The Quiche and the Dead

by Kirsten Weiss

  My stomach wriggled, uneasy. The timing of the burglary was odd. “Maybe, but we don’t know that for sure.” Remembering she was my ride, I hurried after her. “I’ve heard criminals comb the obituaries and target the empty homes of the deceased. Maybe it was just a coincidence a burglar was in there tonight.”

  “After Joe’s casebook? I think not. Besides, there hasn’t been an obituary yet.”

  “Oh. Right,” I said, feeling foolish.

  We squeezed through a fence, popping out onto a side street. Shoes squishing, we walked to her Jeep.

  “Charlene, honestly. We scared off a burglar and got chased by the cops, and you’ve got a good story for Petronella. Isn’t that enough?”

  She unlocked the doors. “Mark my words, this isn’t over yet. The cops will be watching me even closer now.”

  Buckling myself in, I attempted reason. “If you were a suspect, the police would be at your house right now.”

  She laid the limp cat in my lap. “And why are you so sure they’re not?”

  “Why would you be a suspect? We know the quiche was fine, and no one could suspect we had a reason to be in Joe’s house.” Beneath my hand, the cat vibrated, purring.

  “Did Carmichael tell you the quiche was fine?”

  “He told me we could open Pie Town.” But I had to wonder what would have happened if Heidi had taken the quiche. I shook my head. No, I’d made that quiche. It hadn’t been poisoned.

  “Pie Town, Pie Town,” she said. “There’s more to life than Pie Town.”

  “Not to my life,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest. Had I been focusing too much on the pie and not enough on the town? I should have known Joe better.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Whoever was in that house got a good look at us.” She turned to me, the furrows in her brow deepening. “I’m sorry, Val. I shouldn’t have brought you into this. It’s too dangerous.”

  I dragged my palms down my pant legs. He’d seen us. Or had it been a she? In the dark and panic, the only thing I’d gotten a good look at was the black ski mask. And if Charlene’s theory was correct . . . “We need to tell the police.”

  “What we need to do is plot our next step.” She turned onto Highway 1. “The killer’s out there, and he thinks he’s gotten away with it.”

  “Which is why we should tell the cops.”

  “Tell them what? That we broke into Joe’s house—”

  “You had a key! And what about the cat?”

  “There is no cat. We’re prime suspects, and we broke into Joe’s house. How’s that going to look?”

  My piecrust maker wasn’t wrong. Besides, there wasn’t anything useful we could tell the police about the person who’d broken into Joe’s house. But I didn’t like it. “Why are we driving this way?” My feet were freezing, and they’d started to itch.

  “It’s called losing a tail.”

  I clutched my skull. Why had I agreed to come on this looney quest? No house was worth this madness, even if it was overlooking the ocean. “Charlene, no one’s tailing us. There’s no killer. The burglar was just a burglar, and Joe probably died of a heart attack. It’s awful, and I’m sorry for your loss, but—”

  “Did that look like a heart attack?”

  No, it hadn’t. Crumb. I could only delude myself for so long. “Joe had mentioned that things tasted funny to him that morning,” I said. And I’d forgotten to tell the cops.

  “A funny taste in his mouth? Could be poison. If someone poisoned your quiche, Heidi could have been the target.”

  “No one poisoned that quiche. It was either behind the glass in the front counter or in my possession. Someone would have noticed if there was any quiche tampering.” Unless Charlene or Petronella had sprinkled cyanide on the quiche, and that didn’t seem likely.

  “Good gad!” She slammed on the brakes.

  I flew forward. The seat belt hitched under my breast, my head thunked the windshield, and ten burning scalpels dug into my thigh. “Ow!”

  “Did you see that?”

  Pain arced through my forehead. Wincing, I detached the cat’s claws from my leg. “Augh!”

  Frederick twitched his ears.

  “See what?” I asked, watching the cat. Had he reacted to my shout? Maybe he wasn’t deaf after all. Maybe it was a scam so Charlene would cart him around like a feline prince.

  A cleft in the hillside revealed a sandy beach littered with twists of driftwood. The ocean seethed, a gray mass beneath a low bank of fog.

  She leaned forward, peering over the steering wheel. “It looked like a jaguar.”

  “There are no jaguars in Northern California.”

  “There are in zoos.”

  I ground my teeth. “Just. Drive.” Our adventure in breaking and entering had wound me a little tight, and I soothed myself with thoughts of Pie Town. I’d open it tomorrow, and all would be right with the world. The police now knew that someone had broken into Joe’s house and would be on the track of the murderer. So my piecrust maker was more eccentric than I’d thought. No problem. It wasn’t as if she was going to kill anyone.

  Frederick purred.

  Except for maybe me.

  Chapter 4

  I punched the dough on the stainless steel counter, raising a cloud of flour. “Stupid.” Punch. “Useless.” Punch. “Gym!” Punch.

  A humongous, hand-lettered sign blazed from the gym’s window next door: SUGAR KILLS. Talk about insensitive.

  It was high noon, and Pie Town was deserted of all but the gamers, huddled in their usual booth. They were good eaters, but they couldn’t support the shop on their own. I’d stopped our usual pie production line and sent my assistant pie maker, Hannah, home. As painful as checking out of the hotel had been this morning, now I was glad I’d done it. It was cheap, but I still couldn’t afford it for long, especially if sales didn’t pick up.

  Petronella leaned against the counter and crossed her black-denim-clad legs. “You gonna kill that piecrust or run it through the machine?” She jerked her chin toward the piecrust roller, and the unlit cigarette threatened to slip from her lips.

  I glared at her.

  “I’m only curious.” She shrugged. “Kill it or flatten it, your call. But I don’t think it matters much either way.”

  I knuckled the crust one more time. Petronella was right. Beating an innocent piecrust was pointless. It wouldn’t change the fact a maybe-killer had looked me in the eyes, or bring down the sign in Heidi’s window. But I could solve at least one of those problems.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  Petronella saluted with her index finger, her black nail polish flashing. “I’ll hold down the fort.”

  I whisked through the swinging door. Untying my apron, I dropped it on the counter near the register. After Joe’s death, Heidi had to see that a big SUGAR KILLS sign was pretty rude. Maybe she hadn’t meant anything by it. Too much sugar was bad for you, sure. Hers was a reasonable point of view. But there was nothing wrong with an occasional slice of pie. A pie shop and a gym could coexist.

  I pushed open the glass door to Heidi’s gym and pasted a smile on my face.

  A girl in a green Heidi’s Health and Fitness golf shirt looked up from behind the frosted-glass counter. “Hi! Welcome to Heidi’s Health and Fitness! Would you like to hear about a gym membership?”

  “No, thanks. I’m Val from Pie Town. Is Heidi here?”

  “Wait a sec.” She disappeared through a door behind the counter.

  Leaning against the counter, I picked up a brochure advertising a colon cleanse. What sautéed hell was this? I flipped through its stiff, glossy folds. For the low, low price of a treasure-house of supplements, I could cleanse my colon, lose weight, and boost my immune system. “I’d rather eat pie.”

  Heidi bounced out the door. “Valentine! Did you come for the recipes I promised?” She held out a sheaf of papers.

  I took them. “Uh, thanks. Actually, it’s
about the sign in your window.”

  “Which one?” Her blue eyes widened.

  “You might have heard that Joe from the comic shop passed away in Pie Town yesterday.”

  “Sad.” Her lips made an insincere moue of regret.

  “Yes, well, the ‘sugar kills’ sign . . . I was wondering if you could take it down.”

  She raised her narrow chin. “I have the right to put up whatever sign I want.”

  I rubbed my forehead where I’d banged it into Charlene’s windshield the night before. “Of course you do. I’m asking, as your neighbor—”

  Her nostrils flared. “Sugar does kill. America is suffering from an obesity epidemic. It’s tragic, and it’s our duty to do whatever we can to stop it. Sugar, chemicals—we’re jamming our bodies with unnatural substances.”

  An ache blossomed behind my right temple. “Yes, but only for a few weeks, until—”

  “You don’t need to be a part of the complex.” She leaned across the counter toward me. “You don’t have to sell pies. What about selling healthy food?”

  “My shop’s called Pie Town. I make pies. That’s what I make.”

  “Well, if you’re going to keep that awful sign suggesting pies make you happy—”

  “It’s my motto!”

  “Then my sign stays. Is there anything else?”

  Yeah, was there anyone out there who wanted her dead? I knew the quiche hadn’t been poisoned, but had poison been somehow involved in Joe’s death? Joe had said there’d been an odd taste in his mouth all morning. “Have you had any conflicts with anyone lately?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re newish in town, aren’t you?”

  “Three months.” Her nostrils flared. “I’ve been here three months.”

  Not enough time to make someone angry enough to kill her, though I was getting seriously annoyed. And besides, the quiche couldn’t have been poisoned, so Heidi couldn’t be a target. Charlene’s paranoia was contagious. “Good.”

  “What’s good about it?”

  “Um. Look, can’t you just take the ‘sugar kills’ sign down for a few weeks, until things calm down?”

  “America’s in a health crisis. I’m not taking that sign down because you feel guilty about killing one of your customers.”

  “I didn’t—”

  Turning, she zoomed into the back room.

  “Thanks!” I stomped out of the gym and discovered I’d crumpled her recipes into a crude bow tie. Fine. Just because we were neighbors didn’t mean we had to be friends. At this point, I’d settle for frenemies. Blood pounded in my ears, along with a half-dozen pithy comebacks I could have said but hadn’t and shouldn’t. I’d take the moral high road. So sayeth the woman who broke into a dead man’s house last night.

  Flinging open the door to Pie Town, I stormed inside.

  A uniformed police officer turned toward me. Officer Carmichael.

  I stumbled to a halt, heart thudding. Had someone seen Charlene and me at Joe’s house last night? I knew we shouldn’t have gone. I knew we should have called the police. What had I been thinking? Maybe they’d let me bake pies for the other inmates.

  “Miss Harris?”

  “Ah . . .”

  “I’m Carmichael. We met yesterday?” He held a black computer-looking thing under one arm and a sheaf of wrinkled papers.

  “Yes, of course! It’s not like I could have forgotten, because it’s not as if people are in the habit of dropping dead here.” Shut up, stop babbling. I shut my piehole.

  Removing his hat, he ran a broad hand through his hair. The hat had left a dent in its dark waves. “Slow day?”

  I looked around the dining area. No horde of customers had flooded in since I’d been at Heidi’s gym, getting taken to the woodshed.

  Dice rattled across a table. At least the gamers hadn’t budged. In fact, they didn’t look like they’d moved since last night. They seemed to be wearing the same T-shirts and baggy jeans.

  “You could say that,” I said.

  “I heard you’ve got great potpies.” He smiled, his green eyes crinkling.

  My heart beat faster. “We try.”

  “Have you got Wi-Fi by any chance?”

  “Of course!” Tell him. Just tell him the truth.

  “Great.” He pointed toward a table by the front window. “Do you mind?”

  “No! Have a seat. I’ll bring a menu.” Normally people ordered at the counter, and the coffee was self-serve. But today I wasn’t going to draw a line in the sand. And I couldn’t help but notice that Carmichael was sexy in a tall, muscular, man-in-uniform kind of way. He was the first guy I’d noticed that way since the Breakup. It had only been four months, and I knew I wasn’t over my ex yet. But I enjoyed the new flush of warmth to my cheeks.

  Handing him a menu, I grabbed my apron and returned to the kitchen, prodding my chignon for any stray wisps of hair.

  I passed through the swinging doors, and Charlene pounced, a pink blur in a knit tunic and faded jeans ripped at the knee. She adjusted her pink cloche hat. “What’s a cop doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. As usual, Charlene had left Pie Town at nine AM this morning after she’d made a day’s worth of crusts and left them for me in the walk-in refrigerator.

  “I was driving by and saw the cop car. What does he want?”

  “Potpie.” Walking to the metal table in the center of the kitchen, I tied the apron around my waist. Sliced pies with missing wedges filled one half of the table, divided from a floured work area by white, ceramic canisters of utensils and a stack of white plates. Nearby, a tall rack for dirty tableware stood empty. Aside from the gamers, we hadn’t had any customers to dirty the plates. I never thought clean dishware would be so depressing.

  “You didn’t say anything, did you?” Charlene asked.

  Petronella strode past with a tray full of fruit pies that weren’t going to be sold.

  I tapped her on the shoulder. “Could you take the order from the cop in the window?”

  Her brow wrinkled, her brown eyes reflecting bafflement. “Take an order?”

  “Just this once,” I said.

  “Okaaaay.” She hurried past with the tray. If I couldn’t sell those pies, maybe I could donate them to a local shelter. Was there a local shelter? The state had weird laws about food donations—would a shelter accept the pies?

  Charlene’s eyes narrowed. Dragging me into my office, she shut the door. “Did you tell him?”

  “No, but I still think we should.”

  “It’s a bad idea. And I don’t buy that he’s just here for lunch. That copper’s got an ulterior motive.”

  “This place is dead,” I said. “I don’t care what his motive is as long as he orders pie.” And the fact that he was sitting in the front window for all to see . . . Well, as long as people saw him eating and not arresting me, I was happy.

  “Watch your step around him. He’s new in town.”

  I raised a brow. The plastic-draped wedding gown fluttered at the corner of my vision. “And that means he’s not to be trusted?”

  “No, it means he’ll do his job. Unlike that numb nuts, Detective Shaw.”

  Sick of the sight of it, I unhooked the silk dress from the bookcase and looked for a place to stash it. “I know why I don’t like him.” The walk of shame he’d put my quiche through yesterday had been totally unnecessary and likely the cause of my empty bakery. “But what’s your beef with Shaw?”

  Turning to the mirror by my desk, she fiddled with her hat. “He’s no Detective Goren, I tell you.”

  “Detective Goren?” How many homicide detectives did tiny San Nicholas employ?

  “That nice detective in New York.”

  “Wait. You mean from Law and Order: Criminal Intent?”

  “That’s the one. The show went downhill when he left to take care of his ailing mother.”

  “Ah.” I hung the dress on the back of the door. That way, when it
was open, which my office usually was, I wouldn’t have to see the gown.

  “Shaw’s the mayor’s nephew.” She tsked. “Nepotism is a societal rot. Now, I’ve been going through that book—”

  “What book?”

  “Joe’s casebook.”

  “You stole it?” My voice rose.

  “Borrowed it. Joe wouldn’t have minded.”

  “We have to give it to the police.”

  “Shaw won’t take it seriously unless we can prove it has bearing on the case. We need to follow up on these, figure out what they’re about, and then tell the cops.”

  “Charlene—”

  There was a soft knock at the door, and Petronella stuck her head in. “The cop in the window talks to himself and wants a mini chicken potpie, and there’s someone here to see you, Val.”

  My stomach plunged. A visitor? All my friends in San Nicholas were already in Pie Town. Stretching my mouth into a smile, I walked into the dining area. Officer Carmichael stabbed at his computer-thing with one finger, muttering beneath his breath.

  Detective Shaw stood frowning in the center of the dining area, his long arms crossed. He wore an expensive-looking blue suit, and I wondered how he afforded it. My cantankerous piecrust maker would no doubt have a theory.

  I approached the lean detective. “Detective Shaw?” I had to tell him about the casebook. “Did you want to see me?”

  Carmichael looked up. His lips pressed into a thin line.

  “You’re open,” Shaw boomed, glancing at Carmichael. “And nice to see you supporting a local business, GC. Are you on your break?”

  “Lunch,” Carmichael said, expressionless.

  The gamers watched us, two dice rattling off their table and onto the floor. A pudgy college kid dove for them before they could scatter beneath a booth.

  I brushed my already clean hands on my apron and glanced at Carmichael.

  He poked the computer screen.

  “Someone from your department called and told us we could reopen,” I said. “Is there a problem?” Tell him, tell him, tell him. But if I confessed to breaking in, I’d have to tell him about the casebook Charlene had removed, and I couldn’t do that to my piecrust specialist. She’d stolen the book. She needed to come clean, and we could fess up together. Still, if it was a clue in a murder investigation, it was my duty to come forward.