Talk Nerdy to Me (26 page)

"No,
we're not. Come on, Charlie, let's go in. I want to get a look at those cookies."

"Yeah,
because it's not your mother making them." But Charlie was feeling better
about braving the X-rated pastries with Eve by his side. Eve helped him
maintain his sense of humor about such things.

"Speaking
of cookies, how could two guys who got talked into frosting those cookies take
a crowbar to my back door? It doesn't make sense that they're the ones, when I
think about how your mom and aunt are wrapping them around their little
fingers."

"Right now, only one
thing makes sense."

"What's that?"

He put an arm around her waist as they walked
toward the back door of the bakery. "First of all, repairing the damned
mixer."

"And
then?"

"Going
straight to bed."

She laughed, and he felt that suspicious warmth
invading his heart. No doubt about it. He was coming down with a bad case.

Eve
hoped either Manny, Kyle, or both of them together had done that number on her
door. If they hadn't, then Denise was next in the lineup. Denise worked out
every day. No flabby muscles would dare cling to her athletic frame. And she
might be determined to protect her baby sister from doing something dangerous.

Denise
would be smart enough to break down the back door to make it look as if the
culprit didn't have a key. And Denise would rationalize it as all for Eve's own
good. Eve didn't think Denise would be the least bit conscience-stricken if she
thought her actions would save her little sister from her own stupidity.

But
Eve wasn't about to help focus the laser beam of Charlie's intellect on Denise.
She appreciated his protective tendencies, but a false accusation would rip
apart a sisterly bond that was already worn in several places. Eve could kick
herself for giving in to the urge to tell Denise about the hovercraft.

Charlie
opened the back door of the bakery without knocking and they stepped into a
world that smelled of family, Christmas, and lazy Sunday mornings. Or at least
that's what Eve imagined the warmth and soothing aromas could mean in the
right hands.

There
hadn't been any baking going on in her parents' house, not with all the charity
work her mother had to do. Christmas had been efficiently dispensed with because
the holidays were high season if you were running charity balls and teas. Lazy
Sunday mornings hadn't existed, either. Church early in the morning and a big
brunch at the country club had taken up the biggest part of the day.

Eve's
reverie ended abruptly as she realized Charlie had opened the back door of the
bakery without a key. "The door wasn't locked?" She'd become fixated
on the subject of locks recently.

"It's
a problem with several people in my life these days," Charlie said as they
stepped inside. "They say locking the door causes too many problems, like
when Aunt Myrtle comes into the alley for a breath of fresh air and locks
herself out."

"She goes outside in
this weather?" Eve found herself in a little curtained alcove. A small
bathroom was off to the right, and a large fuse box was mounted on the wall
right next to the door.

"It's a habit left
over from her smoking days."

"BS.
She's sneaking a cigarette." Eve had been around too many people who had
supposedly quit to believe that Aunt Myrtle went to the back alley to suck up
plain old air. She was after nicotine.

"Charlie?"
Rose Shepherd, a voluminous apron covering her pale green pantsuit, pushed
back the curtain. "I thought I heard people talking back here. Hello,
Eve!"

"Hello,
Mrs. Shepherd." Eve winced at the heartiness of the greeting. No doubt
about it, Rose was salivating for a daughter-in-law prospect, and by showing up
tonight at this hour, Eve was implying a connection with Charlie that could
lead to Something Big. Too bad for Rose.

"You
should call me Rose," she said. "After all, you and Charlie are
friends, so it seems silly to stand on formality."

"Thank
you. I'll do that, then." Eve avoided looking at Charlie. He'd warned her
this would be the result of her tagging along, but she hadn't been able to
figure out an alternative. "Listen, as long as I'm here, what can I do to
help while Charlie's repairing your mixer?"

"She
can frost!" The raspy voice could only belong to Myrtle, the pseudo
ex-smoker. "Manny's doing fine, but Kyle's flagging. We could use
reinforcements."

Eve's
stomach lurched. She glanced at Charlie for moral support. He winked, which helped
relieve her jitters, but it still felt weird to be diving into a communal
project with the very men she and Charlie had discussed as prime suspects in
the breakin. It looked as if she'd end up frosting X-rated cookies with them.

"It'll
be fine," Charlie murmured as he held the curtain aside.

Of
course it would, she told herself. After all, Charlie was here. Comforted by
that thought, she stepped into the warm and fragrant back room. Gleaming
stainless steel appliances lined the walls, giving it a high-tech feel. A seriously
insulated door on one wall obviously led to a walk-in refrigerator.

A
butcher-block island took up space in the center of the room, and there Manny
and Kyle perched on stools, each man wearing clear plastic gloves. They didn't
look much like criminals while surrounded by an array of cake-decorating tools.
Eve wasn't close enough to inspect the shape of the cookies they were working
on, but she had a pretty good grasp of the concept already.

Kyle
glanced up eagerly. "Are you here to help? I mean, this used to be fun and
all, but after you've decorated fifty couples doing it, the thrill is gone. I
never thought the day would come that I didn't care about sex, but after fifty
cookies, a guy gets jaded."

"Kyle."
Manny placed his cookie to one side and picked up another one. "You
haven't done fifty. You've only done twenty."

"Really? It seems like
more."

"Actually,
it's less," Myrtle said from her station over by one of the large ovens.
"You ate one. So your count is only nineteen to Manny's thirty."

"Manny's done thirty?
No way."

'Thirty."
Manny's hands looked huge wielding the parchment cone filled with frosting, but
despite that he delicately squirted two dabs of red frosting on his cookie.
"This will be thirty-one. You, on the other hand, are not currently
frosting diddly-squat, are you?"

"I'm
resting my fingers," Kyle said. "All that squeezing was giving me
finger cramps. I might get carpel tunnel of the pinky doing this."

Manny
snorted and picked up a cone filled with yellow frosting.

Eve
had a tough time imagining two guys who were squabbling over how many cookies
they'd each frosted taking a crowbar to her back door. But maybe that was the
idea. The cookie-frosting caper was protective coloring. And she'd much rather
think they did it than her sister.

As
she stepped closer to the island she saw the purpose of the two dabs of red on
Manny's cookie. Nipples. The cookie portrayed the woman on her back and the man
in a sideways scissors position, so you got him in profile, but she was
sporting full frontal nudity.

Eve
felt warm breath on the back of her neck and glanced over her shoulder to find
Charlie standing there, hands on hips, his gaze intent on the cookie Manny was
decorating. Both couples were being given blond hair...everywhere that hair was
appropriate. Charlie seemed to be fascinated by Manny's technique.

"So
what do you think?" she asked, just to get a reaction out of him.

Charlie's
color was high as he met her gaze. "Looks complicated. But doable."

She
was a bad girl to tease him, but she couldn't resist. "The decorating or
the position?"

He
swallowed. "Uh ... both, I guess." Then he stepped back and turned
toward his mother. "All righty, then! Let's see about that mixer."

"I
don't know how it happened." Rose led him away toward a far corner of the
room. "One minute it was kneading the dough great, and the next it gave a
groan of protest and quit working entirely."

"Sort of like Kyle,
over there," Manny said.

"Boys,
boys," Myrtle said. "Don't fight." Opening the oven door, she
took out a giant tray and smacked it down so hard on the butcher-block island
that the cookies jumped. "Here's another twenty-five, kiddos. Let 'em cool
off a little before you start. Eve, you'll have to tie back your hair if you're
going to help. Health department regulations."

"Oh.
Right." Eve didn't know much about the food business, but she'd noticed
that employees didn't have loose hair flying around. "I didn't bring
anything."

"Here."
Manny took off one glove, reached in his pocket and pulled out a red bandanna.
"It's clean."

"Thanks."
She couldn't imagine that a guy who would break down her door would turn around
and offer her a bandanna for her hair, but who knew how criminals thought? She
tied her hah back with Manny's bandanna.

"If
you're all set in here," Myrtle said, "I'm going out for a breath of
fresh air." Pulling off her oven mitts, she headed out through the
curtained doorway.

"She's going for a
smoke," Kyle muttered.

"Which
she can have if she wants," Manny said in a low voice. He pursed his lips
as he finished up his cookie. Then he drew back and admired it. "Not bad.
Not bad at all."

"Smoking is bad for
her," Kyle said.

Manny
took another cookie. "You aren't some judge and jury, you know. The poor
lady's had a hard life, losing her husband early. I think she showed pluck,
starting up this bakery. She can have the occasional cigarette without going to
hell."

"It's
not hell I'm thinking of," Kyle said. "It's the hospital, which is
worse. Cigarettes will land you in the hospital sooner or later. Everybody
knows that." Then he looked at Eve. "Am I right?"

"Probably,
although some people get away with it." Eve glanced over to where Rose and
Charlie were engrossed in the mixer repair. Charlie was making enough noise
taking it apart that she doubted either he or his mother could hear this
discussion.

"I
say Myrtle shouldn't take those odds." Kyle looked worried. "I tried
talking to her about it, real quiet so Rose wouldn't hear, because Rose acts
like she doesn't know. But Myrtle's in total denial about the risks."

"Kyle,
you can't make her give up smoking if she doesn't want to," Manny said.
"But you could help her by frosting a few more cookies."

"Okay."
Kyle sighed. Then he glanced hopefully at Eve. "Ready to glove up and take
a turn? This would be easier without the gloves, but we're not allowed on account
of the sanitary issues. If you're not used to working with gloves, I can show
you a few tricks."

"I'd
appreciate that." Eve reached for the box of plastic gloves and pulled out
a pair. As she put them on she wondered if Kyle had handed her a clue. Anybody
who knew his way around plastic gloves might be used to them because he always
made sure not to leave fingerprints whenever he took a crowbar to somebody's
back door.

But
as Kyle demonstrated how to manipulate the parchment cones filled with frosting
and the various attachments, Eve felt less and less inclined to think of him
as a crook. Crooks could be charming, she reminded herself.
Dirty
Rotten Scoundrels
had become a Broadway bit based on that very
premise. She shouldn't eliminate Manny and Kyle because they seemed like decent
guys.

As
a cookie froster, Eve turned out to be passable, better than Kyle but not
nearly as accomplished as Manny. She did discover that staring at the sex act
while squeezing frosting from a parchment cone made her think about getting
back to her house ASAP. She didn't mind helping the cause, but she hoped
Charlie would finish the repair in the next hour or so.

Logically she should be
exhausted. It was nearly one in the morning, after a long day and an eventful
night. But she was keyed up and eager to finish out the hours of darkness with
a guy who did nice things for a pair of black leather chaps. Instead she was
dabbing nipples on a sugar cookie while Charlie had his head buried in a dough
mixer.

"You're
doing a great job," Rose said as she walked past carrying a large bag of
raisins.