“It’s tough living on the coast. The bus service is terrible. There are some shuttle services for the elderly, but they’re slow and he hates being dependent on anyone.”
I laid my hand on his. “You’ll get through this. And he’ll understand, eventually. What does your mother say?”
“She doesn’t like to drive anymore, so she’s dependent on him. I think she realizes he needs to stop driving, but she doesn’t want to seem like she’s ganging up on him.” He shook his head. “But about Charlene—”
“I kind of avoided her today. The thing is, I still don’t know what I’m going to say to her. Yes, I love the Baker Street Bakers too. No, I really don’t want to stop investigating, I just think I should stop. And maybe I haven’t been thinking straight with the whole new-brother situation. But Charlene and I recently did put a toe over the line when it came to interfering in your investigation. And—”
“She’s behind you.”
“I know she’s behind me,” I said. “She’s been a rock. She’s always supported me.”
“I mean she’s right behind you.”
“Interfering?” Charlene asked, and my muscles jumped. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to arrest us?”
Gordon rose and motioned to his chair. “No. I’m going to have a talk with the bartender about a certain TA. That way, you won’t have to interfere again tonight.” He edged through the crowd to the bar.
Charlene seized his chair and dropped into it. “Interfering?”
“It’s nothing. I was just hashing out whether we should keep investigating.”
“And?”
“We’ve helped Gordon in the past.” I hesitated, thinking. “We need to keep doing it. Pie Town doesn’t need any more bad publicity, and . . .”
“What?”
“I need to get out of my head. As much as I go back and forth on if what we’re doing is right or wrong, it feels right.”
“Doing what we can to stop a killer is right. There’s no feeling about it.” She peeled off her white knit jacket and set it on the back of the chair. “I found the business card those UFO folks left on your desk. What did they want?”
“The usual. Proof of life on other planets. So of course they came to Pie Town.” In spite of myself, I smiled. “I told them the truth, but they wouldn’t believe me.”
“Well, the evidence that this planet has been visited by aliens is compelling.” She dug her phone from the pocket of her orange tunic, tapped the screen, and handed it to me.
I studied the photo—an unaltered picture of Charlene dangling a pie-plate UFO off a fishing line.
“Is this the end of our pie-tin UFO promotion?” I asked.
She sighed, her shoulders folding inward. “It was time. Tally Wally convinced me people were starting to turn.”
“So that’s what you two were talking about.”
“That, and . . .”
“And what?”
Her face crumpled. “It was stupid, really.”
“What?”
“My husband. He loved the idea of UFOs and life in other worlds and flying to the stars. That’s what gave me the idea for the pie tins. And I thought, if we made the international wire services, maybe my daughter would see . . .” She blinked rapidly. “Maybe I did take the pie-tin UFOs too far.”
A lump hardened in my throat. She’d thought her daughter might see the article and make the connection between the pie-tin UFOs and her father.
“Well, it’s too bad your promotion is ending.” I wrinkled my brow, thinking of a way to salvage this without causing a bigger UFO panic. “Maybe, alongside your big-reveal photo, we could print instructions? A step-by-step guide to making a pie-tin UFO.”
Her face lighted. “You think? Of course, any copycats would need two official Pie Town pie tins to make one, and the only way to get those is to buy two pies.”
I nodded, somber. “There is that.”
She thumped her fist on the wooden table, rattling my beer glass. “She’s back! Now about Doran—”
“Doran will get over it,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “We didn’t actually do anything wrong, which he’ll realize, if he bothers to think about it.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say, but what you said isn’t bad. Now, how much trouble are you in with the big guy?” She nodded toward Gordon at the bar.
“Not so much.” I frowned. It was downright weird that he’d encourage us to investigate, even if he had warned us off interfering.
“What’s wrong?”
“You know when you first start dating someone and you see them through rose-colored glasses? Everything seems perfect.”
“That’s the best part!”
“Yeah, but the glasses have to come off sooner or later.” I paused, thinking of my ex-fiancé. I’d been burned so badly, but it hadn’t all been Mark’s fault. “Gordon and I are still in that glasses-on phase, and it feels great. But I guess I’m worried about what comes next.”
“He’s a copper. I think he sees people pretty clearly.”
Gordon had said we needed to take people as they are. But he was a detective, and a good one who wouldn’t want a case messed up. I glanced toward the bar. So why was he so easygoing about me and Charlene? “He encouraged us to keep investigating.”
“How much did he have to drink?”
“Two beers.” I gnawed my bottom lip. “He did tell us we needed to be more careful not to interfere with his investigation—”
“We’re always careful!”
I shot her a look. “More careful.”
“Fine, more careful. Whatever.”
“But—”
“No luck on the alibi.” Gordon rested one hand on my shoulder. “The bartender can’t remember Brittany, and neither can the waitresses who were here that night. But that’s not conclusive. It was a busy night, and they don’t have photographic memories.”
“I once knew a guy with a photographic memory,” Charlene mused. “It came in real handy during that line-dance competition.”
“How . . . ?” Gordon shook his head. “Never mind.”
Creakily, Charlene lumbered from the chair. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds. Word is there’s been a Bigfoot sighting down behind the Circle K.”
“Where the creek is?” I asked, alarmed. The bank there was steep and could get slippery. “Charlene . . .”
“Why don’t we go with you?” Gordon looked down at me, his green eyes crinkling, and my heart lifted.
His hand lightly squeezed my shoulder. “I haven’t been on a Bigfoot hunt in years.”
CHAPTER 26
Outside, cars crawled along Main Street, their drivers searching for parking. Inside, the gamers huddled, dice rattling, in their regular corner booth. Families with sunburned noses slumped wearily at tables.
The coast was often deceptively warmer in early autumn than in summer. Today was one of those glorious September Sunday afternoons, and Pie Town was buzzing.
But my pulse skittered. Tonight, Charlene and I were infiltrating a secret society, even if it was only a bunch of college kids. And I couldn’t tell if my jitters were worry or excitement. But I’d committed. We were doing this.
Petronella and I worked the front counter while Abril filled orders from the kitchen and Hunter bused tables.
Charlene sat at the counter, her face contorting. She made increasingly alarming noises, a newspaper clenched in her fists. Bigfoot had been a no-show last night. It looked like she was taking it hard.
I deposited plates of coconut cream, strawberry, and two pumpkin pies at a four-top and bustled behind the counter.
Charlene gave a strangled gasp.
The bell over the front door jangled. I ignored it.
“Charlene,” I said, “what’s wrong?”
“Marla,” she croaked.
“You rang?” Marla asked, and glared at the full stools in front of the counter.
Charlene spun to face her. “You dare show your face here?�
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“Oh, I see you read my article.” She tried to pluck the paper from Charlene’s grasp, but Charlene clung to it like baked fruit filling to the bottom of an oven.
“What article?” I asked, before one of the octogenarians could get into an actual brawl.
“Here you go.” Tally Wally handed me an unrumpled copy of the paper, and my head rocked back in surprise.
“What are you still doing here?” I asked. “Don’t you golf Sunday afternoons?”
He sipped his coffee. “I had a feeling things would be more interesting here.”
His buddy Graham leaned forward on his stool and peered past Tally Wally. “And we were right.”
Bemused, I scanned the page Tally Wally had neatly folded.
DID A PIE SHOP’S PROMO GO TOO FAR?
A week ago, when photos of UFOs over San Nicholas began appearing on the Twitter account of a Pie Town employee, people took notice. Most believed the photos, clearly of two pie tins fastened together, were a marketing gag. But some took the pictures seriously.
“There was a near riot on Main Street,” local resident Marla Van Helsing said. “I was there, in Pie Town, at the time. It was terrifying.”
Pie Town’s owner has confirmed that the photos were intended as a harmless joke.
But were the photos harmless?
“The police had to manage crowd control,” Ms. Van Helsing said. “Someone could have been trampled. Did I mention it was terrifying?”
“It was completely out of control,” neighboring business owner Heidi Gladstone said. “My customers couldn’t reach my gym, Heidi’s Health and Fitness. The people who were trapped inside were afraid to leave and face that mob.”
In today’s age of viral marketing, businesses are pushing the envelope in their attempts to get attention online. But when do publicity stunts go too far?
I grimaced. It could have been worse. The article could have connected Pie Town with the recent murders. “It’s fair,” I said reluctantly. I was going to have to bake apology pies to my neighbors—except for Heidi. She was anti-pie.
“Fair?” Charlene glared at Marla. “Fair? Is it fair that this publicity hound plants her bottom at our counter for discount hand pies and cheap coffee, then turns on the hand that feeds her?”
Marla tossed her glamorously coiffed head. “You should be thanking me.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Charlene’s eyes bulged.
“Because of me, your little pie-plate stunt is in the news another day.”
“I was going to post how-I-did-it photos,” Charlene howled.
“No publicity is bad publicity,” Marla said.
“Mm.” That wasn’t entirely true, but in the interests of keeping the peace, I didn’t argue. “How have the old photos been doing online?” I asked Charlene. “Are people still sharing them?”
“That’s not the point,” she grumbled.
Marla arched a brow. “Isn’t it? Isn’t it, Charlene?”
A man vacated a stool at the far end of the counter, and Marla scuttled to seize it before someone else could.
“I could throttle her,” Charlene muttered.
“But you won’t,” I said, “because we both know that even if her intentions were bad, the results were not. Doran gave me some files on that professor who died a few years back. I haven’t had a chance to read through them yet—”
“Where are they?”
“My office.”
Crumpling the paper into a ball, she stood and stalked into my office.
I followed, smothering a smile.
Charlene made herself comfortable in my executive chair. The purple satin robe I’d hung on its back this morning slithered sideways. I adjusted it and handed her the file folder.
“You heard from your brother?” she asked, scanning the first article printout.
“Not yet.” And it was all I could do not to run to his rental to try to make him see things my way. But that would be wrong. I slipped my hands into my apron’s pockets. “I’m giving him some space.” Even if it was killing me.
“Professor Theresa Keller.” Studying the article, she leaned back in my chair, and it creaked. “I remember this accident. Five years ago, one of those zippy sports cars took a curve too fast and went over the cliff out past that fancy hotel. The woman died. I didn’t remember her name though, or that she was a professor at the local college. It happened late at night. No witnesses. Someone saw the car at the bottom of the cliffs the next morning and called it in.”
“So, the question is, does this have anything to do with Starke’s poem or with his death?”
“Starke wasn’t here when it happened,” she said. “He arrived four years ago, didn’t he?”
“Then if there was something hinky about this accident, Starke couldn’t have seen it. But Aidan might have.”
“The plagiarism. If Starke stole Aidan’s story—”
“It would be a motive to kill both Starke and Aidan,” I said. “Assuming this has anything to do with the murders. And we still can’t be sure it does. It’s all kind of vague.”
“We need to know where all our suspects were the night Theresa Keller died.”
“If this is about Theresa Keller, then that lets out Brittany. She would have been, what? Fifteen? Sixteen?”
“You’ve never raised a teenager.” Charlene’s snowy brows pulled downward. “Don’t count her out.”
“But didn’t she move here from Maine after Theresa’s accident?”
“That’s what she says.”
“Okay, five years is a long time for a records check,” I said. “We need help.”
Charlene folded her arms over her fuchsia tunic. “Call your copper. I won’t stop you.”
I pulled my phone from my apron pocket and called Gordon.
“Dare I hope this is a personal call?” he asked.
My heart fluttered. “It’s always personal. Except, no, we found some information that might be useful, but we aren’t sure what to make of it.” I explained about Theresa Keller.
“And you think she’s connected to that poem? I thought the title was ‘Death in a Parking Lot,’ not ‘Death on the Cliffs.’ ”
“She’s the only professor there who’s died in the last few years. Maybe Starke took some artistic liberties.”
He sighed. “All right. I’ll look into it, if only to justify digging through your dumpster for that poem. I’ll get back to you.”
We said our goodbyes, and he hung up.
“What did he say?” Charlene kicked her high-tops up on the metal desk.
“He’s looking into it.”
“Call Jezek. He’s been around that college a while. Maybe he knows something.”
“Maybe he did it.” But I phoned Professor Jezek.
“Hello?” he asked cautiously.
“Professor Jezek, this is Val Harris, from Pie Town.”
“Oh.” His voice darkened.
“You were at the college five years ago, weren’t you?”
“Yes . . . ?”
“Did you know Theresa Keller?”
There was a choking sound.
“Hello? Professor?”
He hung up.
“Well?” Charlene asked.
I stared at the phone. “Jezek hung up on me.”
“Suspicious.”
But was it? I wasn’t sure I’d want to talk to me either.
I phoned Dorothy and the dean, but my calls went to voicemail.
“They’re probably screening their calls.” Charlene laced her hands behind her head. “That’s what I do.”
“Are we on the wrong track?” I asked. “I mean, it’s kind of an out-there theory, isn’t it?”
“That Aidan witnessed a five-year-old murder, told Starke, and Starke wrote a poem about it that got him killed? Then the murderer realized where the story had really come from and killed Aidan? Seems pretty straightforward to me.”
“Uh, yeah. When you put it that way . . .” None of it q
uite fit. I shook my head. “Why do people commit murder?”
“Money, love, revenge, or to protect themselves. Oh, or craziness.”
“All right, so why kill Theresa Keller?”
Charlene thumbed through the printed articles and shook her head. “This was reported as an accident. Most of the articles are about the dangers of that stretch of road and the need to improve it. Here’s a quote from . . . Professor Piotr Jezek. Theresa was an amazing woman and an asset to the department. She will be missed.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, excited. “ ‘To the department’? To the English department?”
She shook her head. “The article doesn’t specify.”
I scooted around the desk and grabbed for my computer keyboard. “There’s got to be something online—”
Petronella opened the office door and stuck her head inside. “Hey, we’re getting slammed out here.”
My cheeks warmed. It wasn’t fair to leave my staff in the lurch. Again. Pies before investigations. “Sorry. I’ll be right out.”
“Don’t worry, Val,” Charlene said. “I’m on the case.”
That was exactly the sort of thing to make me worried. But hungry customers were calling, and I hurried into the dining area.
The crowd finally eased up around five. The tables were mostly clear, aside from the gamers in the corner. A handful of customers lined up at the register for pies to take home.
I handed a boxed chocolate-pecan pie to a round-faced man. “Here you go!”
“Thanks!” He bustled out the door.
I glanced at the corner booth. Charlene sat with the gamers, which either meant she’d taken up a new hobby or she was up to something. I ran my finger inside the collar of my Pie Town t-shirt.
The phone in my apron rang, and I checked the number. Gordon. My pulse gave a little jump. “Um, Petronella, would you mind taking over for a minute?”
She set a plastic bin beneath the counter and nodded. “Sure thing.”
I stepped aside for her and answered the phone. “Hey, Gordon. What’s going on?”
“I had an interesting conversation with the officer on the scene of that car accident you told me about.”
“Oh?”
“He told me he was never satisfied Theresa’s death was an accident.”
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