7. Crew
“ Y ou think she knew it was you?” Rachel asked, using her car window as a mirror and replacing the wig on her head.
“No way,” I scoffed. “Look at this.” I pointed to the glued on mustache that felt like a caterpillar taking a nap on my upper lip.
“True,” my sister in law shrugged. “Maybe I should consider going dark. I look like a sexy Edna Mode.”
I squinted at her. “Can Edna Mode be sexy?”
“Anything can be sexy if you want it to. Just ask Adam when he’s-”
“Dick!” A loud voice yelled out from across the parking lot.
“Why did you name me that?” I hissed to my sister in law.
She raised two hands in defense, her wig bouncing with the movement. “I thought it sounded sophisticated.”
“Dick has never sounded sophisticated. Ever.”
Although the mustached was doing wondrous things for my ego right now and the consideration of growing a real one wasn’t quite lost on me.
I turned to where Winnie had poked her head out of her light pink truck and waved a large bag of food for us to pick up. Rachel beside me stared down at her phone, unphased.
“Are you gonna get it?” I whispered.
“No, this is your thing,” she looked up from her device. “I’m just here for the wig. And the desserts.”
I groaned and stood straight with my head slightly tilted down, keeping my hood low over my eyes.
“Diiiiiccckkk!!!” Winnie shouted at ten times the volume, causing various eyes to glance around for whoever was supposed to grab their food.
Irritation began to grow behind my eyelids.
“I’m right here.” I announced my arrival and reached up and grabbed the hefty bag from her witch talons. Which were less talon-looking and more like soft, smooth skin with pastel green painted ends.
“Oh good, I worked extra hard on these, hope you and Autumn enjoy.” She smiled in a way I had never seen before. Then again she never smiled at me unless she was mentally plotting my demise, so maybe this was normal for the average person.
I wrapped two hands around the paper sack and lifted it up to her in thanks. My voice lowered an octave. “Thanks. We will.”
She hummed a response before doing a full one eighty and turning back to the ovens behind her.
Trekking back to the car felt like I was in a spy movie.; one where they had to cross enemies lines in a disguise to bring back the golden treasure or the blue monkey or whatever national secret they possessed. Only this time the treasure was flakey baked goods with light, creamy filling.
All I had to do was taste a couple, get an idea of what goes in there, and try to recreate it at home. If recipes were my downfall, then wearing a fake mustache and breaking down a stolen dessert would be my uprising. And, unlike when I lost my brothers toaster, I felt zero remorse.
I reached Rachel’s car and raised the bag with a devilish grin.
She squealed in excitement and clapped her hands together. “You think she knew it was you?” Rachel asked in a hushed tone.
“No way. She may be into all that chemistry bs but I’ve got the upper hand on street smarts.”
Although, if we were being technical, she was the one who came out with the idea first, but that was irrelevant for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom at the moment.
“Okay, let’s do this. Your brother comes home in thirty minutes and I like to greet him at the door.”
“Gross.” I muttered. “I liked you better when you guys were just friends.”
Rachel nodded. “Fair.”
I quickly opened the bag, frustrated how much I admired the precision in her packaging. Tiny paper boxes with pink and white stripes on them, her logo on top. Each pastry wrapped delicately like a birthday present you go to unravel. We each grabbed a pastry: her a strawberry and mint cheesecake dish with some kind of cinnamon sugar chips, me with a basic cream cheese puff pastry.
“Alright, remember the purpose of this.” I eyed the dessert in front me.
The evil, tempting…almost sexy dessert. Can pastries be sexy? Or maybe it was just that Winnie made it, dipping her temptress hands right in the batter.
“No distractions.” I reminded Rachel, but mostly myself. “Take a bite, get in there, figure out the ingredients, come back.”
Rachel nodded slowly like she didn’t understand but went along anyway.
“Okay, okay.” I shook out my shoulders. “Three. Two…” I stared down at the cream cheese Danish resting in my hands and shudder.
Meanwhile, Rachel isn’t paying any attention to my countdown. She’s lifting her treat straight from the paper it was wrapped in up to her wide open mouth, ready and willing and-
“Wait!” I shouted and stuck a hand out to her, pausing the dessert an inch from her lips. “We should discuss funeral plans first.”
“Crew, is this really that serious?”
My face screwed into the most serious version of it I could muster. “As serious as it gets. I don’t care if I’m buried or cremated but I would like to serve birria tacos with corn tortillas, pepper jack, and a purple cabbage mango salsa on the side please.”
Rachel’s earnest face matched mine as she dipped her head in understanding. “Got it. I would like a twenty minute moment of silence with only Billy Joel playing in the background and please bury me with my Dreams 8track.”
“Done and done.” I glanced back at my hands, my destiny lying between them.
This dessert was going to make or break me. Literally, since I might die if she saw through my extensive disguise and took all of those poison threats into fruition.
“Okay,” I took a deep breath and lifted the pastry to my mouth. “It was great knowing you.”
Rachel gave me a half-hearted salute. “It’s been a pleasure, sarge.”
Simultaneously, we both took two large bites into our desserts. In for a penny, in for a…death, I guess.
Flavorful notes hit my tongue one at a time then all together at once like a punch to the gut. No, not a punch. It was a dance. A waltz in my palette, moving and gliding effortlessly together in a delicate swirl. Sweet, creamy, vanilla, a touch of something fresh, unique. Then, the real punch hit…salty. Salty, REALLY, REALLY, salty. My tongue shriveled up, my mouth twisting and turning. What the hell?
I lifted my head and saw Rachel, mouth open, strawberry covered tongue sticking out with a muffled ‘thisisawful’ noise coming out.
In unison, we both jerked up from our positions of being bent over our wide range of desserts and immediately began spitting out the remaining bits in our mouths. I reached for the stack of napkins in our bag, ones riddled with her logos, and desperately scraped any leftover saltiness out of my tongue.
“How in the world does that wretched lady have a line wrapped around your truck every night?” Rachel asked, her words spilling out in between gags.
“I told you she poisons them, the only reason it didn’t work on us is because we know the truth.”
“Or she knows the truth?”
Slowly we both turned to face the pink truck in the distance. A shiver crawled its way up my spine when I made eye contact with a bright, shining Winnifred hanging outside the window, waving.
“You’re welcome, DICK!” She yelled at the top of her lungs, causing everyone, literally everyone, within a fifty foot radius to stare at me.
A scowl spread on my lips, my eyebrows lowering. My mustache also lowering- due to the scowl. I began to make a threat right back to her, conjuring up all Winnie The Pooh references I could, but just then my fake mustache decided to it was ready to clock out, falling right to the parking lot.
Rachel busted out laughing beside me. “Oh my gosh,” she wheezed, holding her stomach. “I think I’m in love with her.”
That would make just one of us.