Death by the Dozen (2 page)

Olivia obviously didn’t know what kind of trouble she was inviting when she challenged Angie. Although it had been more than twenty years, Mel still hadn’t fully recovered from the day Angie had bloodied the nose of their seventh grade class bully, Jeff Stanton, when he dumped chocolate milk over Mel’s head at lunch one day and called her “Bessie, the chocolate cow.”

Although that incident had only gotten Angie a week’s detention, Mel was always afraid that one day Angie’s temper was going to land her in a jam that Mel wouldn’t be able to fix.

“Breathe, Angie,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.”

Angie gave her a mutinous look, but she complied. Mel stepped around her and faced Olivia.

“You can’t seriously think you’re going to stop us from registering to compete in the challenge to the chefs,” Mel said.

“Oh, yeah, I can and I will,” Olivia said. “I called my contact in the Arts office last night, and she told me you hadn’t registered yet. I knew your last chance was this morning. I’ve been waiting since eight. You are not going to get by me.”

“You’ve been waiting here for two hours?” Angie asked. “You’re mental. You know that?”

“No little snot-nosed Scottsdale princess is going to beat me out of my title,” Olivia said. “I’ve won it five years in a row, and I’m not giving it up, not now, not ever.”

“Who are you calling a Scottsdale princess?” Mel snapped, feeling her temper begin to heat. “I’m a Southie, born and raised off of Camelback Road. I am no princess.”

“Look at you. You’re tall, blonde, and thin,” Olivia snorted. “For someone who says she isn’t a princess, you sure look the part.”

The irony was almost too much to take. When Mel was a chubby adolescent, she was derided and called “Bessie, the chocolate cow.” She would have given anything to be considered a princess back then.

Now, after years of struggling with her weight, she had developed a healthy relationship with food and felt good about her body and herself. And she was being mocked for it. It was all so ridiculous.

“Olivia, you need to step aside,” Mel said. “I have just as much right as anyone to enter.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Olivia said. “You’re not entering my contest.”

She puffed out her chest, and Mel was sure she was going to expand to fill the entire landing. She was stocky with corkscrew gray hair that she wore in a stubby ponytail on top of her head. She also wore a blue chef’s coat that Mel suspected she thought made her look like Cat Cora on the
Iron Chef
TV show. Mel wanted to tell her that it just made her look like Grumpy Smurf, but she didn’t think that would get Olivia out of her way.

“Five minutes,” Angie hissed from behind her.

Mel felt her panic swell. Olivia was not known for being reasonable, and the clock was ticking.

“‘I don’t scratch my head unless it itches, and I don’t dance unless I hear some music. I will not be intimidated. That’s just the way it is,’” Angie muttered.

“Coach Boone in
Remember the Titans
,” Mel identified the movie quote. She and Angie and their other childhood friend, Tate Harper, were old movie aficionados and frequently quizzed one another with movie quotes. But why was Angie doing it now? Didn’t she know they were in a crisis? But then, she’d chosen a football movie quote, and Mel realized that was no coincidence. She knew what Angie was thinking.

“No, we can’t do that,” she said over her shoulder.

Olivia was watching them through narrowed eyes.

“We have no choice,” Angie said. “It’s got to be the fall-over feint.”

Mel groaned. Angie had seven older brothers, who loved to play touch football, and Mel had spent enough time at the DeLaura family gatherings to be drafted into play. When they were younger, she and Angie had never been able to get their hands on the ball, and the brothers only allowed them on the field to humor them and keep their mother from scolding them. So naturally, Mel and Angie had been forced to create a few plays of their own, one of which was the fall-over feint. It was guaranteed to get them where they wanted to go with the ball, but usually resulted in someone getting fairly banged up.

“Three minutes,” Angie said through gritted teeth.

“All right, all right,” Mel said. “On three.”

Olivia was beginning to look concerned.

“One,” Angie counted.

“Two,” said Mel.

“Three!” they said together.

Mel fell over to the side, curling up into a tight ball as she went, as Angie sprung over her. Mel felt Angie’s sneaker kick the side of her head, but she came out of her crouch and crawled past the collision of bodies, barely registering that Angie had Olivia pinned to the floor as Mel hurried up the stairs.

Olivia let out a furious bellow, and from her splayed position on the landing, she reached out an arm and tried to grab Mel’s leg, but she was too late. Mel reached the top of the stairs and took off in a sprint.

The door to 12B was open, and Mel skidded into the room and glanced at the digital clock on the wall. It read 10:00. An elderly woman was working the counter, and she squinted at Mel through her reading glasses. She held out her hand, and Mel shoved the papers into it. As the woman hit it with a rubber stamp, the clock flipped to 10:01.

“You’re cutting it pretty close, miss,” the woman said. Her short hair was dyed a champagne color, and her purple lipstick matched the frames of her reading glasses.

Mel sagged against the counter and glanced at the woman’s name tag. “You have no idea, Jane.”

Angie came tearing into the office. Her T-shirt had a small rip, and her long brown hair was hanging haphazardly out of her hair band. “Did we make it?”

Too winded to speak, Mel held up her fist, and Angie banged knuckles with her.

“Excellent!” she said and then sagged against the counter beside Mel.

Jane, the clerk, looked at them in concern and then left the counter. She came back with two Dixie cups of water.

“Thanks,” Mel said. She held hers up toward Angie, and they clinked paper.

“Let’s take Olivia down for good,” Angie said.

“I hear that,” Mel agreed. They downed their water and crushed their cups. Tossing the cups into the wastepaper basket, they left the office calling a thank-you to Jane. There was no sign of Olivia on the stairs, just a smudge of flour on the floor where she’d been sprawled. Mel took it as a good sign.

“How did it go?” Tate asked as he pushed open the front door of the bakery. “Are you registered? You didn’t forget, did you?”

“Why would you think I’d forget?” Mel asked.

Tate was wearing his usual power suit. Today it was an Armani in navy with a crisp white shirt and jade green tie. His wavy brown hair was cropped in a conservative cut to suit the investment clients he dealt with each day, and he looked every inch the wealthy businessman that he was.

Having known him since he was riddled with acne and shooting rubber bands out of his braces, Mel often forgot that her childhood chum had grown into a man that most husband-hunting women would happily hold at gunpoint to force a proposal.

Tate stared at her. Then he looked at Angie, who was restocking the display case with Mel’s latest creation, the Choco-Pom Cupcake, a chocolate and pomegranate concoction that was Mel’s current favorite.

“How did she do?” he asked Angie.

“Made it with a nanosecond to spare,” Angie said.

Tate shook his head. “Mel, you’ve got to get your game face on.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Mel protested. “We would have been there in plenty of time if not for Olivia.”

“Olivia Puckett?” he asked.

“Yep.” Angie said. “She tried to block us from turning in our paperwork.”

“How did you get past her?”

Mel and Angie exchanged a look. Angie ducked back behind the display case and began rapidly unloading the Choco-Poms. Mel grabbed a rag and began wiping down the counter even though she had just finished doing so minutes before.

Tate lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose as if bracing himself for a migraine. “You might as well tell me. It can’t be any worse than what I’m imagining.”

“The fall-over feint,” Mel mumbled.

“Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,” Tate said. He cupped his ear and leaned close.

“The fall-over feint,” Mel repeated with a grimace.

“You didn’t,” he said. He looked as if his knees might give out, and he lowered himself into a nearby chair.

“We did.” Angie popped up from the display case with an empty tray. “And it worked, too.”

“Of course it worked,” Tate said. “It always works! Last time it worked so well, your brother Tony ended up in the hospital with a concussion. Please tell me Olivia is unconcussed.”

“She got up on her own power,” Angie said. “As soon as I got off of her.”

“Does the word
lawsuit
mean anything to you two?” Tate asked. He looked as if he might have a seizure.

“She was blocking our way,” Mel said. “We really had no choice.”

“If Joe hears about this . . .” Tate’s voice trailed off, and Mel blanched.

Her boyfriend, Joe DeLaura, one of Angie’s older brothers, was an assistant district attorney. There was no question. He would be very unhappy to find out she and Angie had tackled someone, even someone as annoying as Olivia Puckett.

“Well, I don’t see why he would unless someone shoots his mouth off,” Angie said. She glowered at Tate, making it very clear who she thought the weak link might be.

He raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. Angie scowled, picked up her tray, and pushed her way through the swinging door back into the kitchen.

“What did I say?” he asked Mel.

“‘It has been my experience that men are least attracted to women who treat them well,’” Mel said.

“Miss Bowers in
Death on the Nile
,” Tate cited the quote without blinking. “Played by Maggie Smith, I believe.”

“Correct and correct,” Mel said.

“So, enlighten me,” he said. He leaned forward, resting an elbow on the table, eagerness etched in every line of his body. “What’s going on with Ange?”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Mel warned him.

“Too late.” He grinned. “Did she dump him? Is it over? Was he crushed?”

“No, no, and no,” Mel said. “In fact, I’m worried about her. He hasn’t called her in two days.”

Tate let out a groan and leaned back. “That’s it?”

“He’s never missed a day,” Mel said. She put away her cleaning rag and wiped her hands on her bright pink bib apron that had
Fairy Tale Cupcakes
scrawled in glittery script across the front.

Tate rolled his eyes. “Why is she still dating him? I mean, what can she possibly see in him?”

He was referring to Angie’s boyfriend of three months. Brian Malloy, known to his fans as Roach, was the drummer in the popular rock band the Sewers. He and Angie had met when his father had been murdered on a date with Mel’s mother. Roach had made the mistake of accusing Mel of harming his father, and Angie had gone nuclear on him. Mel suspected very few people got in the rock star’s face, and he had been bowled over by Angie and asked her out immediately.

“Um, let’s see, he’s hot,” Mel said. She came around the counter and sat across from Tate. “Oh, yeah, and he’s hot.”

“Only if you go for the ‘skinny, tattooed, with stringy hair’ type,” Tate grumped.

Mel pressed her lips together. Over the past few months, she had become a master at knowing when to keep her mouth shut. Whatever happened between Angie and Tate, she fervently hoped they would all come out friends at the end of it.

It had been the three of them against the world for as long as she could remember. Then Tate had gotten engaged, and Angie had finally come clean to Mel about her feelings for him. She was in love with Tate and had been since they were kids. Oy.

But after his tragically ended engagement, Tate, being a typical male, had wallowed and whined and refused even to consider dating anyone ever again. Then Roach had come to town and swept Angie off her feet. Now Tate had come to realize that he was in love with her, too, but so far he had not declared himself but sat ever hopeful, waiting for Angie’s relationship to implode.

It was only a matter of time before the situation was resolved. Roach had asked Angie to move back to Los Angeles with him, but she had told him she wanted to wait until he was done with his current tour. Mel knew that once Roach was back, decisions would have to be made.

Mel hated the idea of losing her best friend and partner, but Tate had it much worse. He stood to lose the love of his life without ever having told her how he felt.

“He’ll call,” he said sourly. “He’d be an idiot to let her go.”

Mel reached over and patted his shoulder. “Hang in there, champ.”

“I have a choice?”

“No.”

“Okay, I’ve worked out a schedule,” Angie said as she came bustling back through the kitchen door. She was carrying a clipboard and had a red pen in her hand. “We have three weeks, and we’re going to need every second of them.”