8. Chapter 8
I’m yawning as I finish covering the dough and sliding it into the cooler. Pop will be in at 4:30 AM to bring it out, let it rise, then turn it into buns. The rest of the prep is done: the zepole ready for frying, the pasticciotti ready for baking, the sfogliatelle already baked.
Sfogliatelle are my favourite even though they’re nasty to prep. I love the little shell-baked pastries filled with cream. I always bake more than we need so I can eat a few. This girl needs extra calories to get through the night.
I think of Reaper. If he were waiting for me at home, I could eat at least three more. I have an image of how I’d burn off those calories and shiver, then decide maybe four or five more.
I pull the calzones out of the oven and shelve them to cool, check the Stromboli and decide it needs ten more minutes. The calzones make me think of Reaper again. The sexy biker said he was dealing with Miguel tonight and I’m half-dreading the fallout. Maybe there won’t be any. Miguel is a coward in his heart and frankly, coward or not, Reaper would scare anyone.
I stuff a cannoli into my mouth as I slide the tray into the display. I figure I’ll never see the badass biker again after he’s done with Miguel. He made it clear that this was a one-time thing, which makes me kind of sad, but maybe it’s for the best. Pops would definitely not approve of Reaper.
I’ve already made the biscotti and bagged the Nicciolini di Canzo. I can’t stand the small crumbly cookies, but they seem to be a favorite among the over-60s. The only thing left to do is throw three calzones into a paper bag so I’m covered for breakfast and lunch tomorrow.
I write a quick note to Pops to remind him to sprinkle the zeppole with powdered sugar after he fries them and add a cherry on top of the whipped cream. Mrs. Royer, one of our best customers, gets cranky when the zeppole isn’t done right.
I sign the note, then add a bunch of little x’s and o’s. My pop truly is the best and I love him more than anything else in this world.
I throw my apron into the laundry bin and step through the back door into the alley. I’m facing the door, twisting the bolt into place with my key when something slams into my back. Not something, someone. He’s tall, his arm pressing against the back of my neck, his hand wrapped in my hair and a knee shoved between my thighs.
Me, I’m not so tall, have my face pressed into the hard surface of the door and no means of kicking him the balls. “GET OFF ME!”
I go into freakout mode as I twist my body to evade his grip. I don’t need my hair. It’ll grow back. My life on the other hand, I kind of want it for another 60 or so years.
He tightens his grip and slams me harder against the door, his pelvis pressing into my lower back. His hot breath brushes my hair. “You fuckin’ little bitch.”
It’s Reaper. His voice is low and chill like he’s talking about the weather instead of spewing profanity and calling me names.
Me, on the other hand, not so chill. “What the hell are you doing!” I try to elbow him in the stomach and almost succeed.
“You set me up,” he growls into my ear. “Nobody fuckin’ does that and lives.”
Chills course through me despite the heat from his body. He’s a Hell’s Jury biker and they have a take-no-prisoners policy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but maybe we can take this inside so we don’t attract the wrong kind of attention.”
“Right. So you can stab me in the back,” he says coldly. “Oh wait. You already did that.”
I try to match his tone. “I honestly have no idea what’s going on, and sorry if I’m getting all logical on you and stuff, but if I set you up, do you think I’d hang around and do prep for tomorrow?”
Perhaps the words were ill-advised because his muscles tense and he twists me around like I’m a pretzel. “You’re fucking coming with me.” He wraps a hand around my arm and starts dragging me out of the alley.
When I say dragging, I mean dragging. I let my body go limp and he almost drops me. Unfortunately, he doesn’t take kindly to my resistance.
“You come with me without a fuss or I’ll break your neck right here and now. What’s one more fuckin’ body?”
“Shit,” I whisper. I struggle to keep up with his long strides as heads toward an alley to a white pick-up. “What happened?”
“Get in.” He opens the door on the driver’s side and shoves me between the shoulder blades.
Spot is sitting in the passenger seat and gives a happy yip when he sees me. “What are you doing with Spot? I told you to threaten Miguel, not kidnap his dog.”
“Move over,” he growls, bumping me with his hip.
I try to slide to the passenger side, but Spot won’t budge so I’m stuck in the middle. “Could one of you please explain what’s going on?”
Reaper starts the truck, floors the gas, and rips down the road straight out of Sagebrush towards Pyramid Lake.
“Woah,” I gasp when he squeals around a corner.
He slaps his hand across my chest to keep me from face planting onto the dash. “Put on your seatbelt.”
My nipples kind of like being pressed against his forearm and also, it’s reassuring that he cares. I figure whatever the issue, we can talk our way through it, then go back to my place and have the pre-marital sex Pops frowns upon.
I fumble with the belt, then once I’ve got it buckled, I turn to him. “Whatever you think I did, I didn’t. I’ve been at class all day and then at the bakery.”
“Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t get your little hands dirty. So what poor bastard did you seduce into doing it?”
“Doing what?” My temper’s starting to rise.
“Kill your fucking ex-boyfriend.”
“What?” I stutter as I go numb from my toes to my fingertips. “Miguel’s dead?”
“I’m thinking you already know that.” The drive seems to be settling Reaper down as his tone is warming up.
“Why would I know that?” I don’t know what to feel. Shock maybe, but there should also be grief. After all, I kind of liked the guy once, at least enough to sleep with him. I search around and find a little bit, but maybe not enough. Am I really that cold-hearted?
Reaper intrudes on my musings. “Because it seems like a big fucking coincidence that I get to his apartment minutes before the cops show up. Somebody had to have reported it.”
The cops? Oh dear God, and yes, I am addressing the big fellow. “This is too weird.”
“Yeah,” he mutters. He glances down at me. “You’re not lying about this, X? You didn’t set me up?”
I brush up against his hard thigh as I turn to look more fully at him. “The only reason I would set you up is because you’re squeezing my pops. But I’m not an idiot. It would be easier to get you alone, shoot you in the face and run for the hills.”
“You got a fucking gun?” he asks, breaking hard and stopping dead in the middle of road.
He grabs me, his hands running up and down my body and if the conversation wasn’t so serious, I might do him in kind. “Hand me your pack.”
The pack in question is on the floor under Spot, who up until now has been curled up on the seat, enjoying the ride.
I pick it up and shove it in Reaper’s arms. “There’s nothing in it that I can use as a weapon unless my nail file counts.”
He ignores me as he searches the pack, then drops it back where it was before.
We travel several more miles in silence, then he pulls into an empty parking lot at the lake and stops the truck.
We sit for a few minutes, but I’m not good at long silences. “You gotta think this through. I’m a straightforward kind of girl. If I don’t like something, I’m gonna get the problem done and over with.”
He looks at me. “Good to know for future reference.”
“And if I did set you up, as I said before, I’d be long gone when you came looking for your revenge.”
He sighs as he slumps against the seat and rubs his chin. “I know. I thought all that. But shit.”
I slump against the seat too. “Dog balls.”
He turns his body towards me, pressing his back against the door. His knee bumps mine as he does this and I have this sudden image of me on his lap, facing him. He’s got his pants open and his cock is as hard as Hades and I’m wearing my short skirt, tucked up around my waist and?—
“Okay X,” he interrupts. “Let’s for a minute assume you have nothing to do with Miguel’s death.”
My bubble bursts. “Let’s not assume. Let’s face reality. I had nothing to do with my ex-boyfriend’s death.”
He studies my face. “Why aren’t you more upset?”
Good grief.
I roll my eyes. “I’m crying on the inside.”
“I’m asking,” he growls.
I barely know him and I can already distinguish between his various tones. This one means ‘stop with the sarcasm or I’ll toss you in the lake’.
I’m not into an early morning swim, so I say, “Miguel and I were not exactly in love and we were never going to be. We would have ended it eventually, probably with bitter recriminations and unimaginative insults. The breakup was earlier is all. The rest I guess played out the way I thought it would.” I pause, think I’m being a little cold-hearted, so add, “I’m shocked that he’s dead. Murder is not something I’d wish on anyone.”
Spot whines and scratches at the door so Reaper leans over me and lets him out. His forearm brushes against my breasts and I suck in a breath. Focus on the here and now, Ximina, not the future possibilities.
“Hey,” I protest weakly. “You can’t just let the dog out in a strange place. He might not come back.”
“Let’s hope not,” Reaper mutters as he moves back to his side of the truck, but he leave’s Spot’s door open which makes me think of Reaper and me, in our home, watching a movie, with Spot curled up at our feet.
My nipples beg him to come back. Reaper, not Spot, but I tell them to stand down. They don’t. It’s also my opportunity to move to the passenger side of the truck. I don’t. Now I know where my nipples get their stubbornness from.
“Spot’s the only witness,” I say to distract myself from the sexy biker still brushing up against me. “He could identify the killer by smell.”
Reaper looks dubious. “He doesn’t strike me as that smart.”
I think about it. “He was smart enough to go on the lam with you.”
His chuckle is not exactly reassuring. “That isn’t a point in his favor.”
“Let’s talk this through,” I tell him shifting slightly away so I get some thinking space. “You went to the Miguel’s apartment and found him murdered.” Oh yeah, and… “How exactly was he killed?” I’m no different than most people. I see an accident, I’m gonna slow down and gawk.
Reaper shakes his head. “You don’t wanna know. It wasn’t pretty.”
For the first time since this conversation started, I get scared. “That bad, huh?”
“Yeah. The apartment wasn’t tossed and they didn’t kill Spot, so I can’t figure out the reason behind it.”
“Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe someone was setting you up.”
He narrows his eyes.
“Not me, but someone!”
“Who would even know I was there? You tell anyone?”
I think about it. It doesn’t take long. “That would be a ‘no’.”
“Go over your activities for the last 24 hours. From the moment I dropped you off last night to the moment I picked you up this morning.”
Reaper’s stomach growls and I remember the calzones I have. Three. I always do things in the threes. Sort of the Holy Trinity. “I’ve got calzones,” I say as I dig through my pack and grab the bag. “Eat while I talk,” I say as I hand it to him.
He opens the bag and inhales. “Might be worth marrying you just for these,” he mutters.
“Wow, as proposals go, you’ve got it nailed.”
He side-eyes me as he takes a huge bite. “Sorry,” he mumbles around his mouthful.
I pull a calzone out of the bag and nibble it. “So what I did over the last 24 hours? You dropped me off. I went inside. I got a call from my former friend, Lavender.”
“Another former friend,” he remarks after he swallows. “How many ex-friends do you have?”
He listens patiently while I explain the mess.
“So you need new friends.”
“I’m not currently in the market for new friends.”
Spot jumps back in the truck and sits down on the seat but looks intently at me.
Reaper reaches across me again and closes the door. Spot thinks he’s offering the calzone and grabs it out of his other hand.
“Fucking dog!” Reaper snarls, his cool vibe disappearing as fast as the calzone in Spot’s mouth.
It’s the first time he’s really lost his composure and for some reason it makes me happy that it was over a calzone I made.
“Relax,” I say as I hand him mine. “I’m not really hungry. And there’s another in the bag, so you’re not gonna starve.”
“Thanks,” he says as he takes a bite of my calzone. “So the friend called. What’d she want?”
“Ex,” I correct as I shrug. “Nothing, not really. Miguel asked her to call me. He thinks I took something of his when I left.”
“What something?”
I think about the conversation. “I don’t know. I didn’t give her a chance to tell me.”
He sighs. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? Okay, what’d you do next?”
“Had a shower, went to bed.” I don’t tell him about the bedtime story I told myself because he featured heavily in it. “I slept in and had to run to get to my class.” I frown remembering the reception from the prof. “I was late, prof was pissed, the class sucked, so I left.”
“You just walked out of class?”
“Yeah. I was hungry. Didn’t have time for breakfast so I went to the cafeteria, got a coffee and two eclairs.”
He circles his hand at me. “Move on. I don’t need the minutia.”
“Yes, you do, because Edgar, Miguel’s cousin, found me there and pissed me off, so I mashed one of the eclairs into his face.”
Reaper stares at me. “You have no boundaries, do you?”
I scowl. “Of course, I do. After all, I wanted to kill Miguel, but I didn’t, did I?”
“That has yet to be established,” Reaper grumbles as he looks at the bag in my hand. “You said you had three?”
I sigh as I hand him the bag. “I’ll get something to eat at the cafeteria.”
“You’re not going anywhere without me until we figure out what’s going on.” He takes a bite of the calzone. “What’d the cousin want?” he mumbles.
“The same thing Lavender did. He asked me if I took something of Miguel’s.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know. I was mad so I didn’t let him finish. Then, you know.” I shrug. “The eclair thing happened.”
“Jesus. Did you take something of Miguel’s? And if you mash the calzone into my face I will take you for a long walk in the desert that you’ll never come back from.”
I grin at his threat because it lacks conviction. “Better eat it fast. And no, I didn’t take anything of Miguel’s that I know of. Tracy was kind enough to box up what few things I had in the apartment and left it for me to pick up. Which I did.”
“And where is the box that Tracy packed up for you? Because what if whatever the killers are looking for is inside the box?”
Where is the box? I tap my finger on my chin. “I was pissed, the box was big and heavy. There was nothing special in it.”
“Did you look?”
“I didn’t have to. I only had a few things at Miguel’s and nothing that mattered.”
“So where is it?”
I run the events over in my head. I had a class and I was running late. Ah yes. “Had to head to the college to get to an accounting seminar, so I took the box with me.”
“So it’s in your car?”
“This feels like the Inquisition,” I tell him. “No. I took the bus that day. My car gets moody, remember?”
Something flickers in his eyes. Guilt or regret maybe. “Okay you took the bus. What did you do with the box?”
“Stuffed it in my locker.”
“The locker’s that big?”
“I said I stuffed it in there. I didn’t say it was easy.”
“Okay then. We go to the college to get it.”
He goes to the start the truck then stops when I say, “It’s 4:30 AM. The college is closed.”
“Right.” He rubs his hand over the whiskers on his chin. “We wait here then.”
I think of all the things we could be doing while we’re waiting, but I want to clean up first. I’m not at my best after prepping for six hours. “How about we go to my apartment so I can shower and change my clothes? I smell like a moldering mess of overripe sourdough starter.”
He takes a sniff of me. “You smell fine. Like calzones.”
“Thanks,” I say, more pleased than I should be at being told I smell like dough and pepperoni. “But if we’re going to the college, I’m not going looking like this.”
“Okay,” Reaper replies as he starts the truck. “Let’s hit it.”