkered pants. She wore her pleated hat back on her head to enhance the amazing latex scar Oz had adhered to her forehead. It was pretty badass.

  Oz had decided to wear his chef whites as well, but had changed it up by making the side of his face appear to be rotting off. Every time Mel saw his fake putrid skin flap in the breeze, she had to resist the urge to peel it off.

  Being the body in the casket, Marty had chosen to be less undead than the rest of them. He was pasty pale and sunken eyed but that was about it. Mel suspected because he was closer to his actual expiration date than the rest of them, dressing up as a dead man had less appeal for him. Overall, she had to admit, they were fabulously gruesome.

  “Sorry, Marty, but no napping,” Mel said. She grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him out of the casket, which was sitting on a trailer on the back of the cupcake van. “We’ve got to load up the van and get over to the Civic Center Park and set up our station before the undead descend upon us.”

  “Ooh, that sounded nice and grisly.” Angie shuddered.

  “It did, didn’t it?” Mel said. She let go of Marty, ignoring the look of longing he gave the coffin. “Let’s move, people.”

  She hurried to the back of the bakery, where she’d left her rolling cart. Loaded with boxes of cupcakes, she pushed it beside the service window of the van and began to hand them off to Oz, who was inside.

  “What flavors did you create for zombie cupcakes?” Tate asked.

  “No new flavors,” Mel said. She flipped open the lid of one of the boxes to show off the cupcakes. “Just new names. In place of the usual suspects we have the Marshmallow Mummy—”

  “Hey, you made the frosting look like bandages on a mummy’s head,” Oz said from the window. “Cool.”

  “And it has a marshmallow filling,” Mel said. “We also have Vanilla Eyeballs, Strawberry Brains, and Dark Chocolate Demise just to round out the flavors.”

  “The eyeball one is staring at me,” Marty said. “I don’t think I could eat that.”

  “How about the brains?” Tate said. “How did you pipe the frosting in the shape of a pink brain?”

  “Fine pastry tip,” Angie said. “It was fun.”

  “Are those little candy coffins on the chocolate ones?” Oz asked. “I dig those. Get it?”

  “Aw, man, that stunk worse than rotting flesh,” Marty said. He closed the lid on the box, took it from Mel and handed it through the window. The others stared at him and he asked, “What? I’m just getting into the spirit of things.”

  “Fine, but please keep the rotten flesh remarks to a minimum when selling the cupcakes,” Mel said.

  “This from the woman who ruined a perfectly good cupcake by putting a bloodshot eyeball on it,” he said. He shook his head as if he couldn’t fathom what she’d been thinking.

  Mel lowered her head to keep from laughing. She didn’t want to offend Marty as he took his vanilla cupcakes very seriously.

  “Melanie!” a voice called from the bakery. Mel glanced up to see her mother Joyce Cooper stride out the door. Joyce took three steps and stopped, putting her hand to her throat. “Oh, my!”

  “We look amazing, right?” Mel asked. She spread her arms wide to include her entire crew.

  “What are you?” Joyce asked.

  “The baking dead,” Oz said from the van.

  “Niiiice.” Tate nodded.

  “Yeah, I’ll give you that one,” Marty agreed and exchanged a complicated handshake with Oz.

  Mel approached her mother who only flinched a little when she drew near. “Thanks for watchi
ng the bakery so we could work the zombie walk, Mom.”

  “No problem,” Joyce said. “But, honey, really I just have to say that white foundation you have on, well, it’s really not terribly flattering and now that you’re single, you really might want to consider a little blush and maybe a less prominent eye shadow.”

  “I’m supposed to look like a zombie,” Mel said. “I’m pretty sure they don’t wear blush or eye shadow.”

  “Lipstick?”

  “No,” Mel said.

  Joyce heaved a beleaguered sigh, turned and walked back into the bakery.

  “Really?” Mel said to Angie. “She’s worried about my pasty foundation but she blithely ignores the fact that I have a gaping wound on my head.”

  “She’s just looking out for you,” Angie said. “Maybe you’ll meet a nice undead lawyer at the zombie walk and she’ll stop worrying.”

  “There’s only one lawyer I’m interested in,” Mel said. “And as far as I know he is alive and kicking.”

  Angie gave her a half hug as if trying to bolster her spirits. The love of Mel’s life was Joe DeLaura, the middle of Angie’s seven older brothers. A few months ago, Joe had rejected Mel’s proposal of marriage even though he had already proposed to her and she’d said yes. As Mel explained to her mother, it was complicated.

  The truth was that Mel had gotten cold feet at the “until death us do part” portion of the whole marriage package, but she had worked through it. Unfortunately, when she had gotten over her case of the wiggins and proposed to Joe, he’d just taken on the trial of a notorious mobster, who was known for wriggling off justice’s barbed hook by murdering anyone who tried to lock him up.

  Joe had walked away from Mel to keep her from being a target. To Mel it still felt like rejection. She didn’t handle that sort of thing well and in the past three months had gained fifteen pounds from comfort eating. For that alone, she hoped Joe brought his mobster to justice.

  “Come on, ladies, it’s ‘time to nut up or shut up’,” Tate said as he dropped an arm around Mel’s and Angie’s shoulders and began to herd them to the van.