10. Lottie
LOTTIE
I waddle out to the front and find the entire bakery bustling with customers—none of whom happen to be at the counter at the moment. It’s so cozy in here they’re all huddled at the tables set out, nibbling on their treats while winter is busy freezing the very air we breathe outside. With its butter-yellow walls and twinkle lights strung through the faux tree branches near the ceiling, this place looks more or less like an enchanted fairytale.
But I’m not looking at my customers at the moment or any fairytale that might be waiting to happen. Instead, I see Lily, Effie, and Carlotta all gathered around Suze, while true to her word, Sweetheart is making sure everything in my refrigerated display case disappears.
The bakery is decked out in enough paper hearts and foil cutout Cupids to circle the globe twice. Not to mention, that very same heart-shaped theme is present and accounted for in each and every one of my desserts.
“ Suze ?” I shout so loud that half the bakery turns to look—at least for a moment. It takes more than that to distract them from my desserts. “I’m so glad you’re back! How are your teeth doing?” I cringe as I ask, because, well, it can’t be good. Her teeth had exploded for the most part last night.
Talk about teeth made from chalk—and those concrete cookies didn’t help either.
Suze looks perfectly comfortable bundled in a blue wool coat and has a creamy vanilla scarf wrapped around her neck like a noose.
“Oh, I’m all better now.” She twirls her scarf, and I swear I see a glimmer of something metallic coming from her mouth as she speaks. “Wanna see my new teeth?”
She bares her fangs, and we all belt out a collective scream—save for Lyla Nell, who is wildly laughing and clapping.
“Holy cannoli—Suze,” I shout twice as loud. “Who did that to you? And, more importantly, why ?”
“Come on, Lot.” Carlotta ticks her head to the side. “Can’t you see her dentist had it out for her?”
“Oh, you girls.” Suze waves it off with a laugh. “Aren’t they gorgeous?” She runs her tongue along her teeth, and we collectively cringe.
“What exactly are they?” Lily asks.
“Yeah.” Effie makes a face. “What exactly are we looking at here? Temporary caps?”
“They’re permanent, and they’re gold ,” Suze announces a little too proudly—and a touch too loudly. She opens her mouth wide for us to inspect, and we lean in to do just that.
Sure enough, every last tooth on her top—and bottom—row gleams in a questionably gold alloy.
“Oh no,” I groan. “Suze, why in the world would you do something like that?”
Effie grunts, “More like, how in the world. You work at a bakery. No offense, Lottie, but she’s not exactly making enough to qualify as royalty, let alone to gift every one of those enamel queens in her mouth a gold crown.”
Lily scoffs. “I bet Lottie’s been handing Suze a little under the table. She is practically Lottie’s mother-in-law.”
“I’m no such thing,” Suze is quick to protest the idea.
Honestly, she took it better than I thought she would.
“And I didn’t pay for them,” Suze is quick to clarify. “Well, I put it on my credit card, but Everett said he would sue the pants off the deceased—or sue the body bags off of them, as it were.” She shudders for effect. “Apparently, they had deep pockets, and despite their early dismissal from the planet, the monetary beat goes on at their company. Everett says he’s really going to sock it to those two corpses and get me a huge payout. So all of my dental work is free, free, free .” She practically sings that last word.
No surprise there— free is her favorite word. Suze is a notorious cheapskate.
I try to rack my brain and rewind that conversation we had last night, but I can’t recall Everett saying he’d be socking it to any corpse on the planet. For Suze’s sake, I hope she’s right. She’s going to need a big payout to cover the cost, whatever it may be.
I’d ask what that cost is, but it feels crass.
“So how much are the new choppers setting you back, Suzie Q?” Carlotta asks. Subtlety isn’t really her strong suit.
We all lean in, and I think I see a handful of customers leaning in, too.
Suze rolls her eyes and then tries to blink her bangs out of her line of sight. Her short hair is nearly all gray now, but she still clings to that bangs-in-the-eyeballs style she’s had for years.
“Oh, all right,” she sighs. “If you must know, for the complete set, it was seventy-five thousand.”
“ American dollars? ” I cry in terror.
“No, rupees,” she quips. “Of course, it was dollars, you ding-a-ling.” She pushes past me with her chin high and teeth gleaming with all the glitz and glamour of a pharaoh’s coffin. “Now, let’s get to work. These heart-shaped cookies aren’t going to sell themselves.”
Effie shrugs as she heads back to the counter. “They’re pretty much selling themselves. Especially those naughty grams you came up with last night.”
Suze shrugs right back. “I do what I can to keep this place in business. Heaven knows what would happen if I just rolled over and gave up. The entire lot of us would be unemployed.”
Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes. And I shoot Carlotta a look, too, because I know exactly who’s behind those naughty grams.
“ Nah .” Carlotta waves away the thought. “Lot wouldn’t let this place go under. Not before she pulled her biggest stunt of them all—a triple homicide of her least favorite employees.”
Suze, Effie, and Lily all gasp in unison before diving back into their work with a newfound vigor.
“I should have Cray Cray give the pep talks more often,” I whisper to Lyla Nell. Cray Cray would be Carlotta’s fitting moniker in lieu of Grandma.
A few customers stride up to the counter, and Suze offers them a big, golden-toothed grin—an uncharacteristically cheerful greeting from the perennial sourpuss demeanor if ever there was one.
In less than three seconds, every one of those customers recoils in horror. Two of them dart out the door, screaming. And another fans herself with her fingers as if she’s about to pass out.
“ Suzy scawy! ” Lyla Nell buries her face in my chest before looking back up. “Suzy, go away.”
“Believe me, some days I’d love to send her packing,” I mutter. Heaven forbid that Everett can’t squeeze a dime out of that company, and with Suze’s luck, that’ll definitely be the case. Fortune isn’t typically on her side.
I’m about to head over and suggest Suze take the rest of the day off when the chime on the door goes off and in walks my good fortune.
It just so happens to be someone who might be able to shed a little light on why two so-called jerks took an arrow to the heart.
Cupid might be the obvious suspect, but a part of me wonders if this woman here might have had a hand in it, too.
And I’m about to find out.