“There’s a good boy. You made up with Emmie!” Aunt Frances beamed at me.
The seniors immediately bustled in to start cleaning up the café.
“Just leave it. It’s late; we’ll never get it open in time,” Emmie said from where she was slumped in a chair.
“The hell?” Edna yelled. “This is going to be the hottest spot in Harrogate in about twelve hours. You’re my retirement plan, Emmie. Get a move on.”
My great-aunt handed me a broom. “Unfortunately, you’re more of a paper pusher than a blue-collar man, but many hands…”
A young man in coveralls I recognized from the retirement community trudged up the sidewalk with a toolbox, walked in, and sighed. “Granny, am I getting paid for this?” he complained.
An older woman pinched his ear. “How many times have I bailed you out of jail for fighting? I paid for your drywall certification, and you live on my couch. Get to patching, boy.”
“All-you-can-eat cupcakes,” Emmie promised him.
He perked up. “A murder cupcake? Hell yeah! Those are going for, like, twenty bucks on Ebay!”
27
EMMIE
“Do you think that this is in poor taste?”
“My aunt made me this sweater,” Marius argued.
His red sweater was decorated with snowflakes and an anthropomorphized cupcake that had a dagger sticking out of it.
“I’m not the only one dressed up,” Marius said, pointing at groups of people wearing various murder- and cupcake-themed items of clothing and eating the mini cupcakes I’d baked along with savory treats from Girl Meets Fig. “This party is to help raise money for your cat café franchise. You have to play up to people’s expectations.”
“This whole committee is going to hell in a handbasket,” Gertrude complained loudly, walking by me, trying to collect donations for the pets-to-prison-pipeline project—working title—that Cora had started at the county jail with Rosie, who was shopping her story around for a Netflix special.
“Look at all the tickets we sold,” I reminded her. “This money’s going to help a lot of needy cats this winter.”
Gertrude harrumphed. “That’s because you were using sex to sell tickets.”
“Let’s see the goods, hot stuff!” Several drunk senior citizens whooped to Marius.
“Convince me to buy another raffle ticket.”
“Striptease!”
“My adoring public awaits.” Marius leaned in to kiss me hungrily, promises of good things awaiting me under the tree that night.
“If that’s how he kisses, I’m gonna buy the whole book of tickets,” Ida declared.
The band, consisting of several of the local high school boys, played the last few chords of an enthusiastic rock and roll rendition of “Silent Night.”
On stage, Marius pulled his sweater off, shaking his head. His hair, not combed down like it normally was, fell over his forehead. He tossed the sweater into the audience to screams for the seniors.
My heart fluttered.
“Thank you for coming and supporting a cause dear to my heart,” Marius said into the microphone one of the teens handed him. “Each party ticket does come with a raffle entry, but buy more! You could win a date with me at the infamous murder cat café, for cupcakes and coffee.”
“I’m going to have to change the name, aren’t I?” I sighed.
“And maybe you’ll even adopt a feline friend,” Marius continued on stage. “I adopted my second cat from the Murder Cupcake Café.”
“You literally sleep with him,” Zoe reminded me before I could reach for my wallet. “You don’t have disposable income to spend on extra raffle tickets for a date with your own boyfriend.”
