Death by the Dozen (20 page)

“Well, let’s go see if we can talk some sense into those judges.”

Scottsdale Osborn Hospital was across the street from the San Francisco Giants Stadium, well, their spring training stadium. Mel’s father had taken her and her brother, Charlie, every year to spring training games. Mel had always loved the red brick and green trim, and she could never pass it without thinking of her dad and missing him. Today it seemed particularly poignant.

As if sensing her distress, Joe laced his fingers with hers as they crossed the street and strode past the ball park and the Civic Center Library to the festival grounds.

Mel flashed her VIP badge at the perky volunteer. Joe just gave her his best dimpled smile, and the flustered woman let them in without hesitation.

“How do you do that?” Mel asked. “It’s like a superpower.”

Joe grinned at her and she shook her head. The man could charm a girl right out of her apron with a smile like that.

She felt her stomach knot up with a sick feeling of dread as they approached the challenge to the chefs staging area. She tried to brace herself for the gloating satisfaction she would see on Olivia’s mug, because no matter how you looked at it, Mel was late and she was pretty positive that alone put her out of the competition. There was no way she could make a dessert out of whatever ingredient they’d hit them with when there was only a half an hour left to go and she didn’t have her sous-chef.

The staging area was in its usual full-throttle chaos as Mel and Joe approached. The judges were circling, and Mel watched as Dutch stopped by what was usually her station. Today it was occupied by someone else. Naturally, since she and Angie hadn’t shown up, it had been given to a different competitor.

Mel squinted at the booth. A large man with a very bad haircut was slicing and dicing and sending Joanie, their runner, off the stage to fetch something. Oh, man, they even gave their runner away? That seemed cold.

Joanie was pounding down the stairs and jogging past Mel when she stopped and gaped at her. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I just thought I’d—”

“Get up there,” Joanie interrupted her and gave her a shove toward the stage. “He needs you, the boy is in way over his head, but he’s fighting to keep you alive. Now git!”

Mel looked back at the station. Recognition zapped her like a knife in a toaster. “Oz? Is that Oz?”

She turned a wide-eyed glance at Joe, who looked equally surprised and a lot impressed. “Well, go help him!”

Mel gave Joe a quick kiss and ran up the steps onto the stage.

“Oz!” Mel called. “I can’t believe you, what possessed you to attempt this?”

“Tony called the bakery and told me about Angie, and I didn’t know what else to do to help out. I know how important it is to her to beat that cow,” he said with a glare over at Olivia.

“Oz, I . . . you . . . you’re awesome.”

“Thanks, but are you going to help me here or what? The clock is ticking louder than Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve countdown, and I’m starting to panic,” he said.

It was true. His round face was beaded up with sweat, and his chef’s coat was too tight and looked the worse for wear.

“I’m in!” Mel jumped into the kitchenette beside him.

“Oh, thank the culinary gods!” Oz sagged against his cutting board.

“All right, what’s the mystery ingredient, and what are you cooking with it?” she asked.

“You ready for this?” Oz asked. He held up a string of red chili peppers. “Are we having fun yet?”

Mel broke into a grin. “Oh, yeah, we are. What’s your plan?”

The timer buzzed on the oven, and Oz hustled over to it. He took out a pan of cupcakes and popped them in the cooler. “Well, we’re called Fairy Tale Cupcakes, so I figured I’d make the chocolate chili cupcakes my
abuela
made when I was a kid.”

“Oh, Oz!” Mel grabbed his face and planted a kiss on his shaggy head. For a nanosecond his eyes appeared from between the hanks of the hair that usually hung over them, and they were wide with surprise. “It’s perfect, you know that, right?”

He flushed with pleasure and began to stammer, “B-But now I’m stuck. I don’t have the skills to plate these.”

“I’m your sous-chef,” Mel said. “I’ll work on the plating. You just finish what you started.”

Oz blew out a breath. “Okay. Hey, how is Angie?”

Mel smiled at him. “Well, after this, she’s going to demand that we give you a raise.”

“But I’m interning. You’re not paying me anything,” he said.

“We’re going to have to rethink that,” Mel said. “Now, let’s do this.”

Oz snapped back into action. The boy had skills—of that, there was no question. His cupcakes had cooled, and he was carefully unwrapping them. In a pot on his small stove top he had melted a chocolate candy coating. Mel watch as he used a long wooden skewer, stabbed the top of a cupcake, and dipped it into the chocolate. He moved quickly, dipping each one and placing them carefully on wax paper.

When he removed the wooden skewer, Mel carefully placed a whole chili from the strand onto the top of the cupcake. When they were done, Oz put them into their small refrigerator to set the chocolate.

Mel helped herself to the leftover chocolate candy and set to making intricate swirls of chocolate on the dessert plate and then sprinkling tiny amounts of chili flakes amidst the whirls and curlicues.

The warning bell sounded. They had one minute to go. Oz pulled out the cupcakes with their hardened chocolate shells and placed one onto each plate. They looked amazing.

They exchanged a high-five and a half hug just as the alarm sounded for the end of the competition.

There were a couple of cupcakes leftover, and Mel was dying to see how Oz’s cupcake tasted. Even if they were lousy, she was so proud of him for jumping in to help, she boxed the leftovers and couldn’t wait to bring one up to Angie to show her.

The servers took away their entries, and Mel and Oz departed the staging area. Joe was waiting and he asked, “How did it go?”

Mel opened the box to show him, and his eyes got their usual sugar-crazed glaze on them.

“Are those chocolate chili?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” Mel answered. He reached for the box, but she smacked his hand away.

“I’m saving these for Angie. Oz, I want you to take the rest of the day off,” she said. “You went above and beyond. I can’t wait to tell your guidance counselor about how you saved the day. Hey, how did you get them to let you compete for us anyway?”

“I found Angie’s VIP tags at the shop,” he said. “So, I had those, and then some crazy blonde lady threatened to have her husband shut the festival down if I wasn’t allowed to represent the bakery.”

“Ginny,” Mel said. “Huh, I’ll have to thank her.”

“I want to sleep for two years,” Oz said. “How do you people do this? God, they’re going to judge those cupcakes. What if they’re a bust? I can’t stand to watch.”

“Go,” Mel ordered. “They’re going to be great. I know it. You saved us, Oz.”

He flipped her a lopsided grin and loped off through the crowd toward the exit.

“You’re really not going to let me try one?” Joe asked.

“Well, maybe one, back at the shop. I have to see if the bakery is okay. I’m going to keep it closed today. I want to get back to the hospital and check on Angie.”

“Tony just called to report. She’s still in the ICU, but she’s doing fine,” Joe said. “I didn’t tell him about Oz. I thought you might want to share that story.”

Mel smiled. “It is a good one.”

Together they clasped hands and made their way back to Old Town. Mel noted that Oz had put a sign on the door saying that because of a family emergency the bakery would be closed. The doors were locked, the lights were off, and all seemed calm. She really had to hire that boy on permanently.

“Hungry?” she asked as they climbed the stairs to her apartment.

“Are you offering me a cupcake?” he asked.

“How about a chicken sandwich and then a cupcake?” She unlocked her door and pushed it open.

“O . . . ah!” Joe’s answer turned into a yelp as a white ball of fury flew out of the open door and latched on to his pant leg.

“Captain Jack!” Mel shoved the cupcakes into Joe’s arms and unhooked the kitten from the fabric of his pants. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry, little guy. I forgot about you.”

Joe looked at her over the box. “New boyfriend?”

“Angie and I found him in the Dumpster last night trying to eat a cupcake that was bigger than him,” Mel said. She held the white ball of furious fur under her chin and tried to soothe him. “It’s okay, buddy, you’re all right. I’ve got you.”

Captain Jack began to purr, and Mel felt him nuzzle her. It appeared he had decided he liked her, or maybe he had just scared himself silly and was willing to take comfort where he could get it.

“Captain Jack?” Joe asked.

“Angie named him because of his black eye spot. It looks like a pirate’s patch.”

“So, we’re talking
Pirates of the Caribbean
’s Jack Sparrow?”

“Exactly,” Mel said.

“But Jack doesn’t have an eye patch.”

“Yeah, tell your sister that.”

Joe followed her into the apartment with a little wince.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “He gashed me pretty badly. I think I’m bleeding.”

“Oh, let me get you some Neosporin and a Band-Aid,” Mel said.

She turned to go to the bathroom, but Joe stopped her by grabbing the back of her jeans and pulling her back.

“I really think a kiss and a cupcake will do the trick,” he said with a grin.

“Oh, you big faker,” she said. “You have cupcakes on the brain. Here, he can kiss you.”

She held out Captain Jack to him, and Joe gave her a wary look before he took him. “He’s not going to shred me, is he?”

“No, but he may try to steal your cupcake.”

Joe lifted the kitten until they were nose to nose. “Apparently, we need to come to an understanding,” he said. “The cupcakes and the girl are mine. I’ll share but remember more mine than yours, got it?”

Captain Jack gave him a squinty stink eye and then promptly began to lick his own shoulder.

“I’m just guessing here, but I think this little pirate is plotting to have me thrown off of his ship.”

Mel laughed as she quickly made them each a chicken sandwich on toasted sour dough with lettuce and tomato and a light smear of mayonnaise. She then poured Captain Jack a small saucer of milk and gave him some diced-up chicken of his own, placing it on the floor in his corner of the kitchen.

“No wonder he attacked me,” Joe said. “You feed him like this and he’s never going to leave.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?” she asked.

Joe looked at the kitten and then at her and back at Captain Jack, who seemed to sense that his future swung in the balance. He looked up at Joe and gave a very loud belch for such a tiny cat. Joe burst out laughing.

“He really is a Captain Jack,” he said. “I’m game if you are.”

Mel smiled. “We have a pet.”

Joe took a bite of his sandwich. “It’ll be good practice for us.”

“Practice?”

“You know, for having kids,” he said.

Mel sucked in a gulp of air and a piece of bread lodged in her throat, making her choke. It wasn’t the “delicate clearing of the throat” choking; it was a full-on hacking like she was going to die before she got the bread dislodged with several whacks on the back from Joe.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she answered, her voice tight. She took a long sip of water, trying to ease the raked feeling of her esophagus. It only helped a little. “Wrong tube.”

If Joe thought her sudden attack was from him mentioning babies, he said nothing and neither did Mel. She thought perhaps she had misunderstood him. They had been dating for only a few months; surely he couldn’t be thinking that far in the future, could he?

Thankfully, Captain Jack kept them entertained by swatting and chasing his empty plastic bowl around the kitchen floor.

Joe collected their dishes while Mel took out Oz’s cupcakes. She had to acknowledge that a part of her was nervous.

They looked good with their thick chocolate coating and pepper on top. She put one on a plate for each of them, and Joe handed her a fork.

“Here goes nothing,” Mel said. She tucked into the cupcake, breaking through the chocolate exterior and into the seemingly moist cake. She raised the forkful to her mouth, knowing that their contest status was dependent upon the efforts of a supersized high school punk rocker with culinary aspirations, and her first impression of the taste was that it was exquisite.

She and Joe exchanged wide-eyed glances.

“This is fantastic!” he said. “This could be one of yours.”

The taste of chocolate and chili rolled across her tongue in a burst of flavor that burned while it soothed, but neither flavor overpowered the other. It was addictive. She took another bite and another, and before she knew it, the cupcake was gone. She glanced at her empty plate and then at Joe.