Red Velvet Revenge (2 page)

Angie blew out a breath, stirring the dark brown bangs that hung across her forehead. The rest of her long hair was
piled up in a clip on the back of her head. She gave Mel a level look as she scooped up another gooey spoonful of her sundae.

“I think we should close for a week or two,” Angie said. Mel opened her mouth to protest, but Angie barreled ahead. “Hear me out. It’s costing us more money to be open than to close, we can both take a vacation until monsoon season hits, and then when we reopen, our regulars will be back and our tourists will slowly trickle on in again.”

“You know, if you want to go to Los Angeles to see Roach, you can just go,” Mel said. “We don’t have to shut down the bakery so you can go be with your boyfriend.”

Mel knew her tone was harsh, but sheesh! Close down the bakery? She couldn’t help but think that it would be the kiss of death for their small business.

Angie’s eyes narrowed and she plunked down her spoon with a
plop
. She looked like she was winding up to argue, and Mel braced herself, as Angie’s fiery temper was hotter than the desert sun and known for leaving scorch marks on the recipient of her ire.

Angie never got the chance to let loose her volley of mad. With a bang and a puff of blue smoke, an ancient, oversized van/truck lurched into a parking spot on their side of the street. Mel and Angie whipped their heads in the direction of the noise.

“Is that…” Angie began, but Mel was already rising to her feet.

“Yup, it is,” she said. “I’d recognize that shaggy mane and the other bald head anywhere.”

Angie began to shovel the last of her sundae into her mouth. She slapped her free hand to her forehead, and Mel
knew Angie had just given herself a walloping case of brain freeze.

They hurried to the cashier’s window by the exit and paid their tab. Mel rushed back to leave their waiter’s tip tucked under her soda pitcher.

“But Oz and Marty are supposed to be watching the bakery,” Angie said as she followed Mel out the door.

Mel was pretty sure the blast of heat that smacked her full in the face as she stepped outside singed her eyebrows. She tried to look on the upside—as in, no waxing or plucking—but people without eyebrows just looked odd.

She ran her fingers over her brow bone just to reassure herself that they were still there and then felt positive that the acrid smell that was assaulting her nose wasn’t burnt hair but rather the noxious blue smoke coming out of the tailpipe of the decrepit van in front of her.

“Oz,” she called to her young intern. “What are you doing here?”

The young man who had been the bakery’s paid intern since last spring turned to look at her from where he had his head under the hood of the van.

“Hey, Mel,” he said. He stepped back and opened his arms wide. “Check it out. Isn’t she a beauty?”

“That depends. Is she a contestant in a demolition derby?” Angie asked. She was fanning the back of her neck with one of the thick paper napkins from the Sugar Bowl.

“Heck no,” Marty said, stepping forward. He was a dapper older gentleman who had come to work in the bakery several months before, when Mel and Angie had discovered that if they were to have any sort of personal life, they needed backup.

Oz and Marty exchanged excited glances and then spoke together. “She’s your new cupcake van.”

Mel looked at Angie and assumed her dumbfounded expression mirrored her own, and then looked back at the van. She took in the oversized white behemoth, which reminded her of an old bread truck. It was covered in faded Good Humor and Blue Bunny ice cream stickers, and she felt her powers of speech evaporate as she tried to form a response.

“I know it isn’t much to look at now,” Marty said. “But we could trick this baby out and it would be sweet.”

“Where did it come from?” Angie asked.

“
Mi tío
Nacho—er, my uncle Ignacio left it to me when he died last year,” Oz said. “It’s been in my cousin’s garage down in Tucson, and they finally drove it up.”

“That’s great, Oz,” Mel said. “I’m so happy that you’re going to have some wheels.”

“No, it’s not just for me,” Oz said. “You two gave me my first job at the bakery and I want to give back. Marty and I are thinking we can motor around the hood and sell cupcakes.”

“In that?” Mel asked. She had visions of her carefully cultivated image for the bakery going up, well, in a puff of blue smoke.

“Come on,” Marty said. He took Mel’s and Angie’s elbows and half guided, half dragged them toward the back of the van. “You just need to go for a ride and you’ll see the potential.”

“All right, I’m going,” Angie said, and she shook Marty off. Oz hefted up the rolling door in the back and Mel and Angie climbed aboard. Vintage steel freezers
lined both sides, and Mel took in the scratched sliding window on the left side of the truck that appeared to have been retrofitted.

There was no seating. Angie plopped down on the floor, and Mel sat beside her while Marty and Oz scrambled into the front. Mel wrinkled her nose. Something smelled bad, like an expired dairy product. She suspected the smell lingered in the beige shag carpet but she didn’t want to get close enough to verify her suspicion.

It took three turns of the key and a punch to the top of the dashboard to get it going, but the van finally coughed itself back to life, and Oz backed out of the parking spot, using the overly large side mirrors to guide his way.

The polyester shag carpet that covered the narrow strip of floor between the banks of freezers stuck to Mel’s sweaty legs and itched. She sat with her knees drawn up and noticed that Angie did the same.

They puttered around Old Town Scottsdale, and then Oz headed out to the open road.

“Let me show you what she can do,” he said, as slick as any used-car salesman.

“Really not necessary,” Angie said. “Around the block will do.”

But it was too late. Oz took Indian School Road out toward the highway. They were idling at the on-ramp traffic light when a big pink van pulled up beside them. Mel got a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Marty and Oz had their windows down, because, in addition to the sour milk smell, blue exhaust, and itchy shag carpet, the van’s air conditioner didn’t seem capable of cooling the van to a temperature of less than one hundred.

Mel peered out the window over Marty’s shoulder and groaned.

“What is it?” Angie asked. She rose and moved to kneel beside her.

“Olivia Puckett from Confections Bakery just pulled up beside us.”

Two

As if sensing their stare, Olivia’s head swiveled on her thick neck in their direction. Her nose wrinkled as if, from several feet away, she were getting a whiff of eau de stink from the truck, but then her eyes met Mel’s and her expression cleared. The corners of her mouth turned up in a humorless smile.

“What is
that
?” she shouted.

“It’s a van. What does it look like?” Marty shouted back. He’d had a few run-ins with Olivia in the past, and she was not on his short list of favorite people.

“It looks like a piece of sh—” she shouted back, but Oz revved the engine, drowning out whatever she had been about to say.

“Don’t you listen to her, baby girl,” Oz said as he patted the dashboard. “She’s evil.”

But Olivia had misconstrued his attempt to keep the truck running as an invitation to race.

She leaned out of her window and yelled, “You want a piece of me? Come get it!”

“She did not just say that,” Angie said to Mel.

“Oh, yeah, she did,” Mel said.

Olivia was revving her engine, and she cackled, looking at them like they were no more than bug guts smashed on her windshield. They both turned to lean over Oz’s seat.

“You heard her!” Angie said.

“Punch it!” Mel ordered.

Oz revved his engine. Marty checked his seat belt. Mel and Angie braced themselves against the backs of the front seats. The light turned green and Olivia shot out of her lane, turning onto the two-lane on-ramp that led up to the highway.

Oz stomped on the gas, and the truck lurched forward as if it really wanted to give chase. Then it began to make a horrible grinding noise.

“I’m giving her all she’s got, Captain!” Oz yelled over the noise in a terrible Scottish accent.

“All she’s got isn’t good enough!” Angie quoted back to him.

Marty glowered at the two of them. “
Star Trek
? You’re quoting
Star Trek
now
?”

As the former ice cream truck lumbered into the middle of the intersection and Olivia’s sweet pink van was nothing but a memory and a flash of mocking taillights, Oz’s new baby gave a deep, shuddering heave, knocking both Mel and Angie to the floor. It made a deafening
BANG
. Then it stopped dead.

Mel and Angie picked themselves up off of the nasty carpet. Cars zipped around them to get to the on-ramp before the light changed. A line of cars formed behind the truck, however, inciting honks and a few one-fingered salutes when drivers unable to get around them missed the light and were forced to wait for the next green.

“What are they so mad about?” Angie snapped as she and Mel climbed out of the back of the truck. “We’re the ones who broke down.”

She looked like she was going to charge the middle-aged man in the Mustang, who had honked and flipped the bird at them.

In an attempt to avoid Angie being carted off to jail, Mel said, “Angie, you’re the lightest. You steer us to the side. Oz, Marty, and I will push.”

Angie gave the man in the car one more blast of stink eye before she climbed up into the driver’s seat.

Oz joined Mel and Marty at the back of the van. Mel was about to tell Marty not to strain himself, but as if he knew what she was about to say before she opened her mouth, he held up his hand to stop her.

“I’m old, not dead,” he said. “I think I can manage not to stroke out on you from a little exertion.”

“Got to give it to him,” Oz said with a shrug.

“Fine, but be careful, both of you,” Mel said.

Marty and Oz exchanged put-out looks, and Mel wondered if this was what the mothers of teenage boys felt like.

They had to wait for a break in the traffic, and as soon as it was clear, Angie yelled, “Push!”

It took every ounce of strength Mel possessed to help get the van in motion, and she was pretty sure the only thing
more painful would be trying to push out a baby. The van was like a great beached whale being encouraged back into the ocean.

They were covered in sweat before they’d gone ten feet. The sun beat down on their backs, and Mel could feel her short blond hair become soaked and matted to her head as she pushed. Angie had the van in neutral and managed to crank the steering wheel in a sharp U-turn.

They crossed two lanes of oncoming traffic, and Angie hit the brakes as they slowed beneath the highway underpass, bringing them to a stop in the shade.

Mel, Oz, and Marty slumped against the back of the former ice cream truck in relief. Angie popped out of the driver’s side door and took a look at the three of them.

“Everyone okay?” she asked.

The collective huffing and puffing kept them from answering, but since no one was supine on the curb, Angie seemed satisfied.

A large, cream-colored Cadillac Escalade pulled up and parked behind them. The driver’s side door popped open, and out stepped an older gentleman wearing a white straw cowboy hat. Mel suddenly felt like she was in an old Western movie and the good guy was coming to the rescue.

“‘Don’t say it’s a fine morning or I’ll shoot ya,’” Angie whispered in a low drawl.

“John Wayne in
McLintock!
,” Mel whispered back. They exchanged heat-weary high fives.

“You folks look like you could use a hand,” the man in the hat said.

Mel would have hugged him, but given that she was beginning
to offend herself with the amount of sweat pouring off of her, she refrained.

“We sure could,” Marty said as he wiped his hand on the side of his leg and held it out to the stranger.

“Marty Zelaznik.”

“Slim Hazard, at your service,” he said as he clasped Marty’s hand in return. He was tall, and it wasn’t just the cowboy boots that he wore that made him so. He was wearing a cotton Western-style shirt with an embroidered yoke and jeans that sported a belt buckle as big as Mel’s head.

“This is Melanie, Angie, and young Oz,” Marty said as he gestured at the rest of them. Mel wasn’t positive but she thought she heard a note of admiration in Marty’s voice. She knew it wasn’t for them, so he had to be impressed by the cowboy in front of them. His next words confirmed it.

“You wouldn’t be Slim Hazard from Juniper Pass, would you?”

Slim pushed his hat back on his head and put his hand on the back of his neck, as if he were embarrassed that Marty had heard of him.

“Yep, I’m afraid that’s me,” he said. “Here, son, let me have a look.”

Slim ambled over to where Oz crouched, looking under the van to assess the damage from below.

“Wow, it’s really him.” Marty looked gobsmacked. He glanced at Mel and Angie to see if they were as impressed as he was. When they both shrugged, he frowned. “You two are lacking in your rodeo lore.”