The Cakes of Wrath (25 page)

I awoke the next morning to the pleasant aromas of coffee and bacon, two scents that I'm pretty sure could raise me from the grave if the need ever arose. Miss Frankie had settled me in Philippe's room and I'd fallen asleep the minute my head hit the pillow. I thought I'd heard raised voices once, but I wasn't sure if they'd been real or part of a dream.

Desperate for caffeine and food, I slipped a robe over the pajamas Miss Frankie had loaned me and limped downstairs. I knew she'd object to me showing up for breakfast without dressing first, but I wasn't sure I could manage alone and I hoped she'd be in a forgiving mood since I was injured and all.

It took forever to get to the bottom of the stairs. I was so focused on getting one foot in front of the other without falling, I didn't notice the suitcases stacked up by the front door until I was standing in the foyer.

Well, now . . . that was interesting. Were they Pearl Lee's? Did that mean she'd actually told Miss Frankie the truth? Maybe those raised voices last night had been real.

I didn't want to be responsible for a driving a wedge between family members, but I wasn't the one who'd been lying to Miss Frankie. I wasn't the one who'd been sneaking around and hiding what I was doing. If Pearl Lee's shenanigans had finally caught up with her, she only had herself to blame.

Feeling lighter than I had in several days, I turned toward the kitchen and sniffed appreciatively. I pushed a lock of bed hair out of my eyes and opened the door. “Miss Frankie, you sure do know how to give a girl incentive—”

I focused on the scene in front of me and the words froze in my throat. Miss Frankie stood in front of the range. Pearl Lee was pouring coffee into Miss Frankie's best china cups, and a couple of strangers stared at me from chairs at the table. A middle-aged woman with a porcelain doll face and almond-shaped eyes looked horrified by my appearance. Her companion, a large man of about the same age with graying hair and wide blue eyes, kept his head down and darted sidelong looks at me every few seconds.

That lock of messy hair fell back into my eyes and I clutched the robe tightly in front of me. “I'm sorry. I didn't realize you had guests.”

Miss Frankie wagged a spatula in my direction. “Don't worry about it, sugar. You run back upstairs and dress. We'll wait for you.”

I turned around obediently, and it wasn't until I was halfway up the stairs that reality broke through the medication-induced haze in my brain. Oh. My. God. I stopped in my tracks and turned around again.
Oh. My. God!
I wanted someone to tell me I'd imagined those two people in the kitchen. I wanted someone to convince me that they weren't who I thought they were. But even if someone had tried, I wouldn't have believed them.

Edie was going to freak out. She'd probably blame me and want to finish the job Scotty had started last night. And to tell the absolute truth, I wouldn't have blamed her.

Dumbfounded and unable to think clearly, I took a couple of steps back down the stairs, then changed my mind and climbed up to the second floor. I had no idea what I was going to do about this, but I'd have a much better chance of holding my own against Miss Frankie if I was dressed. Whatever “my own” was in this situation.

To my dismay, my jeans and T-shirt had disappeared from Philippe's old bedroom while I slept and a fluorescent pink jogging suit hung in their place. A clean pair of granny panties and some tube socks sat on the chair by the window along with a bra that wouldn't even dream of containing “the girls.”

Was she
kidding
me?

I dug around in Philippe's childhood dresser, hoping I'd find some of his adult clothes. I found a couple pairs of clean boxers and a stack of white undershirts that I could have worn if I'd had the full use of both arms, but everything else had probably been here since his junior high school days. There was no way I could squeeze my thighs into any of his jeans. No way to pull a T-shirt over my head. So the jogging suit it was.

I dressed as quickly as I could, rolling the waist of the jogging pants a couple of times to make them look less like “mom” pants and also to take up the slack in the length since my legs were about half as long as Miss Frankie's. After zipping the jacket to hide my braless state. I shoved my hair around gently, but there was really no hope for it. After that, I went back to the kitchen, where everyone but me seemed to be in a fantastic mood. They were so busy chatting, nobody even noticed me until I cleared my throat to get their attention.

Miss Frankie hopped up when she saw me and grabbed both of my hands to tug me toward the table. “Rita, how
are
you feeling?”

“Fine,” I lied. “What's going on here?”

“Come. Sit down. We have guests.”

“I can see that.” Determined to take control of the situation myself, I extricated my hands from her tight grasp and offered one to Edie's father. “I'm Rita Lucero,” I said. “You must be Mr. Bryce.”

He stood to shake my hand. “Call me Charlie. And this is my wife, Lin.” He waited for me to sit before he resumed his own seat. “You're Edie's boss at the bakery, right? I take it you didn't know we were coming.”

I was pretty tired of Miss Frankie's shenanigans, too. I shot a harsh look at her, which she managed to ignore, and then gave the Bryces my best smile. “No. I didn't realize you'd be here. This is quite a surprise. When did you arrive?”

“Just this morning. Miss Frankie told us about your accident. I hope you're feeling better.”

I waggled a hand in a so-so gesture and spoke to my meddling ex-mother-in-law. “I can't imagine why you didn't tell me they were coming. Does Edie know?”

“We thought it best not to tell her,” Mrs. Bryce said in a softly accented voice.

“Are you sure that's wise?”

Lin Bryce picked up her coffee cup in both hands and brought it almost to her lips. “Yes, I am. Edie is being completely unreasonable. Telling her would have only made things worse. I do hope you're not encouraging her in this . . . thing.”

And by
thing
, she meant her soon-to-be grandchild? I hid my curled lip behind my own cup and tried to figure out how to respond without making everything worse. “I'm supporting her,” I said after I got a bit of caffeine into my system. “She's a friend.”

Pearl Lee appeared at my side with the coffeepot. “They have a very tight-knit group at Zydeco. Edie is in good hands.” I appreciated the vote of confidence as much as I hated that she was using the moment to suck up.

Mrs. Bryce's mouth pinched tight with disapproval. “Considering the choices she has been making lately, I doubt that very much. We did not raise our daughter to behave this way. Something is influencing her, and not in a positive way.”

Ouch!
My smile froze and I glanced at Charlie for his reaction. He put a big bear hand on his wife's shoulder. “Now, Lin, let's not start off on the wrong foot.” He smiled an apology all around the room. “My wife is understandably upset by what's going on. I'm sure you can understand.”

I was raised to have manners. Really, I was. But I'd had a rough couple of weeks and I was in no mood for their holier-than-thou attitudes. “Yeah, well, Edie's upset, too, and she's the one who's pregnant and alone.”

Lin gave me another pinched look. “And whose fault is that?”

“She wasn't raised to be fast and loose,” Charlie said, as if that explained everything.

“Edie isn't fast and loose,” I said. “She's anything but that.”

“And yet she's pregnant with a child out of wedlock.” Lin put her cup down on the saucer with a
clink
. “I think that proves otherwise.”

“Edie doesn't make a habit of sleeping around,” I said. I tried to remain calm and rational, but my voice rose a little with every word and I was practically shouting by the time I finished.

Miss Frankie appeared at my side and put a hand on my shoulder. “Rita, the Bryces are my guests. I invited them here, and I insist that you treat them with respect while you're in my house. I think we should arrange to meet Edie for dinner tomorrow. You talk to her in the morning and we can all get together tomorrow night—if you think you'll feel up to it, that is.”

My face burned from the sting of her rebuke, but the way she just kept pushing made my blood boil. “I'm not going to sit down for dinner with Edie and her parents,” I snapped. “You weren't even supposed to invite them. Edie doesn't want them here. I can't even count the number of times I told you to stay out of it.”

Miss Frankie's eyes flashed but she kept that smile on her face. “I don't think this is the time or place for this conversation.”

“I can't talk to you privately,” I shouted. “You just ignore me and do what you want anyway. Now Edie's parents are here and they're acting like Edie sold state secrets or burned the flag or something, and you expect me to set up a dinner as if there's no problem? I can't even tell you how wrong that is. They have a grandchild on the way who is going to need its family, but all they can think about is what a bad person Edie is. No wonder she didn't want them here.”

Charlie got to his feet and Lin's face turned to stone.

Miss Frankie straightened her shoulders and looked down her nose at me. “We all know that you're not yourself, sugar. You'll apologize to the Bryces, of course. They're here to straighten this mess out, that's all.”

Anger buzzed around in my head, and every word Miss Frankie spoke only made it louder. “I doubt very much they want to reconcile with Edie. They're here to shame her, and because you just couldn't keep from meddling. This is none of our business, Miss Frankie. You should have kept out of it and let them work it out on their own. I can't
believe
you put me in the middle of this.”

She pulled her hand away as if the heat of my anger had burned her. “It was the right thing to do.”

“No,” I said. “It wasn't.” I put my cup on the table and stood. “I'm not getting involved in this, Miss Frankie. Don't expect me to smooth the way for you. You're on your own. But you should know that if Edie leaves Zydeco over this, it's going to take a long time for me to forgive you.”

I wanted to pick up my keys and purse and make a dramatic exit, but everything I'd brought with me was upstairs in Philippe's old bedroom so I had no choice but to limp upstairs again. By the time I got there, I was so exhausted all I could do was collapse on the bed. I lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling and wondering how Edie was going to react when she found out that her parents were in town.

Miss Frankie isn't one to leave bad feelings unresolved, so I expected her to come after me and insist that we talk. When an hour passed, and there was no sign of her, it was clear she wasn't going to come, and that spoke more strongly about how she felt than anything else could have. Well, so what if she was angry with me—I was angry with her, too, so I guess we were even. Maybe I owed her an apology for flying off the handle, but I still couldn't believe she'd had the nerve to bring Edie's parents to town.

Eventually, I called a cab to take me home. I expected Miss Frankie to stop me from leaving, but she didn't even make an appearance as I limped back down the stairs and out the door. I knew the ball was in my court now, both in my relationship with Miss Frankie and the battle over Edie's right to live her own life. The trouble was, I didn't know which play to make, or how to run it once I made up my mind. I only knew I didn't have much time to waste.

First things first. The moment the cab driver dropped me at home, I took off that dreadful pink jogging suit and changed into a pair of sweatpants, a strapless bra with a front closure that I could actually fasten without hurting my shoulder too much, and a soft cotton shirt that buttoned down the front. Getting dressed was a chore but I felt more human once I was wearing my own clothes. That led me to try brushing my hair, which proved to be more problematic. I gave up after a few minutes, secured the tangled mess with a clip, and called it good enough.

I still didn't know what I was going to do about Miss Frankie, but I couldn't just sit back and let Edie get blindsided by her parents. I had to tell her they were in town, but I didn't know how to do that without making her angry. I decided I could use some advice, so I turned to the wisest person I know—my aunt Yolanda. To my dismay, the call went straight to voice mail. I left a message and hung up but by that time all the exertion had wiped me out. I put the phone on the nightstand so I could hear it if it rang, and lay back on the bed. It was only noon, so I figured Edie would still be at work for at least five more hours—I thought Miss Frankie would wait for me to apologize before contacting Edie herself, which meant that I could close my eyes for a few minutes and still have plenty of time to talk with Edie today. I just needed five minutes. Maybe ten. Then I'd go to Zydeco and start cleaning up the mess Miss Frankie had created.

I woke up sometime later to the sound of someone banging on my door. Late afternoon shadows bathed my bedroom, which meant I'd been asleep for hours. I was so groggy, I completely forgot about my shoulder until I sat up. When I did, I remembered my injury in a hurry. Cradling my arm to keep my shoulder from moving again, I began the laborious process of making my way down the stairs.

The banging sounded so insistent, I figured Detective Winslow must have tracked me down. I just knew there would be hell to pay for leaving the hospital before he got there.

Bang, bang, bang!
“Rita? Are you in there?”

I recognized Edie's voice and I was both relieved and worried at the same time. Relieved because it wasn't Winslow—yet. Worried because this had to mean I was too late. Miss Frankie had gotten to her first, and now she was here to . . . to do what?

Quit?

Probably.

I rubbed my face and tried to clear my head. Maybe I could talk her out of doing something rash, but if I hoped to do that, I'd need to think. My brain felt as if it was misfiring badly.

Bang, bang, bang!
“Rita! Come on. Open the door!”

I pulled in a calming breath and took the last four steps as quickly as I dared. I flipped the locks and opened the door to Edie. She stood on the porch, her eyes wild and her face so pinched with emotion the resemblance to her mother hit me between the eyes.

“Sorry,” I said. “What's going on?”

Edie brushed past me into the house, looked around for something, and then lunged for the switch on the wall. The lights came on and she turned to get a good look at me. “I've been worried sick. We've been calling you for hours. Why didn't you answer your phone?”

I was still muddled, so I had trouble following her. “You . . . Wait.
What?
”

“I was up half the night waiting to hear something from the hospital,” she said. “Nobody there would tell me anything. And then this morning, Ox said Miss Frankie had taken you to her house.” She put a large baking dish covered with foil on the coffee table and then shooed me toward the couch, talking a mile a minute while she helped me sit and put my feet up. “We figured everything was okay, but when Ox called Miss Frankie's to talk to you, she said you weren't there. What the hell are you doing here by yourself?”

Edie was concerned about me? That must mean she didn't know about her parents . . . but was that good or bad? At least she wasn't angry—yet. But now
I
had to tell her, and that wasn't going to be easy.

My heart started beating faster and my throat grew tight and dry. “You're here to check up on me?”

“Of course.” She plumped a pillow and wedged it carefully behind my shoulder. “How's that? Does that feel all right?”

I nodded. “I'm really okay,” I said. “I should have called. I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, you should have.” She picked up the baking dish and turned toward the kitchen. “Don't move. I brought dinner. And just so you know, I'm staying the night.” My confusion must have been evident because she waved toward the front door and explained, “My bag is out in the car. I'll get it after we eat.”

“You don't have to stay with me,” I said automatically.

She gave me her mother's face again. “You are
not
staying alone. It's either me or Ox and Isabeau. Or Sparkle. They all offered to come over—if you don't want me, I'll call one of them.”

I held up both hands as far as I could without wincing. “Okay, okay. I give. There's no need to call anyone else.”

She gave me a satisfied smile and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving behind a whiff of something from inside that dish that I couldn't identify. I thought about following her into the kitchen, but two things stopped me. One, I was surprisingly comfortable where I was, and two, a few minutes alone would buy me time to think.

Edie rattled around in the kitchen for a while and then reappeared with a plate containing a lump of overcooked meat, a mound of greens, and another of rice riddled with flecks of green onion. “It's not much,” she said as she handed me the plate. “But it's what I had on hand.”

“You cooked?”

She gave me a stern look. “Don't laugh. I'm trying to eat healthy for the baby.”

And this was how she did it? Interesting. She went back to the kitchen and I got busy trying to figure out what she was serving me. Edie and I met at pastry school, but baking was not her forte. Apparently, cooking wasn't either. I picked at the meat and decided it must be pork, extremely well done. The fried rice was easy to figure out, but the greens gave me a bit more trouble. The leaves were flat and dull, so I ruled out kale. I took a sniff and crossed spinach and beet greens off the list. That left collard or mustard greens as possibilities.

I'm not a big fan of bitter greens, even when they're prepared well, but I can eat them if they're done up right like they are at Rubio's. These were not. I just knew I'd have trouble choking down the limp pile of dull leaves on my plate, but I didn't want to offend Edie before I told her about her parents. I'd just have to take one for the team.

While I was giving myself a pep talk, Edie came back from the kitchen with her plate so I did my best to look enthusiastic about the meal in front of me. “This is really nice of you,” I said, forking up a bite of the meat. “How did things go at work today?”

“Everything went fine,” Edie said as she settled into a chair facing the couch. “What did the doctor tell you?”

“A few bruises,” I said. “Nothing serious. I'll be back to normal in a couple of days.” I chewed. And chewed. And chewed that dry, tasteless piece of pork. If Edie was still speaking to me after tonight, maybe I'd offer to give her some cooking lessons—for the baby's sake.

“I didn't get a chance to ask you last night. Did you notice anybody in the alley when you came back?”

Edie looked at me strangely as she ate some rice. “But you did ask. You don't remember?”

“It's kind of a blur,” I admitted. “What was your answer?”

“I've thought and thought about it, but I didn't see anybody at all. You don't have any idea who did this to you?”

“Oh, I have an idea,” I said. “I just don't have any proof. I'm pretty sure it was Scotty Justus.”

Edie stopped chewing. “Why would he hit you?”

“I think he killed Destiny. He knows I suspect him and he's trying to shut me up.”

“Why would he kill his own daughter?”

“I haven't worked out all the details yet,” I admitted. “I know that he was fed up with her drug use and I know their relationship was strained.” But even I had to admit that as motives go, those were weak. “Maybe he didn't want her to turn in her drug dealer,” I said. And then a new thought occurred to me. “Maybe he was supplying her with drugs. He was a shrimper for a long time. Maybe that was just a cover for drug running. Anyway, tomorrow I want to talk to everybody I can. Someone
must
have seen Scotty last night.”

“Well, I'm sure someone did,” Edie said. “He's there every day. What you need is to find somebody who saw him coming after you with a weapon.” She put her fork on her plate and shook her head slowly. “What you really need is to step back and let the police do their job. I mean, it's obvious that you're making someone nervous. If you keep digging, they'll strike again and you might not be able to walk away next time.”

She wasn't saying anything I hadn't thought of myself, but hearing it still sent a shiver of apprehension up my spine. “I'd be happy to step back if the police would actually do their jobs,” I said. “Detective Winslow is apparently trying to pin Destiny's murder on me. If I want to keep myself out of prison, I can't wait for someone else to look into it.”

Edie rolled her eyes. “You won't go to prison, and you can't undo dead.”

“You don't know I won't be arrested,” I said. “You haven't seen how Detective Winslow acts. I don't have an alibi, and I can't prove that I didn't wig out and kill Destiny.”

“He can't prove you did,” Edie reasoned. “Please don't keep putting yourself in danger. It's freaky enough just knowing that someone dangerous is on the loose.”

“I'll be as careful as I can,” I promised, “but I can't just sit around and wait. What time did the attack happen anyway? I'm a little fuzzy on some of the details.”

She let out a resigned sigh. “We left Zydeco at around seven, so if you factor in the time it took us to walk there and our . . . conversation, I'd say maybe seven fifteen.”

“Who was still at work then? Second Chances would have been open, right? And the Chopper Shop.”

“The drugstore and EZ Shipping are both open until nine,” Edie said. “And I saw lights at the Feathered Peacock. Zora must have had a late class going on.” She pulled a small notebook from her bag and started making a list. “To give to the police,” she said.

Over the next few minutes, we came up with half a dozen other possible witnesses, including Felix and Lorena from the market on the corner, anyone working at Paolo's Pizza, and the crew at Rubio's Ribs. It would take weeks to work through the list in my spare time. I'd just have to focus on the likeliest witnesses first.

I'd toyed with my food while we talked, but once the list was complete, I had a hard time hiding my lack of enthusiasm. Luckily, I wasn't the only one.

Edie ate another bite of rice and made a face. “This is horrible, isn't it?”

I laughed. “It's a valiant effort.”

“My poor baby is doomed,” she said, setting her plate on the coffee table. “I've been reading all this literature about what to feed it, what I'm supposed to eat while I'm pregnant, and what I'm supposed to avoid. No caffeine, limit the fish, watch out for mercury. No deli meats, no soft cheeses, no smoked seafood . . . And that's just for now. After the baby's born, there are a million things to remember, and I can't even cook one edible dinner. I can't feed the baby
cake
for every meal.” She buried her face in her hands and wailed, “What am I doing, Rita? Am I making a mistake?”

This was so unlike the Edie I'd known since pastry school, I didn't know what to think. Even if I'd been able to think clearly, I was in way over my head. I wasn't qualified to give the kind of advice she wanted, so I decided to start with what I knew. “Cooking isn't that hard,” I said. “It's definitely something we can work on.”

She picked up a lump of green with her fork and shook it at me. “This was supposed to be simple, and I ruined it.”

“It just takes practice,” I told her. “Relax. You don't have to be a superwoman. There's no rule that says you have to make everything your baby eats from scratch.”

“Oh, yes there is,” she cried. “There are rules about everything! About breastfeeding and what kind of diapers to use and what kind of wipes are bad for the baby. Then there are bottles and car seats, and pacifiers, and . . . Really, Rita, what
am
I doing?”

“Right now, I'd say you're panicking, but try not to do that,” I said gently. “You still have almost four months to go. There's time. And you're going to be a good mother, Edie. I'm sure there's a lot to figure out, but you'll get there. If anybody can wade through all the rules and make sense of them, you can.”

She sighed heavily and sank down in the chair, kicking her feet out in front of her and staring at the small mound of her stomach. “Thanks, but what if I go into labor early? Sure, I'm usually good with rules and things, but in this case I'm not so sure I agree with you. I'm really starting to wonder if I can do this on my own.”