Baker's Apprentice Read online

  “Because it weighs six pounds,” he says patiently. “I needed gas money and a deposit for an apartment, and utilities and food—”

  There are some days when I shouldn’t go outside without duct tape over my mouth. Today is shaping up to be one of them.

  “The good news is, Rick needs help at Norwegian Woods right now. And Kenny says Sean’s not happy at Bailey’s. Said he was talking about moving over to some new place on Capitol Hill. If he leaves, Harte might let me come back to Bailey’s.”

  I set down my knife. “Let you? He should be begging you. Nobody goes there on Saturday nights anymore. Well, nobody except a few twenty-two-year-olds who don’t know Bob Dylan from Matt Dillon. They play mostly elevator jazz during the week and top forty on Friday and Saturday. Kenny’s too busy to deal with it and Sean seems to think his main job is hustling the single women.”

  “Maybe I should give Harte a call.” He spreads a blob of ketchup over his hash browns, and I cringe.

  “You’re ruining those. They’re going to get soggy.”

  He sighs. “Thank you, Detective Sergeant Morrison of the food police.”

  Somehow I manage to find the dead-bolt key and fit it into the lock, while Mac busies himself unfastening the big Navajo silver clip and burying his face in my hair. “God, you smell good.” Through the forest of my hair, the tip of his tongue finds a vulnerable patch of skin. “Too good, in fact. It should probably be illegal.”

  His breath on my neck makes all the molecules in my body realign, like iron filings to a magnet. I search frantically for the doorknob key.

  “I believe it constitutes gross fraud and misrepresentation.” When he slips his hands under my jacket, I nearly choke.

  “Will you stop it and let me open the damn door?”

  “Ms. Morrison, we have reason to suspect you of smuggling bread under your shirt. I’m afraid we’re going to have to pat you down. Just to be sure.”

  I finally get the key in the knob and the door gives way and we lurch through. He catches it with one cowboy boot, kicking it shut behind us. The apartment is sunny and still and freezing cold, thanks to CM’s polar-bear constitution, but I have reason to silently bless her. My ever-thoughtful best friend has left the futon open and made up.

  My jacket falls to the floor and he tugs my flannel shirt out of my jeans. We fumble with each other’s buttons. He’s still muttering.

  “No bread here, but I think the evidence warrants a full strip search.” The flannel shirt follows the jacket to the floor and I pull him down onto the futon.

  In that lingering afterglow that follows a fabulous meal or great sex, I burrow under the comforter, curled up against him, soaking up his heat like a lizard on a hot stone.

  “I won’t have to worry about finding a job,” he says into my hair. “I’ll be dead before the week’s over. Not that I’m complaining, you understand. It’s exactly the way I always hoped to die.”

  “No, McLeod, you won’t be that lucky. I won’t kill you off.” I drag my fingernails lightly across his stomach. “I’m going to keep you alive and torture you.”

  Without looking, I can feel his smile. “Oh, please don’t throw me in the brier patch.”

  The rhythm of his thumb stroking my shoulder is just about to lull me into REM state when I suddenly remember my ten o’clock appointment. Reluctantly I roll away and sit up.

  “I have to go interview a job applicant.” I look hopefully over my shoulder. “You can stay here and sleep. I won’t be long.”

  He props himself up on one elbow. “Nah. I need to find an apartment. I don’t think Kenny’s wife was too thrilled to see me this morning. I’ll come back about seven and take you to dinner. Ask CM to come, if you want.”

  Maggie Stanopolis says she’s thirty-six, but she looks older. Maybe it’s the industrial-strength foundation a shade or two darker than her natural coloring that cakes in the folds of her skin, giving her face the appearance of old linen that needs pressing. Her drapey blue shirt calls attention to her clear blue eyes. Thick blond hair erupts from dark roots into a startling fountain, secured by a clip on the top of her head.

  “I know you work at night, so I really appreciate you meeting with me this morning.” She smiles and pushes a three-ring binder at me. “My cake book.”

  “So why do you want to leave Booker’s?” I ask.

  “We had…I suppose you could call it artistic differences. That and they moved their operation up to Lake Forest Park because rent was cheaper. And I wanted to stay more central. Close to where we live. And my husband’s restaurant—maybe you’ve heard of it—Tony’s?”

  Her words come like ketchup out of a bottle—first slow and hesitant, then quickly in big, splashy globs. Her eyes are in constant motion, resting on mine for only a few seconds before finding another focus.

  The golden puddle of sun pouring onto the table makes me drowsy. I keep seeing Mac, snuggled under the quilt on my futon, his slow smile, his pale hair against my skin.

  “On Capitol Hill?” I stifle a yawn and she nods. I haven’t been to Tony’s, and I seem to recall that it’s better known as a yuppie pickup joint than a temple of fine dining. “I’ve heard good things about it,” I lie.

  A smile hovers briefly without actually landing on her face.

  “Did you go to school in Seattle?”

  “Stadium High School, in Tacoma. Northwest Culinary Academy.”

  “When did you graduate?”

  “I didn’t…finish. But I think my work speaks for itself,” she adds hastily.

  I scoot the notebook over until it’s directly in front of me and turn back the cover. The first page is a picture of a cake with the words “Margaret Dailey Stanopolis, Cake Designer” done in frosting calligraphy.

  I flip through page after plastic-sheeted page. Wedding cakes, engagement cakes, baby shower, birthday, anniversary, family reunion, graduation, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Groundhog Day—even a divorce cake, a clever image of a marriage certificate being cut in two with scissors. I’ll have to keep that one in mind.

  Some have real flowers, some are decked out with sculpted sugar. But the most impressive ones are like pictures painted with frosting—portraits, pictures of diplomas, even one of a Victorian house—looking as if they should be hung on a wall.

  I look up into her expectant gaze. “They’re beautiful. How long have you been doing this?”

  “Thanks.” She rubs her hands up and down her thighs, leaving tracks on the nap of her sand-washed silk pants. “Two years at Booker’s, and before that about five on my own.”

  “How do you do the ones that look like paintings?”

  “I do a sheet of rolled fondant on top, then paint it with artists’ brushes and egg-yolk paints.”

  “What kind of cakes do you use?”

  “Booker’s was pretty much into basic chocolate and vanilla butter cake, lemon pound cake. Sometimes cheesecakes. But Ellen said you guys have your own recipes. I can do whatever you like.” She looks at her watch, which annoys me.

  “Are you in a time crunch?”

  “I have another appointment at noon.”

  “Okay. Thanks for coming by. One of us, probably Ellen, w—”

  “Do you have any idea when you’ll make a decision? Because I really need to secure a position right away.”

  The bell over the door jangles as two women enter. Tyler, our blue-haired barista, strolls out of the kitchen to wait on them, wiping her hands on her apron, staring blatantly at our table.

  I close the binder and slide it back to her. “I’m sure it’ll be soon. Maybe tomorrow, but—”

  “Are you talking to anyone else?”

  “Not that I know of.” That probably isn’t the cool thing to say, but I’m too tired to lie.

  “Well, then. I’ll wait to hear from you. Thank you so much.” She thrusts her hand under my nose and I shake it. Then she picks up the binder, holding it against her breasts like a much-loved child, and ducks out the door.
r />   “Where’s Ellen?” I ask Tyler after the women have left.

  “Dentist. She lost a crown or something. In a sticky bun.”

  “Ouch.”

  “She said she’d see you later.”

  “Not till I get some sleep.”

  She smirks. “That’s not what I heard you were getting.”

  “Tyler…”

  She makes big eyes at me. “I saw him this morning. Not bad for an old dude. Nice ass, too—”

  “He’s not old.”

  She twists a blue spike. “Maybe there’s a younger brother?”

  “Older. Besides, I think he’s a lawyer.”

  She pantomimes putting a finger down her throat.

  “What happened to you and Teddy?”

  “He’s history. So maybe you could, like, will Mac to me? You know? When you kick?”

  I smile smugly. “You won’t want him by then. He’ll be all used up.”

  I open my eyes in twilight to see a blurry, upside-down face. CM.

  “What time is it?” I blink.

  She raises a glass of red wine. “The sun’s over the yardarm.”

  I push the hair off my face and sit up slowly, letting out a stale breath. “Ugh. Forgot to brush my teeth.”

  “Better do it quick before Cute Stuff shows up.”

  The desk lamp is on, casting soft shadows on the wall behind it. I look at my watch. I can’t believe I slept till six. Good thing I showered this morning. I reach my arms toward the ceiling and yawn. “Can you have dinner with us?”

  “Wish I could. I have to go back to the studio for a meeting. Besides, I don’t think I could stand watching you two paw at each other.”

  Christine Mayle has been my best friend since third grade. And believe me, it’s not easy being best friends with someone who looks like Celtic royalty—tall; slender; green eyes; long, auburn hair. She’s one of those women who could put on a plastic garbage bag and start a new fashion trend. Once, in high school, she told me that she knew she was beautiful and that people were always going to notice her. Since then I’ve watched her accept admiration as her due, without fuss, the way a queen might accept homage from her devoted subjects. It’s an attitude I’ve always admired for its honesty.

  She sits on the edge of the tub, sipping her wine while I brush my teeth. “So…how did it go?”

  I try to tell her around my toothbrush, but it comes out unintelligible.

  “That good, huh?”

  I rinse out my mouth, pull back my hair, and start washing my face with shaving cream. I know it sounds strange, but CM’s always used it and her skin looks like an Estée Lauder ad, so I thought I’d give it a try.

  “If you really want to know, somehow the whole thing feels weird.”

  “Weird?”

  “I was sitting there at breakfast looking at him, and all of a sudden, it was like…vertigo. I mean, we used to be friends, and now we’re…something else. Another horse of a different color, as my oma used to say. And two weeks”—I turn to look directly at her—“of silence makes me nervous.”

  “If he was calling you every day, that would make you nervous, too.” She smiles indulgently. “Everything makes you nervous.” She finishes her wine and sets the glass on the vanity. She kicks off her shoes. “Enjoy it, don’t dissect it. Things will work themselves out.”

  She stands up and slips out of her jeans, hanging them on the hook behind the door. “And now, if you’re through hogging the bathroom, I’m getting in the shower.”

  “What did you think of Maggie?” Ellen asks me between sips of espresso. Linda’s in back washing up, and Tyler hasn’t come in yet, so we have a few minutes of privacy.

  “I don’t know. I guess she’s fine. We don’t exactly have applicants lined up for a shot at it, do we?” I stretch my legs out in front of me and rotate my aching feet.

  “Not really.”

  “She said two years at Booker’s, five doing cakes freelance. That leaves almost ten years unaccounted for. Did she give you a resumé?”

  Ellen laughs. “Nobody in this business has a resumé. She told me she was a starving artist till she met Mr. Wonderful. Taking art classes and trying to sell her paintings.” She hesitates. “Did you notice her eye?”

  “Her eye?”

  “She had a black eye. It was pretty well camouflaged. Probably a few days old. And it looks like she’s good with the concealer.”

  Now I feel really stupid. “I didn’t even notice.”

  “You have to know what to look for. Before Food Bank started picking up the day-olds, I used to take them over to a battered-women’s shelter. I saw quite a few women who knew how to use makeup. Maggie’s was just barely a shadow.”

  “That’s no reason not to hire her—”

  Ellen shakes her head impatiently. “No. In fact, it may be a good reason to hire her. I just think you and I need to be aware of it. There’s a potential for trouble.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know—irate spouse, confrontations in the workplace.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  She shrugs. “I think we should give her a three-month trial. Her book looks good.”

  She sets down her cup and goes to unlock the door for Tyler, who’s peering in at us, nose smushed against the glass. Ellen hands her a cleanup rag. “Take care of your grease spot on the door.”

  “Whoa. I’m the barista and the cake decorator, and now I’m the janitor, too.”

  “You won’t have to worry about the cakes much beyond today,” Ellen says. “We’re hiring Maggie Stanopolis. She’s from—”

  “I know where she’s from.” Tyler gives us her drop-dead look. “Bet she does a great Smurf cake.”

  Ellen smiles. “Her style is a little different from yours, but I think she’s very talented.”

  “Her face looks like it got left in the dryer too long. And that skuzzy blond hair. Looks like she’s got a dead animal on her head.”

  It takes all my self-control not to laugh. “We’re not hiring her to be our poster girl. Besides, I think having blue hair and a safety pin in your ear disqualifies you from commenting on anyone else’s appearance.”

  Color flames in Tyler’s paste-white cheeks. Her Doc Martens make dull clomping sounds on the rubber matting as she disappears into the work area and then we hear her slamming the cooler doors.

  “Hey!” Ellen calls after her. “Knock it off unless you can afford to buy us a new Traulsen.” She looks at me. “This could prove interesting.”

  “I’ll say. Who needs an irate spouse when you have an irate cake decorator?”

  two

  Mazurka Bars are, as Ellen likes to say, locally world famous—a killer combination of thin, flaky crust, then your choice of lemon, chocolate-espresso, apple-raisin, or raspberry filling, and on top the crumble layer with its habit-forming, sandy crunch. We sell them not only to our customers, but to cafés and delis and even some grocery stores around the city. Ellen invented them when she lived in New Hampshire, and she brought the recipe with her to Seattle, at first baking them in her apartment and selling them outside movie theaters and down at Seattle Center before Sonics games and every September at the Bumbershoot arts festival. A lot of our customers still remember her fondly as the Mazurka Bar Lady.

  Production outgrew her tiny apartment a long time ago—one of the reasons she and her former partner Diane bought the bakery—and lately, demand has mushroomed to the point where we’ve had to hire three part-timers to do nothing but Mazurkas. Ellen supervises them closely, and still insists on making the huge batches of filling and topping herself, but Kristen, Susan, and Barb do the crust, the assembly and baking off, the cutting, wrapping, and labeling.

  They work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, usually coming in around noon, so I rarely see them, but on this particular Monday, we’ve got a large special order for a convention event at the Sheraton, so the gang’s all here when Maggie shows up at eight A.M. for her first day at work.

&nb
sp; Linda left as usual on the stroke of seven, wary of turning into a pumpkin if she stays one minute over. But I’m still here, and Ellen, Tyler, Jen, and Misha, the morning crew, plus the Mazurka mavens. Maggie insists on shaking hands with everyone, no matter if they’re talking to someone else at the moment or up to their elbows in dishwater or patting out scone dough with floury hands. She smiles directly into their faces, mentioning that her husband is Tony Stanopolis, owner of Tony’s on Capitol Hill. As if that somehow places her in context for us. She seems oblivious to the surreptitiously exchanged glances and rolling of eyes.

  Tyler has grudgingly agreed to help with the cakes for a couple of weeks, but her demeanor could be generously described as sullen. When Ellen takes Maggie back to show her how the storeroom’s organized, Tyler gives me a fish-eyed stare.

  “‘Cake designer’? What a joke.”

  “She’ll be fine. Help her out.”

  She folds her arms. “Sure. Front door okay?”

  “Ha-ha, Tyler. Don’t you remember what it was like to be the new kid?”

  “Yeah, I remember.” She looks at me sideways. “Nobody gave me any breaks.”

  “Oh, come on. You’re starting to sound like Linda.”

  While Maggie fills out payroll forms, Ellen comes over to me. “You better get gone. You’re about to fall asleep standing up. Where’s Tyler?”

  “I don’t know. Probably sulking in the bathroom. What’s with her, anyway?”

  Ellen shakes her head. “Lots of things, I think. We’re going to have to keep an eye on this.” She lays a gentle hand on my arm. “But we can talk later. Go home. Go to bed.” She grins wickedly. “I mean, go to sleep.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s not an issue at the moment. Mac’s trying to get a job lined up and find an apartment. I haven’t seen him in two days.”

  Her expression is one of horror. “Two days? No sex for two days? Like, ohmigod!”

  Mac and I didn’t spend a lot of time at each other’s residences last year when we were friends. We saw each other at Bailey’s, where he worked as a bartender, or we went places together—cafés, movies, bookstores, coffeehouses. Weather permitting, we were usually outside. Walking in the Market or Pioneer Square, jogging in the parks, or—Mac’s favorite—riding the Washington state ferries. In fact, the only time he was ever inside my house was when I was recovering from my appendectomy. And I never set foot in his place. The subject came up once, and he put me off by saying that it was “kind of like Motel Six.”