“Is that so?” Nick took out his key card for the door. “Please come in. We’ll certainly want to get your name in the story.”
Inside the cramped motel room the woman glanced at the queen-size bed as if wondering whether they both slept in it. “Now tell us about yourself,” Nick suggested. “Have you always lived in Clydestown?”
She sat uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa, clutching a large manila envelope. “Born and raised here. My husband and two sons work our dairy farm out on the Post Road. Maggie Oates and I have been rivals for years in the apple-pie judging. I won two years ago and she won last year. I’m out to reclaim the championship this time. When I phoned her tonight and she said you’d interviewed her, I checked the motels until I found where you were.”
“That was clever of you,” Gloria offered.
“I’ve got pictures of my prize-winning pie from two years ago if you’d like to see them.” She unclasped the envelope and slid out some color photos.
“Very nice,” Nick commented, passing them on to Gloria.
“The judging here has always stressed the appearance of the pie as much as its taste.” She added, “Sometimes I think the appearance of the baker counts, too, at least with Leonard Fine.”
“Isn’t it a blind judging?”
“Yes, but everyone recognizes Maggie’s special crust flavor. I try to be clever with my crust design, but she still beat me out last year.”
“You don’t approve of Fine’s judging?”
She shrugged. “The women all love him. We all wish we had a husband who could bake like he does.”
“If he picks your pie, be assured you’ll be seeing more of us.”
“You may keep the pictures for your story if you wish.”
Nick hesitated. “Let me just keep one and you take the rest.”
“Will you be at the judging in the morning?”
“I certainly will,” he assured her. “Good luck.”
The next morning they finished breakfast, picked up a New York paper, and drove out to the fairgrounds, arriving before ten so they could witness the delivery of the pies. Beth Buckley had positioned herself at the entrance to the Fine Arts Building, accepting apple pies in their plastic containers. “Hello there,” she greeted them. “I hear you’ve been getting around our town, talking to our baker and some of the ladies.”
“They’re talented people,” Nick assured her. “Gloria bought one of Fine’s angel food cakes and we had some last night.”
Already there were three apple pies in front of Beth Buckley and as they chatted Maggie Oates arrived with hers. Beth used a marking pen to write a number on the nametag and the same number on the plastic container. Then she removed Maggie’s tag and placed it with the others in a cigar box. “All set,” she told the young woman. “Good luck!”
“How many entries are there?” Maggie asked.
“Yours is number four, and I know we’ll be getting one from Rita Wadsworth.”
“Here she comes now,” Gloria observed, seeing her approach from the parking lot.
“That makes five,” Beth said as she accepted Rita’s pie. “Good luck to you both.”
“Come on, Maggie,” Rita urged. “We might as well sit together and show everyone we’re friends.”
Maggie followed her inside with some reluctance and Beth commented, “They’re not really friends at all, not during the fair. Last time they had a big argument about the merits of single-crust pie versus double-crust.”
Nick and Gloria strolled around a bit, watching children on the Ferris wheel and teenagers caring for their animals. One girl was leading a llama toward the Livestock Building and Gloria commented, “In my day we had pigs and goats.”
“Times change even on the farm.”
“Some things don’t change. They still have milking contests.”
They were back in time for the judging, just as Beth Buckley was up on stage slicing a slender piece from each pie and placing it on a paper plate. The pies themselves were in their original containers, opened so the judge could study their design. The spectators and contestants themselves were at the foot of the low stage, straining for a look at the entries and trying to guess who’d submitted each pie. There were still only five in the line, and when Nick asked Beth about it she shrugged. “I guess Rita and Maggie are strong contenders. They frightened most of the others away. But we’ve still got some great-looking pies.”
“Good enough to eat,” Gloria agreed.
They found seats in the third row as Leonard Fine entered and mounted the platform. He carried a black ledger in one hand, perhaps to record the results of his judging, and he’d exchanged his red shirt for a more dressy black one with gold braid on the sleeves. “Good morning, folks,” he greeted them. “It’s nice to see so much interest in the apple-pie judging, and I hope you’ll keep up that interest at auction time. Those of you who’ve attended my previous judging know that I give high marks for both taste and appearance. I understand we have two prior blue-ribbon winners among this year’s entrants, so my taste buds are really looking forward to this.”
The baker sat down behind the table and pulled all five slices of pie a bit closer. Starting at his left he cut a small piece with his fork and tasted it. The process was repeated with the next four. He seemed to enjoy every bite, but tried to keep his face impassive. Twice he went back for a second helping and the contestants in the front row seemed to hold their collective breaths.
Then, without warning, Len Fine’s expression changed. It was as if he’d suddenly bitten into a hive of bees. He opened his mouth and reached for a glass of water Beth had left on the table. Gulping it down, he seemed to recover for an instant. “The blue ribbon goes to pie number four,” he said clearly, then was seized by a fit of coughing. He slipped out of his chair and hit the floor.
Beth and a couple of others ran to the stage while the rest of the audience rose uncertainly to its feet. “Did you do that, Nicky?” Gloria whispered.
“Of course not! I think he’s been poisoned.”
Len Fine was dead by the time the ambulance crew arrived. Two women had fainted and the Fine Arts Building was in an uproar. Beth Buckley was on the platform trying to calm everyone down but it was a losing battle. Nick hurried to her side, speaking in a loud voice, and asked everyone to file out quietly. It seemed clear to him that Fine had been poisoned by one of the apple pies and he had a motive for lending Beth a hand with the crowd. It gave him an opportunity to slip the baker’s journal into the folds of the newspaper he carried. At that moment he didn’t know himself why he wanted it.
Once outside, Gloria asked, “Where does that leave us?”
“He lived long enough to name pie number four as the winner. That was Maggie Oates’s number.”
“Yes, but surely the police will take all five pies as evidence. You’ll never get your hands on any of them.”
They remained on the scene while the body was removed and the county sheriff questioned Mrs. Buckley and the spectators who’d been closest to the stage. All agreed that Fine seemed in perfect health when he entered the building and spoke to them. It wasn’t until he tasted the pies that he seemed to become ill.
The sheriff, a man named Pike with a bushy red moustache, asked Beth if Fine had eaten anything else. “Not a thing,” she replied, but was immediately corrected by Ruth Wadsworth.
“He drank some of the water,” she reminded them.
Sheriff Pike glanced at the half-empty glass and motioned to a deputy. “We’d better take that, too.”
When the building was finally cleared, Nick and Gloria headed back to their car. He produced Fine’s journal from the folds of his newspaper. “What’s that?” Gloria asked.
“He had this with him. I thought it might have information about the pie judging, but it appears to be mostly an appointment book with the fair dates and his personal schedule.”
“That won’t tell us anything.”
“No...” He hesitated and flipped
through several of the pages. “I wonder what this is. Every week or ten days there’s a notation Moo.”
“Maybe he has a thing about cows.”
“Or dairy farms,” Nick suggested, remembering Rita Wadsworth’s farm.
They drove back to the motel while Nick tried to decide his next move. Gloria was certainly correct that Maggie’s prize-winning pie was beyond his reach, and by the time the police finished their tests it wouldn’t look like anything Milo Marx would want to preserve in plastic. Somehow he had to convince Maggie to bake a duplicate pie without mentioning Marx’s name.
Later that afternoon they returned to the Oates home. Maggie had called Wayne at work with the news of Fine’s death and he’d come home early to comfort her. “She’s pretty broken up,” he told them at the door. “I don’t think she wants visitors.”
Maggie heard them talking and put in an appearance. “It’s a terrible tragedy, what happened to Len. He was such a fine man. I gave a statement to the police about my pie, but there’s no way it could have been poisoned.”
“If he was poisoned I’m sure it came from elsewhere,” Nick said.
But even as he uttered those reassuring words the sheriff’s car pulled up in front of the house with a state police car right behind it. Sheriff Pike came onto the porch and spoke the dire words. “Sorry to bother you again, Maggie, but we’re going to have to take you in for further questioning. The preliminary lab report indicates the poison was in your pie, though they haven’t determined the source of it yet.”
“That’s impossible! I didn’t poison Len, and I was alone here when I baked it. After it cooled I sealed it in its plastic box. It wasn’t opened till Beth cut the slices for judging this morning, and she did that before a roomful of people.”
The sheriff tried to calm her. “No one’s saying it was deliberate, Maggie. Maybe some drain cleaner accidentally spilled into your filling.”
“No!” she insisted. “No, no, no! Why would I kill him when he gave me the blue ribbon last year and again this year?”
“You didn’t know you’d be winning again,” the sheriff pointed out. “Maybe you thought he’d give the ribbon to Rita.”
Wayne Oates tried to intervene. “If Maggie leaves this house, I’m going with her. You’ll have to lock me up, too.”
“The state cops just have some more questions, Maggie. You’ll have to come along.”
Nick watched them lead her away, with Wayne following behind. “There goes your chance of getting another pie,” Gloria said.
The following morning it was announced that Maggie Oates was being held without bail and the case would be referred to the grand jury for possible indictment. Nick was finished in Clydestown. He had failed an assignment for the first time in his career. The prize pie was being dissected in a police lab and the only person who might duplicate it was behind bars. Nick and Gloria checked out of their motel and headed home.
“You shouldn’t feel bad,” Gloria said, trying to comfort him. “There was nothing you could do.”
As they headed out of town he could see the top of the Ferris wheel and the tents for the fair. A truck came out of the road ahead with two prize cows in the back, their blue ribbons proudly displayed. “Cows, Nicky. Moo!”
“Are you trying to cheer me up?”
“I was reminding you of the notes in the baker’s appointment book. Remember?”
“I remember,” Nick replied after just a moment’s silence. He made a quick U-turn on the nearly deserted road. “We’re going back.”
“Back where?”
“To the sheriff’s office.”
They arrived within minutes and he parked behind the sheriff’s car. “What are you trying to do?” she asked.
“Deliver the winning pie to Milo Marx. And the only way I can do it is by getting Maggie Oates out of jail.”
“You’re not planning a jail break!”
“No, I’m planning to convince them that she didn’t poison Len Fine.”
They found Beth Buckley and Rita Wadsworth in the waiting room. “The sheriff and county prosecutor are taking statements from everyone,” Beth explained. “They’ve got Maggie’s husband in there now.”
Nick strode forward and knocked on the door. An angry Sheriff Pike opened it. “We’re not to be disturbed. What are you doing here, Nicholas?”
“I have important information regarding Leonard Fine’s death, Sheriff.”
“Just wait out there till we’re finished with Mr. Oates.”
“It can’t wait,” Nick said, forcing his way into the room. The county prosecutor half rose from his chair, looking startled, and Wayne Oates merely seemed puzzled.
Nick dropped Leonard Fine’s journal on the sheriff’s desk. “I accidentally picked this up along with my papers after Fine’s collapse. When I realized what it was, I had to return it right away.”
“Accidentally,” the prosecutor repeated, but Nick ignored him.
He flipped open the book to the daily appointments section and pointed to the series of MOO notations. “Do you have any notion as to what these mean?” he asked, holding the book for Wayne Oates to see.
“Not the slightest.”
“That’s odd, since they’re your wife’s initials. She happened to mention that her mother’s name was Oliver. She’s Maggie Oliver Oates.”
The sheriff and the prosecutor were both out of their chairs, crowding around for a look at the book. “What’s this mean, Wayne?” Sheriff Pike asked.
“I don’t know.”
But Nick had an explanation. “It means that Len Fine and your wife were meeting regularly, every week or ten days. Can you think of any reason for those meetings?”
Wayne Oates moistened his lips. “No.”
“Since you had no knowledge of these meetings, is it safe to say they were clandestine in nature?”
That brought Wayne out of his chair, too. “Listen, if you’re implying my wife and Fine were lovers, you’re—”
“That’s exactly what I’m implying. And somehow you found out about it.”
Sheriff Pike stepped between them. “Let’s everyone calm down and be seated. If Maggie and Len were having a secret relationship, maybe he broke it off. Maybe that’s why she poisoned him.”
“Would she have poisoned her own pie, Sheriff, knowing it would make her the number-one suspect? And would Fine have used his dying breath to declare her the winner if they’d broken off their relationship?”
Sheriff Pike was shaking his head. “Then you tell me, Mr. Nicholas, who else could possibly have poisoned that pie? The testimony shows that Maggie was alone when she baked it, and sealed it in a box as soon as it was cool. She delivered it to Beth Buckley at the fair. Beth opened the pies and cut slices for judging in full view of the spectators. There was no chance for her or anyone else to have poisoned it.”
“You’re forgetting the matter of motive,” Nick said. “If Maggie and Fine were having an affair, there’s one other person with a motive for killing him — and who wouldn’t be too upset if Maggie got blamed for it.”
“Look here!” Wayne said, out of his chair again. “I didn’t kill anybody! There’s no way I could have poisoned that pie.”
“Ah, but there is,” Nick told them. “While the pie was cooling in the kitchen you went out there to get a knife to cut yourself a piece of the test pie, even though there was only one piece left. While you were out there with the pie it was a simple matter to poison it.”
“How?” Wayne demanded. “Tell me how! The pie was already baked, with its crust intact.”
“By injecting the poison into the pie with a hypodermic needle, through the air holes in the top crust. You’re a security guard at the hospital, with plenty of opportunity to obtain both the poison and the needles.”
That was the beginning of the end. By day’s end, Wayne Oates had made a full confession and Maggie had been freed. Nick and Gloria waited for her and drove her home. “I can’t thank you enough,” she told them. �
�You’ve saved my life. And Beth is awarding me the blue ribbon, even though Wayne poisoned my pie. If there’s anything I can do to repay you—”
“There is one thing,” Nick told her with a smile. “You could bake us one of those prize-winning pies.”
DeKok and the Death of a Rottweiler
by Baantjer
© 1996 by Uitgeverij De Fontein, Baarn, Netherlands. From De Cock en een hamerslag by Baantjer (Albert Cornelis), English translation ©2006 EQMM
The most popular author in the Netherlands, Baantjer has more than fifty novels in print featuring his series detective Inspector DeKok. A former inspector for the Amsterdam police himself, the author seems to spin many of his tales from commonplace events — if murder can ever be called such. The latest Baantjer title available in English is DeKok and Variations on Murder, which will be re-released in paperback in June 2006 by Speck Press.
❖
Translated from the Dutch by H.G. Smittenaar.
Inspector DeKok of the renowned old police station at Warmoes Street in Amsterdam looked with surprise at the stately man who sat down on the chair next to his desk in the crowded detective room.
“Schouten,” he exclaimed happily, “Jan Schouten.”
The man crossed his long legs and nodded slowly. “You still have a good memory for faces,” he observed.
DeKok smiled. “And for names,” he answered. “A useful professional talent.”
The inspector surveyed his visitor attentively. His sharp glance roamed from the willful chin to the clear blue eyes.
“You’re still looking good,” he said with an admiring tone in his voice. The gray sleuth shook his head. “Jan Schouten,” he repeated with a sigh. “I had no idea you were still around.”
The visitor grinned. With widespread fingers he combed through his silver hair, which reached almost to his shoulders.
“I always check the obituaries first,” he said with a shrug. “If I don’t see my name, I’m ready to start another day with gusto.”
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 6. Whole No. 778, June 2006 Page 18