There was a choking sound, and we both snapped our heads toward the counter.
Joe’s fork clattered to the linoleum. Bowed over the quiche, he gripped his stomach.
I froze, brows squishing together, coldness piercing my core. Then Petronella and I raced around the counter, bumping into each other as we fought our way through the narrow passage beside the cash register.
Joe fell to the floor, writhing.
I fumbled in my apron pocket for my phone and called 9-1-1.
Petronella clasped one of Joe’s hands. “Joe! I’m here. Val’s calling an ambulance. What’s happening?”
Joe went limp, his eyes rolling back. He didn’t answer.
Chapter 2
A uniformed police officer strode through the front entrance, setting the bell above it ringing. His square jaw tightening, he scanned the scene—customers gaping, Petronella and I gripping Joe’s arms and shoulders as he thrashed. The officer came to kneel beside us, placing a hand on Joe’s chest.
Joe went limp.
Patrons sat unmoving, their coffees and hand pies cooling. Even the gamers stopped rattling their twenty-sided dice across the table.
Charlene placed a floury hand on my shoulder.
“What happened?” The officer pressed two fingers to the side of Joe’s neck, checked his breathing.
Petronella choked out a sob.
“He was eating.” I motioned to his spot at the counter. “Then he grabbed his stomach and collapsed. He’s not choking—we checked.”
“Did you notice him behaving oddly before he collapsed?” the officer asked. Below the San Nicholas Police Department badge, his metal name tag read: Carmichael. “Anything unusual? Was he disoriented?”
“No,” I said, “but he did look a little tired.”
Officer Carmichael loosened Joe’s tie. “Okay, the paramedics will be here in a few minutes. They’ll need some space.”
I nodded.
Charlene tugged on my shoulder, and the two of us backed against the counter.
“Petronella,” I said in a low voice.
She squeezed Joe’s hand between hers. Rising, she joined us, wiping her hands on her apron. Charlene wrapped an arm around Petronella’s waist, comforting.
Paramedics raced inside. A fire truck wailed to a halt out front. More police crowded the dining area.
Officer Carmichael approached me.
“How is he?” I asked.
He glanced over his broad shoulder.
The paramedics shook their heads, folded up their equipment.
“I’m sorry,” the officer said. “Did you know him well?”
Petronella hurried into the kitchen. Shooting me a worried look, Charlene followed her.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, feeling rough traces of flour against my cheek. “He owns—owned—the comic shop next door. He liked to come in here for morning coffee.” I nodded toward the urn on the counter.
“And the breakfast pie? Was that his?” He nodded toward the partially eaten quiche on the counter.
“He won it from me in a bet this morning.”
Officer Carmichael smiled, his jade-colored eyes sympathetic. “You must have been close.”
“We joked around, but I can’t say I knew him well.” My hands fell to my sides. Five months as neighbors, and I knew Joe was a widower who liked morning coffee and pie and baseball. Did he have kids? If he did, they’d likely have been grown by now. “I’m sort of newish in town.”
“So am I. What brought you to San Nicholas?”
I looked at him, startled, then realized this wasn’t small talk. His pen hovered, poised and ready for action, over a notebook. But I wasn’t sure what to tell him. Mark had brought me here, to his hometown, but the words stuck in my throat. “I opened Pie Town five months ago.”
A tall, thin man in a brown suit strode to us. Slipping a leather wallet from his breast pocket, he flipped it open, displaying a San Nicholas PD badge. His face was narrow, hawkish, his eyes burning. “I’ll take it from here, GC.”
Officer Carmichael’s expression flickered. He nodded and walked a few steps away, turning and scribbling in his notepad.
“I’m Detective Shaw. You’re the owner?” the detective asked.
“Yes. I’m Val Harris.”
“You’ll have to close up for today. Everyone out, including staff. We’ll take your staff ’s and customers’ statements, and once we’re done, they can leave.” He snapped his fingers. “GC?”
Carmichael turned, silent.
“Did you take Miss Harris’s statement?” Shaw asked.
He nodded.
“Then you can go, Miss Harris,” Shaw said. “Thank you for your cooperation.”
I twisted my hands in my apron. Joe. I couldn’t believe he was gone. And I couldn’t carry on, business as usual, after he had died in Pie Town. But the pie shop was my livelihood. I drew a breath, forcing myself to calm. The detective hadn’t asked me to close forever, only for the day.
“Is that a problem?” Detective Shaw asked, his tone careless.
“No,” I said. “Can you tell me the normal procedure in a case like this?” Asking how long I’d be closed seemed crass under the circumstances. But I needed to know.
His expression pinched. “This is a possible homicide. We’ll tell you when you can reopen. I take it he was eating here when he collapsed?”
“Yes.” A fist tightened around my heart. Homicide? Homicide!
“What, exactly?”
“A quiche.” I pointed to the counter.
“Who made it?”
“I did.”
“He eat anything else while he was here?”
“No,” I said, dizzy. “He had some coffee, but it’s self-serve from the same urn everyone else has been drinking out of.”
“Self-serve?” His lip curled. “You can go. And we’ll be taking the quiche,” he bellowed. Walking to the counter, he leaned over the quiche and sniffed it. “GC? Pack this up.”
All eyes followed Detective Shaw as he strode out the door. Officer Carmichael snapped on a pair of latex gloves. Grabbing the quiche, he followed.
Numb, I stumbled to my office and gathered my things into my backpack. Homicide. Suspected homicide. But my quiche wasn’t responsible for Joe’s death. Sure, they had to check, but . . . I’d made that quiche!
Thinking over how I’d prepared the quiche, I thumped into my desk chair. My fists clenched. Second-guessing myself was nuts. It wasn’t as if I kept rat poison lying around the kitchen on the off chance I’d like to use it to season a pie. I’d learned at a tender age never to keep anything inedible in my work area after spraying a cookie tin with starch rather than cooking spray. An entire batch of hot-cross buns had gone up in flames.
There was nothing wrong with that quiche.
A vision of Joe’s face, contorted with pain, floated before my eyes. Homicide? The detective was just . . . wrong! And how could he have diagnosed poison so quickly? There had been no autopsy. The SNPD was being overly cautious. Sure, someone dies in a restaurant, the authorities have to be careful. They were being smart, taking precautions.
So why had Shaw called it a homicide? Suspected homicide.
My office door bammed open, rustling the plastic on the wedding gown.
Charlene stormed inside, her jowls quivering. “They’re closing Pie Town? This is a frame-up!”
“It’s only temporary,” I said, and hoped it was true.
“And that buffoon of a detective made Petronella cry.”
“Is she all right?”
“No, she’s not all right. She’s gone home. Val, I need to talk to you—”
Officer Carmichael knocked on the door frame and took a step inside. “We’ll lock up for you,” he said. “Have you got a spare set of keys?” He glanced at the wedding dress.
“Um, yeah.” I scrabbled in my desk drawer and tossed him a set.
He caught it one handed. “Thanks.” He shifted his weight. “I doubt you’ll b
e closed for long.”
“We’d better not be,” Charlene snapped. “Social security checks only go so far.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He looked to me. “And I’ll need your contact info.”
“Oh. Right.” I gave him my cell number, and he noted it in his leather-bound book.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
I fiddled with the zipper of my backpack, lying atop my desk. “You can find me at the Seaside Inn.”
“That dump?” Charlene asked. “What are you doing there?”
“It’s not that bad.” At least I hoped it wasn’t. I hadn’t seen it yet from the inside. “I haven’t had much time for apartment hunting.” And then I realized where I’d messed up, and my stomach clenched. If they searched Pie Town, they’d see the mattress in my office’s storage closet. In my frantic efforts to build the best pie kitchen ever, I’d been pillaging my monthly rent budget. That had left me with only one place to sleep: Pie Town.
My sleeping arrangements had to be a zoning violation, so it was a good thing my budget had finally stopped hemorrhaging a month ago. It was time for me to house hunt.
Carmichael grunted. “That motel’s not bad. The area can get a little sketchy late at night though. Be careful.”
I grabbed my backpack off the desk. “Well, I guess I’ll get out of your hair.” I hurried past them, escaping from the room.
My life was not going as planned. But neither, I imagined, had Joe’s.
* * *
There was a slim chance the police would allow me back into Pie Town tonight, but the idea of staying in a hotel appealed. It had been months since I’d taken a shower outside my gym.
Checking into the Seaside Inn, I got a room overlooking the alley. There was a seaside several blocks away, but the salt air was faint and masked by the rising stench from the alley dumpsters. The room had been painted a murky gray color, darker blots of gray marring the thinning carpet. I doubted its decor had been updated since the 1970s.
What had Joe been doing in the seventies?
Dumping my backpack on the bed, I checked myself in the mirror and pulled my shoulder-length, brown hair loose from its bun. Since I now had the day off, I might as well take care of some personal business.
I’d been sleeping in my office closet ever since my engagement went kablooey four months ago. Crawling over my mattress to reach the door every morning was getting stale. And then there was the shower issue. Pie Town didn’t have one, and it was the only reason I went to the gym these days.
I spread a newspaper on the motel room’s cracked desk and circled the cheapest apartments for rent. Some were almost in my price range, and a few had open houses today.
Taking only my wallet from my backpack, I returned to my battered, sky-blue VW Bug and went apartment hunting.
Four hours later, I returned to the motel, beaten by the reality of California prices. Even the apartments I couldn’t quite afford had been rundown, seedy. Until Pie Town started turning a profit, I either had to settle for seedy or stay in the closet.
What had I been thinking, moving out to a coastal California town? Oh, right. I’d been thinking the mortgage would be split between me and my new husband. The irony was that my ex-fiancé, Mark, was a realtor. Did I say irony? Tragedy was more like it. I’d passed half a dozen signs with his grinning mug on them in my quest for a new home. Each time one of his signs had flashed past, my chest ached.
It was too early for dinner, but I’d missed lunch, and my stomach rumbled, hollow. Ordering a pizza, I collapsed on the bed, its springs creaking beneath me. Okay, so I hadn’t found a place today. Maybe I needed to look further inland. But I couldn’t go on sleeping at Pie Town. My eyelids drifted shut.
Someone banged on the door, and I jerked off the bed. Pizza! I checked my watch, marveling at their speed. Grabbing my wallet, I opened the door.
Charlene barreled inside, an odd, white, furry stole draped over her olive-colored, knit coat. “I need your help.”
Stiffening, I tugged at the hem of my long-sleeved Pie Town T-shirt. White with pink script, the colors matched our aprons. “Um, what are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?” she asked, bursting with her usual Sturm und Drang. “My ex-boyfriend was killed in Pie Town, and I’m being framed. That’s what I’m doing here.”
I stared. “Joe was your boyfriend?” How did I not know this?
“Ex-boyfriend. It was years ago. Before your time. He was a lovely man, but we worked better . . . not together. And now I’m the prime suspect in his death.”
“But why would you be a suspect?” I leaned out onto the balcony, hopeful, searching for the pizza guy.
“Haven’t you been listening? We once had a relationship! He died after eating one of my pies.”
“My quiche.”
“But it was my piecrust.” She collapsed into the desk chair. “I’ll really miss the old coot.”
“Charlene, I didn’t know—”
“We have a responsibility,” Charlene said. “A man I knew was murdered—”
“We don’t know he was murdered.”
“In our pie shop!”
“My pie shop.”
“Adding insult to injury, I’m being framed for the crime. And that really pisses me off.”
“You’re not . . . No one’s being framed.”
“It’s a frame-up.” Her voice quavered. “Just like Oswald.”
“Who’s Oswald?” I shook my head, trying to rattle my brain-tank into gear.
“Lee Harvey Oswald! The grassy knoll?”
“I know who—”
“The Kennedy assassination? You’re too young to remember it, but surely they taught you about that dark day in school.”
Her stole writhed, yawned, exposing sharp white teeth.
I jumped backward, banging into the TV stand. “What the . . . What is that?!”
She patted the furry wrap. “This is Frederick. Like so many white cats, he’s deaf. And it’s a good thing too, because he’s very sensitive, and I don’t think he’d care for your attitude, missy. On a happier topic, I have good news for you. Your wedding dress is getting lots of retweets.”
“What?”
“On Twitter. Some are saying the dress is cursed since you were . . . Well, you know.”
“I was what?”
She gave me a look.
“I wasn’t dumped.” I dropped onto the bed.
“Don’t worry, not everyone believes in curses. The important thing is, lots of retweets.”
Someone knocked at the door.
“Hold on,” I said.
I opened the door to the pizza delivery girl, transacted vital business, and returned to the room. “Look, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Joe’s death had shaken us all, but Charlene loved drama. We didn’t know how Joe had died, and certainly not that it was a murder. “There hasn’t even been an autopsy. If you ask me, Detective Shaw was jumping the gun on this poison business.”
Charlene grabbed the pizza box out of my hands and sniffed. “Pepperoni? I’m too depressed to eat, but I should keep my strength up. May I?”
I nodded, resigned.
Laying the pizza beside the TV, she opened the box and made a face. “Mushrooms? Why did you have to go and add fungus to a perfectly good pizza?” She shuddered and flicked mushrooms from a slice. “They’re slimy, and they’ve got no flavor.” Taking a bite, she pointed the slice at me. “So what are you going to do about this murder?”
“Why would you expect me to do anything about it?”
“You used to be an investigative journalist, weren’t you?”
“No.”
“But you told me you took an investigative journalism class.”
“As part of my English major. That was nearly ten years ago. The police are investigating. I’m sure they’ll test the quiche and discover there’s nothing wrong with it, and then things can return to normal.”
Her face tightened. “Joe’s dead. He was a good man
, and things will never return to normal.”
I stared at my sneakers. “I’m sorry, Charlene. I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant you won’t be a suspect.”
“Because they’ve never been normal.”
“Come again?”
“Things have never been normal in San Nicholas. Not that you would have noticed; you’ve got your head stuck so deep in that pie shop. You need to get out and look around.” She gazed around the room. “Couldn’t you find a better hotel?”
“It’s temporary.”
“Five months sleeping in your office isn’t temporary. Where are you keeping all your things? You do have things, don’t you?”
Not many, and those that I did have were where I couldn’t get at them, in my ex’s storage unit. I grabbed a slice and stuffed pizza into my mouth. The storage unit was a sore spot. “It’s only been four months, and do you have any idea how expensive rents are in San Nicholas? I can’t afford to start up the best pie shop in Northern California and pay for an apartment.”
“Staying in this rat trap isn’t the answer.”
I took a deep breath. Great Buddha, that pizza was good. “Look, I appreciate your concern, but I’m sure the right apartment will come along.”
“I’ve got a place.”
“Thanks, Charlene, but I don’t need a roommate.”
“Neither do I. I’ve got one of those, whatchamacall’em, tiny houses, up on the bluff. My tenant recently moved out.”
My heart beat faster. Could the solution be that easy? “How much are you asking?”
“Hold your horses.” Her eyes narrowed, glinting with cunning. “I didn’t say you could live there. I couldn’t possibly rent out my jewel box of a house overlooking the ocean, ideal for single living, after a man I knew for decades was horribly murdered.”
I blew out a breath. “There’s no reason to think it was murder.”
“That’s what you say. The police say otherwise.”
“What do you expect me to do about it? And I haven’t even seen this so-called tiny house overlooking the bluff.”
She grabbed the pizza box. “You drive.”
We crammed into my VW. I aimed the car downtown, a collection of restaurants and touristy shops tucked between a swell of green hills and the Pacific.
The Quiche and the Dead Page 2