Buttercream Bump Off by Jenn McKinlay Page A

bite back the words that had just escaped her lips.
    “Don’t tell me what to do,” Angie said. The words were even more intimidating because they were said quietly.
    Mel raised her hands. “My bad. Sorry. You’re right. It’s your life. I’m just concerned because I love you.”
    In a blink, Angie’s face softened, and she reached out and hugged Mel.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “You know how crazy I get when someone tries to boss me around. Thirty-four years of living with the brothers will do that to a gal.”
    “It’s okay,” Mel said. “I was out of line.”
    “You’re my best friend,” Angie said. “You’re never out of line. And you don’t need to worry. If I get any crazy murderer vibe off of him, I’ll dump him flat.”
    Mel stared at her hard.
    “What?”
    “I don’t like this.”
    “It’s just dinner.”
    “So was my mother’s date with his father,” Mel said.
    “Mel, relax. I’ll be fine. Now, bigger picture—it’s a free concert, and I scored tickets for you and Tate, too, so how cool am I?”
    “Pretty cool,” Mel admitted with a smile.
    Mel’s phone began to ring its distinctive Gone with the Wind ringtone. She fished it out of her apron pocket and glanced at the screen. It was her mom.
    “Hi, Mom, how are you?”
    “I need you to come over and take away the dress,” Joyce said.
    “The dress?” Mel asked.
    “Yes, I am sure it’s cursed. It’s killed two men already. I can’t let it kill another.”
    “Mom, the man at Dillard’s didn’t die, and the medical examiner said Baxter was strangled,” she said. “He didn’t have a heart attack. It had nothing to do with the dress.”
    “You don’t know that,” she insisted. “Please, I need you to come and get the dress.”
    “What do you want me to do with it? Take it to Goodwill?”
    “Oh, goodness no,” Joyce said. “Then some poor unsuspecting person will suffer the curse. No, you have to destroy it.”
    “Will you feel better if I do?”
    “Yes,” Joyce sighed.
    “Okay, then I’ll come over after work and get it.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Anytime,” Mel said.
    Angie looked at her with raised eyebrows.
    “I have to get rid of ‘the dress,’ ” she said.
    “Makes sense,” Angie agreed.
    Of course it made sense to Angie. She was Italian and had a very healthy superstitious streak running through her. If her palms itched, she was convinced she was going to have good luck. She even wore an amethyst pendant of her grandmother’s to ward off the malocchio , the evil eye.
    “No, it doesn’t,” Mel said. “It’s just my mother being weird. Malloy didn’t die because of her dress.”
    “How do you know?” Angie asked. “It could be cursed.”
    Mel rolled her eyes and picked up the finished raffle box and placed it prominently on the front counter. They would run the raffle for one week. That should give them plenty of entrants for the drawing.
    The front door was pushed open, and in shuffled an older gentleman. Mel looked more closely. No, there was nothing merely “older” about him. This guy was a fossil. She was only surprised he didn’t leave a trail of dust behind him when he walked.
    His back curved like a question mark, leaving him significantly shorter than he’d most likely been a half century before. He wore dark pants that were hitched a bit too high by a pair of wide, red suspenders. His shirt was white with thin blue stripes, buttoned up to the collar and covered in a thin cardigan sweater in nondescript beige. He wore gold-rimmed glasses that slid low on his nose, and his hair . . . well, it was more of a removable hair hat in a shade of reddish brown that his head had not produced on its own in at least thirty years.
    “Good afternoon, sir,” Angie greeted him. “May I help you?”
    The man shuffled forward in his orthopedic shoes and smacked the newspaper down on the counter. “I want to enter the contest.”
    “Well, it doesn’t actually start until tomorrow,” Angie