25. Emmie
25
EMMIE
A fter we’d closed up the cupcake shop, I said goodbye to the Svensson girls. Then I gave in and cried. Chin trembling, I began measuring flour for the new cupcake recipe I was going to test.
This was the worst Christmas ever.
I uncorked my bottle of baking cognac.
“Why do I have such terrible taste in men?” I wailed to the cats, who were certain they hadn’t been fed in weeks and were starving.
Marius was probably in Manhattan in a fancy bar with a thin, pretty woman in a pencil skirt and garters, who was making bedroom eyes at him over five-hundred-dollar Scotch.
She’d never bake. All her bras and panties would match. She’d be able to go toe to toe with Marius on all his legal knowledge and make legal sex puns in bed.
Bet she didn’t just lie there over the back of a couch while he did all the work. She probably did those expensive stripper classes on Thursdays.
“Kris Kringle’s balls,” I swore as I realized I’d lost count of the flour. “I just wanted to bake some cupcakes.” I started sobbing and sank to the floor.
I couldn’t get Marius’s expression out of my head and kept thinking of how he’d accused me of murdering Brooks. Like he was so sure that I was an awful person.
Screw him.
I’d blocked his number immediately after leaving the senior center.
I’d also told Zoe to ignore him if he called her then begged her incessantly all day, asking, “Did he call? Did he email? Did he text you?”
No, no, and no.
Marius had walked out of my life just as easily as he’d walked in, leaving me with a mess to clean up.
To be fair, the rational part of me, which I was about to drown in alcohol, said Marius had technically provided thousands of dollars’ worth of free legal help, gotten me out of jail, given me not one but five orgasms, and opened my café back up.
But still…
Now is not the time for being rational. Now is the time for drunk baking.
I hauled myself upright and rummaged in a drawer for a large spoon to start remeasuring the flour.
The smartwatch, buried under kitchen gadgets, buzzed right as I was shutting the drawer.
Likes Butt Stuff: Are you really dead???
Likes Butt Stuff: You said you’d help me pay for my kids’ holiday trip to Rockefeller Center. You still gonna do it?
I took out my phone and dialed the number. “Who the hell is this?” I shrieked when a woman answered. “How many women was Brooks sleeping with?” The rage had settled in. “I can’t get one lousy man, and Brooks had a whole harem of partners that he just rotated through. What the fuck? The audacity of men.”
The woman cussed me out then hung up.
“How many more were there?” I snarled, scrolling through the smartwatch, cursing the teeny-tiny screen. “Rosie, Oakley, Beatrice, Tits, Likes Butt Stuff—was Brooks cheating on me with half the town?”
A YouTube video tutorial helped me access the threads of deleted messages, which let me find Rosebud in Training, Thick Thighs, and Fat Pussy because Brooks was nothing if not revolting.
Maybe that was why Marius had been so upset that morning. He was furious about Brooks—what he’d done to him—and he was hurting.
“It doesn’t matter; he walked away from me.” I took another long swig of cognac, to the yowls of irate and hungry cats, then furiously dialed each of the numbers of the women Brooks was sleeping with.
“Hello?” Rosie aka Rosebud In Training said. I recognized her voice.
“I know you slept with my husband!” I shrieked at her. “Homewrecker! And I’m destroying that bracelet.”
“Emmie? What the—”
I hung up then punched in the next number and the next and the next.
Tits informed me that yes, she’d known Brooks was married, and no, she didn’t care. She hadn’t even wanted to sleep with him, but he’d helped pay her rent, and by the way, I owed her seventy-five bucks.
“My Christmas charity doesn’t extend that far.”
When I punched in the last number, Fat Pussy’s, I almost thought I’d drunkenly mistyped because the name that came up…
“That can’t be right.” I shook my head. The noisy cats were giving me a headache. I stared out into the dark empty café. “Oh my God—I need to get out of here.”
Feeling woozy, I hauled myself up. It took me several tries to unblock Marius’s number on my phone.
“Pick up. Pick up,” I muttered as I grabbed my purse, not bothering to fix the strap as I thrust my arms into my jacket. I made sure the back door to the kitchen was locked then scuttled to the front door, phone glued to my ear. “Pick up.”
Ring, ring!
I froze as a ringtone echoed in the empty dining room.
Out of the corridor that led to the bathrooms, Marius slowly walked toward me, hands up.
Cora was behind him, holding a shotgun.
“Put that fucking phone down, Emmie,” she spat, “or your boyfriend’s going to be the second person to die in this shop.”
“Don’t do it, Emmie.” Marius’s voice was unnaturally calm for someone with a gun to his head. Probably all that courtroom training. “You hate me, remember, Emmie?” he said, giving me a crooked smile. “I was mean to you this morning. Just save yourself; I’m not worth it.”
“Shut up!” Cora screamed, cocking the shotgun. “Get on your knees, and throw away that goddamn phone!”
Marius knelt down slowly. I dropped the phone and kicked it away.
“That’s right. You took something from me, and now I’m going to take it from you,” Cora said. Her voice had this creepy, unhinged lilt.
“I—what? Brooks was my husband. You were sleeping with my husband,” I argued while Marius mouthed at me to shut up.
“No, he wasn’t. He was mine first. We were together in high school. Brooks said,” Cora sobbed, “that I wasn’t as hard a worker as you, that he didn’t want some gold digger. But…” She gasped. “I know, I know he loved me. I gave him my virginity. He had to love me.”
“Are you sure? Because I’m sure this pattern of cheating behavior didn’t just pop up out of the ground when he was in his midtwenties,” I argued. “Brooks was probably juggling you and five other women. You and I are both victims. Just put down the gun. I’m sure we can work it out. I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill him.”
“You’re not a victim. You’re a villain. The only reason he’s dead is because of you,” Cora spat.
“Emmie didn’t kill him—you did,” Marius said, earning a rap of the gun on his ear.
“I may have pushed him off the ledge, but Emmie put him there,” Cora snarled. “He was going to marry me.” Her voice caught. “He said the other women didn’t mean anything, that he’d made a mistake. But he could never just make a clean break. I just wanted to make him sick. I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted him to realize that Oakley and all those other women wouldn’t stick by him through sickness and in health. He wasn’t supposed to die.”
“What about Beatrice?” I asked.
“She lied to my face. She was sleeping with my man. She was in love with him. She told me that he told her they were going to be together, that he didn’t like Oakley.”
“So you put shellfish in her food?”
“Of course not! I didn’t even know she was allergic. Karma got her with the allergic reaction.” She wiped her teary face on her shoulder. “Even the universe agrees she had to pay for what she did. Don’t you see?”
“All I see is a man who is not worth all this mess and drama.”
“There is no man on this earth greater than Brooks.” Cora was reverent. “He’s charming and handsome and the captain of the football team. And his cock…”
“I’ve seen bigger,” I said.
“Him?” Cora screeched, her attention back on Marius.
I winced.
“Maybe I’ll shoot that off first.”
“Whoa,” I said, trying to stall her. “I think there’s been a big misunderstanding. Just put the gun down and walk away. No one is going to know that you were the one who killed Brooks. We won’t say anything, right, Marius? You can finally be free, Cora.”
“They’ll know it was my grandmother’s cataract medicine.” Cora sobbed. “I’m going to jail.”
“But…” I said, my mind racing.
“Stop stalling!” Cora screamed.
“You’re not a murderer, Cora,” I said urgently.
“Yes, I am! I killed the love of my life. I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”
“He died from cyanide poisoning. Your grandmother doesn’t have cyanide in her medicine cabinet.”
“But the eye drops…”
“Brooks didn’t eat those cupcakes,” Marius said. “We had tox reports done.”
“I didn’t kill Brooksey!” Cora sounded hysterical. The gun trembled in her hand, too close to Marius’s head for my comfort. “But who…?”
There was movement outside of the window.
Rosie was outside, phone to her ear.
“She’s calling the police!” Cora shrieked. The gun flailed. “I’m doomed!”
The door opened.
“Rosie, get back!” Marius barked at her. “You’ll get hurt. She has a gun.”
Rosie’s face lit up. “Oh, Marius, I knew we had a connection.” She sighed then blinked at Cora. “Cora, get that gun off of him, and shoot Emmie.”
“What?” I choked out.
Cora hesitantly lifted the gun.
“I knew it was you!” I screeched at Rosie as she stroked Marius’s face and hair then leaned in to press her lips to his. I saw red. “Get the fuck off of my man. Why are all of you trying to steal my men?”
Marius jerked.
Cora twisted the gun back on him.
“She’s not, Emmie,” he choked out, “I’m yours.” Marius blinked rapidly, neck craning as Cora leaned the gun on him. “I just want you to know I’m sorry, Emmie. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, and I’m sorry I was mean to you. You’re the best thing to ever happen to me, and I wish I hadn’t thrown away the chance of you falling in love with me.”
“Shut up!” Cora raged. “You don’t know what love is. None of you know what real love truly is.”
Rosie rolled her eyes.
“You murdered Brooks,” Cora sobbed to Rosie.
“Of course I did. He had it coming. Now, where’s my bracelet?” Rosie barked at me.
“You want a memento of the love of your life?” I baited her.
Rosie just scoffed. “As if. I’m not like dumb little Cora. Brooks betrayed me. He got what he deserved. I designed that bracelet myself, and I want it back.”
I didn’t move.
“Never mind. I’ll fish it off your corpse.” She pulled a tiny bottle of clear liquid out of her purse. “And replace it with this. Made it myself. Cyanide extracted from hundreds of apricot pits. We’ll tell the cops that you admitted that you murdered Brooks for the life insurance money, won’t we, Cora?”
Cora whimpered.
“If you don’t cooperate,” Rosie said sweetly to Cora, “and if you try and rat me out, I’m just going to tell everyone that you were an accomplice.”
Something furry brushed past me. Out of the dark, they appeared—dozens of silent cats, led by Moose.
“But Marius isn’t going to lie,” Cora whispered and licked her lips.
Rosie looked down at him and ran her thumb over his lower lip.
“There’s always another man. Pity, Marius—you’re so handsome. Shoot him in the back, Cora, so we can have a nice funeral.”
Cora lowered the weapon to his back.
“Please,” I cried, “don’t!”
Rosie startled when a cat rubbed against her boot, purring.
“Good kitty,” Rosie cooed. “Such good kitties.”
Moose, like his owner hadn’t just had a gun to his head, calmly leaped onto Marius’s shoulders and daintily licked a paw.
“I should have gotten a dog,” Marius muttered as Moose jumped onto his head, totally nonplussed that Marius was in danger. The other cats slowly came over to investigate why a grown man was kneeling on the floor, jumping onto his broad shoulders like he was a cat tree, sniffing his coat.
Rosie laughed. “Dumb animals. They’re just waiting for Cora to kill you so they can eat your corpse. Don’t worry. Your new mommy will let you live in her new cat café. Cora, do it.”
Cora racked the shotgun.
As if that was the cue, thirty pairs of eyes fixed themselves on Cora, then the mass of animals sprang.
I screamed as they attacked Rosie and Cora with teeth and claws, hissing and scratching.
The shotgun went off, and plaster rained down over us. Rosie screamed, and Cora tried to run.
My ears rang.
Cats went flying.
Cora fired again, blowing a hole in the wall, then dropped the gun as a tabby cat bit her on the hand.
Rosie was incapacitated on the ground, curled up as the cats, led by Moose, attacked her.
“Jesus Christ,” Marius swore, sliding across the tile floor to scoop me into his arms and haul me to the door. “You have too many goddamn cats, woman.”