Sugar and Iced (Cupcake Bakery Mystery) (2 page)

“Mel, you have to think big picture,” Tate said.

Mel growled at him. “Stop trying to go corporate on me.”

“Mel,” Tate said. He was using his most patient tone of voice, which to Mel just sounded patronizing. “What are our long-term objectives for the bakery?”

“To stay open,” Mel said.

“Beyond that,” Tate said.

“There is no beyond that,” Mel said. “We are a small but popular bakery doing a solid business. I don’t want to be any more than that.”

“But we could be the next big national bakery,” he said. “We could be known all over the world.”

Mel jammed her fingers in her ears and sang, “La la la la la. I can’t hear you. La la la la la.”

“Mel!” Angie called her name, but Mel couldn’t hear her, so Angie reached up and unplugged one of her ears. “Mel!”

“What?” Mel asked. She noticed that everyone was staring at her, but she refused to be embarrassed. She did not want her bakery to become a corporation. It was her sanctuary, her oasis, her baby.

“I think we should do the pageant,” Angie said.

“Yay!” Ginny cheered, but when she saw Mel’s frown, she quickly took a sip out of her pink bottle.

“You’re joking,” Mel said. “How can you say that?”

The front door opened and Oz Ruiz and his friend Lupe entered the bakery. Carrying skateboards and wearing matching all-black outfits, with multiple piercings and their bangs covering the upper half of their faces, the two teens looked like the last people you would find in a cupcake bakery. And probably that would be true, except Oz had come to Mel the year before as an intern and had proven so invaluable that she had hired him on as part-time help.

“Hear me out,” Angie said. “I know you don’t want to go corporate, but when we first opened we took big exposure gigs like this one all the time. Just because we’ve got a solid following, I don’t think we should get lazy.”

“But baking cupcakes for a beauty pageant? They’re everything we’re against. They debase women by making them sex objects whose worth is based solely on their outward appearance,” Mel argued.

“Not true!” Ginny argued. “Sweet Tiara offers a full scholarship to the winner. We’ve paid the way for several prominent businesswomen, a judge, and two doctors.”

“And what happened to the rest of them?” Mel asked. She gave Ginny a pointed look. “Got their MRS degrees, did they?”

Ginny sniffed. “There is nothing wrong with being a Mrs. Maybe if you gave it a try, you wouldn’t be so cranky.”

“Hear, hear,” Joyce said and Mel glowered at the two of them.

“What’s this about a scholarship?” Lupe asked. She tossed the dyed green fringe out of her eyes and looked at Ginny.

“The winner of the Sweet Tiara Pageant will have all four years of her college education paid for,” Ginny said. “It’s a pretty good deal given that you only have to wear the crown for one year. I would have worn it longer if they’d let me, but that’s just me, the sex object, talking.”

Mel rolled her eyes. “Why are you interested, Lupe?”

Lupe bit her lip but said nothing, so Oz spoke up for her, “Lupe wants to be a doctor. She’s been accepted at Stanford, but there’s no way her family can afford the tuition and she’s only been offered a partial scholarship.”

“If you won, the pageant would pick up the tab for all four years,” Ginny said.

Lupe’s eyes went wide, at least what Mel could see of them behind the green bangs.

“What do I need to do?” she asked.

“Well, you need to fill out the forms and there is an entrance fee of a hundred dollars,” Ginny said. “Then, of course, you’ll have to get an interview dress, a bathing suit, and a gown. Oh, and you have to have a talent and do some public speaking.”

“Oh,” Lupe sighed. “I don’t think I can afford the en-trance fee or clothes. My dad passed away a few years ago, and my mom works as a secretary at the high school. Not great pay but she can keep an eye on my three sisters. My paycheck from my job at the bookstore has to go to the family.”

Oz stared at his friend. “I’ll pay your entrance fee.”

“What?” Lupe shook her head. “I can’t let you do that.”

“You’re not letting me,” he grumbled. “You’re going to pay me back.”

“But what if I don’t win?” she asked.

“You’ll win,” he said. “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met. They’d be crazy not to pick you.”

“Beauty pageants aren’t generally based on smarts,” Mel said. She knew she sounded sour, but she couldn’t help it.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lupe sighed. “Even if you pay the entrance fee, Oz, I can’t afford the clothes and I don’t think my current hairdo is going to cut it.”

“I’ll help with your hair,” Joyce said. “And we’ll figure out the clothes.”

Mel whipped her head in her mother’s direction. She and Ginny began circling Lupe. They pushed her green hair away from her face and scrutinized the body she was hiding under several layers of black denim.

“I think the raw material is all there,” Ginny said. “I’ll help, too, as much as I can. We don’t want my assistance to be considered a conflict of interest.”

“Oh, good grief!” Mel said. “Mom, you can’t honestly be encouraging this.”

Joyce cupped Lupe’s face as she studied her bone structure. “I’m sorry, was someone speaking?”

Lupe glanced from Mel to her mother with wide eyes. Then she looked at Mel and said, “If you were me and the scholarship meant culinary school and opening your bakery, would you do it?”

Mel opened her mouth to argue that it was different, but she couldn’t. The truth was, she’d had Tate to bankroll the bakery, which was essentially what her mother and Ginny were going to do for Lupe.

“Fine, but you’d better get straight A’s when you get your full ride to Stanford,” Mel said. “I will be checking on you.”

Lupe grinned and Mel was momentarily stunned. The girl beneath the shaggy green-and-black fringe was a knockout.

“Does this mean we’re taking the pageant as a cupcake gig?” Oz asked. “After all, I have to keep an eye on my investment.”

Lupe slugged him in the shoulder with a laugh and Oz winced and rubbed his arm.

“Okay, lesson one,” Joyce said as she looped an arm through Lupe’s. “No punching.”

“That should be lesson two,” Ginny interrupted. “Lesson one should be a study in split ends.”

“Christine’s Salon?” Joyce asked.

“ASAP,” Ginny replied.

“It’s so nice to have a daughter again,” Joyce said as they walked out the door with Lupe wedged between them like a hostage.

“Better her than me,” Mel griped as the door swung closed behind them.

“Don’t fret,” Tate said. “Your mom will come around. Maybe working on the pageant together will bridge the gap between you two.”

“Yeah, your mom isn’t one to hold a grudge,” Angie said. “This will give you a common purpose.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Mel said. “The only thing that is going to get her to forgive me is a walk down the aisle with ‘dear Joe’ waiting at the end of it.”

“Would that be so bad?” a voice asked from the front door.

Mel glanced up and saw the man in the doorway and a grin parted her lips. Without hesitation, she jogged across the room and threw herself into his arms.

“Charlie!” Mel cried as she wrapped her brother in a
hug that strangled. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you call? You just missed Mom.”

Charlie lifted her up off her feet and squeezed her tight before setting her back down. “I didn’t know until this morning that I was coming into town. It’s just a quick business trip, but I’ll probably take Mom out to dinner and crash at her place before heading back to Flagstaff tomorrow. Care to join us?”

“I think that would make it infinitely less fun,” Mel said. “She’s still not speaking to me.”

“Really?” he asked. “But it’s been months.”

“Really,” Angie confirmed as she gave Charlie a hug.

Tate stepped forward and shook Charlie’s hand and confirmed, “It’s bad.”

“Really bad,” Oz agreed as he stepped forward and shook Charlie’s hand, too.

“Maybe you should just marry the guy,” Charlie said to Mel. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and Mel could see their late father, Charlie Senior, who had gone on to the eternally open bar ten years before, in the gesture. It made her heart hurt.

An awkward silence filled the room.

“Or not,” Charlie added.

“Can you guys run the show for a bit?” Mel asked Tate, Oz, and Angie. “I want to visit with Charlie for a while.”

“Of course.”

“Absolutely.”

“On it.”

Mel gestured for Charlie to follow her into the kitchen. There they ran into Marty, who was sitting at the big steel table in the center of the room fortifying himself with one of the Salted Caramels.

“What? A man can’t even eat a cupcake without people spying on him?”

“I am not spying on you, Marty,” Mel protested.

“Oh, please, I know you and Angie want me to break up with Olivia, but I’m not going to, so you can just save all your hot air for arguing with Tate about the business. Hi, Charlie.”

“Hi, Marty,” Charlie answered as Marty crammed the last bite of his cupcake into his mouth and pushed through the door back into the bakery.

“Funny, I never think of a bakery as being a hotbed of drama until I come and visit you,” Charlie said.

“We’re special like that,” Mel said. She loaded up a tray with a variety of cupcakes and led the way out the back door and up the stairs to her apartment.

When she pushed the door open, Captain Jack, her adopted white cat with a black patch of fur over his right eye, launched himself at Charlie. Thankfully, Charlie had been by enough that he knew to brace himself for the incoming fur ball and he bent down and caught the cat around the middle, hoisting him up into his arms.

“Hey, Jackster,” Charlie said. “How you doing?”

“Mad at me,” Mel said. “Like Mom.”

“Misses Joe, does he?” As if in answer to Charlie’s question, Jack went limp and hung over Charlie’s arm, as if the feline were dying of a broken heart.

“Oh, quit it, you big faker,” Mel said. She put the tray down on her coffee table and reached over to scratch Captain Jack’s chin. “You just saw him the other day. It’s not like Joe is out of your life.”

“But he doesn’t spend the night anymore, does he?” Charlie asked.

Mel and Charlie were super close, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to have a candid convo about her love life with her brother. Besides, it was way more complicated than she could explain at this juncture.

“I’m not having this talk,” she said.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “Nancy will kill me if I don’t come home with details. Us married-with-children types are living vicariously through you now. You have to give me something.”

“Watch cable television,” Mel said. “It’ll be more entertaining, I’m sure.”

“What about the detective?” Charlie asked. “Is he still in the picture?”

Mel felt her face get warm and she cursed her fair skin.

“Oh, he is, is he?” Charlie asked. His eyebrows shot up behind his glasses. “How does Joe feel about that?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Mel asked.

“You’re not going to play, are you?” He sighed and reached for a cupcake.

“Nope,” she said. “You’ll have to get your thrills elsewhere.”

“Listen, Sis, when you called me a few months ago and asked me to dinner, you told me that you didn’t know what you wanted. You said you were going to break the engagement with Joe and ask for more time. Now it’s been months and you seem to be in a holding pattern.” Charlie paused to take a bite out of his cupcake. Mel waited while he looked momentarily blissed out and then swallowed.

“Yeah, I’m in a stall, for sure,” she agreed.

“Well, if you won’t give me any particulars, tell me this, are you happy?” Charlie asked.

Mel picked up a Salted Caramel. She wondered if this was going to replace the chocolate with coconut as her current favorite cupcake. Then she thought if she combined them she might have the mother of all cupcakes: salted caramel icing with coconut filling and chocolate cake. Her vision went fuzzy while she tried to picture it and she had to shake her head to get her focus back.

“I’m baking some of the best cupcakes of my life,” she said. “I’m inspired like never before.”

“Yes, but you always do that when your love life is a mess. The question remains, are you happy?” Charlie persisted.

Mel took a bite and chewed. Everything was better with the rush of cake and frosting, at least for the moment. Then she swallowed.

“Happiness is overrated,” she said.

Charlie gave her a concerned look.

“All right, fine,” she said. “My personal life is in the toilet. Joe and I are, well, it’s complicated. And Manny? Ugh, he’s made it very clear that he’s interested, and I’m tempted but I don’t want to ruin what I have with Joe, but if Joe keeps insisting on marriage . . . see? It’s a mess. There. Feel better now?”

“Not really, no,” Charlie said. “Well, you’ve got nothing but time.”

“Not according to Mom,” Mel said. “Since she’s not speaking to me, I don’t have to hear it, but I know she’s convinced my biological clock is ticking like a time bomb.”

“If she’s not speaking to you, how do you know that?” Charlie asked.

“Because every time she sees me, she glances pointedly at her watch,” Mel said. “And she’s not trying to tell me I’m late for dinner.”

“She does not,” Charlie said through a mouthful of cupcake.

“She does,” Mel said. “Ask Angie she noticed it, too.”

“She just wants what’s best for you,” Charlie said. Unfortunately, he didn’t sound as if he believed it, either.

“Well, marriage is not it,” Mel said. “At least, not right now.”

“Why not?” Charlie asked. “You’ve loved Joe since you were twelve years old. Why is getting married to him a bad thing?”

“I don’t want to get married,” Mel said. “It requires a lot of paperwork and I think there’s even a blood test involved.”

“Seriously?” Charlie asked. “That’s your objection? Paperwork and a blood test?”

“I don’t like needles,” she said.

“Lame!” Charlie roared. “Do you even listen to yourself when you speak? Why can’t you be like most girls and have the wedding of your dreams already completely planned out and all you have to do is insert the approved male?”

“Because I was always the chubette,” Mel said. “Daydreaming about weddings when the only time boys ever noticed me was to mock and deride me was never as satisfying as eating an entire bag of potato chips.”

“Your issues have issues, you know that, right?” he asked.

“I know,” Mel said. She was quiet for a moment and then she sighed. “Here’s the thing, what if Joe and I do get married, how long until I start packing on the pounds and he leaves me for some skinny young thing?”

“You won’t and he won’t and even if you did, he wouldn’t,” Charlie said.

“Okay, so we’re happily married for fifty years,” Mel said. “We have kids and grandkids and great-grandkids and then he up and dies on me.”

“Most people would feel lucky to have had all that,” Charlie said.

“Losing Dad was so hard,” Mel said. She felt her throat get tight and her eyes were burning but she refused to cry.

“Aw, I know.” Charlie held out one arm and Mel scooted under it and he hugged her close. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss Dad.”

“I just don’t think I can go through that,” Mel said. “I know it’s wimpy and pathetic, but if I let myself love Joe as deeply as I want to, well, if he was taken away from me, Charlie, I’d die. I’d just die.”

“So, you’d rather keep him at a distance and never know what it’s like to be one with your true love?”

Mel pulled back and looked at him. He gave her a dark look and said, “If you ever tell anyone I said anything that sappy, I’ll join ranks with Mom and never speak to you again.”

Mel smiled and then teased, “I won’t, but gosh, that was sweet.”

The tips of Charlie’s ears turned pink, which Mel knew meant he was embarrassed. He cleared his throat and frowned.

“Do you think that all of this may be because you’ve had an unusual preponderance of dead bodies popping up in your life over the past two years?” Charlie asked. “I mean it’s just not normal.”

“Oh, ‘preponderance’—big word,” Mel teased.

“From my word-of-the-day calendar,” Charlie confirmed with a superior look. “But seriously, do you?”

“Maybe, but it’s not like I go looking for them,” she said.

“No, but they certainly know how to find you.”

She watched as Captain Jack hooked an empty cupcake liner off of the tray and then flicked it. As it fluttered to the ground like a butterfly, he wiggled his haunches and launched. He overshot and the breeze he created made the cupcake liner skitter across the floor. He skidded to a stop and turned around, giving the paper chase.

“So what should I do about Mom?” she asked. “I’ve tried talking to her, but she won’t listen.”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “She loves dear Joe.”

Mel rolled her eyes. Her mother always called Joe “dear Joe,” making it very clear how she felt about having an assistant district attorney dating her daughter.

“She’s sponsoring a girl in the Sweet Tiara Beauty Pageant, which her friend Ginny wants us to make cupcakes for. Do you think I should do the pageant to force us together?” Mel asked. “Maybe if she has to be around me all the time, she won’t be able to stay mad.”

“Mom is a lousy grudge holder,” Charlie said. “Frankly, I’m amazed she’s lasted this long. I say do the pageant. You’ll wear her down.”

“Even though it goes against everything I believe in?” Mel asked.

“It’s a bunch of girls in poufy dresses competing for a sparkly crown and some scholarship money,” Charlie said. “How bad can it really be?”