Cake on a Hot Tin Roof Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  A Sheetcake Named Desire

  “A tasty treat for mystery lovers, combining all the right ingredients in a perfectly prepared story that’s sure to satisfy.”

  —B. B. Haywood, national bestselling author

  of Town in a Wild Moose Chase

  “A decadent new series with a Big Easy attitude.”

  —Paige Shelton, national bestselling author

  of If Fried Chicken Could Fly

  “A mouth-watering new series! Brady’s writing is smooth as fondant, rich as buttercream—the pastry shop’s delectable confections are just icing on the cake for the appealing characters and intriguing mystery.”

  —Sheila Connolly, national bestselling

  author of Bitter Harvest

  “A delicious blend of deception, danger… and dessert.”

  —Dorothy St. James, author of

  the White House Gardener Mysteries

  “Jacklyn Brady whips up a delectable mystery layered with great characters and sprinkled with clever plot twists.”

  —Hannah Reed, author of the Queen Bee Mysteries

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Jacklyn Brady

  A SHEETCAKE NAMED DESIRE

  CAKE ON A HOT TIN ROOF

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  CAKE ON A HOT TIN ROOF

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / February 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Cover illustration by Chris Lyons.

  Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

  Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  EISBN: 9781101559956

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This one’s for Valerie Sherry Brown and Vanessa Lee Sthole.

  I couldn’t do any of it without you.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Recipes

  One

  “You’ll be here by seven, won’t you, sugar? You won’t be late?”

  My mother-in-law sounded so hopeful, I hated to disappoint her, but how could she ask me to leave work early on a Friday evening during Mardi Gras season? I shifted my cell phone to the other ear and glanced at the chaos surrounding me. Clutter and constant movement filled every corner of Zydeco Cakes, signs of the work overload the staff and I had been experiencing since the first of the year.

  Stacks of empty boxes, all decorated in traditional Mardi Gras purple, green, and gold, teetered in every corner of the massive design room. Near the door to the loading dock, boxes filled with King Cakes awaited delivery to businesses and events. More boxes filled the other end of the room, in preparation for the walk-in customers we hoped would be coming in droves to pick them up before the season was over. And that was on top of our regular business: cakes for two weddings, a Valentine’s Day party, and a fiftieth birthday party, all scheduled for delivery in the coming week.

  I’d only been running Zydeco Cakes for a few months, and this was my first Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I knew the carnival season was a big deal around here, but as a recent transplant to the city, I was still shocked at just how big a deal it was. We were already a month into the season, but the sharp increase in business had left me off-balance and scrambling to catch up. I’d been looking forward to the celebration, but I was starting to wonder if I’d be able to find enough free time to enjoy any of it.

  But that wasn’t Miss Frankie’s fault, and I tried not to take out my frustrations on her.

  She and I became partners last year, shortly after the death of her only child, Philippe Renier, who’d also happened to be my husband—at least on paper. I was his widow on a flimsy technicality: he’d been killed minutes before he was supposed to sign our divorce agreement, though Miss Frankie liked to imagine that we’d been on the verge of reconciling when he died.

  I’m the one with the training and experience as a pastry chef, so I handle the day-to-day work at the bakery. Miss F
rankie offers moral support and the occasional cash infusion from the comfort of her living room. Most of the time our arrangement suits me, but today I was frustrated by my partner’s lack of hands-on experience.

  I’d been working alongside the rest of the staff for days, ignoring the growing heap of paperwork in my office and the even longer to-do list for tonight’s Mardi Gras party at Miss Frankie’s country club. The same party Miss Frankie was nagging me about at that very moment.

  “Rita? Are you even listening to me?”

  Her insistent tone pulled me away from my growing frustration and back to the conversation. “I’m listening,” I assured her. “But I don’t think you realize how crazy it is around here. We’re up to our eyeballs in work. Nobody has been able to take a lunch break for two days and things are only getting worse.”

  “I know y’all are busy,” Miss Frankie said, “but tonight’s party is important.”

  And there it was: the crux of our argument.

  “It’s a party,” I pointed out.

  “A very important party,” she pointed back. “With very important people. It’s not just a social event, Rita. It’s the Captain’s Court for Musterion. It’s crucial to the business that you be here, and that you show up on time.”

  Like I said before, I’m no expert on Mardi Gras, but over the past few months I’d learned a few things. All of the parties, parades, and balls are organized by social clubs known as krewes. There are hundreds of them scattered across the Gulf Coast region. Some krewes take themselves very seriously, others not so much. Musterion (whose membership list topped 2,000) falls somewhere in the middle. The Captain’s Court was a sort of last blast for Musterion’s movers and shakers, a celebration of all the work they’d done to get ready for Mardi Gras and the prequel to next week’s parade and formal ball, which would be open to the entire krewe.

  Carnival season may seem heathen on the surface, but it actually has deep roots in Christianity. The whole point of it, after all, is for people to stuff themselves silly on Fat Tuesday before the forty-day austerity of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. That “last hurrah” starts all the way back at Epiphany on January 6. Which is where the King Cake gets its name—the word King refers to the wise men, and the traditional plastic baby figurine baked into every cake represents the baby Jesus. According to tradition, the person lucky (or unlucky) enough to get the slice of cake with the hidden baby in it is obligated to host the party next year.

  Philippe, who had been a longtime member of the Krewe of Musterion, got the baby at last year’s Captain’s Court celebration, which put him on tap to act as this year’s host. Thanks to Miss Frankie, I got custody of the baby when he died. This party was, according to Miss Frankie, a very big deal, which was why she volunteered me to take over as hostess. I just wish she’d discussed it with me first.

  I’m all about doing what’s best for the business. I just didn’t happen to agree that this party she was so wound up about needed the top spot on my priority list. I’d said so about two million times in the past few weeks, but Miss Frankie wasn’t listening.

  “I’ll get there as soon as the orders for tomorrow morning have been filled,” I said, also for the two-millionth time. “That’s more important for the business than me standing around with a glass of champagne in my hand.” She started to argue, but I went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I don’t know any of the people on your guest list. They’re not going to miss me if I’m a little late. If you need help entertaining the masses before I get there, I’m sure Bernice will pitch in.”

  Bernice Dudley is Miss Frankie’s neighbor and closest friend. She’s a sweet lady with a halo of white hair and a drawl as smooth and Southern as aged Kentucky bourbon.

  “Well, of course I can count on Bernice,” Miss Frankie said with a tick of her tongue. “That’s not the point. A proper party simply cannot begin without its hostess.”

  That would be me, though not by choice. I was harboring some resentment over the way Miss Frankie had finagled me into the role, which might have been making me slightly more stubborn than usual. I still wasn’t convinced that Philippe’s predeath party obligations had legally become my responsibilities.

  Miss Frankie let out a long-suffering sigh. “Rita. Sugar. Try to understand. This party is important. All the top brass of Musterion will be here, and that includes some very influential—and wealthy—people.”

  I could have refused, but I was a little concerned about Miss Frankie. Losing her only son had shaken her world to its core. She’d made a valiant effort to keep her spirits up as we stumbled through the holidays together, but by New Year’s Eve she’d had enough. The idea of heading into an entire year without Philippe had crumbled her like a stale cookie. She’d spent the whole month of January in a funk, and had only started rallying again in the past week or so. I didn’t want anything to jeopardize that.

  “These people were friends of Philippe’s,” she was saying now. “Most of them were clients of Zydeco when he was alive.”

  “I understand that, but—”

  “They’ll want to meet you.”

  I laughed. “I doubt that.”

  “Why would you? You were Philippe’s wife and you’re running Zydeco now. Of course they’ll want to know more about you. This is your chance to make a good impression. To establish yourself as one of them. Otherwise, they might take their business somewhere else now that Philippe is gone.”

  But I wasn’t one of them. I knew it, and they’d figure it out soon enough. Philippe and Miss Frankie had been born into that society. Old money and the genteel Southern breeding might be in their blood, but they weren’t in mine.

  “I know there are a lot of potential customers on the guest list, but I can’t ignore current paying customers just to play nice with people who might spend money at Zydeco in the future.” It was a lousy excuse. Even I knew that. But the thought of trying to impress two hundred of New Orleans’s most influential citizens at once was stressing me out.

  “I’m not asking you to ignore anybody,” Miss Frankie said. “But you work too hard. I’m asking you to take one evening to have a little fun and make an investment in the bakery’s future at the same time. Is that so difficult?”

  “Much more difficult than you can imagine,” I grumbled, sounding like a moody teenager. Work had always been my comfort zone, and I was resisting leaving it big-time.

  Over the phone, I heard the tap-tap of fingernails on a hard surface, a sure sign that Miss Frankie was processing my response and formulating another argument. “What’s the matter, sugar? Why does the idea of this party bother you so much?”

  She knew me too well. “Besides the fact that I don’t know anyone on the guest list?” I rubbed my forehead with the fingertips of one hand as if I could scrub away my nervousness. I had half a dozen solid objections to hosting this party, but Miss Frankie didn’t really want to hear any of them. “It’s just that it falls at such a bad time. This carnival thing is pretty overwhelming.”

  Miss Frankie gave a low chuckle. “Relax, sugar. Have fun with it. That’s the whole point of carnival.”

  Relax. Have fun. This wasn’t the first time she’d given me that advice. I rotated my head on my neck and tried to work out a few of the stress kinks. “I’ll try,” I said. But it wasn’t that simple. I’d been raised by a master worrier. My uncle Nestor didn’t know the meaning of the word relax, and he’d taught me everything I knew about stressing out. Part of me wanted to enjoy life more—I just didn’t know how.

  “Will you?”

  “Of course.”

  Miss Frankie pretended to believe me and changed the subject. “By the way, did I tell you who phoned in an RSVP this morning?”

  I stopped rolling my head. “This morning? I thought we turned in the final head count to the caterer two weeks ago.”

  “We did, but everyone knows that for a party like this, the final head count is just a guideline.”

  “Not everyone,” I mumbled. We’d hired
a caterer for the buffet, but Zydeco was supplying the King Cakes and I’d been relying on those figures to plan how many we’d need.

  “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of food,” Miss Frankie said. “Nobody expects us to turn away a guest who calls at the last minute. Now, guess who it was.”

  I wasn’t even going to try. “Who?”

  “Ivanka Hedge.”

  The muscles in my neck tightened up again. Ivanka Hedge was one of the wealthiest young women in New Orleans, heir to the Lafitte perfume fortune. Just a week earlier, she’d announced her engagement to Richard Montgomery III, son of an obscenely wealthy businessman with international ties. His grandfather, Richard I, had founded the prestigious Terrebonne Academy, a private school open only to those with the right family background and sufficient money to afford the astronomical tuition. Academic accomplishment factored way below the right genealogy on the list of qualifications.

  The city had been buzzing with wedding talk all week, and every business that was remotely tied to the wedding industry had been scrambling to offer their services for flowers, dresses, entertainment, china, silver, and of course, the various cakes they’d need.

  At Zydeco, we’d been discussing the possibility of landing the wedding cake contract—a dream only slightly less ambitious than being hired on by the White House. For the past four days I’d tried countless times to reach Ivanka personally or, failing that, to set up an appointment through her assistant. For all my efforts, I had yet to even speak to a live person.

  My heart did a little pitty-pat at the prospect of actually meeting Ivanka tonight. I nibbled at the carrot cake Miss Frankie was dangling in front of me. “Are you serious?”

  “Would I lie to you?” she asked.

  Only if she thought the means justified the end. “How did you manage to get her to come?”

  “I have connections, sugar. The Montgomery men have belonged to Musterion for six generations. Richard is on the Parade Committee this year. I knew he and Ivanka were on the guest list, but I didn’t want to say anything until I knew they were coming. So you see why you have to be here on time. This really is your chance to make a good impression.”