Sugar and Iced (Cupcake Bakery Mystery) (9 page)

“Mel, I had the most amazing epiphany in the van
today!” Tate said as he pushed through her office door and stepped into her inner sanctum.

Mel glanced up from the computer on her desk. She was trying to combine a triple word and triple letter tile in Words with Friends to beat her friend Erika Ona Sanborn, a Canadian cupcake baker who was also an elementary school teacher, bless her heart. Erika had dusted her in their last match and Mel was looking to even the score.

“Can you make a word out of three L’s, two P’s, a Z, and a Q?” she asked.

“Qlzlplp?” he offered.

Mel growled and slammed the lid on her laptop.

“Back to me now?” Tate asked.

“Yes, you had an epiphany,” Mel said just to prove she had sort of been listening.

“So, I was parked down by Patriots Square Park in Phoenix and what did I notice but tons of delivery trucks,” he said. “And it hit me—all of those trucks are delivering packages.”

“Hence the name
delivery truck
,” Mel said.

He ignored her and took the seat across from her. He looked positively giddy, which was Mel’s first clue that she probably wouldn’t like what was coming.

“Just think,” he said. “What if all those trucks were delivering our cupcakes? Come on, say it with me,
Cha-ching
.”

“Did you hit your head on the service window in the van?” Mel asked.

“No, why?”

“Tate, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but cupcakes are an extremely perishable food item, not to mention they get mushed pretty easily,” she said. “Even if there were enough people who wanted us to send cupcakes for them, it would be prohibitively expensive. We’d be better served opening a franchise in downtown Phoenix.”

“Hey, now you’re talking,” he said.

“No.”

“I could study up on franchises and do a cost analysis.”

“No.”

“Aw, come on, Mel, you’re killing me,” he said.

Tate looked so crestfallen that Mel felt herself weaken. Darn it.

“If I say yes to you writing up a business proposal, will you go away?” she asked.

“I will be nothing but a memory,” he promised.

“‘Memories are meant to fade. They’re designed that way for a reason,’” Mel said.

“Ha!” Tate grinned at her. “From the movie
Strange Days
.”

“Correct,” Mel said returning his grin. “Now go away.”

Tate raised his hands in surrender and backed out of her office and into the kitchen.

Mel knew that taking the bakery to the next level had become Tate’s personal mission. The trouble with that was if they expanded she feared their product—
Ack!
That was the problem right there. When she started thinking of her cupcakes as product instead of yummies from her own kitchen, well, she was going corporate and she really didn’t want to venture down that path.

She rose from her desk and went into the kitchen. The telltale whoosh of the kitchen door clued her in that Tate had gone into the front part of the bakery.

Mel thought about going out front to see what was happening, but she knew she had to finish up tomorrow’s cupcakes for the pageant. Ginny had been right. They didn’t cancel the pageant or postpone it; they just rolled it back one day. Tomorrow they would finish the swimsuit contest and the girls would submit their cupcake recipes, the day after that would be the talent show and finally the last day would be cupcake tasting and evening gowns and the winner would be crowned. It made Mel tired just to think about it.

She went to the walk-in cooler and pulled out a large tray of butter-flavored cupcakes. She planned to decorate them with vanilla buttercream and then put on the finishing touch. She used her standing mixer to whip up a fresh batch of buttercream. Using a pastry bag with an open tip, she piped a fat dollop of frosting onto the cupcake.

The door swung open and she was about to give Tate a hairy eyeball for interrupting her again. Instead it was Angie who joined her.

“The bakery is closed for the night. The boys have all been booted,” she said. “I figured you could use some help prepping the goods for tomorrow’s cupcake tower.”

“Thanks,” Mel said. She gestured to the other side of the table and said, “Grab a seat.”

“What are we making?” Angie asked.

Mel put down her pastry bag and opened one of her tubs of yellow and orange fondant butterflies.

“I cut out and molded the fondant butterflies last night,” Mel said. “We just need to brush them with luster dust to make them sparkly and plant them in the vanilla buttercream.”

Mel opened one of the three containers of luster dust and, using a paintbrush, she swept an edible coating of glitter onto a butterfly’s wings.

“Oh, wow, these are too pretty to eat,” Angie said as she examined the tub of butterflies.

Mel gave her a look and Angie laughed. “Okay, yeah, I could totally bite the wings off of these buggers.”

Mel laughed. “I wish we could bite the wings off of Tate.”

Angie frowned. “What do you mean?”

“He’s just so into taking the business to the next level,” Mel said. “He’s driving me bananas.”

“He’s just an overachiever,” Angie said. “Since he left the world of high finance, he’s struggling to find a place to put his financial prowess.”

“Well, he needs to find something other than
my
bakery,” Mel said.

“It’s not
your
bakery,” Angie corrected her.

Mel frowned. She did not appreciate the tone Angie was taking with her.

“Well, excuse me,” Mel said.

“No, I won’t,” Angie said.

There was a fire in Angie’s eyes, which should have warned Mel off. But she’d had a rough day, too, and wasn’t really in the mood for attitude, even from her best friend.

“It belongs to all of us and frankly your fear of commitment is holding us back,” Angie said.

“Hey, what happened to liking our operation as it is and ‘Tate needs a kick in the pants’?” Mel asked.

Angie blew out a breath. “Tate and I have been talking, and I’ve reconsidered. Also, I think my words might have come out more harshly than I intended.”

“You think? How can you say
I
have a fear of commitment?” Mel asked. She slammed her little paintbrush with the luster dust on it onto the steel table. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Angie asked.

“You gave up a career in teaching to work in a bakery,” Mel said.

“I wanted to help you,” Angie said.

“Oh, please,” Mel shook her head. “You were just avoiding a commitment to a career. Just like pining after Tate keeps you from having a real relationship.”

“What?” Angie snapped.

“You heard me,” Mel retorted. “Look at you, you dumped a rock star who was in love with you for a childhood friend who is still holding you at arm’s length. And you say I have a fear of commitment? Look in the mirror, sweetie.”

Mel knew she had gone too far when Angie’s face turned a mottled shade of red and she started breathing through her nose like a bull about to charge.

“I don’t have to,” Angie growled. “I’m looking at the poster child for commitment phobia and low self-esteem right now. You’re terrified of making a commitment because you don’t believe in your own self-worth and you’re afraid you might get hurt. That’s why you broke up with my brother and broke his heart, because you’re a big chicken.”

“That is not—You are so off base—So you
are
mad at me!” Mel shouted. “I knew it!”

“Of course I’m mad at you!” Angie shouted in return. “Joe is my brother and you’re my best friend. Did you even stop to think about how your breakup would tear me up? No!”

“You got one part of that sentence right. It was my breakup, not yours! It has nothing to do with you!”

“It has everything to do with me! You’re two of the people I love the most!”

“It’s still none of your business. Just like when you and Tate were doing your ridiculous little dance around each other, it was none of my business and I butted out. Do you think that was easy for me?”

“Oh, yeah, you butted out,” Angie scoffed. “You told him he’d had everything handed to him all of his life and that he didn’t know how to go after what he wanted. So he up and quit his investment job, you know, where he was making oodles of money, so he could come and work here. If it’s anyone’s fault that he’s keeping me at arm’s length, it’s yours! Well played, Mel.”

“How was I supposed to know the numb-nut was going to quit his job?” Mel asked. “You can’t blame me because he’s an idiot.”

They stared at each other over the steel worktable. Both were red-faced and breathing heavy.

“This is ridiculous! I don’t know how talking about the business turned into a fight over our personal lives,” Angie said. She looked as if she was visibly trying to calm herself with deep breathing exercises. Mel wasn’t there yet.

“It’s your fault,” Mel said, still peeved. “You brought commitment issues and low self-esteem into it.”

“Well, it was overdue,” Angie snapped. Obviously, the breathing hadn’t worked. “You’re
not
the fat girl anymore. You’re a beautiful, brilliant small businesswoman and shoving away the guy you love to flirt with someone else just because you’re a scaredy-cat is just stupid.”

“Oh, so now I’m stupid?” Mel asked.

Angie growled. “Fine, don’t listen to the important stuff I’m saying, just hear the insults you’re looking for.”

“Hard not to hear them when you’re shouting them at me, Miss Temper Tantrum,” Mel snapped.

“Fine! I’ll stop talking to you altogether,” Angie snapped. “In fact, I’ll just go work in the other room.”

“Good!” Mel said as Angie packed up a tray full of butterflies and luster dust.

“Great!” Angie agreed.

“Fantastic!”

“Terrific!”

Angie banged through the swinging kitchen door to the front of the bakery. Mel watched until the door swung to a stop.

“Damn,” she said.

“Am I interrupting something?” a voice asked from the
back door.

Mel turned around and there was Joe. Her shoulders, which had ratcheted up around her ears while tiffing with Angie, sank back down.

“Can I have a hug?” she asked.

Joe opened his arms and Mel scooted across the kitchen, and into his embrace.

“Uncle Stan called me at the office,” he said. His hand ran up and down her back. “You okay?”

“Yes,” she said. She stepped back and studied him. “Angie is the one who found the body. She could probably use a hug, too.”

Joe glanced around the kitchen. “Where is she?”

“She’s in the front of the bakery,” Mel said. She glanced down at her hands, which were clenched together. “We’re fighting.”

Joe nodded. As the middle brother of Angie’s seven older brothers, he was the one who negotiated the peace treaties within the family. Mel was pretty sure that was how he’d ended up going into law. With six hotheaded Italian brothers, Joe’s skills at hammering out a compromise were unparalleled.

He threw an arm around her shoulders and led her toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go work this out.”

In the front of the bakery, Angie had taken over a booth. She was brushing luster dust onto fondant butterflies and muttering under her breath. Her legendary temper looked ready to erupt.

“Maybe I’ll just let you talk to her on your own,” Mel said and began to back out of the doorway.

Joe glanced from Mel to Angie and back. “That might be best.”

Mel slipped behind Joe and back through the door as he strode forward. Mel heard him say, “Ange! How’s my favorite baby sister?”

“I’m your only baby sis—” Angie’s voice was cut off as the door closed.

Mel hoped that Joe could work his magic. She really hated fighting with Angie. She opened up another tub of butterflies and picked out an orange one. She brushed it with the pearly dust and the butterfly’s wings sparkled and shimmered. Well, at least something in her life was going right.

The back door opened and in walked Tate and Oz. Mel frowned at them.

“I thought everyone went home for the night,” she said.

“I did,” Tate said. “But I hate my apartment.”

He was renting a duplex in the old section of Scottsdale. It was small and cramped and the other half of the duplex was currently being rented by a young couple who made a lot of noise, mostly because they seemed to spend their time together either really, really happy or fighting.

“I did, too, but my family is driving me crazy,” Oz said. “My cousins are visiting from Hermosillo and I have to share my room with two of them. Can I sleep here?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Oz persisted. “I’ll just sleep in the cupcake truck if you won’t let me crash in a booth.”

“I’ve got dibs on the cupcake truck,” Tate argued.

“No one is sleeping in the truck,” Mel said. “Tate was only allowed to do that because he refused to crash with any of us when he gave up his luxury penthouse apartment.”

She gave him a dark look, which he returned in full.

“Why did you give it up, T?” Oz asked. “We both could have slept there tonight.”

“I gave it up so I could prove to myself that I could make it on my own,” Tate said.

Mel and Oz both looked at him as if he were deranged.

“Honestly, I didn’t think it was going to take this long,” he said. “Of course, it wouldn’t be so hard if I could just get some support for my expansion ideas.”

“You have support,” Mel said. “I just don’t want to change the bakery. I like it exactly the way it is. I don’t want to go corporate or figure out how to franchise.”

Oz looked from one to the other. “So, he wants to expand and you don’t.”

“Basically,” Mel said.

“So, you don’t,” Oz said to Mel and then he turned to Tate and said, “And you do.”

“Yes, Oz, that is the drift,” Tate said. He sounded annoyed.

They both frowned at the teen. With his black fringe hanging over his face, Mel couldn’t tell if he was mocking them or not.

“T-man, what’s our customer base made up of?” Oz asked.

“Sixty percent walk-in tourists, forty percent locals,” Tate said. “Although, near holidays our local traffic is much higher.”

“What’s the one thing our customers always ask?”

“Do we have any other locations,” Tate said without hesitation.

“Correct,” Oz said. “What is your standard answer, Mel?”

“No, because opening a second location is complicated,” she said. “And quality would suffer.”

“But it’s not and it won’t,” Tate protested. “I’ve been doing research and there are several cupcake bakeries that are opening franchises for their product.”

“Stop calling it ‘product,’” Mel said. Tate rolled his eyes.

“Listen, I know you think you birthed each and every cupcake,” Tate said. “But they are ‘product’ and you’re in ‘business’ and you need to stop acting so artsy-fartsy about the whole thing.”

“Ah!” Mel gasped. She turned to Oz and he nodded.

“Sorry, boss,” Oz said. “As a student of the culinary arts myself, I totally get how you feel, but T-man is right. It’s a business.”

“Well, I—” Mel stammered. “I’m not ready to—”

The kitchen door swung open and Joe and Angie walked into the room. Joe was carrying Angie’s tray and she looked distinctly less pissed than she had a few minutes ago.

“What’s going on?” Angie asked, glancing at the three of them as if she thought they’d decided to hold a meeting and had not invited her.

“Why don’t we call Marty?” Mel asked. “Surely, he’ll want to weigh in on this decision.”

“Texting him now,” Oz said. Sure enough, his thumbs were flying across the front of his phone.

“Marty texts?” Tate asked.

“Olivia’s been getting him up to speed,” Oz said. “I think they text each other some pretty kinky stuff.”

Everyone blanched.

“Really?” Tate asked. “You had to share that?”

Oz raised his hands, including the one still holding the phone, in a sign of surrender. “Why should I suffer alone?”

“Point taken,” Mel said. “Why do you think it’s suggestive stuff?”

“Because his head lights up like a stop light,” Oz laughed. “The other day I was afraid he was going to stroke out on me.”

“See?” Angie cried. “This is why we need an intervention.”

“You can’t break them up,” Joe protested. “The heart wants what the heart wants. No intervention is going to stop it.”

“Agreed,” Mel said. She and Joe met each other’s eyes and he smiled.

“Oh, good grief,” Angie muttered. “Are they having a moment?”

“I think so,” Tate said. Then he grinned at her. “Here, let’s try it.” He took her hand in his and gazed at her and said, “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

Mel glanced over at them to see Angie look all melty at Tate.

“Did I look at you like that?” she asked Joe.

“Yes,” he said. Then he grinned.

Oz started texting furiously into his phone.

“Are you texting this to Marty?” Tate asked.

“No, I’m putting it in my notepad for future reference,” Oz said. “A guy can use all the chick advice he can get when he’s just starting out.”

His phone beeped and he checked the screen. “Incoming from Marty. It says, ‘Why are you bugging me? You people need lives. Tell Tate to get off his keister and make it happen and for Mel to butt out of his business plan and it’ll work just fine.’”

“Wow, it’s like he’s right here with us,” Angie said.

“Classic Marty,” Mel agreed.

“So, do we have a deal?” Tate asked.

“My reputation is to be scrupulously maintained,” Mel said. “If you do this franchise thingy the name of Fairy Tale Cupcakes must never be sullied by dry cupcakes, sloppy cupcakes, or, heaven forbid”—she paused to clutch her chest and take a steadying breath—“a bad frosting-to-cake ratio.”

Tate put his hand over his heart. “I promise. It is going to be epic.”

Angie clapped her hands in front of her and stood up on her toes. “So, it’s a go?”

Mel held out her hand to Tate and he grabbed it, shook it hard twice, and then pulled her in for a hug. Mel squeezed him back and then opened her arms for Angie, Oz, and then Joe to join in.

Oz texted furiously from the huddle before he squeezed everyone back. When they broke apart and stepped back, Oz glanced at his phone and burst out laughing.

“What?” Mel asked.

“I told Marty we were having a group hug and he said he’s glad he isn’t here because he would have vomited.”

Mel started laughing, and then she looked at Angie. “So we ambush him tomorrow?”

“And hug the stuffing out of him? Hell, yeah!” They high-fived each other and then Angie pulled her aside and said, “Sorry about before. Joe talked some sense into me and I was going to apologize even before you agreed to let Tate try his new idea. I want you to know that.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Mel said. “I know I’m working through some stuff. And I know it hasn’t been easy for you, but I’m trying to figure it out. I really am. And maybe this expansion plan will work out for us.”

Angie gazed at Tate with her heart in her eyes, “I hope so.”

“Let’s celebrate,” Tate said. “Cupcakes all around!”

He and Angie headed to the walk-in cooler while Mel, Joe, and Oz took seats at the table.

“Now that the business is all settled,” Oz said. “I was hoping to talk to you about Lupe.”

“What about her?” Mel asked.

“Um, well, that is to say—” Oz glanced through his fringe at Joe.

“Earmuffs?” Mel asked.

Oz nodded.

Mel looked at Joe. “Earmuffs, Joe.”

“What?” he asked.

Mel demonstrated putting her hands over her ears.

“Seriously?” he asked.

Mel nodded and Oz seconded the motion. “You’re the assistant district attorney. It’s just for a sec.”

“Fine,” Joe said. He clapped his hands over his ears and started to hum.

Mel leaned closer to Oz. “What is it?”

“I was just wondering how things will go for Lupe with this investigation if she has a record.”