Mango Cake and Murder Read online

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Title Page & Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  To my family

  Mom, Dad, David, Edie, David, Diana, and Darwin

  And the next generation of Murphy’s Jason, Ana, and Anthony

  Mango Cake and Murder

  by Christy Murphy

  Cover illustrator, Edie Murphy.

  Editor, Robb Fulcher

  Copyright 2016 Christy Murphy. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to the actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Mom and I were told we'd be catering a gathering of twenty-five, but so far there were only eight people. Three of the guests, who'd come in the same car and had just arrived, were already making excuses to leave. They claimed they had to "wake up early." It was only 4:15 in the afternoon.

  Margaret, the sixty-year-old hostess, had run out of exciting party conversation once she’d pitched all the guests on her latest venture, a memorial pet taxidermy service. "I know what we need," she said, guessing that her dead pet talk wasn't enough to kick the party into high gear. "Let's have some music!" She walked over to what looked like a sideboard and opened a wooden door revealing a large, antiquated CD player.

  Four fumble-filled minutes later the Bee Gees' song "Tragedy" echoed throughout the large living room. The Gibb brothers sang in gleeful harmony about the difficulties of a life going nowhere when no one loves you. I served the bored partygoers crab rangoon and thought about my impending divorce.

  Every guest, even though most were on medication that probably warned them not to drink, made their way over to Mom at the bar. Mom served up her signature drink, The Filipino Fling, a twist on the Singapore Sling. Mom’s concoction mixed gin, cherry brandy, lemon juice, and a splash of Mom's special sauce–a rich sugar syrup that would skyrocket a person's glucose levels if swallowed on its own.

  "Tragedy" ended and the CD shuffled over to another tune, "You Should Be Dancing." The guests, having just started work on their Flings, dismissed the well-harmonized advice. I hoped the drinks would kick in soon. This party needed some serious flinging.

  Margaret looked over to me and made an awkward boogie my way. I could see the worried hostess look in her blue eyes. "I think it’s time for the guest of honor to make an appearance," she said. "It’ll liven up the party. Would you mind fetching Father from the study?"

  It’s a sad party when the surly, eighty-five-year-old "birthday boy" is the big hope for making an occasion festive.

  "Right away," I answered hoping to sound upbeat and took my nearly-full serving tray to the kitchen. I set the platter down on the expensive marble counter and relieved the awkward party tension with a stolen bite of a crab rangoon. It was so good I snagged two more and ate them as I made my way up the backstairs and down the hall. The heavy, wood door to the den was closed. I brushed the rangoon dust off on my apron and knocked. No answer. I waited a minute and knocked louder. The Bee Gees continued to blare from downstairs. I figured Margaret’s dad didn’t hear me through the thick door and the music.

  "Mr. Sanders," I said as I eased open the door. I didn’t want to startle him. As I entered, my shoe slipped on something. I lifted my foot and discovered a small capsule crushed under my heel.

  That's when I noticed pills scattered everywhere, and Harold Sanders lying on the floor. The desk chair and lamp were knocked over. I rushed to his side, rolled him on his back, and checked to see if he was breathing. No luck. I started CPR and yelled for help, to no avail.

  Grabbing my cell from my apron pocket, I dialed 911, and hit the speaker button. I waited for the call to connect and continued CPR. There was silence as the CD player chose another song. I informed the 911 operator about the situation. She dispatched an ambulance, and I kept up my efforts to revive Mr. Sanders. The upbeat, Travolta-strolling riff of "Staying Alive" pulsated from downstairs.

  As I tried to stay positive, I caught the Brothers Gibb singing about going nowhere again. I’d never realized until that day how depressing Bee Gee songs could be. And no matter how many times the group ah, ah, ah-ed about Staying Alive, Mr. Sanders, like the guest downstairs, ignored their harmonious advice.

  I’d imagined Mom and my’s first catering gig together couldn't get worse when the guest of honor died. But later, we found out Harold Sanders had been murdered.

  * * *

  I thought this stage of my life was going to be the "Oh no! I’m a broke, 35 year-old woman getting out of a bad relationship and moving back with my mother" stage. But instead, it was more like "I’m half of a mother-daughter catering/crime-solving team" and life has never been better. Who knew?

  Sure, my life must’ve been in a pretty depressing place for crime and murder to make things better. But who am I to judge Fate? People ask me (Alright, one person asked me, and most people ask Mom), "How did you two begin solving crimes?"

  I’d love to say our journey began some place exciting, like on an express train through Europe or aboard an Egyptian river cruise, but it started in a place a great deal more modest and a lot more greasy.

  Insert dreamy flashback music …

  Mom sat across from me and surveyed the once-white tiles that lined the walls of Pete’s Burger. The place looked dirty when I’d first come to work here, but now, the fast food joint seemed to grow an extra layer of grime under Mom’s scrutiny.

  "Let’s get out of here, kid. This place is lousy," she said.

  I signaled for her to speak more quietly. Mom had a high-pitched voice that carried. "My boss is right there," I said, and pointed to "Mr. Stephens" leaning on the counter a few yards from our dilapidated, vinyl-padded booth. He insisted on being called "Mr. Stephens" despite the fact that he was in his twenties, and I was likely a decade older than him.

  "Don’t worry. I’m a customer, he’ll ignore me," Mom whispered.

  I laughed. The singular table of customers and my new boss turned to look. I quieted myself and tried to wipe the grease off my glasses, as if nothing had happened. After smearing the grease around for a minute, I pushed my glasses back onto my round face and sighed. This place was lousy, and the polyester uniform I had to wear didn’t help. At least Mom had stopped by to visit me on my break.

  When I was a kid, I never noticed Mom had a Filipino accent. But as I spent more time away from home, I missed her familiar lilt, complete with the "d" sound in the place the "th" usually inhabited. Words like "this" and "these" sounded closer to "dis" and "dese" as in "dis place is lousy."

  I watched Mom push her salad around with her fork. My petite mom wasn’t a big eater, but I could tell, even if she were starving, she wouldn’t eat that salad.


  "How do they make salad greasy?" Mom asked.

  "You don’t like the Prime Burger Salad?"

  "Ah!" Mom scoffed and shook her head. "How fancy," she said and laughed her quiet laugh. Her eyes always teared up when she laughed. I smiled as I watched her dab her eyes with a napkin.

  I couldn't take another bite of my burger either. I'd been living off this food for a month, and my body, despite its history of high-capacity food intake, had reached its burger limit.

  "This place is like that motel you live in," she paused and looked around. "It’s depressing."

  "I’m depressed, so I figured this job would keep with the theme," I said, trying to make a joke.

  Mom wasn’t having it. She knew I had a brain that runs a little more worried and sad than most. I have this odd memory thing, where if something is traumatizing, my brain remembers every second of it. Don’t even ask about the time my fly was down, and I passed gas while giving a speech in front of the entire seventh grade class.

  Mom put her hand in mine. She looked so worried. "This is just temporary until I find something better," I told her.

  "Good, I have something better. Let’s go."

  "You heard about a job for me?" I asked. I'd spent the last decade not finishing college and managing my soon to be ex-husband's music career. Not the best resume.

  "The catering business is picking up," Mom said.

  "Mom, I can't cook," I said.

  Mom waved her hand as if that was a minor detail.

  "There's so much to do," she said. I shot her a doubtful look. Mom has a history of embellishing the truth.

  "This," Mom started, then paused as she looked around. Not being able to find another word for how awful it was, she said, "is really lousy." She put down her fork, raided the nearby napkin holder, and tucked some into her purse. I knew she was serious about getting out of here. Napkin hoarding is what Mom does before she makes an exit.

  "We can talk about it tonight," I said in a lowered voice.

  Mom waved off my attempt to be quiet. "He’s too busy waiting for his drug dealer to notice what you’re doing."

  Mom was suspicious of everybody for everything, and one of her favorites suspicions was that everybody was "on the drugs." Almost every friend or date I ever had was suspected of being "on the drugs."

  "Mom, you say everyone is on drugs."

  "But, I never say someone is waiting for his drug dealer."

  She had me there.

  "Let’s go. We can go to the Lucky Dragon and eat food that won’t make you break out."

  At this point I realized my "cover-up makeup" wasn’t as convincing as I'd hoped. Mom continued, "Wenling put a little TV in the back that we can watch while we fold wontons. It has cable and everything." Mom loved to watch all of those forensic shows on TV.

  "Aren’t you supposed to be seeing a client?" I asked.

  "I saw them before I came here. They want someone to make food for what-you-call-it, a party when somebody dies?"

  "A wake?"

  "Yes, that’s it. But the ‘awake’ is in two days for three hundred people. I told them, I can’t do so big with short notice. I referred them to Oliver since sometimes he orders cakes from me," she said. I could never tell if my mother was lying. The truth and a convenient tale were delivered in the same tone and at the same speed. No difference in the pauses. Mom had zero tells. She should’ve been a poker player.

  Mom got my attention with a light tap on the table, and then she motioned to the door with her lips, the Filipino way of pointing.

  I turned and spotted a skinny guy with long, stringy hair heading to the counter. Mr. Stephens grabbed a burger, shoved it into a bag, and then pretended to give the skinny guy change. Except, the man hadn’t given my manager any money in the first place. And even though Mr. Stephens was standing behind the register, I could tell it wasn’t open. "The change" had came from his pocket.

  "At least he’s not a thief," Mom whispered as the stringy-haired man handed Mr. Stephens a sandwich baggie of what looked like weed. My manager crammed the baggie in his pocket and beelined it to his office. The stringy-hair guy headed for the exit.

  I turned back to Mom. She raised her eyebrows. He was waiting for his drug dealer. "Mom, how did you know that?"

  "Just a guess."

  "No, it wasn’t. Tell me."

  Mom shrugged and said, "He looked anxious like he was waiting for someone. He’s not usually a drug person, but his shirt is all wrinkled, his eyes are baggy, and he kept staring at his wedding band and shaking his head. So he’s going through some kind of breakup with his wife who usually keeps him in line. He counted his money three times since we’ve sat down. What kind of delivery would someone want in the middle of the afternoon that they are nervous about while working a cruddy job during a breakup?"

  "It makes sense when you lay it out like that."

  Mom nodded.

  Then, it hit me. Mom was right–a lot.

  Tons of my friends had been on drugs. They just hadn’t offered me any.

  If I’d listened to Mom, I wouldn’t have married Robert. I’d never have dropped out of college, and I wouldn’t have tried to dye my black hair blonde the night before senior yearbook pictures. Life lesson learned. It’s never too late to start listening to Mom, and I decided I’d start right now.

  "I’ll change and get my purse," I said.

  * * *

  Worry niggled at my brain as I parked my Honda at an open meter a short block from the Lucky Dragon. Mom had convinced me to check out of the motel I'd called home for the last month. It made sense. If I was working in Fletcher Canyon with Mom, why commute from Hollywood? Mom reasoned I'd be better off just moving back home with her. It made sense financially, but I didn't know if it was the right move for me. It's one thing to have to start over again. It’s another, more depressing thing, to be a grown woman moving back home to be taken care of by her mother.

  "Give me a second, kid," Mom said as she dug around in her purse.

  "No problem," I said. An upside to being lost in life is there's no reason to be in a hurry.

  I looked out at Main Street, a two-lane, tree-lined road at the foot of the mountain. It was only six blocks, but all the residents called it "downtown". The barber shop at the far end of the street had been there for over one hundred years. There’d been renovations to the inside, but the barber pole out front remained unchanged. A bus made up to look like a red-and-white trolley ran up and down the street and around to the Civic Center that housed the courthouse, post office, and the sheriff’s substation we shared with the neighboring town.

  Main Street housed the local eateries, a laundromat/dry cleaner, a bookstore, a pharmacy, a vegetable market, and a few other stores I didn't recognize. I'd thought this little town was boring as a kid, but now it felt quaint and peaceful.

  "All set," Mom said, her fists full of change as she stepped out of the car. I followed. For a quick second, I'd worried about leaving my stuff in the car, but then I remembered this was Fletcher Canyon, not Hollywood.

  I waited as Mom pumped change into the meter. A lot of change.

  "Mom, there's a two-hour limit," I said.

  Mom laughed. "Not here," she said. "Next time you can park in the employee parking behind the restaurant."

  "Why didn't we do that this time?" I asked.

  Mom did the thing she does when she doesn't want to answer my question. She acts like she didn't hear me and changes the subject. "Look there's, Todd!" Mom said, pointing to the publisher and editor of The Fletcher Canyon Weekly headed our way. "Hi, Todd!" Mom said walking over to him.

  "Hi, Jo!" he said. "Any news?"

  "My daughter is back in town," Mom said. "She's moved back to help me with the business."

  "Well, let me know if you want to take out an ad in the paper," he said and then turned to me. "Welcome back, and," he paused, "I'm sorry to hear about your husband."

  "Uh thanks," I said, but before I could ask what he meant about my hus
band, Mom pulled me down the street.

  "Let's go," she said. "I texted Wenling we were coming ages ago."

  Wenling owned The Lucky Dragon Restaurant and had been Mom's best friend for years. They'd met when they were both featured extras on a major television show whose name I'm not sure I can legally mention. Let's just say that Los Angeles casting directors in the late seventies and early eighties needed any Asian women, even if they were Chinese or Filipino, to play war-torn Koreans.

  My dad was a Teamster for Local 399 and drove for that same TV show for all eleven seasons. He was the one who convinced Mom to go on the casting call. Mom will still get the occasional call for commercials and modeling work. Nobody ever would guess it, because she has such a happy expression all the time, but Mom's "sad face" is epic. When they need an older woman to look sad in some kind of environment brochure or war show, Mom's phone will ring.

  We got about three yards before Mom ran into someone else she knew. Mom stopped to introduce me once again, saying I'd moved home to help her (a face-saving gesture I appreciated). Mom talked some more. I stood by and waited.

  Mom finished talking to the lady whose name I’d already forgotten, because Mom was shouting across the street to another woman she knew. "Hi, Edna!" Mom said, waving to the woman on the other side of the street. The woman waved back, and Mom yelled. "This is my daughter. She just moved back."

  Edna smiled and waved to me. I returned the wave, but even as Edna went into the pharmacy, Mom spotted yet another person down the street that she knew. Mom made a motion to me. More smiles and waving. I started to think I knew the reason Mom wanted to park on Main Street even if it meant paying for the meter. Nobody would see us if we parked in the alley and came through the kitchen door.

  We continued down the street and passed the ice cream shop next door to The Lucky Dragon. I gazed in through the glass storefront at its black and white checkered tiles and clean white soda fountain counter with shiny chrome edges. It looked like something out of a Frank Capra movie. I’d definitely missed this ice cream place. My folks moved to Fletcher Canyon even though it was a little out of the way, because Mom and Dad weren’t "Hollywood types." They liked living in a small town.