Happy birthday, Jen! Hope you enjoy our feeble attempt to write like a certain favorite author of yours - and have a great day!
The Birthday Cake Caper
My name is Jen Smith and I’m a bounty hunter. At least, that is what my official title is. I don’t think I’m all that good at it, but sometimes I get lucky.
One morning, I went down to the bail bonds office to get a list of skips to bring in, and found the office manager, Rita, and Sarah, another bounty hunter, acting suspicious. By acting suspicious, I mean they were speaking softly and broke off almost guiltily when I walked in. Neither was known for being soft-spoken.
Rita was a rough-talking woman who wore skirts and hair high and her blouses low. Her favorite store seemed to be
“We got a FTA for ya,” Rita said, cracking gum.
“Yeah, we’re gonna take him down,” Sarah said, indicating me and her.
“What was the charge?” I asked, picking up the file.
“Armed robbery,” Rita told me. “He held up bakeries.”
“Let’s take him wherever he’s got the cream puffs stashed,” Sarah suggested.
“Is he still robbing them?” And wouldn’t any baked goods be stale?
“Nah, but he didn’t show up for his court date.”
His name was George Wickham and he was known as the birthday cake bandit. Evidently, stealing custom-made cakes was his specialty.
“All right,” I said to Sarah. “Let’s go. But you’re driving.” I had a bad habit of having my vehicles stolen, towed, burned, broken into or blown up. Sarah might drive like a bat out of hell, but she was definitely safer.
We went outside, got into Sarah’s Z28 and decided a trip to the Donut Delight was needed for inspiration.
Ah, Donut Delight. I worked there while I was in high school, and it was the scene of an interesting evening once when George Knightley seduced me behind a case of bear claws. But Knightley had gone from neighborhood bad boy to being my current boyfriend, and a cop.
I was standing in line at Donut Delight and you would think Knightley, being a cop, would show up, but the warm breath in my ear belonged to someone else entirely.
“Babe,” the voice, deep and husky, said reprovingly in my ear. “Those donuts are nice, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” Figures. I was a junk food junkie. Darcy, security specialist and sometime bounty hunter, not to the mention the subject of an abnormal amount of my fantasies, was a health nut.
“So what are you doing here, then?” I had to ask.
“I saw Sarah outside and thought I’d come in to warn you.”
“Warn me?”
“Wickham is not to be taken lightly, despite the airiness of the cakes he likes to steal. Be careful.”
“I will,” I assured him. When I turned around to face him, he was gone.
“I hope you got me some of them jelly-filled ones,” Sarah said as I got back into the car. I handed over the box, which included some stuffed with strawberry jam.
“I talked to Mortie in the bakery and she said all the donut makers in town know what Wickham looks like now, so they are all on their toes, and they’re all packing heat, just in case he tries it again.”
“I’ll be glad to take the night shift at one of the shops,” Sarah said, squirting jelly down the front of her too-tight blouse as she bit into the breakfast treat. “They can pay me in donuts.”
“Mortie said Wickham used to date some girl named Joanna over at Bob’s Breads, and she thinks that is what sparked his cake fetish. We might want to swing by there and see if Joanna knows where he lives now. I somehow doubt he’s at the address in the file.”
“Seems to me, we should be checking out weddings to see if he invites himself to receptions,” Sarah said, heading across town to Bob’s.
I made a mental note to read the engagement announcements in the paper to see whose nuptials were coming up, but in the meantime, there was Joanna to speak to.
“Haven’t seen him,” she said after I introduced myself to the cute girl behind the counter. “In months. Just as well. He was a jerk, using me to get to the baked goods.”
“Are you catering any weddings this weekend?” I asked.
“Just one. Let me get you the information.” She was gone for a moment and came back with a card that had the name and number of a bride-to-be. “I don’t think she would appreciate losing her cake to him, so she’ll probably want to help.”
I nodded, pulled Sarah away from the hard rolls and we went back to the office. On the way back, my mother, Alyson, called.
“You and George are coming for dinner tonight.” It wasn’t a question.
“Six o’clock,” I assured her.
“Good. Everyone will be here. Don’t be late. You know how your father gets upset if his dinner is not on time.”
I sighed and hung up. ‘Everyone’ meant my sister, Cindy, and her daughter, Alicia, who thought she was a horse. And Grandma Sofie, who had lived with my parents ever since my grandfather had eaten one too many cream-filled horns and had gone off to that bake shop in the sky. I paused halfway to meeting a chocolate-frosted donut with my mouth, put the pastry back in the box, and shut the lid.
“I gotta go shopping, on account of I’m going to help Rita with a birthday party.” She didn’t say whose.
I let Sarah go, called some woman named Ulrike and asked if I could discuss her wedding with her. We agreed that I could stake out her reception, and if Wickham showed up, I could discreetly nab him and haul him off to be rebonded. I was supposed to look like a wedding guest, and I could bring a friend.
In the meantime, Knightley and I were required to attend Friday night dinner at my parents’ house. Everyone was there when we arrived, and as it was almost six on the dot, a mass exodus to the dining room table began the moment we walked in the door.
“How’s the cop business going?” Grandma Sofie asked Knightley as we all sat down to a delicious vegan meal. I knew Knightley would be stopping off at the Burger Barn later, for an infusion of red meat, but in the meantime, he was certainly a good sport about the way my parents ate. “Want to see my gun?”
Everyone paused, and my niece, Alicia, the one who thought she was a horse, nickered from under the table where she was no doubt noshing on a sheaf of hay. At least it was vegan.
“Er…”
I saved Knightley from being outgunned by Grandma by asking her who had died lately.
“Old Man Elliot,” she said. “The viewing is tonight, and they are serving cake!”
Cake… “I’ll be glad to take you,” I offered. “Oh, and do you want to go to a wedding reception with me tomorrow night?” Grandma Sofie nodded.
“Who’s getting married?” Knightley asked, looking at me curiously.
“An old high school friend,” I glibly lied. “I think we’ll just go to the reception.”
After dinner, Knightley got a call and had to go to work. Cindy stayed to help Mom clean up, Dad went into the other room to read the paper and watch TV, and I played stable owner to Alicia’s horse while Grandma got ready.
Some people play bingo; Grandma Sofie goes to funeral home viewings. This one was packed, and I saw, unfortunately, that it was a closed casket. That might not mean much to anyone else, but a closed casket to Grandma Sofie was like a glass of warm milk to an insomniac. It was all I could do to keep an eye on her in the viewing room and watch the cake plates that held treats for those attending the visitation.
My phone rang, and it was Darcy.
“Babe,” he said. “What are you doing at the funeral home?”
“Watching people eat cake. What are you doing tailing me?” I had to ask.
“I’m tailing someone else, but I saw you go in. Be careful,” he warned, and hung up. Great.
In the viewing room, someone started to wail, and when I rushed in, everyone was standing around Old Man Elliot’s daughter, Elizabeth, who was screaming that Grandma Sofie was a menace.
“I was just trying to open the coffin!” Grandma insisted. “Why even bother with a viewing if there is nothing to view?”
A different sort of cry went up from the other room, and when I escorted Grandma out of the funeral home, I heard someone say all the cake had been stolen. Drats! I almost had my chance with Wickham!
The next night, I ended up with two escorts to the wedding reception. Grandma Sofie, and Sarah. Sarah had invited herself along when I told her what I was going to do.
“You need someone to keep an eye on Grandma while you keep an eye on the cake,” she insisted. “They say Old Man Elliot’s daughter has paid Knightley’s grandmother to put a curse on her, and if I keep an eye on her for you, I can be there when the curse kicks in.” I knew this was something Sarah wanted to watch, not prevent.
“All right,” I reluctantly agreed. “But if you get up to do the chicken dance, you gotta take Grandma Sofie with you.”
“You got it,” Sarah agreed.
I almost changed my mind on both of them when I saw what they were wearing to the wedding. Grandma was in pink polyester pant suit and sneakers, and Sarah was decked out in red spandex that showed every wide curve on her body. My black dress and moderate sandals looked tame by comparison, and the only outfit appropriate for apprehending cake bandits.
The evening began quietly enough. Dinner was served, no one went near the cake and Grandma Sofie didn’t even drink any champagne. Then the festivities began, and I found myself torn between watching the antics of the groomsmen and keeping an eye on dessert. Then I saw him, seated calmly at a table on the other side of the cake. George Wickham. I recognized him from his bonding paperwork and stood, slowly inching my way toward the multi-tiered confection that stood between me and my skip.
The groomsmen, intent on harassing every female under a certain age in the room, had grabbed a willing Sarah and had her out on the dance floor, leading a conga line. Grandma Sofie was behind her, and in front of a man in a tuxedo. She spied me, said something to Sarah and the man, and they headed the line toward me and the cake. I was just about to come up behind Wickham, my cuffs to the ready, when one of the groomsmen grinned, grabbed the handcuffs and clamped one to my wrist and the other to his.
Wickham, unaware of what I was about to do, stayed in his seat as I was hauled off to join the dancers by the inebriated groomsman. I protested, physically, bumped the conga dancers, who all fell like dominoes, and Sarah and Grandma Sofie went tumbling head first into the cake. When everyone was picked up and wiped down, Wickham was gone, and so was the top of the cake, bridal couple figurine and all.
“Come over for lunch,” my mom, Alyson, suggested on the phone. “I’ll make all your favorites.”
“Pineapple upside-down cake?” I eagerly asked.
“Whatever you want. I’ll make the cake with a can of soda.”
Yum. Cake had been part of my woes, lately, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from enjoying my mom’s home cooking. Best of all was when I got to her house. Everyone was there for my birthday! Rita, Sarah, Grandma Sofie, Cindy, Alicia (munching alfalfa) and my parents! Knightley was there, and so was Darcy!
We had lunch, but when Mom went to get the cake out of the kitchen, she screamed at someone to come back with her cake. Hey – that was my cake! I ran into the kitchen and saw that she had cornered Wickham, caught red-handed with my birthday cake!
I tackled him, and the force of the impact set the cake flying upward. It hit the ceiling, came back down and landed squarely on his head. I cuffed him, called Knightley and Darcy to assist, and we and Rita took him downtown to be bonded out again.
Afterwards, we went back to the house, where Mom had taken the time to make another cake, and we all celebrated my birthday in a very happy manner!
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