Wedding Cake Crumble Read online

  Tate nodded and glanced past her at Mel with the same seeking expression.

  “I’m okay, too,” Mel said.

  Tate nodded and hugged Angie close again. When he released her, he kept his arm about her and Mel wondered who was anchoring whom.

  “How bad is it?” he asked.

  Mel and Angie exchanged a look, and then Angie said, “It’s pretty bad. Oh, Tate, he was strangled with his own camera strap.”

  Tate’s eyes went wide. “I have to see him. I have to know—”

  Mel understood. This was his friend, and there was some sort of code or loyalty that meant Tate couldn’t flinch away from seeing what his friend had suffered.

  “Uncle Stan is in there,” she said. “He’ll need you to give him Blaise’s mother’s name and number if you have it. He’s going to have to go and break the news to her.”

  “I’ll do it,” Tate said. “Or at the very least I’ll go with Stan when he does it.” His voice wobbled a little. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate that,” Mel said.

  Tate gave Angie one more quick squeeze before he strode across the room to join the police. Tate was tall and thin with thick unruly brown hair. A former money magician, he had left the world of corporate investment to work full time on the bakery’s franchise operation. So far, they had opened up bakeries in Nevada, Connecticut, California, and Florida, and were currently looking at opening one in Washington State.

  It was still new and scary for Mel, but with Tate at the helm, things had been going smoothly and the money had been crazy good. Mel was still trying to adjust to having discretionary income, i.e. mad money. With Tate’s plan for world domination with cupcakes in full swing, she figured she’d best get used to it.

  “Poor Tate,” Angie said. “He looks wrecked. I don’t know how he’s going to be able to face Blaise’s mom. Blaise was her only child; he was her whole world.”

  Mel blew out a breath. She couldn’t imagine. She knew how her mother felt about her and her brother, Charlie Jr., and his two sons. If anything happened to any of them, it would devastate Joyce.

  “Was Blaise seeing anyone?” Mel asked. “I know he was single at your engagement party, but maybe he’d met someone since then.”

  “Do you mean someone who knows what’s going on in his life and can clue us in?” Angie asked. “Or someone who might be angry with him enough to kill him?”

  “I feel like strangling someone with their camera strap is a particularly angry way to murder them,” Mel said. “I mean, to use his own equipment; it was either a weapon of convenience or it must bear some significance in another way.”

  “I’m the least photogenic person who ever lived,” Angie said. “And I have the chubby-cheeked, unibrow, squinty-eyed pictures to prove it, but even I never felt the need to strangle the photographer.”

  Her voice wobbled and Mel knew her friend was struggling to keep it together and not cry again.

  “Which is why I’m thinking it has to be someone in his life who has a grudge,” Mel said. “If only we could see his client list, then we could talk to them—”

  Angie’s eyes were round. She was making slashing motions across her throat. She began to clear her throat really loudly and Mel tipped her head to the side, trying to figure out if she was having a fit or a delayed reaction to the murder or not.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

  Angie flapped her hands in the air and Mel looked to see if there was a fly buzzing her.

  “Sheesh, Cooper, she’s trying to warn you that someone is listening,” a voice spoke behind Mel. “Even I got that. A bit slow on the uptake, aren’t you?”

  Three

  Mel didn’t have to look to know to whom the voice belonged. It was Detective Tara Martinez, Uncle Stan’s partner, and the woman who hated Mel’s guts because Tara had a thing for Mel’s fiancé. Great, just great.

  Mel turned around slowly. “Hello, Detective Martinez.”

  The short Hispanic officer was in street clothes with her badge clipped onto the waistband of her slacks. She looked polished and professional while Mel felt as if she’d just crawled out of her own hamper.

  “Hi. Where’s my partner?” Tara asked.

  “He’s in the office with Bla— the victim,” Mel said.

  She gestured towards the other room and Tara glanced at her hand. It was her left hand, the one that displayed her engagement ring. Tara stared at it until Mel shoved her hand behind her back, feeling self-conscious.

  Tara’s gaze met Mel’s for just a moment and the look of hurt in her eyes made Mel suck in a breath. Tara was taking her engagement to Joe pretty hard, and Mel felt bad about that but not enough to deny her own joy.

  Tara walked towards the office but paused beside Angie and said, “I heard he was a friend of yours. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  “Thanks,” Angie said. “I . . . we . . . we’re all a bit shocked. He was a good man.”

  “We’ll find out who did it,” Tara said. “I promise.”

  Angie’s face crumbled in her grief and Tara patted her shoulder before joining Uncle Stan, Tate, and Lisa in Blaise’s office.

  Feeling drained, Mel sat on the edge of Angie’s uncomfortable chair. She could have sat on her own seat, but she felt the need to be close to someone to buffer the upset that was ricocheting through her like a rogue pinball.

  Angie must have needed it, too, because she leaned her head on Mel’s shoulder and let out a long drawn-out sigh. Mel put her arm around her friend. Mel wasn’t sure how long they sat like that. The muted conversation from the office gave her no idea as to what was happening. Cupcake, the dog, never moved but sat silently at attention, her ears twitching occasionally, the only indicator that she was mindful of what was happening around her.

  Tate came back and Mel moved seats. Tate promptly picked Angie up and sat in her seat holding her on his lap. His eyes were red and his face pale. Grief was etched in the fine lines at the corners of his eyes. He rested his cheek on the top of Angie’s head and Mel knew he was taking comfort in her closeness.

  The door opened and Mel turned and felt her heart leap in her chest. Joe! She was halfway across the room before she realized she was moving and she was in his arms and hugging him close without ever realizing that she’d grabbed him.

  He pulled her close and his mouth was right beside her ear when he whispered, “Hey, cupcake, it’s okay, I’ve got you. I’m here.”

  A half sob, half chuckle bubbled out of her before she could stop it. Joe leaned back to see her face. His dark brown eyes looked concerned as he studied her face.

  “What is it?” he asked. “I came as soon as Stan called. Are you okay? He said you weren’t hurt.”

  His hands swept over her as if assuring himself that she was all right.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just . . .” She glanced at the police dog still sitting at attention. “Cupcake is her name.”

  Joe looked from her to the dog. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.” Mel nodded. Her throat was tight. “Sorry. I might be teensy bit hysterical right now.”

  “It’s understandable,” he said. He pulled her in tight and placed a kiss against her temple.

  This. This was why she was going to marry this man and become Mrs. Joe DeLaura. He was her rock. When everything was chaotic and crazy, Joe knew exactly what to do. And right now, it was to hug her and tell her that what she was feeling was totally legit. He didn’t try to fix it, make it go away, or diminish it. He just let her feel.

  “Better?” he asked after a moment.

  “A little,” she said. She sniffed and used the tissue wadded up in her hand to make one more swipe under her eyes and nose. “I’m worried about Tate, though. He’s known Blaise since high school. He was more than just a wedding photographer
for them.”

  Joe glanced at the portrait of Tate and Angie on the wall. His lips moved into a grim line. His gaze shifted to the couple, who hadn’t moved from their sad huddle.

  “I’ll go see what I can find out from Stan,” he said.

  Mel nodded. As a prosecutor, Joe was privy to information in ways that Mel never would be. Before he could walk away, she grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze.

  He glanced at her and Mel said, “Tara is here, too.”

  Joe raised his eyebrows. “Should I be concerned about that?”

  “Only in that she has a thing for you,” Mel said.

  “Says you,” Joe said. He shook his head as if he didn’t know where she got her crazy ideas. Mel could have pushed the point, but this was not the time nor place.

  Instead, she said nothing as she watched him go and confer with the others. Lisa passed him on the way, with Cupcake at her side. They exchanged greetings and Cupcake sniffed Joe’s pant leg and then moved on.

  “Listen, I have another call,” Lisa said to Mel. “They need Cupcake to sniff out a possible drug house. Stan said he’d take your statements. You guys going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Mel said. “We’ll be fine.”

  Lisa accepted the lie, giving Mel a quick half hug on her way out the door. Cupcake followed her handler without looking back. Mel wished with all her heart that she could go with her.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Let me see if I’ve got this,” Marty Zelaznik said. “You went to the photographer’s studio to pay him, but when you got there he was dead.”

  “Yup.” Mel twisted the pastry bag in her hand. She was making specialty cupcakes for an anniversary party where the husband wanted bacon and/or bourbon flavored cupcakes but the wife wanted lemon cupcakes with lavender frosting and/or black forest cupcakes. Instead of arguing, the couple had decided to go with his-and-hers cupcake towers and order all four flavors.

  Mel figured this was probably why their marriage had survived twenty-five years. Clearly, they had the art of compromise down. Personally, she had been delighted when the wife requested the lavender frosting. It took Mel a couple of tries to get it just right but she was pleased with how it had turned out. In fact, the lemon-lavender combo was so tasty she was considering making it a specialty item on the menu. Sort of like the McRib sandwich or the bacon crust at Little Caesars.

  “What is it with you two?” Marty asked, bringing her attention back to him. He clapped his hands on his bald dome and his bushy eyebrows rose up to his forehead. “You just had to find another body, didn’t you? I was almost in the clear. The girls were about to call off that shark of a lawyer and leave me be. If they get wind of this, I’m doomed.”

  Mel lowered the pastry bag and stared at him. “Really, Marty? A man is dead. A friend of Tate’s, and your biggest concern is that your daughters are going to find out that we ran across a body and decide you’re a few eggs short of a dozen?”

  “You’re missing the bigger picture here,” he said. “My daughters, Nora and Julie, are still convinced I’m off my rocker.”

  “But you passed your psych eval,” Mel said.

  “They don’t care; they still think this place is—”

  “A hell mouth,” Mel said.

  “Yeah, pretty much. They’re just looking for a reason to make me move back to the Midwest and live in some old person’s home, so they can keep an eye on me and my money.”

  “I take it they haven’t warmed up to Olivia?” Mel asked.

  Olivia Puckett was Marty’s girlfriend, and his grown daughters had taken an instant dislike to her. That was likely the only thing Mel agreed with them about, but for Mel it was more that Olivia owned a rival bakery than whether she was good for Marty or not. As far as Mel could tell, Marty and Olivia had been happy together, which was saying something given that Marty was well into his eighties and Olivia could be a handful.

  “No, they haven’t, and discovering another dead body isn’t going to help,” Marty said.

  “It wasn’t just a dead body,” Mel said. “He was an old friend of Tate’s, so you can’t look at it through the filter of how his murder affects you.”

  “You make me sound very petty and selfish when you put it like that,” he said. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared. “You know it’s not that simple.”

  Mel heaved a sigh. He was right. She wasn’t being fair, but at the moment Angie was home, no doubt crying her eyes out, while Tate was with Stan, telling Blaise’s mother that he was dead, and even worse than that, he’d been murdered in his own studio.

  “I know, Marty,” she said. “I’m sorry. I do realize that your daughters are worried that we’re a bad influence on you and that Blaise’s murder will not help convince them otherwise, but there really is nothing we can do to keep it quiet. Someone strangled Blaise with his camera strap. It was grisly.”

  Recalling Blaise’s vacant eyes, the strangulation marks around his neck, and the cold feel of his skin beneath her fingers made Mel shiver. She inadvertently squeezed her pastry bag and purple frosting shot out, hitting Marty in the apron with a splat.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Marty took the bag out of her hands and put it on the table. Then he used a wad of paper towels to clean off the bib of his apron. He nudged Mel into a seat at the table and went over to the coffeepot they kept in the corner and poured her a piping-hot cup of coffee. He put in the exact amount of sugar and milk that she liked before he set it down in front of her.

  Mel squinted at him. How had it happened? Marty, who had shown up here two and a half years ago, looking sad and bedraggled in a baggy cardigan sweater and a toupee that looked more like road kill that wasn’t quite dead, had become such an integral part of their operation. She could barely remember a time when the octogenarian hadn’t been her main counter person.

  Now his daughters, Nora and Julie, were trying to take him away because they thought he was crazy to be working here in his eighties. What they didn’t understand was that he was happy.

  Unbeknownst to Mel or any of the others, Marty was loaded and his daughters lived in fear that he planned to fritter it away on what they called “his little bakery friends.” The only person they disliked more than Mel and the bakery crew was Marty’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, Olivia Puckett, who owned a rival bakery called Confections.

  Presently, Marty and Olivia were struggling with the fact that Marty had never mentioned to her that he was a millionaire. Mel could understand both sides. Marty didn’t want someone after his money but Olivia was furious that he hadn’t trusted her with the information after they moved in together. In short, they were a hot mess.

  With Angie and Tate’s wedding coming up fast, Mel was just hoping the chaos could be contained so as not to damage the day Angie had been waiting for her whole life.

  “It’ll be okay,” Marty said. Mel wasn’t sure if he was talking her into believing it or himself. “If we could just keep it quiet, you know, not make a fuss, not draw attention to ourselves by sticking our noses where they don’t belong, that might keep the whole incident off their radar.”

  “I don’t see why we would have anything to do with it,” Mel said. “I mean, we only found him. It’s not like incidents before where he was a customer, or someone the bakery was working with in an official capacity.”

  Marty blew out a relieved breath. “Good, that’s good.”

  “Of course, it might come out when Angie and Tate hire a new photographer and people talk about what happened to the old one.”

  “No, I’ve got that covered,” Marty said.

  “You’ve got it covered?” she asked. “Marty, you can’t take Blaise’s place and do the pictures for the wedding. He was a pro.”

  “I take a good picture,” he protested.

  “Sure, if you like the whole
severed-head look,” Mel said.

  “What?” He looked offended.

  “When have you ever taken a picture that actually included anyone’s head on their body?” Marty opened his mouth to protest but she interrupted and said, “Or without blocking their face with your thumb?”

  “Well, I thought it was really nice of me to volunteer my services, but if you’re just going to nitpick, I’ll go back out front,” he said.

  “Marty, we need someone who can take a professional picture,” Mel said. Then she bit her lip, realizing she wasn’t at her most tactful.

  “Well, that’s gratitude,” he snapped, and pushed through the swinging doors back to the front of the bakery, where he’d left Oz, Mel’s other main employee, manning the front counter by himself.

  Mel put down her coffee cup and reached for the pastry bag. She was just lifting it when Marty’s head reappeared around the swinging door.

  “And just so we’re clear, I wasn’t talking about doing the photos myself. I figured Ray DeLaura probably knew a guy, so I placed a call,” he said. “But your confidence in me really warms my heart. Not!”

  The door swung shut after him, moving back and forth until it came to a stop, and Mel stared at it for a moment. Ray? Did he really say he’d tapped Ray DeLaura for a replacement? Oh, hell no! Joe would have a stroke.

  Ray DeLaura was the black sheep of the DeLaura family because every family has to have one. If Joe was the mediating peacemaker of his six brothers, Ray was the instigator, the troublemaker, the wild card. If he hired a photographer for the wedding, it would likely be the same person who took his mug shot at the local police station.

  Mel debated calling Joe. But then again, he had his hands full already and maybe Ray would surprise them. Maybe when he said he knew a guy, he actually knew a guy who was qualified.

  Needing distraction, Mel got back to work on the cupcakes. The purple frosting lifted her spirits just a little bit, enough to keep her moving at any rate, and as she loaded up a tray to store in the walk-in cooler for delivery later, she convinced herself that Uncle Stan would figure out who had harmed Blaise. Her throat tightened up, but she swallowed past it.