Dark Chocolate Demise (Cupcake Bakery Mystery, Band 7) - Softcover

McKinlay, Jenn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425258939 ISBN 13: 9780425258934

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

The New York Times bestselling Cupcake Bakery Mysteries bake up sweet surprises, but as the series continues, Mel and Angie are in for a fresh batch of trouble…

Scottsdale, Arizona, may not be the liveliest place on earth, but it’s never been as dead as this. Hundreds of fans have gathered together for the first annual Old Town Zombie Walk, and Mel, Angie, and the Fairy Tale Cupcake crew are donning their best undead attire to sell some horror-themed desserts to the hungry hordes.

But the fun turns to fright when Mel finds a real dead body in a prop casket outside of the bakery’s truck—and the corpse looks alarmingly like a zombie of their own. Knowing that Joe, Angie’s brother and Mel’s former flame, has been working on a dangerous mob case, Mel worries that the murder is a hit gone wrong and that someone near and dear was the real target. To keep any of her friends from winding up six feet under, Mel will do whatever it takes to find a killer—no matter how scary things get...

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The hardest decision New York Times bestselling author Jenn McKinlay ever had to make was what to major in during college. Then she discovered the sanctuary of the library and library science—a major that allowed her to study all the subjects. She loves working as a librarian. After all, what other occupation allows you to research the ethnobotanical properties of agave, perform a puppet show for twenty wiggly toddlers and try to answer why the rabbit’s foot is considered lucky, all in the same day? Jenn is also the author of the Cupcake Bakery Mysteries, the Hat Shop Mysteries and the Bluff Point romance series. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, in a house that is overrun with books, pets, kids and her husband’s guitars.

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One

“He looks really good in there,” Angie DeLaura said. “Peaceful even.”

“You can’t say that about everyone,” Melanie Cooper agreed.

“It’s all about the casket,” Tate Harper said. “You want to choose a lining that complements your skin tone in the postmortem.”

Mel and Angie turned and gave him concerned looks.

“How could you possibly know that?” Mel asked.

“The funeral director at the mortuary told me,” he said. He threw an arm around Angie. “Since we’re engaged and all, maybe we should pick out a double-wide so we can spend eternity snuggling.”

Angie beamed at him and giggled. Then she kissed him. It did not maintain its PG-13 rating for more than a moment, and Mel felt her upchuck reflex kick in as she turned away.

She was happy for her best friends in their coupledom, really she was, but sometimes, like now, it was just gag worthy.

“Really you two, how about a little decorum, given the gravity of the situation?” she asked. She knew she sounded a bit snippy but honestly, some days they were just too much.

“Of course, you’re right,” Tate said. “Sorry.”

He and Angie untangled themselves from each other. He smoothed the front of his shirt and straightened his jacket while Angie fluffed her hair and shook out her skirt. Duly subdued, the three of them stood beside the casket that held their friend and employee Marty Zelaznik.

Marty looked particularly spiffy in his white dress shirt and his favorite bold blue tie. His suit was black, and Angie had tucked a blue pocket square into his breast pocket so that just the edge of it was visible. His features were relaxed and his bald head was as shiny as if it had been waxed to a high gloss.

“Hey.” Oscar Ruiz, a teen known as Oz, who worked alongside Marty in the bakery Fairy Tale Cupcakes that Mel, Angie, and Tate owned, joined the trio by the casket. “So, we’re going with an open lid, huh?”

“We think it’s for the best,” Mel said.

“His tie is crooked,” Angie said. “We should fix that.”

“Yeah, and his makeup is a little on the heavy side,” Tate said. “He has angry eyebrows.”

“Anyone have a handkerchief?” Mel asked. “A little spit will take care of that.”

At this, Marty’s eyes popped open and he sat up in his coffin and glared. “What am I, five? You are not spit shining me!”

“Ah!” Angie yelped and leaped back with her hand clutching her chest. “Gees, Marty, you scared me to death!”

“Nice one.” Tate laughed as he and Oz high-fived and knuckle-bumped Marty.

“What? Did you think I was really dead?” Marty asked, sounding outraged.

“No!” Angie snapped. “I thought you were napping. You had a little drool in the corner of your mouth.”

“I was, but that doesn’t mean you get to swab my decks,” Marty said as he shifted around and rubbed the dried spittle off his chin. “You know, I have to say it’s pretty comfy in here. I may have to look into putting a deposit on one of these for the future.”

“Way in the future,” Mel said.

Marty glanced at the four of them. “So when do we leave for the zombie walk? I want to catch a few more Z’s. Oh, and by the way, the undead look you’ve all got going, yeah, I don’t want to wake up to that ever again.”

Mel glanced at her friends. Tate and Angie were doing the undead bride and groom. In requisite tux and white wedding gown, they had topped off their look with gray makeup and faux partially rotted flesh. Tate had a fake knife lodged in his skull, while Angie had an axe sticking out of her back. They had already taken bogus wedding photos that Angie was seriously considering making their official wedding portrait.

Being single and thinking this was going to become a permanent state, Mel had decided to go as an undead chef complete with her toque, double-breasted white coat, and checkered pants. She wore her pleated hat back on her head to enhance the amazing latex scar Oz had adhered to her forehead. It was pretty badass.

Oz had decided to wear his chef whites as well, but had changed it up by making the side of his face appear to be rotting off. Every time Mel saw his fake putrid skin flap in the breeze, she had to resist the urge to peel it off.

As the body in the casket, Marty had chosen to be less undead than the rest of them. He was pasty pale and sunken eyed but that was about it. Mel suspected that because he was closer to his actual expiration date than the rest of them, dressing up as a dead man had less appeal for him. Overall, she had to admit, they were fabulously gruesome.

“Sorry, Marty, but no napping,” Mel said. She grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him out of the casket, which was sitting on a trailer on the back of the cupcake van. “We’ve got to load up the van and get over to the Civic Center Park and set up our station before the undead descend upon us.”

“Ooh, that sounded nice and grisly.” Angie shuddered.

“It did, didn’t it?” Mel said. She let go of Marty, ignoring the look of longing he gave the coffin. “Let’s move, people.”

She hurried to the back of the bakery, where she’d left her rolling cart loaded with boxes of cupcakes. She pushed it alongside the service window of the van and began to hand them off to Oz, who was inside.

“What flavors did you create for zombie cupcakes?” Tate asked.

“No new flavors,” Mel said. She flipped open the lid of one of the boxes to show off the cupcakes. “Just new names. In place of the usual suspects we have the Marshmallow Mummy—”

“Hey, you made the frosting look like bandages on a mummy’s head,” Oz said from the window. “Cool.”

“And it has a marshmallow filling,” Mel said. “We also have Vanilla Eyeballs, Strawberry Brains, and Dark Chocolate Demise just to round out the flavors.”

“The eyeball one is staring at me,” Marty said. “I don’t think I could eat that.”

“How about the brains?” Tate said. “How did you pipe the frosting in the shape of a pink brain?”

“Fine pastry tip,” Angie said. “It was fun.”

“Are those little candy coffins on the chocolate ones?” Oz asked. “I dig those. Get it?”

“Aw, man, that stunk worse than rotting flesh,” Marty said. He closed the lid on the box, took it from Mel, and handed it through the window. The others stared at him and he asked, “What? I’m just getting into the spirit of things.”

“Fine, but please keep the rotten flesh remarks to a minimum when selling the cupcakes,” Mel said.

“This from the woman who ruined a perfectly good cupcake by putting a bloodshot eyeball on it,” he said. He shook his head as if he couldn’t fathom what she’d been thinking.

Mel lowered her head to keep from laughing. She didn’t want to offend Marty, as he took his vanilla cupcakes very seriously.

“Melanie!” a voice called from the bakery. Mel glanced up to see her mother, Joyce Cooper, stride out the door. Joyce took three steps and stopped, putting her hand to her throat. “Oh, my!”

“We look amazing, right?” Mel asked. She spread her arms wide to include her entire crew.

“What are...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0425258939
• ISBN 13: 9780425258934
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland