Life is Sweet (16 page)

When he was gone, she frowned to herself. It had been the first time she'd talked to Walt just for no reason at all, and she had immediately introduced the most depressing topics imaginable. No wonder the man had left as soon as he could politely excuse himself. After the life he'd led, the last thing he probably wanted to dwell on was his deceased parents. From the sound of things, his troubles had started early in life.

And she thought she had problems.

When she looked up, Cash had hopped onto the counter and was demolishing the leftover piece of cake Walt had left on his plate. She groaned at the thought of veterinary dental bills she couldn't afford and plucked him off the counter, offering him a conciliatory head butt before dropping him back onto the ground.

 

Pam called Tuesday morning, before Becca was fully awake, and left a message saying she wasn't going to make it to the shop that day. She'd stayed another night in Richmond—she said she had something to take care of there. Her voice sounded edgy. Strange.

Tuesday was never the busiest day at the shop—they didn't see much action until the after-school crowd streamed in. Becca liked the idea of a leisurely, low-traffic day, except when she got one. Then she worried that the world was burnt out on cupcakes. She would imagine herself declaring bankruptcy and having to sell out and move, maybe into a stall with Harvey. Apprehension over what she would do when she'd reached her last penny consumed her. And not just for herself. How would she support an aging horse? After Saturday, Cal probably wanted her to find a different place to board him. Different inevitably would mean more expensive.

By afternoon, she was in a state. Added to the usual angst about the looming worldwide cupcake surplus, there was the speech, still unplanned, that she was slated to give at Olivia's school the next day. Also, the vision of poor Erin as a cinder at the bottom of a Hawaiian volcano still plagued her thoughts. And what was up with Pam? She never stayed overnight at her parents' if she could help it. And then there was that puzzling phrase—something Pam had to take care of. . . .

Maybe Pam had gone to Richmond to see a doctor. But if that was the case, why hadn't she said something? The only answer Becca's frantic mind could come up with was that Pam was very sick, perhaps with something fatal, and hadn't wanted to worry her.

“Is something wrong?” Walt asked her. A brave question, after she'd talked his ear off the day before. He'd been quiet and more-than-usually wan all day.

“Just fretting about Pam.” She stared at the slew of pumpkin spice cupcakes she'd made for Career Day. At least she'd been worrying productively. If her visual aids managed to put her audience in a sugar coma, maybe her speech wouldn't matter so much.

“I thought there was something on your mind,” Walt said. “The same CD's been playing on the stereo for three straight hours.”

He was right. And it was Philip Glass. No wonder she had a tension headache.

“Why don't you take a short break?” he said. “Go upstairs and relax for a half hour. Eat something healthy.”

When Walt was telling her she looked bad, it was time to worry. “You don't mind manning the counter?” She'd never actually left him unsupervised during working hours for more than a few minutes, but he was competent. And it wasn't a busy day.

He shooed her out the door. “Go ahead. I've got this down cold.”

She went upstairs, started to fix herself something to eat, then picked up the phone and called Pam.

No answer. Probably because she was in the middle of an emergency CT scan. Becca's brain had latched on to the doctor scenario and wouldn't let go.

She got out her address book, looked up the number for Pam's parents in Richmond, and dialed. She exhaled in relief when Pam's mom answered. If she was at home, chances were Pam wasn't dying in a hospital. “Hi, Mrs. Deutch. This is Becca Hudson, Pam's friend. Is Pam okay?”

The pause that followed was fraught with confusion. “I don't know . . . Did something happen?”

“Not that I know of,” Becca said. “I was just wondering how she seemed to you.”

“I don't know. How does she seem to you?”

“I haven't seen her since she took off a few days ago,” Becca said, “but her message sounded odd. I was wondering if she looked okay to you.”

“I haven't seen her.” Mrs. Deutch's voice quavered with tension now. “You say she's disappeared?”

Becca tried to untangle the situation. Obviously, Pam had fibbed about visiting her parents. But where had she gone instead? And why lie?

As the seconds ticked by, Mrs. Deutch's concern escalated into a full-blown panic. “Where could she be? Why would she have sounded scared on the phone?”

“I never said scared,” Becca said. “Just odd.”

“What if she's been kidnapped?” Mrs. Deutch exclaimed. “I worry so much about her, especially about doing her little real estate business. I read a book recently about a poor Realtor who was kidnapped from an open house by a psychopath.”

“Yeah, but that was fiction,” Becca said.

“Has it been twenty-four hours? I need to call Jim.”

Jim was Pam's father. “No, wait. Please. I'll find her—no need to panic. I'm sure everything's fine. Just a little misunderstanding.” Becca forced herself into a perky brightness. “I'll have Pam give you a call as soon as I hear from her. Okay? How about that?”

The woman was still flaking out on the other end of the line when Becca finally begged off.

She hung up and collapsed onto her couch, whereupon she was immediately set upon by the felines. She petted them absently while she sifted through what little information she had. Pam had lied, and was now MIA. Maybe she wasn't dying, but there was evidently something going on with her.

Minutes passed before she remembered that Walt was still downstairs alone. She went back down, bracing for some new calamity, only to find Walt calmly serving customers. Everything was fine. In fact, he turned out to be quite the salesman.

“Someone came by needing a bunch of cupcakes for the high school,” he explained. “Something about a party for the marching band. I sold them three dozen.”

She nodded, then studied the shelves more critically. On Tuesdays, she didn't usually have full shelves. Not like she would on a Saturday morning, for instance. Yet the chocolate, vanilla, and lemon cupcakes she'd left before going upstairs were still there. “Where did you get the three dozen?”

He nodded toward the back. “From the pumpkin spice ones you baked this morning in your frenzy. I figured you'd be glad to get rid of those.”

She looked back at the counter where she'd left the Career Day cupcakes. Damn. She'd have to make more. And Walt seemed so pleased with himself, she'd have to figure out a way to do it surreptitiously so that he wouldn't notice that he'd actually screwed up. Not that selling three dozen cupcakes was a screwup, exactly. At least it was a profitable mistake. But now she had an anniversary cake to prepare, as well as the cupcake redo.

She got to work, leaving Walt at the register. Just before closing time, she noticed that he looked tired. “Maybe
you
should go upstairs for a bit,” she said. “You could have a nap on my sofa.”

He shook his head. “I'm fine.”

“There are some sandwich fixings in the fridge. You could make me one and bring it down in an hour or so.” She'd never gotten around to eating the lunch that she'd interrupted so that she could make her ill-conceived call to Pam's mom. Also, Walt's being gone for an hour would give her about enough time to get the replacement cupcakes made. “It would be doing me a huge favor.”

He considered this and let out a sigh as he scratched his scraggly chin. “I guess I could get cleaned up again while I'm up there. Get that out of the way.”

“Good idea,” she said.

When he was gone, she spent the next hour running between the register and her mixer. Was this harried feeling the first sign of a mind coming unhinged? She'd never been so glad to see business slow down at the dinner hour. She settled into the back as the new pumpkin cupcakes cooled, and began whipping up another batch of vanilla nutmeg buttercream.

With the stand mixer on high, she barely heard the bell over the door ring as Pam swept in. Becca nearly collapsed against her KitchenAid in relief . . . until she saw the annoyed look in Pam's eyes.

“Are you insane?” Pam shouted at her over the whir of the mixer.

Becca shut it off. “Where have you been?”

“I'll be happy to tell you that as soon as I find out what possessed you to tell my mom that I'd been kidnapped.”

“I didn't say anything about kidnapping,” Becca said. “I just called to ask where you were. Which I never would have done if I'd known you lied to me about going to Richmond in the first place.”

Pam had the decency to look a little embarrassed about her fib. “I'm sorry. But I still don't know what made you call my mother, like I was a teenager or something.”

“I've been going a little crazy, I think. And with Erin gone . . .”

Pam rolled her eyes. “She's coming back. Cal got an e-mail from her this afternoon.”

“
Cal
got one?”

“We probably did, too,” Pam said. “I just haven't checked my e-mail today.”

Becca frowned as a weird possibility occurred to her. Cal had disappeared after Saturday night, about the same time as Pam. “Have you seen Cal?”

Pam's face flushed. “That's what I wanted to talk to you about before the whole Mom-calling-the-FBI thing came up.”

“You could have talked to me at any time. I've been right here. Freaking out.”

“I was out of town,” Pam confessed. “With Cal.”

That was weird. Pam and Cal were buddies, in a sniping kind of way, but they hadn't traveled together since the ill-starred Vegas trip. “Where did you go?”

“To this place in West Virginia. It was real pretty. Lots of fall color.”

Some of that fall color no doubt matched the crimson in Pam's cheeks. As understanding dawned, Becca shook her head in disbelief. “This place you went to . . . it was a hotel?”

“More like a lodge.”

A groan escaped Becca's lips before she could stop it. “What were
you
thinking?”

Her friend's posture went rigid. “What was
I
thinking? What were you thinking, telling Cal you'd never loved him?”

“He told you that?”

Of course he'd told her. How else would she know? Pam and Cal had spent the past two days together in a hotel room—all bets were off concerning what other intimate topics they'd covered. “I meant that to be private.”

“It's still private,” Pam said. “Cal's not blabbing it all over town. The poor guy was devastated.”

“I just wanted him to get over me.”

“Wow.” Pam's expression hardened. “Can you hear how arrogant you sound?
Over you?
You two are divorced. Of course he's over you.”

Evidently during their West Virginia debauch, Cal hadn't mentioned the pass he'd made that had started the whole mess. “I didn't mean to be arrogant. We just were having words, and I thought it would be useful to air our feelings.”

“He said he was trying to warn you off getting together with a married man, and then you just turned mean on him.”

“That's not exactly how it happened. And Matthew
is not
married. You know that as well as anyone. And anyway, we're not together.”

Pam blew out a breath. “No, he's just treating you like his stand-in wife—”

Anger rose in Becca's throat. “He is not.”

Pam rolled her eyes. “Asking you for help planning the little girl's birthday party? Taking you on shopping trips? Come on. It's weird.”

“Only if you put some kind of crass spin on it, like everyone seems to be doing.”

“He's chasing you. And you're going along with it.”

Was she serious? “A few weeks ago, you and Erin were ribbing me about his interest as if it was funny. Now suddenly in your imagination and the imaginations of a lot of other people, Matthew and I are evil backstreet adulterers.”

“A few weeks ago I thought it was just harmless flirtation.”

“It's all perfectly innocent,” Becca insisted. “If the lack of facts doesn't convince you, can't you at least take my word for it?”

Pam shrugged. “If you say so. But you certainly have no right to be judgmental about what
I'm
doing.”

“I'm not trying to judge, but I saw him on Saturday, Pam. He was upset. I'm guessing that there was more than a little alcohol involved in this lost weekend.” It was probably a lucky thing that West Virginia wasn't a quickie marriage destination.

“Yes, he was upset,” Pam said. “And I was upset for him when he told me about the things you had said. You
never
loved him?” She tossed her head. “It makes me wonder how much you ever liked any of us.”

“That's not fair. You're my best friend here.”

“That's what
I
thought. When you first moved here, it was a gas. I didn't even mind when you changed things.”

Becca frowned. “Changed what things?”

“Well, like the friendship dynamics . . . and things. Cal had always been my buddy. We were close. And then you moved here and you were suddenly the shiny new car on the lot and the rest of us were old jalopies.”