A Sheetcake Named Desire (8 page)

“Don’t be an ass,” Burt cautioned. “The decision is Miss Frankie’s. If she wants Rita—”

“You want the business to crash and burn?” Ox shouted. “Go right ahead and put Rita in charge.”

I jerked backward so hard, my own chair rocked onto two legs. “Hey! Wait just a minute—”

Ox went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “If you want to continue Philippe’s legacy, let me do what I’ve been trained to do.”

He wasn’t exactly endearing himself to Miss Frankie. She met his gaze without blinking. “I have no doubt that you’re capable of running Zydeco,” she said. “But in light of the circumstances, I’m not comfortable handing over the business to you. Rita is my choice. If you can’t accept that, you’re free to leave.”

Leave? Ox? Bad idea. I wasn’t the only one shocked by the ultimatum, either. Someone gasped, but I wasn’t quick enough to see who it was. Right now, though, my first priority was to keep Ox from doing something foolish.

“Everybody, please calm down,” I said, but Ox was out the door before I could say anything else.

I started to follow, but Miss Frankie grabbed my wrist and held on with a strength that surprised me.

“Let him go, Rita.”

“But we need him.
I
need him.”

“You’ll do just fine without him,” she said firmly. “If he won’t support you, you’ll be better off without him.”

I sat down at the table and swallowed my guilt over letting my friend walk out the door on his friends, his career, his future. The meeting lasted less than ten minutes after Ox’s stormy departure. Not to be outdone, Quinn had also blown out the door behind Ox on another gust of melodrama accompanied by a threat to take me to court. I’m not sure what she objected to most, that I’d been married to Philippe, that we never got around to finalizing the divorce, or that I existed at all.

Thaddeus gave me a key to Philippe’s house, got my signature on some legal paperwork, and then offered to drive Miss Frankie home so I could stay and acquaint myself with the business. As the staff filed out of the conference room, Estelle said, “You know, Miss Frankie is right, Rita. Ox has been a complete jerk lately. We’ll be fine without him.”

“All for one and one for all,” Burt put in, flashing teeth and dimples at me.

Isabeau seemed less certain. “Give Ox a break. You know how close he and Philippe were. We all grieve in different ways.”

Dwight scratched his beard with the fingers of one hand and eyed the door thoughtfully. “Assuming we’re all actually grieving.”

That shocked me almost as much as Ox’s outburst. “You don’t think Ox is grieving?”

Dwight shrugged without looking at me. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you might as well have. What’s going on around here, anyway?”

Slowly, Dwight lifted his soulful brown eyes to meet mine. I could see confusion and anger in his expression. “All I know is that Ox took a swing at Philippe yesterday, and half an hour later, Philippe was dead. Do the math.”

“You can’t seriously believe that Ox killed Philippe?” Edie demanded.

Dwight let out a sharp laugh. “You seriously think he didn’t?”

Isabeau’s pretty face clouded. “You know he didn’t. He would never do something like that.”

“Well somebody did,” Abe pointed out unnecessarily. “And it was probably one of us.”

“He did threaten to kill Philippe,” Burt said, half under his breath.

“We’re talking about
Ox
,” I said. “He’s your friend.”

“He was a friend of Philippe’s, too,” Sparkle said, in her trademark monotone. “That didn’t turn out so well.”

I looked around, seeing the fear, doubt, and mistrust on all their faces. Only Edie and Isabeau seemed ready to believe in Ox. Did the others really suspect him of this horrible thing? I couldn’t believe he’d done what they were thinking, but if they didn’t trust him, having him around would do more harm than good. I had to let him go for now, but I promised myself I’d find some way to prove that my old friend wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

Ten

I needed to spend some time wrapping my mind around the sudden change in my circumstances. In the blink of an eye, I’d gone from living on a shoestring to owning a home of my own and inheriting what Thaddeus had hinted was a substantial bank account. But I knew that the next few hours at Zydeco were critical. If I didn’t get involved now, the staff would never accept me as the voice of authority.

It was a Sunday, but we’d lost most of Saturday to the police investigation and Edie had asked the staff to stick around for a few hours so we could get back on schedule. I urged them to return to whatever projects they had been working on yesterday and assured them that my door was always open. And it would be . . . just as soon as I figured out where it was. As I watched Thaddeus drive off with Miss Frankie, I felt a pang of nervousness. I had never managed an entire staff before, and the idea of stepping into Philippe’s shoes was daunting.

I’d always thought that he and I were well matched as partners, partly because of our differences. Philippe was fun loving and gregarious. I was more reserved. He handled the people and drew friends into our lives. I paid the bills and made sure we kept beer on hand for the spontaneous parties he threw together.

I’d have been comfortable finding Philippe’s office and locking myself away with spreadsheets and schedules, learning the business from the books outward. But that’s not why I was here. My number-one job at Zydeco was getting to know the staff. To learn their strengths and weaknesses. I needed to figure out which of them Miss Frankie could trust and determine whether any of them was skilled enough to take over running the bakery when I left. No doubt about it, I was going to have to step outside my comfort zone while I was here.

I compromised with myself and decided to take a selfguided tour of the building, beginning with a large storage area on the second floor. From there, I moved downstairs to the kitchen and design center.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that Abe had already left the building. He’d always preferred working alone, so his job as head baker suited him; he worked by himself in the wee hours of the morning, baking the cakes the designers would decorate during normal work hours. It also gave him the best opportunity of anyone on staff to indulge in a little sabotage. But how likely was that? He was too smart to do something so obvious.

In the design center, alternative-rock music played on a stereo in the corner, underscoring muted conversations that were punctuated by bursts of laughter and periods of silence. The staff worked on half a dozen projects, ranging from a large pastiage monkey for a child’s birthday cake to gum-paste iris petals that would help celebrate a schoolteacher’s retirement.

I stopped to chat briefly with Estelle as I passed her workstation. I could tell by watching her work on the iris petals that she was highly skilled. She’d tied back her pouf of red hair and covered it with a lime-green scarf, and a deep level of concentration had produced a couple more chins. She was the oldest person on staff by at least ten years, but she seemed to mesh surprisingly well with the rest of the group.

Dwight had covered his beard with a net—necessary, but a little odd looking. Sparkle glowered at the world from a corner that kept her out of the sunlight. I made mental notes about each of the projects they were working on. The monkey cake (Sparkle) was due for delivery tomorrow afternoon, the iris-garden cake (Estelle) due the following day, and a four-tier gluten-free Mexican-vanilla wedding cake with buttercream icing (Dwight) the day after that.

As I left Sparkle, I caught Burt sizing me up from his workstation a few feet away. Was he checking me out or taking my measure as a new boss? Sure, I’d been flattered by his apparent interest yesterday, but Philippe’s murder had changed everything. Yesterday, I’d been an almost-divorced woman with no social life. Today, I was a rich widow with no social life. Huge difference.

He watched me walk toward him, a smile cutting dimples into his cheeks. “Hello, pretty boss lady.”

I smiled but refrained from grinning like a silly schoolgirl. “I think it would be best if you just called me Rita,” I said, and then immediately changed the subject. “This is quite an operation. I’m impressed.”

Burt glanced around at the controlled chaos and shrugged. If he resented me for not flirting with him, he didn’t show it. “This is nothing. Wait until we shift into high gear before a delivery.”

“From what I understand, I won’t have to wait long.” I watched him wrap a narrow strip of pale-blue fondant around a dowel to create a curlicue then asked, “How are things going for you? Any problems I should know about?”

“With me? Nah.” He set that dowel aside to dry and grabbed another. “Still in shock about Philippe, but I’m fine. How about you? Have you recovered from this morning’s drama?”

I let out a thin laugh. “Which part?”

“Either. Both. Quinn’s a real piece of work, but Ox . . . he was harsh.”

Burt was direct; I’d give him that. “He’s grieving,” I said. “I’ll give him some time to cool down, and then I’ll try to talk with him.”

Burt created another curl with a couple of deft twists. “Good idea. Leave him alone for a while. Give him some space to clear his head. He’ll come around. He always does.”

That surprised me. “He’s walked out before?”

One side of Burt’s mouth curled into a half smile. “Not like this, but yeah. He and Philippe went the rounds a few times.”

“Over what?”

“This and that. The usual.”

I dragged a stool close and perched on it. “There’s nothing usual about Philippe and Ox coming to blows. At least not in my world. What’s going on around here, anyway?”

Burt lifted one shoulder and didn’t even bat an eye. His stubborn silence grated on my nerves. “Don’t play games with me, Burt. You weren’t even curious enough to step out onto the dock when they started fighting yesterday. You know something. Tell me what it is.”

He created another curl and set it with the others, then propped both hands on the table and met my gaze. “What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with how long this thing between Philippe and Ox has been going on.”

Something flickered in Burt’s eyes, but it was gone before I could read it. “A month or two, I guess. I couldn’t say for sure.”

Now we were getting somewhere. “How did it start?”

Burt went back to work, curling his last piece of fondant and setting the dowel carefully aside before he answered. “Your guess is as good as mine. Ox was Philippe’s right-hand man when I first came here. A couple of months ago, Philippe started handing out Ox’s work to other people. It didn’t make any sense to me then, and it still doesn’t. I’m good at what I do. Ox is brilliant. The graphic-design stuff? He’s a master. And I don’t know anyone with a steadier hand when it comes to piping work or painting.”

Frankly, neither did I. Which is why Philippe’s behavior was so confusing. “Do you know why Philippe was bypassing him? Did Ox do something wrong, or did Philippe have a new protégé?”

“Not that I know of. It wasn’t like he picked one person and started giving him or her Ox’s work. He just . . . avoided Ox.”

That made no sense at all. Philippe and Ox had had creative differences in the past, but they’d always worked things out within a couple of hours, usually over a beer or a couple shots of tequila. “How did Ox react to that?”

“About like you’d expect. Philippe and Ox basically opened this place together. When I signed on, Philippe made it clear that Ox was second in command, the go-to guy if Philippe wasn’t available. Then one day, it was like Ox got demoted.” Burt turned away to pull a container of lime-green fondant from the shelf behind him. “Frankly, I don’t blame the guy for resenting the change.”

“Do you know what set them off yesterday?”

Burt began kneading the fondant slowly. “Could have been anything. Maybe Ox left the van’s gas tank empty. Maybe Philippe put the keys in the wrong place. Who knows?”

If they were actually fighting over such little things, something was really wrong. “The police are calling Ox a person of interest in the case,” I said. “Do you think he attacked Philippe?”

Burt shook his head slowly. “No way. I think he and Philippe went at each other, and then he stormed off and took a walk to cool down. That’s what he says, anyway.”

“And you believe him?”

“Yeah, I do.”

So did I. I hoped we were both right. “What about the cake? Any ideas about who trashed it?”

Burt shrugged again. “Not a clue.”

I thought about the other incidents Miss Frankie had told me about. Did Burt know about them? “Do you have any ideas about who was responsible for the attack on Philippe?”

Burt shook his head again, took a couple of measurements, and created a swag from the fondant ribbon. “I’ve been thinking about that since yesterday,” he said as he pleated the fondant. “But it just doesn’t make any sense, y’ know? Don’t get me wrong. Philippe was no saint, but he was a good guy and people liked him. No enemies or anything like that.”

“Nobody on staff held a grudge?”

Burt looked up from the fondant, his eyes narrowed. “Why does everybody think that somebody from Zydeco killed him? It could have been anybody.”

“I don’t have any idea who killed him,” I said. “I’m just trying to help Miss Frankie figure out who she can trust.”

Burt glanced at his coworkers and lowered his voice. “It wasn’t one of us.”

“Then you think it was a random act of violence?”

“What else could it be?”

“So there’s nobody else who might have wanted to settle a score? No former disgruntled employee? No old girlfriend with a grudge?” No current blonde-bimbo girlfriend after Philippe’s money?

Burt gave the questions I’d asked aloud some thought before shaking his head again. “As far as I know, he didn’t date all that much before Quinn. He worked all the time, trying to get this place up and running and then trying to keep up with all the business he brought in. He was always here or at the Duke.”

“What’s the Duke?”

Burt jerked his head toward the street. “The Dizzy Duke. It’s a neighborhood bar. We all hang out there just about every night after work.”

Now
that
sounded more like the Philippe I knew. I should have thought to ask about his after-work habits. Popular as Philippe was, there was always someone he rubbed the wrong way, usually guys with a little less money, an older model car, a less effective bank shot at the pool table. Guys whose girlfriends or wives spent a little too much time checking out Philippe’s assets.

I jumped at the possibility that Philippe’s killer wasn’t one of the staff. “Is there anyone at the Duke who might have had a problem with Philippe?”

“Not that I know of.” Burt turned his attention to the other end of the swag and spent a minute or two getting the fondant “fabric” folds just right. “Like I said, he wasn’t a saint or anything. He had issues with people, just like anybody else. But nothing serious enough to kill over.”

“Apparently, somebody felt differently.” I made a mental note to check out the Duke later. That might be the fastest way to ease Miss Frankie’s mind about the staff. “What about Ox? Does he hang out there, too?”

Burt looked up from his work and ran a glance over me, this one more curious than flirtatious. “Yeah. Like I said, we all do. Why?”

“Just wondering if he might be there now.”

Burt didn’t answer. I had a dozen more questions I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to push too hard, so I changed the subject. “So how do you feel about Miss Frankie’s decision? Are you going to hate working for me as much as Ox said he would?”

Burt laughed, and those two sharp dimples dipped into his cheeks again. He began rolling the fondant into a large rectangle, a job that made the muscles in his arms and shoulders flex nicely. Not that I was looking. “I’m a pretty easygoing guy. I’m willing to give you a chance. See what you’re made of.”

My own lips curved in response, and I filed his name in the “Pro Rita” column in my head. I just hoped I was made of sturdy enough stuff to get the job done. “What about the rest of the staff? What can I expect?”

“Isabeau’s a team player. She’ll be fine. Estelle thinks the world of Miss Frankie. If Miss F wants you here, Estelle will fall in line.”

“And Sparkle? How’s she going to take the changes?”

Burt laughed softly and stole a glance at his goth coworker. “Sparkle will give you a hard time, but don’t take it personally. She hates everybody. Once you get to know her, she’s okay. And you know the other guys, right? Edie, Abe, and Dwight? So the only wild card is me.”

“As wild cards go, you seem okay.” Just then, my cell phone let out a chirp. Burt picked up a couple of trays and carried them toward the industrial-sized refrigerators across the room, making it clear the conversation was over.

I checked the caller ID, saw Uncle Nestor’s name on my screen, and immediately felt guilty. I should have called him last night, but by the time Sullivan had followed Quinn out the door, I’d been too exhausted. Today, between the meeting with Thaddeus and Ox’s decision to quit, the day had totally gotten away from me. But this wasn’t the time or the place for the conversation I needed to have with Uncle Nestor, so I sent him straight to voice mail. Then I put my phone on silent and slipped it back into my pocket.