Red Velvet Revenge (16 page)

“Let’s get back to the hotel,” she said. Marty was standing up by the horse trailer, talking to Jake, so she went that way to see if Jake had heard about Ty’s death.

“Is this the bull?” Mel asked. “The one that should have been in the pen where…”

“Ty was found,” Jake said. He blew out a breath. “Yeah, the sheriff wants us to bring him back down to the rodeo grounds so the vet can check him out.”

“Check him out?” Oz asked. “Why?”

Mel glanced at Oz. If he’d been up at the diner making cupcakes, then he had missed hearing about Ty.

“Oz, Ty Stokes was found in one of the bull pens,” Mel said. “He was gored to death.”

Oz dropped his cupcakes.

Seventeen

“What?” he asked. “How did he…Was it
that
bull?”

Oz’s olive complexion faded as the blood drained from his face, and he wobbled in his size thirteens.

“Head between the knees, champ,” Marty said, and he eased Oz down onto a nearby bench and had him hang his head down.

“We don’t know,” Mel said. “Ty was found in the bull pen, and the bull was gone.”

“But why was he…?” Oz’s head came up and his bangs parted. Mel could see he was thinking of something but had cut off his words before he spoke them aloud.

“What do you know, Oz?” she asked.

“Me? Nothing!” he said.

He was protesting a little too quickly for Mel’s liking.
When she was about to press, Tate and Angie joined them, interrupting the moment.

“You okay, O-man?” Tate asked.

“Yeah, I’m cool,” he said.

“He just heard about Ty,” Marty explained.

“Speaking of which, I’d better get this bull back down to the rodeo,” Jake said. “Thank you all for your help.”

He tipped his hat and headed toward the truck. They stood and watched him haul the behemoth bovine away.

“What will happen if they do discover that it was the bull?” Oz asked.

The rest of them exchanged a look over his head: Marty to Mel and Mel to Tate and Tate to Angie and Angie to Mel.

Mel got it. It was her job to break the bad news.

“They’ll probably have to put him down, Oz,” she said.

“So, my cupcakes led him to his doom,” Oz said. He shook his shaggy mane, and Mel felt helpless to console him. She didn’t know how these things worked.

“Now, quit with the crazy talk,” Marty said. “I got a nice close-up look at the bull, and those horns of his are clean. Don’t you think if he gored somebody to death, it’d show?”

“Marty’s right,” Mel said quickly. “He certainly didn’t look like he’d been in any…uh…incidents with his horns.”

Oz glanced up at Mel. She knew it wasn’t her best sell job in the world, but he seemed to accept it.

“I think we all need to get some shut-eye,” Tate said. “It’s been a hell of an evening, and who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

“Do you think they’ll shut the rodeo down because of Ty?” Angie asked.

Mel saw the line of customers outside of her cupcake truck disappear like a dust devil in a rainstorm. It was horribly selfish; a man had died, after all. She needed to get some perspective. But even as she chastised herself, she couldn’t help but lament that they had been doing a bang-up business.

Tate shrugged. “It’s up to the sheriff.”

It was a somber group that made their way to the Last Chance to try to sleep. The bar was full of people who had been out chasing the bull. Mel glanced around the room. Some were laughing and clapping one another on the back, but others were looking anxious, and she knew without being told that word of Ty’s demise was spreading through the room, moving amongst them like a cloaked specter of death wielding his scythe over all of their heads.

A chill shivered through her, and Tate gave her a concerned look.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Mel nodded, but it was a lie. Suddenly, she was overcome with homesickness. She wanted to be curled up on her futon with Joe, watching old movies and chomping on popcorn while Captain Jack made them laugh by chasing his tail until he was overcome with dizziness and fell over.

Tate looked at her as if he understood. He gave her a one-armed hug and kissed the top of her head.

It helped.

Mel and Angie were up early the next morning. The sky was blue, the sun was warm, but the breeze was cool. They
had a quick breakfast with the men at the Stardust Diner, and then they all trooped down to the rodeo to see what was happening.

It was early, but Mel saw both Slim and Lily near the grandstand. They were having a heated conversation with the sheriff.

“Tate!” Lily called, and waved him over.

Mel saw Angie glower, but she didn’t say anything as Tate made his way over to the small group.

“Come on, sunshine,” Marty said to Angie. “Let’s go get ready for business.”

“But what if…” Oz began, but Mel waved her hand.

“Assume it’s business as usual unless you hear otherwise,” she said. “I’ll go find out for sure.”

She made her way over to Tate and the Hazards. She wasn’t sure how to break into the conversation, so she waited, hoping to hear one way or another if they were to open or not today.

“Oh, look, it’s the fairy tale baker,” a voice said behind Mel.

She spun around to find the Bubbas fast approaching.

“What’s the matter? Are you hoping they’ll shut the rodeo down so you can get out of our wager?” Billy asked.

“No!”

“She looks desperate,” Bob said. “Maybe her cupcakes aren’t such a happy-ever-after, after all.”

“Go choke on a brisket,” Mel said. She turned away from them and focused on what the sheriff was saying.

“Look, Slim, I know the rodeo is the lifeblood of Juniper Pass, but I’ve got a murder investigation on my hands now.”

“Hadley, we don’t know that it was murder,” Slim argued.

“The bull came back clean,” Sheriff Dolan countered. “Dr. Elway says it looks like Ty was gored by something else.”

“He’s a veterinarian,” Slim said.

“The county crime lab agrees,” Sheriff Dolan said.

“Are you shutting us down?” Slim asked. “I need an answer.”

The sheriff pushed his hat back on his head and rubbed a hand over his eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept at all last night.

“Not yet,” the sheriff said. “But if anything else happens…”

“It won’t,” Slim said. “Ty’s death was an accident. It had to be.”

Mel glanced at the group surrounding Slim. No one, not even his daughter, looked as if they believed him.

“The rodeo will open same time as usual!” Slim called out, and the crowd dispersed.

Mel spun around and saw the Bubbas watching her with grins on their faces.

“What?” she snapped.

They both shrugged. Mel narrowed her eyes. She did not trust them.

She was halfway across the grounds when Angie came running up to her. Her long brown hair was wild about her head, and she was out of breath and looked panicked.

“Angie, what’s wrong?”

Angie opened her mouth to speak but sucked in a gulp
of air instead. She held up one finger, took another breath, and said, “Cupcakes, all of them, ruined.”

“What?”

“Someone unplugged our freezers. Thousands of cupcakes defrosted,” Angie wheezed.

Mel broke into a run, and Angie, hugging the stitch in her side, followed.

Eighteen

When Mel reached the truck, she found Marty and Oz looking as perplexed and distressed as Angie.

“I’m sorry, Mel,” Oz said.

Mel nodded and climbed up into the back of the truck. The freezers were hanging open, and it was easy to see that, yes, sometime in the night they had stopped working, and now all of her cupcakes—the red velvets, chocolate, vanilla, and lemon—were all defrosted.

Angie climbed up quietly behind her. She was still wheezing. Marty and Oz climbed in, too, and Mel looked at them and then back to the freezers.

“Do we know what happened?” she asked. She was pleased that her voice didn’t reflect the full-blown panic that was coursing through her.

Marty gestured out the back of the truck. “We had the
freezers plugged in on backup power, and somehow the truck got unplugged.”

Mel glanced out the service window to see the Bubbas, standing in their barbecue pit with barely disguised grins.

“I think ‘somehow’ is named Billy and Bob,” she said.

“What?” Angie snapped. “You mean we were sabotaged by those backwoods barbecue buttheads?”

“I can’t prove it,” Mel said as she watched Billy and Bob give each other a high-five. “But, yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”

“Argh,” Angie growled, and spun on her heel toward the back of the truck.

“Oz, grab her!” Mel ordered.

Oz looped an arm out and caught Angie about the waist.

Mel knew that Angie fully intended to go over and put a hurt on Billy and Bob, but Mel had a better idea, and she was going to need all hands on deck to get it done.

“Angie, I know you want revenge,” she said in a low voice only Angie could hear. “But the best revenge will be seeing the Bubbas pimping cupcakes in cute little pink aprons, yes?”

“How is that going to happen when we don’t have enough product to get us to the end of the rodeo?” Angie argued.

“Oh, we’ll have enough,” Mel said. “How many cupcakes did we sell yesterday?”

“Almost two thousand,” Marty said.

“Excellent,” Mel said. “So, here’s what we’re going to do. Let’s keep two thousand of the thawed cupcakes out for today and start frosting just like we would be anyway. Marty, Oz, can I count on you two to get it done?”

Both men nodded and set to work.

“And then that’s it?” Angie asked. “The cupcakes won’t be any good tomorrow. I mean, they’d be okay but not up to our standard.”

“Yes, they will, because they won’t be cupcakes; they’ll be cake pops.”

Angie shook her head. “Come again?”

Mel pulled Angie away from where Marty and Oz were working, so that they couldn’t overhear her. She didn’t want to have to explain about the bet to them and add pressure to an already ulcer-inducing situation.

“You heard me,” Mel said in a low voice. “I’m not throwing out thousands of cupcakes, and I’m not losing the bet to those two idiots. Agreed?”

Angie met her gaze and nodded.

“Excellent,” she said. “All right. Marty and Oz, you’re going to be in charge. Angie, you and I will make a supply run. We’re going to need candy coating, lollipop sticks, and small cellophane wrappers.”

“Problem,” Angie said. “We don’t have a car.”

“Well, we’re just going to have to get one,” Mel said.

Two ladies appeared at the truck window. Both wore Western shirts and jeans with cowboy boots, but neither of them looked as if they’d ever seen the back of a horse except from a distance.

“A half dozen French Toast cupcakes, please,” the woman asked.

“Coming right up,” Marty said. He had already set to work turning the defrosted vanilla cupcakes into breakfast food.

Mel stepped up beside him and started sprinkling the bacon on them.

“So did you hear about Ty Stokes?” one lady asked the other.

“Gored by that crazed bull,” the friend replied. “I hope they put it down. It gives me the shivers to think of that beast roaming the streets looking for another victim.”