by Sharon Short
“Have you heard anything I’ve said?”
I looked up at Winnie.
She was gazing pointedly at me as she took the last bite of her pancake stack.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve just—I have a lot weighing on me—and, and—” I’d told her about the trip out to the Breitenstraters, and out to the woods, and to the pie company, and about thinking the diary and letters Cletus had taken from the historical society might be at the Fireworks Barn and driving out there just as it exploded. But I still hadn’t told her about Owen, other than that he’d driven me home.
Winnie patted my hand. “You’re worrying me. You’re not eating, either.”
The image of Mrs. Oglevee eating the diary pages popped in my head. I took a sip of hot coffee to clear the sudden dry, ashy taste from my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
Winnie frowned at me. “What do you have to be sorry for?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Everything.” I offered her a smile. “Never mind. I’m just tired. I do want to hear what you learned about Good For You Foods International and Todd Raptor.”
Winnie leaned forward, more than happy to tell me—again—what she’d learned. Nothing tickles her more than a challenging research project, especially if it yields juicy results.
“Well, Good For You Foods International is one of the top ten organic and health-food wholesale manufacturing and distributing companies in the world.”
“What does that mean?”
“Basically, they create the lines of organic and health foods, then sell it to the retailers or grocers who sell it to people like you and me.”
I glanced at my biscuit and gravy, took a long gulp of my highly caffeinated coffee. “Not here in Paradise, Ohio.”
“Health- and organic-foods are the hottest trend in the food industry,” Winnie said, a mite defensively. She paused to swipe up a bit of maple syrup with her index finger from her plate, and then licked her finger clean of the syrup. Pure, 100 percent, maple syrup. I guess that counted as organic. I wasn’t sure if it counted as health food, though. “In fact,” Winnie went on, “organic food sales have grown by a factor of eleven times since 1990, and—”
I groaned. “Okay, okay, I believe you. What kind of foods does Good For You Foods International wholesale and distribute?”
“All kinds of things, but mostly vegetarian. Herb teas and jellies. Honey. Dried fruits. Veggie jerky—”
“Veggie jerky?”
“You know, like beef jerky. Only made of veggies. But flavored like beef. With natural herbs and spices, of course. Veggie jerky.”
I was trying to imagine beef jerky made from, say, celery. The image of Mrs. Oglevee eating pages from a diary popped into my head again. Was old paper organic? I shook my head to clear it. “Veggie jerky. Well, then, I suppose lemon ginseng pie really is a good fit for the company. But what about the rest of the pies?”
Winnie drew her mouth down. “I would guess they’d do away with the other pies, at least the ones they couldn’t convert to a health food. The apple and cherry and peach would probably make it in some form, but the others—”
I gasped. No butterscotch? Or chocolate, or coconut cream?
“I know,” Winnie said sympathetically. “The sale will destroy Breitenstrater pies as we know them. I’m guessing, the way these mergers go, the old favorite pies will slowly be phased out, and then discontinued altogether. Eventually the plant here would close and the Breitenstrater line of health food pies would be manufactured elsewhere. That’s the kind of thing that happened to a few other small companies that Good For You Foods acquired over the past few years. But the Breitenstraters will make a ton of cash.” She paused, smiled. “If the sale goes through.”
“What do you mean, if?”
“Well, first of all, Alan Breitenstrater is dead, right? Which leaves Cletus in charge. And he wouldn’t want to sell. Even if he did, I can’t imagine him making it through negotiations with a major company. What major company is going to want to deal with Cletus?”
I shrugged. ‘Any company that thought it could make a killing with health-food pies.” I wagged a finger at her. “Eleven times growth, and all that.”
“Okay. But let’s say Cletus—and Dinky—don’t manage to blow it. Guess who was behind those other mergers—and the only executive manager at Good For You Foods International to really be behind the lemon ginseng pies?”
“Todd Raptor.”
“Exactly. It seems—my contact told me on condition of anonymity—that the other executives were worried that America isn’t quite ready for health-food pies. That maybe that’s mixing the food metaphors a bit much. So to speak.”
“How did you get that out of someone?”
Winnie grinned. “I have my ways. But there’s more. Guess who was also put on probation last week by Good For You Foods International?”
“Todd Raptor?” This time I said his name incredulously.
Winnie nodded triumphantly, proud of this coup of information. “That’s right. Apparently he’d been caught doing some unfortunate things with the budgets of those companies he’d helped acquire . . . while trying to do some unfortunate things with a new female accountant who blew the whistle on him for both his foul manners and his foul accounting practices.”
“Good for her.”
“Amen, sister.”
We both paused, sipping coffee while thinking private huzzahs to the unnamed female employee.
“So, no deal.”
“Actually, Todd was sent here on ‘special assignment.’ If he could make a deal that benefited his company, he could get back in its good graces. Rescue his career.”
Ahh, I thought. That explained Todd’s long presence here away from his company.
“My source wasn’t able to tell me how far the paperwork had gone,” Winnie went on. “Or how interested the company is in the deal with Alan gone.”
I thought about that for a moment. Cletus wouldn’t have agreed to the deal . . . but obviously Alan was more than open to it. Would Cletus have killed his brother to end the deal? But then . . . he was the one who was into ginseng’s health benefits, and it was the development of a lemon ginseng pie that had inspired the deal in the first place. His brother, Geri had told me, had come up with the idea, but surely Cletus had inspired it.
I finally ventured a bite of the biscuit and gravy. It had grown cold and fell in a lump to the pit of my stomach—much like a wad of old diary paper would, I thought. I shook my head again. Was I to be haunted all day by that image of Mrs. Oglevee eating paper?
“You ladies have room for one more?”
I looked up, startled. It was Owen. He glanced away from me, avoiding my eyes. Winnie looked from him to me and back again, clearly wondering what was happening between us. Then she scooted over to make room for Owen.
Owen sat down, and then suddenly looked up at me, concerned. “Josie, are you okay? You haven’t touched your biscuit and gravy—”
“Sheesh, what is this? I’m not eating like a pig, so something’s wrong?”
At the hurt look in Owen’s eyes, I was immediately sorry that I’d snapped at him.
“I just wanted to let you know that when I got home last night, I had a phone call from my friends in Kansas City,” he said quietly. “They did the chemical analysis of the pies as quickly as possible, after hours, for me.” He lowered his voice to a bare whisper. “The lemon ginseng pie was fine. The chocolate cream was heavily dosed with common rat poison, which could have easily been purchased anywhere.”
I thought that through carefully, putting aside my personal issues with Owen.
“So the pie that Alan was eating when he died was fine. Which means he must really have died of a heart attack,” I said.
“But the pie meant for Cletus was dosed to kill,” Winnie said, “yet Cletus has been missing since before the pie-eating contest, which meant that, theoretically, Alan should have eaten that poisoned chocolate pie, but he g
rabbed the ginseng pie instead.”
“So if that chocolate pie was meant for him—you know, maybe the killer got Cletus out of the way somehow, so that Alan would be the one to eat the poisoned pie—Alan just got lucky.”
“You call having a heart attack while eating a lemon ginseng pie lucky?” Owen asked.
I gave him a sharp look. “What I meant was, he got lucky about avoiding the chocolate pie, not that he was lucky to have a heart attack.”
“But maybe the pie really was meant for Cletus, and Alan knew it, and was surprised that Cletus was missing, and that’s why he grabbed the lemon ginseng pie,” Winnie said, “and the stress just added to all his other health problems and that’s why he had a heart attack.”
“Guilt over trying to kill his brother?” I suggested.
“Or stress that it wasn’t going to work out,” Winnie said. “Of course, the poisoned chocolate pie doesn’t account for the fact that Cletus is still missing and that his fireworks business blew up last night.”
“So what do we really know?” I asked.
”That someone tried to kill either Cletus or Alan, and the plan went awry,” Owen said.
We all thought about that for a moment.
Then something hit me. “But if the killer’s plan went awry somehow . . . that means he, or she, might need to strike again.”
18
For the next several hours, I worked at my laundromat, thinking about what Owen had said, but trying not to think about Owen himself.
Talking to customers and washing, drying and folding several orders was a soothing distraction, but the thought kept popping into my head: the pie meant for Cletus had been poisoned—not the lemon ginseng one. But Alan had died. And Cletus was still missing.
Plus the image of Mrs. Oglevee, eating paper, popped into my head over and over. Which was spooky. And scary.
Chip Beavy called to tell me his grandmother was in the hospital up in Masonville—her blood pressure was alarmingly high. Not only had she been drinking ginseng tea, but she’d been skipping her blood pressure medicine. Now she was back on the blood pressure medicine, under observation at the hospital, and feistily demanding to go home, although right now she was napping. I grinned at Chip’s description of his grandmother. I was glad she was going to be okay. I promised I’d call back in a few hours, when she’d probably be awake from her nap.
In between loads and helping customers, I made a few phone calls, too. Several to Sally, who hung up on me every time. A few more about both my car and Sally’s truck—it would be a day or so before we each had our wheels back. One to the vet’s office—Slinky was okay, but now seemed to be trying to throw something up, and the vet would call back when she knew more. I didn’t want to think too much about what that meant.
Another call to Geri, who said she was doing better. She sounded like it, too. No word yet from Cletus or Trudy, a fact that didn’t bother Geri. She was focused on arrangements for Alan’s funeral and said Dinky and Todd were being very supportive. I wasn’t sure what to think of that. Neither man seemed like the supportive kind.
I called Paradise police headquarters and left a message on Chief Worthy’s machine that I had urgent news. I felt obliged to tell him about the poisoned chocolate cream pie, even though I reckoned he’d just roll his eyes and call me Nosey Josie.
I thought about calling Owen, but didn’t do it. We needed some space, I felt, from each other.
At about 11:45, I had half a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, and wrapped the other half for later. Every time I tried to eat, the image of Mrs. Oglevee pounding down old paper popped into my head.
So by noon, I was folding towels for an order for the Paradise Nursing Care Center (which was a three-story house on the corner of Plum and Maple, with additions, converted to a twelve-unit home). Next to me stood Gurdy McGuire, who was also folding towels, but for her family of five, when she interrupted what I was saying about putting a dry towel in with a load of clothes to speed drying time—but always just one towel, and with lightweight clothes (no denim), because of course you want to dry towels and clothes separately . . . anyway, Gurdy hollered, “Josie, look!” and pointed up at the TV over the entrance to my laundromat.
On the screen was a film clip of the Fireworks Barn burning late into the night after the explosion. My stomach flipped, and suddenly I wished for the image of Mrs. Oglevee eating paper from the old diary. Somehow, though, I couldn’t look away, and I stared at the flames licking up into the night as I listened to the WMAS-TV anchor Bonnie Hackman intone: “Last night’s dramatic explosion of the Fireworks Barn in Paradise, Ohio, still has investigators stumped. And this morning, a stunning new twist was just discovered in the burning embers.”
Gurdy said, “Oooh, what could it be?”
“Let’s go now live to the scene with Joey Lopoc.” The image of the burning building gave way to a young news reporter—one I’d never seen on WMAS-TV before—standing in front of the Fireworks Barn site.
The building was gone, except for a small pile of wood siding that still smoldered, sending up plumes of smoke behind Joey. “Well, Bonnie, Chief John Worthy of the Paradise Police Department just told me that human remains have been found in the ashes of what was the Fireworks Barn!”
The shot widened to include both Joey and Chief Worthy, who was trying not to look too pleased at being interviewed.
“Oooh, the chief’s even more handsome on TV!” cooed Gurdy.
I resisted rolling my eyes and tried to focus on the news. “Yes, I can confirm human remains have been found,” Chief Worthy was saying. “But we don’t know who it is, or what gender or age. The fire was so intense last night that we don’t have much to go on. This will take a while to work out.”
Chief Worthy looked from Joey to the camera and beamed, while Joey said somberly, “Well, Bonnie, that’s the latest in this strange tale of a mysterious explosion at the Fireworks Barn here in Paradise last night,” Joey said. “Stay tuned to Channel 3 for updates on this developing story,” he added, unnecessarily. Channel 3 is the only TV news station in Masonville.
I doubted this would make the national news—at least until the body was identified. Tears welled in my eyes. Cletus and Trudy were still missing. Something told me it had to be one of them, although it was possible that it was someone else. But somehow, I knew better. Please, Lord, don’t let it be Trudy, I prayed—she has so much life ahead of her. Then I thought, sorry, Cletus.
I went back to my combo storage room/office, sat down at my desk, and tried to work on my next monthly column—”Josie’s Stain Busters”—for the Paradise Advertiser-Gazette. The column wasn’t due for another week, but I wanted to distract myself from all the mayhem. Hmm. There was so much to choose from—maybe chocolate pie stains . . . or red wine stains on pink blouses . . .
I dropped my yellow pad back to the desk. Oh, dear Lord. Poor Mrs. Beavy would probably hear the news on the TV in her room at the Mason County General Hospital and she’d come to the same conclusion I would.
I got the county yellow pages—which are thinner than the monthly cable guide—out of the bottom drawer of my desk and looked up the hospital’s main number, called, asked for Mrs. Beavy, and as soon as she answered in a quavery voice and I said hi, it’s Josie, she burst out crying.
“Oh, Josie, did you hear the news?” Mrs. Beavy wailed. “I just know it’s him.”
“I heard,” I said. “That’s why I was calling, to see if you’re okay. The person they found could be Trudy
Breitenstrater, though, or maybe someone else altogether. I thought maybe if you’d heard from Cletus . . .”
“I haven’t heard a thing from him,” Mrs. Beavy said. Her wails had settled into a sniffle. “And I think he would have tried to call me, if he was off somewhere and heard about his fireworks outlet exploding.”
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked Mrs. Beavy.
“I’ll be fine, dear. It’s just—it was such a shock to hear that news. And my bloo
d pressure is settling down. I should be home in a few days. Not too long.”
“After you’re back home, why don’t we get together again for tea. I enjoyed our visit,” I said. “But maybe not ginseng.”
“You know, it’s the darndest thing. Cletus swore ginseng tea could possibly lower my blood pressure,” Mrs. Beavy said.
“Some people think American ginseng might have that effect, but—”
“Yes, yes!” Mrs. Beavy said excitedly. “That’s what Cletus said. But that I should probably avoid this other variety. What did he call it? Let’s see, now . . .”
Dear Lord, I thought. Cletus really had thoroughly researched the effects of ginseng.
“Asian?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s it!”
“Um, Mrs. Beavy, the tea you had was made from Asian ginseng.”
There was a silence on Mrs. Beavy’s end. Then she said, “Oh. Well, I’ve given up tea, anyway, dear. But not red wine. For medicinal purposes only, you know. My doctor assures me the good Lord will understand if I have a small glass every other day. So maybe you can join me one afternoon for some red wine. I’ll make another buttermilk pie.”
Would red wine taste good with buttermilk pie? Oh, what the hell, I thought. Why not.
I grinned at the phone. “You’ve got a deal,” I said.
We said our good-byes and hung up. I doodled four-leaf clovers on my yellow pad, and then decided to call Geri again and ask if there was any word on Trudy.
But as I reached for the phone, it rang. I jumped, then answered. “Toadfern’s Laundromat. Always a Leap Ahead of Dirt. How may I help you?”