One Spoonful of Trouble (Felicity Bell Book 1) (16 page)

Casting a wary eye at the wall of coolers, she had to suppress a shiver. Fortunately, the prep room itself was devoid of dead people. Apparently, before leaving for his congress, Uncle Charlie had tucked them all safely away.

“Sit,” said Alice, pointing to a metal chair next to the operating table.

Obediently, Felicity sat. “You’re going to work on me…here?” she asked a little uncertainly. This seemed highly inappropriate. Not to mention creepy.

“Sure,” said Alice as she rummaged around in a cupboard. She returned with something that resembled a large toolbox, and plunked it down on the operating table. “This is Uncle Charlie’s beauty case,” she explained as she snapped the locks and started rifling through the little drawers with relish.

Felicity gulped. “I didn’t know he was into this kind of thing.” She watched as Alice opened compartment after compartment. The bulky case contained everything a beautician needs. Brushes and curlers, creams and lotions, eyeliners and lipsticks, concealers and powders, blushes and bronzers, mascara and eyeliners…

Alice chuckled. “This is not for Uncle Charlie, silly. This is what he uses for his customers.”

“His…customers?”

“Dead people. Believe me, it’s much harder to make a dead body look good than a live one. Now sit back and let me assess the damage.”

CHAPTER 35

One hour later, Felicity’s eyebrows were starting to look normal again. And Alice was just lathering up a batch of soap to work on her pits, when the shop bell announced that a customer had arrived.

Ejaculating a powerful curse, Alice set down the bowl, wiped her hands on a towel, and excused herself.

Patiently awaiting her friend’s return, Felicity decided to continue the tune-up Alice had commenced. She quickly soaped up her armpits, and started applying a Gillette Venus to the exposed area. She felt relieved she’d asked Alice to help her out. Four hands were better than two, and Alice was something of a self-proclaimed beauty expert, having at one time taken beautician classes.

Nothing had ever come of it, but she still liked to help out those less fortunate in the looks department with encouragement and practical advice. Until now, Felicity had always declined the offer.

And she was just finishing up her left pit and getting ready for the other one, when an anomaly caught her eye. She’d purposely ignored the bank of freezers, but now her eye zoomed in on one of the drawers.

It was slightly ajar.

No matter how much she wished she could ignore the open drawer, she found that she couldn’t. She bit her lip, hoping Alice would soon return, and felt her discomfort rising like bile in her throat.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the drawer, and, not being able to stand the suspense, slowly rose to her feet. Making her way over, she approached the gleaming steel drawer with stealth and trepidation, much like one would a snow monkey in Central Park Zoo.

Her plan was to give the drawer a nudge, and instantly move away again.

She extended her hand, touched her index finger to the drawer, and pushed.

Unfortunately, the drawer refused to budge. It moved half an inch in the right direction, and then rolled back out.

Seeing this required a firm approach, she stole out her hand, and shoved.

Once again, the drawer seemed to sway, and then rolled out again.

Something, she deduced, was stuck inside, and she didn’t dare think what it could be. A hand, possibly, or a foot? Or, God forbid, someone’s head?

Then, with shivering bottom lip, she realized what this meant. Whoever was inside that drawer must have thawed out by now, and since she’d been a fervent fan of The Walking Dead, she knew exactly what happened to corpses that don’t receive the proper refrigeration. They rot.

She sniffed once and thought she detected a funny smell. Wrinkling up her nose, she decided that she should simply wait until Alice returned. She was the professional, after all. She should deal with this mess.

But then curiosity took over. She had to know what was inside that drawer.

She screwed up her courage to the sticking point and craned her neck to take a look, then forced herself to gaze into the abyss.

At the sight of the corpse which lay curled up inside the drawer, a scream first formed in the back of her throat before it found its way to her lips and rang out like a trumpet call.

It was the body of a cat.

And not just any cat.

It was her own darling Gaston.

Dead as a doornail.

CHAPTER 36

Falcone opened the door to the two men, and gave them a curt grumble by way of a greeting. As usual, the sight of Jerry and Johnny made him nauseous. He knew, of course, that to succeed in business, sometimes corners had to be cut, and even eggs broken, and these two idiots were something of a necessity, but that didn’t mean he had to like them.

They were good, he had to give them that. Like that one time a little old lady had refused to clear out when he’d wanted to buy her house, raze it to the ground, and build another one of his skyscrapers. One visit from Jerry and Johnny had done the trick, and the project had gone off without a hitch.

He disliked problems, and he employed people who made them go away. So when word reached his ears that Rick was writing a series of scathing articles about him, he’d first tried to reason with the boy, and when that hadn’t worked, had simply handed the affair to Jerry and Johnny, fully expecting them to perform their magic and make this problem, like all others, disappear.

Only it hadn’t. Unlike his competitors, little old ladies or pesky politicians, Rick proved to be one tough nut. No matter how hard Jerry and Johnny leaned on the boy, Rick kept popping up like a bad penny.

In Falcone’s estimation, failure was not an option, and he intended to give the two men an earful. But first he needed to know more about a matter that puzzled him.

“I don’t think I heard you right Jerry, but when I called earlier you told me Rick had run afoul of some woman called Felicity Bell, who had already tried to take him out a couple of times, using brute force in the process. Is that right?”

“That’s right, Mr. Falcone, sir,” Jerry said deferentially.

“So am I to understand that she’s succeeding where the two of you are not?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way, sir. It’s just that Rick’s a really tough man to find.”

“You mean to tell me that you still haven’t found him?”

Jerry visibly wrestled with his emotions. “Well—that is to say—”

“No, Mr. Falcone, sir. We haven’t been able to locate him yet,” said Johnny.

“So you have no idea where he is?”

“We almost caught him at the Happy Bays Inn, but he gave us the slip,” Johnny said with a moronic grin.

“So you’re nowhere nearer to getting that blasted file from him.”

“We’re on the right track sir,” Jerry said with a warning glance at Johnny.

“What do you mean? Looks to me you’ve been gallivanting all over the place while this Felicity Bell is doing all the work. Who is she working for, by the way?”

“Bell’s Bakery & Tea Room,” said Johnny. “Best gophers in town.”

So she was one of the bakery bunch, huh? Maybe tracking down guys was just a sideline for her. In any case she was good. Better than these two morons. She’d even managed to put Rick in the hospital. Not that he was in favor of using violence on the boy, but it showed enterprise. Initiative. Looked like she was succeeding where Jerry and Johnny were failing miserably.

He made up his mind. It never did take long for him to recognize a good deal when he saw it, and with the same swiftness he took business decisions, he said, “You’re fired, the both of you. Now clear out.”

“What? But sir!” cried Jerry, dismayed.

“For Christ’s sakes, take it like a man, Jerry. You can’t say you didn’t see this coming. When I pay good money to get a job done, I expect to get value for my buck. As far as I can tell, you two had every opportunity to get the file back from Rick and instead you let this woman get the better of you. Now don’t make me say this twice.” Then, just for the heck of it, and because he was a fan of The Donald, he said it anyway, rolling the words around his tongue with relish. “You. Are. Fired!”

The moment Jerry and Johnny had left, he picked up the phone and put in a call to his secretary. “Suzy, I need the address of a Felicity Bell. Bell, yes. She’s one of those bakery people. Yeah. Get back to me as soon as you can.”

Disconnecting, he felt as many a great man has felt in the course of history: if you want something done, better to do it yourself.

CHAPTER 37

As is often the case when two great minds align, Bianca Bell, pressing the bell of
Casa di Amore
, was thinking just the same thing at that exact same moment. The door swung open, and the disheveled form of Rick Dawson appeared, staring at her over the rim of a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.

To Bianca’s critical gaze, he looked just the kind of wastrel she’d been half expecting to find.

“Rick Dawson?” she asked, just to be on the safe side. When he nodded, she stepped into the house, not waiting for an invitation, and came straight to the point. “I’ve heard you’ve been seeing my daughter Felicity?”

The confused and slightly annoyed expression lifted from his face, and was replaced by one of jovial surprise. “Mrs. Bell? How nice of you to drop by.”

This display of cordiality did little to appease her. She’d been on the receiving end of male charm before, and she was quite immune to it. “That’s all right. Now tell me: what are your intentions with my daughter, young man?”

If Rick was surprised at her abruptness, he didn’t show it. Reporters, used to working in the trenches of life, and hardened by interviewing dictators, terrorists and other scum of the earth, aren’t easily thrown, not even by curvy women with a scowl, their hair covered in flour. To him, she looked exactly what she was: a baker’s wife, and since she wasn’t carrying a rolling pin, he wasn’t worried.

As it was, he’d done some serious thinking about Felicity since their pleasant drive that morning, and had come to the conclusion that she was just what the doctor ordered by way of a woman to spend the rest of his life with. Unlike the first impression he’d had of her, she was kind-hearted, cheerful and intelligent, and extremely attractive to boot. The fact that from time to time she enjoyed throwing frying pans at his head, pelt him with baby peas or bombard him with eggs, didn’t bother him in the least. It was merely a testament to the kind of boisterous spirit he admired in a girl. And since they’d cleared up that whole misunderstanding about working for his father, he’d had a complete change of heart.

“My intentions are strictly honorable, Mrs. Bell.” And he meant it.

Bianca, whom thirty years at the counter of Bell’s Bakery & Tea Room had turned into a great judge of character, saw that the sparkle in this man’s eye wasn’t merely the kind of lustful gaze she’d seen in so many a male. If she wasn’t mistaken, and she rarely was, this was love. In other words, the real deal.

“You like my daughter, don’t you?” she asked, wanting there to be no misunderstanding.

“I like her very much,” he said fervently. “In fact we’re having dinner tonight, and, and, and…” He merely grinned like an ape for a moment, then added, “I really hope I have your blessing, Mrs. Bell.”

Though she found it a little premature to be giving blessings at this stage of the proceedings, she had to admit this man wasn’t the monster she’d feared. Still, before allowing this thing to play out, she needed clarification on an important point. “You’re a reporter?”

“Yes, I am,” he admitted. “I work—used to work—for the New York Chronicle.”

She pursed her lips. “I don’t like the Chronicle. Full of sex and sleaze.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I was let go.”

“So you’re an unemployed ex-tabloid reporter.”

The indictment, though correct, stung, and he was quick to correct it. “I never wrote for page six if that’s what troubles you. And the reason I was let go was because I insisted on writing an exposé on Chazz Falcone, denouncing his corruption and shady business dealings. When he found out, he put pressure on the editor to nix the story, and when I refused, I was given the boot.”

The story affected Bianca powerfully. In her opinion, there was a big difference between a sleazy reporter being canned and an investigative journalist getting kicked to the curb because of his refusal to budge on a point of principle. She applauded him for it. “I always thought Chazz Falcone was a scoundrel,” she said, losing some of her frostiness. “He owns the house next door,
Casa di Vitae
.”

“I know. I spent many a summer down here as a boy.”

Her face lit up. She now saw all. “As a boy… Don’t tell me that you’re little Rickie who used to come into the bakery every day asking if he could scoop out the cake pans!”

Rick grinned. “That was me. I hope I didn’t give you too much trouble.”

“You certainly did not!” she cried, her face suddenly morphing into a picture of delight. “Little Rickie Falcone. Of course! You were crazy about my husband’s cake batter. Never could get enough.” She clucked her tongue. “Pity Fe is too young to remember. She was just a little girl.”

“A beautiful girl, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, she was. She was indeed.” She heaved a sigh of relief. “I should have made the connection when Fe mentioned you. Dawson is your mother’s name, isn’t it?”

“It is.” A look of devotion came into Rick’s eyes. “Felicity mentioned me?”

“Only in passing.”

Rick’s face fell. “Oh.”

“She was pressed for time. Running out the door.”

He perked up again. “Oh.”

“Well then.” She clasped her hands together. “This is most gratifying. And all I can say is, any time you feel like cleaning out Pete’s cake pans, don’t hesitate to drop by, young man. Always delighted.”

Like Bianca, Rick’s face was now wreathed in smiles. A happy acquaintance had been struck, and he assured his future mother-in-law—though he refrained from addressing her like that—he would be happy to take up his boyhood hobby of scooping out cake batter again.

And he was waving her goodbye as she drove off in her Mini Cooper, when he saw another visitor pull up the driveway. To his horror, Bomer had made good on his promise, and was grinning cheerily from his Porsche as the car rolled to a stop.