Buttercream Bump Off (30 page)

Mel could feel a stitch cramping her side and she was wheezing just a bit as Angie skidded to a stop in front of the darkened glass doors of an office building.

“What office do we need?” Angie asked.

Mel glanced at the papers in her hand. “12B.”

“Second floor,” Angie said. She glanced at her watch. “Seven minutes.”

Mel suppressed a groan as they pulled open the doors and hit the stairs on the right. They wound up in a tight turn. Mel was jogging up the steps, breathing hard, when she slammed into Angie’s back.

“Ow!” She grabbed the rail to keep from falling backwards and glanced up to see why Angie had stopped.

Blocking the way upstairs in a fair imitation of a brick wall was Olivia Puckett, owner of the rival bakery Confections and Mel’s own personal pain in the patoot.

“Step aside,” Angie growled.

Olivia spread her beefy arms wide. “Make me.”

Angie took a step forward as if she would do just that, but Mel grabbed her arm and held her back. Angie was known for being a bit of a firecracker, and Mel didn’t want her sending off any sparks here.

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 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
Iron Chef
. Mel wanted to tell her that it just made her look like Grouchy 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 pitch 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 as Angie sprung over her. Mel felt Angie’s sneaker kick the side of her head, but she was already crawling past the collision of bodies and up the remaining stairs.

Olivia let out a furious bellow as Angie clung to her back, holding her from going after Mel. From her splayed position on the landing, Olivia 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 just as the digital clock on the wall flipped to 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 paper 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 mussed. “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 with concern and then left the counter. She came back with two Dixie cups of water.

“Thanks,” Mel said. She held hers up towards 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.

 

SPRINKLE WITH MURDER
BUTTERCREAM BUMP OFF