April smiled. “Okay, what’s the plan? Maybe I can have the Belgian chef arrested before the competition?”
I chuckled. “That’ll be our backup plan.”
April got up and went to the drawer and pulled out a notepad and a pen. “What’s the thing your dad always says about making decisions?”
“You need to assess the situation, weigh the pros and the cons, and then act.” I recited the mantra I’d heard the Admiral repeat a million times throughout my life.
“Okay, so the situation is we need to win.” April wrote.
“The pros and cons are pretty obvious too. If I lose, then I’ll have to walk away from Baby Cakes, Baby, Michael, all of my friends, and tuck my tail between my legs and go back to L.A.”
“That’s certainly all of the cons, but what are the pros?”
“If I win, then your husband has to leave and . . .”
“And what?”
“And he has to agree to a divorce with no repercussions.” I studied April’s face. The last part was me getting overly involved in my friend’s relationship, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“I wondered what you whispered to him.” She kept her head down so I couldn’t tell if she was pleased or upset until she hopped up from the table and hugged me.
“You’re not upset?”
She sniffed and wiped away a tear. “Of course not. It was the act of a true friend, and, I suspect, the main reason why you accepted his challenge in the first place.” She gazed in my eyes for a few moments to find the answer. “So, we both have a good motive for wanting you to win this challenge. We’re in this together.”
“Right, so now I just need to figure out what to make.”
We sat down and stared at her notepad. April tapped her pen on the pad while she thought. Eventually, she stopped. “I think you should enter Miss Octavia’s Soul Cake. It’s delicious. Everyone around here loves it, and it’s a proven winner.”
“I thought about that, but it just feels like that was Aunt Octavia’s recipe . . . I mean, maybe I need to add something to make it my own? You know, like add my own twist.”
She looked skeptical. “It’s won multiple times. I mean, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?”
“Maybe you’re right.”
We discussed various recipes until April could barely keep her eyes open. It took a bit of persuading, but I eventually convinced her that she would be sharper after a good night’s sleep. Reluctantly, she went downstairs to the basement, now her apartment, and Baby and I went back to our room. Even after spending the majority of my early years with a father who rose by four thirty every morning, I was not a morning person, except for days like today, when I never went to sleep in the first place. Now, I was wide-awake.
The sun was rising by the time I finally dozed off. I awoke to the most amazing smell of sugar, cinnamon, bacon, and coffee. It was five o’clock, which meant I’d been asleep for about an hour and a half.
After the fire at the bakery, we had reverted to the original plan for Baby Cakes, baking and selling from home. When Aunt Octavia first started the bakery, she baked everything right here at home and sold the goods from a detached garage that she renovated into an adorable roadside stand, which was located close to the street. Hannah mostly baked at home and brought things over each morning. Leroy had a tiny apartment over thirty miles away, which meant that our already early mornings were even earlier for him. Tyler Lawrence offered him a spare bedroom, which he used until Baby Cakes was deemed safe and the construction dust and noxious paint fumes were over. Then, he’d moved upstairs to the tiny apartment above the bakery. It had a small living room that opened up to a kitchen that consisted of a hot plate, dorm-size fridge, and a sink. The space had a tiny bedroom and an even tinier bathroom, but it worked. At least, it worked for a young, single man who didn’t have a lot of clothes or shoes or . . . stuff. I liked that Leroy was there during the renovation. Our early starts meant he was often home in the afternoons to answer any of the contractor’s questions. Initially, he was reluctant to make renovation decisions, but he was more knowledgeable about baking and better equipped to answer their questions than I was. Questions about the aesthetics, he left to me.
Baby opened one eye when I moved but closed it quickly and was snoring again in seconds. That dog snored like a freight train and could sleep through anything. At first, I was shocked. He was so loud, I had asked Michael to check him out. After a lot of veterinarian mumbo jumbo, he reassured me that Baby was fine and didn’t need to have his tonsils removed. I didn’t even know dogs had tonsils.
I slid off the tiny sliver of space Baby left for me in the king-size bed and hurried to shower and get dressed.
Hannah and Leroy already had things under control in the garage-makeshift-bakery by the time Baby and I joined them. Our regular customers knew to come early if they wanted their early morning pastry fix. Without easy access to a kitchen like we had in the bakery, our hours were limited. When we sold out, we closed down. In the bakery, when inventory got low, we could always just go into the kitchen and bake more. Today, selling out was a good thing. The New Bison Spring Festival was only a few days away, and the merchants were having a sidewalk sale to drive more people to downtown New Bison, such as it was. Plus, it would help get the public excited about the festival. At least, that’s the way Mayor Abernathy had explained things to us. The vendors on Main Street were planning an early “tasting.” So, while Hannah and Leroy managed the sales at home, I drove downtown to the bakery to get set up for the prefestival sidewalk tasting. The others would join me shortly.
The local high school quartet was providing the music in the town square. At that moment, the violin screeches reminded me of cats in heat, but parents would line the block, take pictures and send them to relatives near and far. It wasn’t a bad marketing ploy for a small-town event.
Retail stores set up tables and racks outside on the sidewalk proclaiming TAKE AN ADDITIONAL . . . to lure buyers toward off-season specials. It was spring, and Tyler wasn’t expecting a large crowd at his knitwear shop, but I’d recommended he go for visual appeal and put out some of his lightweight, brightly colored items front and center. He even had some adorable beach bags and cover-ups that were sure to be a hit with summer just around the corner.
Restaurants included food samples to entice visitors. My baking repertoire was limited to my Great-Aunt Octavia’s award-winning chocolate cake and a Baby Cakes signature dish, thumbprint cookies. Leroy had trained me to bake the cookies. The beauty of these thumbprint cookies was that the dough could be used to make three basic cookies. The hardest part was the dough, which really wasn’t hard at all. Once you had that down, you could roll it into a ball and cover it with powdered sugar. Or, press your thumb (or a spoon if you just got a manicure that you didn’t want to ruin) and fill with either jelly or a simple icing. No heavy-duty equipment needed. Decorating the cookies wasn’t my forte, but I managed, and they were almost as pretty as Leroy’s.
It was a beautiful day. Sunny and warm. I brought Baby’s dog bed out and put it in a sunny spot near the door. He climbed in and lay with his large head on his paws. I ordered him a baseball cap with BABY CAKES on it and a pair of Blues Brothers sunglasses, which he didn’t like but tolerated. I took out my phone and snapped a few quick pictures. #English-MastiffsLoveSun #NewBisonSpringFestival #BringOnThe-Treats
Baby was still moping around, so after I posted the pictures, I called Mayor Abernathy and asked if I could talk to him. He promised to swing by when he finished making his opening remarks at the town square.
I was just about finished setting everything up and was ready for business when I was surprised to see April pull up to the curb in her patrol car. I was even more surprised when Clayton Jefferson Davenport climbed out of the back seat. I didn’t like Clayton, but I had to admit he had great taste in clothes. Today he was sporting an Italian wool tweed CKC cornflower-blue-and-rust overplaid jacket, skinny-legged rust corduroy pants that hit him right above the ankle and showed that he wasn’t wearing socks with his Berluti shoes, and a dark blue turtleneck. I had to commend his stylist. Even at a distance, I got a whiff of his expensive Baccarat Rouge 540 cologne. He might be evil, but he looked and smelled great.
Despite my hopes, he wasn’t handcuffed. It was too much to hope that April had arrested him, but I couldn’t figure out any other reason why she would be in such close proximity to him. Lastly, a slim Black woman with short curly hair and large gray-green eyes climbed out. I didn’t recognize her, which in a large city wasn’t unusual. The Black population in a town the size of New Bison meant that the few Black people who lived here had at least a nodding acquaintance with each other. Most people knew each other or could find a connection with less than five degrees of separation. As a newcomer to the area, I was often greeted in public with, You must be Octavia’s niece? I had no frame of reference for the newcomer, but I’d grill April later. The look on her face told me this was not a social call.
April stomped past me and entered Higher Grounds Coffee and Tea, followed by Clayton Davenport and the newcomer, who looked as though she’d rather be anywhere else at the moment.
They were barely in the building for more than a few moments when I heard Candy’s high-pitched voice. Candy squawked like a parrot and threw out words that would have gotten any sailor under my father’s command duty swabbing the latrine.
The screeching increased as April led Candy out of the building and onto the street.
“You can’t do this,” Candy screamed. “This is my shop.”
“Candy, I’m sorry, but I’m only doing my job.”
Candy took a few moments to share what she thought about April and her job.
The woman who accompanied April looked as though she wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole. Clayton Davenport grinned like a man who’d just won the lottery, which was a big mistake.
Candy grabbed a knife from the table that I had brought outside to help slice the cookies into smaller pieces and lunged at Davenport, but April was swift. In one motion, she grabbed the knife and wrenched it out of Candy’s hand. But if anyone thought that was the end of it, they were sorely mistaken. Candy had just begun to fight. She extended her arms and leapt like a cat. Fingernails like claws, she lunged for Davenport. I was so absorbed by the spectacle playing out on the sidewalk, I didn’t realize Leroy had arrived until he came from behind me, grabbed Candy around the waist, and pulled her away. If it weren’t for Leroy’s quick reflexes, Candy might have clawed Davenport’s eyes out.
“What’s going on?” Leroy asked.
“She assaulted me, and I’m going to press charges,” Davenport said. He pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at a scratch down the side of his face.
“Clayton, is that really necessary?” April said. “She’s obviously emotional. She’s had a terrible shock. Her husband’s dead and now . . . this. Don’t you think you’ve done enough to this poor woman?”
After the initial burst of emotion, Candy Hurston collapsed into a puddle like a deflated balloon.
April squeezed Candy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Davenport snorted. “What kind of sheriff apologizes to a common criminal who assaults a law-abiding citizen who is taking possession of his own property?”
A crowd developed on the street.
April glanced around. “This isn’t the time or the place to go into this. Let’s go back to the station and sort this whole thing out.” She took a step toward the patrol car but stopped to stare into the crowd. “Okay, there’s nothing to see here. Keep it moving.”
The crowd grumbled and took a few steps backward, but no one left. This drama was too good to pass up.
“It’s not his property,” Candy said. “It’s mine. I was Paul’s wife. I don’t care what she says.”
The woman who had arrived with April and Davenport avoided eye contact and hung her head.
“April, what’s going on?” I asked.
Clayton Davenport held the handkerchief to his cheek. “What’s going on is this woman is trespassing on private property.” He grinned at April. “As a public servant, it’s your job to—”
“I don’t need you to explain my job,” April said.
“But I don’t understand,” I said, glancing from Candy to Davenport and then to April. “How does Clayton Davenport own this building?”
“He’s trying to take my building,” Candy blubbered. “He says he or that woman own my building.” She looked to the crowd and went for the sympathy vote by repeating herself. “He’s trying to steal my building.”
“I didn’t steal anything from her,” Davenport said. “It was never hers to begin with. That building belongs to the wife of Paul Rivers.”
“That’s me,” Candy sobbed. “I’m his wife . . . well, I was his wife, before he died. Now, I’m his widow. That means it’s my building.”
Clayton Davenport smirked. “No, this building belongs to the legal wife of Paul Rivers.” He turned to the woman who looked as though she wanted to melt into the brick exterior. “Mrs. Marjorie Rivers.”
“Marjorie?” Candy yelled. “That’s his first wife.”
“First. Last. Only wife. Paul Rivers never got divorced.”
That’s the last thing Candy Hurston Rivers heard before she collapsed into a deep faint.
