Devil's Food Cake
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Have you seen Thom yet?” Sadie asked, craning her neck to peer into the corners of the temporary stage set up at the front of the ballroom at the Carmichael Hotel. Thom Mortenson was supposed to have arrived by 6:30, but he’d called to say he was running late. Sadie glanced at her watch: 7:05. So much for starting the program at 7:00 sharp. She was trying not to show her annoyance at men with no concept of time. Detective Pete Cunningham—Sadie’s date for tonight—was late too.
“Not yet,” Gayle answered from where she sat at Sadie’s left. Gayle was Sadie’s best friend—and she was dateless tonight, which was a strange occurrence.
“So, did you two read his book, then?” an increasingly familiar voice asked.
Sadie looked past Gayle to the young woman seated next to her—the date of Frank Argula. The girl was Frank’s junior by at least thirty years, with thick, brown hair piled on top of her delicate little head. Sadie feared a sneeze might snap the girl’s neck completely as her hair had to weigh twenty-five pounds. Sadie didn’t know the girl’s name—Trixie or Bambi or something like that, she was sure.
“Of course we read it,” Gayle answered coolly, shooting Sadie a look brimming with annoyance. It was the fourth time Trixie-Bambi had cut into their conversation in the ten minutes since Sadie had finally been able to sit down. Frank was currently involved in an animated discussion with a city councilman and was therefore paying no attention to his date.
“It must be really good,” the girl said with a floating kind of smile as she looked around the room. “I mean, look at all these people who want to listen to him talk about it.”
“It is good,” Gayle said dryly.
Sadie scraped together the last bite of mashed potatoes from her plate. Truth be told, she hadn’t loved Thom’s book,
Devilish Details,
which had been published a couple years after Thom had moved away from Garrison. While Sadie was very proud of his accomplishment, the book wasn’t really her style.
Gayle turned back to Sadie. “I still can’t believe he agreed to come,” she said.
“Why?” Trixie-Bambi cut in.
Rather than being annoyed by this interruption, Gayle’s eyes lit up at the girl’s ignorance. Sadie took a sip of her drink to cover her smile as Gayle turned back to the girl with a very different expression.
Here we go,
Sadie thought. It wasn’t that Gayle was a gossip, per se, but she, well, liked . . . being informed and sharing that information with others. Of course, any time Sadie pointed that out, Gayle turned the tables and recalled all the times Sadie had been the one to spill a story.
A server leaned in to take away their plates. “Didn’t Frank tell you about Thom?” Gayle asked once the server had moved away.
The girl shook her head.
“Well,” Gayle said, wriggling in her seat a little bit and leaning close. “First, his wife, who was mentally ill for most of their marriage, overdosed, leaving him as a single father. Then his son killed himself and his girlfriend after junior prom ten years ago.”
The girl gasped and put a hand to her mouth. Sadie felt her stomach tighten. Hearing the details laid out so bluntly was a bit of a shock. Even from Gayle.
“You’re kidding,” the girl said after lowering her hand. “A murder-suicide? Here?”
Up until last October, when Sadie’s neighbor had been murdered, the Mortenson tragedy had been the most recent homicide in Garrison, Colorado. Damon, Thom’s son, had only been a couple years older than Sadie’s own daughter, so the tragedy had hit close to home. In the weeks following the shooting, the school district brought in grief counselors, and parents no longer hesitated to forbid their daughters from dating the bad-boys. Then Thom Mortenson moved to California, despite the fact that most of Garrison hadn’t blamed him for what happened; Damon had been in and out of trouble since he turned twelve, and everyone knew Thom’s wife had had problems as well. Lost in her own thoughts, Sadie didn’t realize Gayle was still telling the story.
“You can imagine our surprise when a couple years later Thom’s name showed up on the cover of a
New York Times
bestseller—”
“And Thom was on
Oprah
after it won the National Book Award,” Sadie added. A bestselling novel was one thing, and national awards were amazing, but
Oprah
? Yeah. That was big-time.
Gayle nodded her acknowledgment, but continued speaking as though Sadie hadn’t interrupted. “Of course we all knew he’d been a bit of a closet writer before Damon’s death, but no one expected this, especially after what had happened.”
“Wow,” Trixie-Bambi said. She pulled at the top of her strapless gown and looked toward the stage. “Has he written any other books?”
“No,” Gayle said, shrugging her shoulders. “Just the one. He’s been saying for years that he has another one in the works, though.”
“Maybe he’ll be like Harper Lee,” the girl said. “A common theory in literary circles regarding the fact that she never wrote another book was because she’d written the perfect novel right out of the gate. How do you compete with your own greatness?”
Sadie and Gayle both looked at the girl in surprise. They hadn’t expected her to recite scholarly supposition.
“Maybe,” Gayle said slowly, obviously caught off guard. In fact, she seemed a bit disappointed that Trixie-Bambi might not be as superficial as they’d suspected.
“I wonder what it’s like for him to come back here,” the girl added. “I imagine it’s hard.”
Sadie was reminded of her own surprise when Thom had accepted the invitation. What was there to come back to Garrison for but to face old ghosts?
Her thoughts were interrupted as a server placed a white dessert plate in front of her. Every thought of Thom or Trixie-Bambi disappeared. In the middle of the plate was a most beautiful sight—a thick, black, gooey piece of devil’s food cake. Sadie grabbed her fork.
“I thought you were on a diet,” Gayle said.
Sadie looked up, fork poised inches from her open mouth, and did her best to feign a scowl at her best friend. Gayle didn’t take back the question. In fact she continued to look pointedly at the rich chocolate goodness on Sadie’s fork. The rich chocolate goodness that was going straight to Sadie’s already ample hips.
Trixie-Bambi turned to say something to Frank, and the clinking of silverware and mingling murmurs of a hundred conversations filled the room. Sadie paid no heed to any of it. Instead, she looked at Gayle and, with emphasized movements, put the bite of cake in her mouth and closed her lips around the fork. Sadie shut her eyes and tried not to groan aloud as the decadent chocolate melted on her tongue.
Gayle snickered, and Sadie feared she’d failed at her attempts to silently appreciate the deliciousness now coursing down her throat. It was just wrong that such an amazing culinary creation should have any calories at all.
“You should really attempt a little more self-restraint,” Gayle said when Sadie recovered from her chocolate-induced swoon and opened her eyes. “Everyone knows you made the cake, so you look a little arrogant right now.”
No one but Gayle, and maybe Sadie’s children, could get away with talking to Sadie like that. However, after twenty years of friendship, there wasn’t much they could do to offend each other.
Sadie used the edge of her fork to cut off another bite. “I have no problem with appearing arrogant when I’ve done something this magnificent.”
In truth, it
was
a little embarrassing to lose control like that—especially in public. Sadie prided herself on her humility, and yet she had no control when it came to dessert. She’d returned from England almost six weeks ago and had been existing on salads, fruit smoothies, and baked chicken ever since, hoping to lose not the
seven
pounds she’d thought she’d gained on vacation, but the
twelve
pounds she’d brought home with her. Twelve pounds in two weeks—Sadie didn’t know that was even possible.
Unfortunately, the diet hadn’t been as effective as she’d hoped—possibly due to the fact that despite her strict meal regimen of protein and leafy greens, she’d been baking scones and crumpets a few times a week. She didn’t count that as breaking her diet because perfecting the recipes was actually research. Gayle, of course, knew this.
But then Sadie had been asked to supply the dessert of her choice for the library fund-raiser. Before she’d even hung up the phone, she’d known what she wanted to make—devil’s food cake. Since it was commonly understood that diets were left at the door of events like this, she knew it was a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone—she’d make a fabulous contribution to the dinner
and
she’d get a piece of cake otherwise forbidden.
“I swear this is the best cake I have ever made in my life,” Sadie said reverently after taking her second bite.
Gayle chuckled, and Sadie couldn’t help but join her, knowing that she was being a little ridiculous. She put a hand on Gayle’s arm and leaned in toward her friend. “It’s a good thing you’re sitting next to me,” she said, giving Gayle’s arm a squeeze. “I’d be liable to embarrass myself otherwise.”
Gayle laughed again and cut a bite from her own piece of cake. She paused for a moment after putting it in her mouth and then turned to Sadie. “This
is
incredible.”