The seat belt caught me in the ribs, but not quick enough to keep my head from banging into the windshield.
“The pies!” Ignoring the thudding pain in my skull, I whipped around and peered anxiously at the pink and white boxes stacked in the rear of the Jeep. I exhaled a shaky breath. The boxes hadn’t fallen.
A growl vibrated beside me.
I turned, eyeing Frederick. The sleeping cat hadn’t budged from the dashboard.
Charlene’s knuckles whitened on the wheel. “Marla, here. Here!”
“What?” I looked around. The street was empty. “Who’s Marla?”
Charlene floored the accelerator, whiplashing me against the seat. We rocketed down the dirt road and flew past a saloon, a chapel, and other random old-west buildings.
I yelped. “Pies. Pies!”
She braked hard. The Jeep screeched to a halt, engulfed in a cloud of dust.
Coughing, I rolled up the window. “What was that about?”
“Marla, is what,” she snarled. Opening her door, she gently dislodged Frederick from the dashboard and arranged him over one shoulder. Charlene strode into the dust cloud and vanished.
I unbuckled myself and clambered over the seat. Holding my breath, I lifted the lid on one of the pies in the cargo area. The air whooshed from my lungs. The pie had survived. The others might be okay as well.
Pie-eating contests are traditionally messy, but it wouldn’t do to prebreak the inventory. Not when I wanted to make a deal with the Bar X to be their regular pie supplier. Aside from guns, cowboys, and those old-timey photos where you dress like a prostitute, there’s nothing that says “old west” more than hand pies. And we made awesome hand pies.
Lurching from the yellow Jeep, I dusted off my pink and white Pie Town T-shirt. Beneath its giant smiley face was our motto: Turn Your Frown Upside Down at Pie Town! I’d designed the shirts myself, one of the perks of owning my own business.
The downsides of entrepreneurship? Baker’s hours and knuckle-biting payrolls. If I could add this wholesaling business, the latter worry would be a thing of the past.
The dust dissipated, leaving a brownish ground fog. We’d parked in front of a squat wooden building set amid a stand of eucalyptus trees. A sign above the one-story wooden shack read: POTTERY.
At the far end of the dirt road, Charlene vanished into a stable, its ginormous, barnlike doors wide open.
A shot rang out, and I flinched.
Mr. Frith had warned me about the gunshots. It was only the sharpshooters, practicing for the event later today. Since a homicidal maniac had attempted to shoot me earlier this year, I was an eensy bit sensitive to gunfire.
“Charlene!” a woman shrieked inside the stable. “You look awful. What happened?”
Three more shots rang out in rapid succession, and my jaw clenched.
I trotted into the stable and slithered past a massive coach that looked like it had driven out of a Wells Fargo ad. Straw lay scattered about the wood plank floor, and the carriage house smelled strongly of manure. Past the coach were rows of empty stalls, and a second set of open doors on the other end of the building.
An elegant, silver-haired woman in a salmon-colored silk top and wide-legged slacks awkwardly embraced Charlene. Diamonds flashed on the woman’s fingers. An expensive camera hung from one slim shoulder.
An older gentleman in jeans and a crisp, white button-up shirt beamed at them both. “I’d no idea you two knew each other.” He chuckled. “That’s life in a small town. I should have guessed.”
The woman released my piecrust maker. “What are you doing here?”
“Pies,” Charlene said, gruff. “For the event today.”
“You’re the pie maker?” The woman’s lip curled. “Charlene, I would have thought you’d have retired.” She sighed. “That’s California though. So impossibly expensive. Fortunately, I’ve got my real estate rentals. I had no idea I could make so much money renting houses. So much money.”
Charlene stiffened. She owned rentals as well. And as one of her tenants, I didn’t like that this conversation was headed toward higher rent.
The snowy cat looked up from Charlene’s shoulder and yawned.
“I work because I want to,” Charlene said. “I like to keep my hand in, stay busy.”
“Of course you do,” the woman said. “Ewan, take a picture of the two of us. I can’t wait to compare this to our old yearbook photos.”
The man stepped forward, and she handed him her camera.
The woman—Marla?—pressed herself next to Charlene and struck a pose.
Charlene flushed, her fists clenching.
Uh-oh. For some reason, Charlene was seriously annoyed. I cleared my throat. “Mr. Frith?”
He returned the camera to Marla and swiveled, his teeth gleaming white against his rough and ruddy skin. “And you must be Val. I’m Ewan. Welcome to the Bar X!” He strode forward and took my hand, pumping it enthusiastically. “Charlene’s told me so much about you,” he said, “not that she needed to. Your pies speak for themselves.”
I grinned. That sounded promising. “And this is the famous Bar X! I’m excited to finally see it.”
The mystery woman—Marla, it had to be—sidled up to him and draped a diamond-spangled hand over his broad shoulder. “And who are you?” she asked me. “Charlene’s employee?”
“Ah . . .” I darted a glance at my piecrust maker. “We work together,” I said, deliberately vague.
Charlene’s shoulders dropped. She raised her chin. “Val owns Pie Town. I run the piecrust room. Val Harris, this is Marla.” Her voice lowered on the last syllable, dripping with disdain.
Marla scanned me. “How adorable. And your skin! What I wouldn’t give for the skin of a twenty-something, right, Charlene?”
Adorable? I’d always figured myself for kind of average, and I warmed at the compliment. I was a normal California gal—blue eyes, five foot five, and a little curvy (the tasty tragedy of owning a pie shop). I touched my brown hair, done up in its usual knot.
Charlene harrumphed. In her mind, she still was a twenty-something. Or at least a forty-something.
“When Ewan suggested a pie-eating contest for our little fund-raiser,” Marla said, “I’d no idea you two would be involved.”
“Who is it supporting?” I asked.
“The local humane society,” she said. “All those poor lost doggies and kittens. I’m on the board. You know how it is when you’re retired. It does help to stay involved, even if my passion is helping others rather than baking pies.” Her nose wrinkled, and she linked her arm with Ewan’s. “Now, you did say something about a private tour?”
“Of course,” he said. “The carriage isn’t hitched up, so we’ll have to walk. Charlene? Val? Would you like to join us?”
Yes!
“Val can’t,” Charlene said. “She needs to get the pies out of the Jeep.”
I shuffled my feet. The pie retrieval wasn’t that urgent. “But—”
“Before they get soggy in the heat,” she continued.
Grrr!
“But I could go for a walk,” Charlene said.
Marla’s face tightened. “Lovely. We really do need to catch up. Are you sure you can manage the exercise, Charlene? You look rather tired.”
Charlene glowered. “I’m fit as a fiddle.”
“Oh, Charlene.” Marla laughed, a jewel-like tinkle. “You haven’t changed a bit. At least, not on the inside.” She snapped a photo of the stable, and the three ambled toward the open doors.
Another shot rang out, and I started. “Wait,” I said. “Where should I put the pies?”
“The saloon,” Ewan called over his shoulder. “My daughter Bridget will be there to help you.”
“Okay,” I said. But they’d already disappeared around the corner of the carriage house. My lips compressed with disappointment. I wouldn’t have minded a tour, but I could take a hint, and Charlene’s had been as obvious as an elephant on Main Street. She didn’t wa
nt me around.
I stomped to the Jeep, opened the driver’s side door, and paused, chagrined. Charlene had the key. I could get inside, but I couldn’t drive the pies closer to the saloon, which was across the street and down a bit. I’d just have to make lots of trips.
Another shot cracked.
A murder of crows rose noisily from the nearby eucalyptus trees. Uneasily, I watched them flap toward the hills.
I stacked six pink pie boxes in my arms and clamped my chin on the top box to steady them. Nudging the door shut with my hip, I lurched across the road, automatically looking right, then left. I gave a slight shake of my head. It wasn’t as if buggies were racing down the–
A shot cracked. The top box flew from beneath my chin. It exploded in a burst of pink cardboard and piecrust and cherry filling.
I shrieked, the boxes swaying.
I slapped my hand on the top box, and they steadied. Okay. Okay. I was alive. But WHAT-THE-HELL? Another shot rang out, louder.
Heart banging against my ribs, I scrambled for cover behind a horse trough. My tennis shoes skidded in the loose dirt, and I half fell against the trough. I clutched the remaining boxes to my chest. Someone. Some stupid person . . .
My fingers dented the pink cardboard. Probably some kids, or hunters, or a random idiot. The trick shooters couldn’t have been this careless.
I forced my breathing to calm. “Hello?” I shouted. “Hold your fire!”
No one answered.
Still clinging to my pies, I squirmed about and peered over the trough. Since I hadn’t been hit, the bullet that had taken out my pie must have come from an angle—my side rather than my front or rear.
The eucalyptus trees across the street shivered. They would have made a good hiding place for a shooter.
Hiding place? The shot had to have been an accident, but suddenly all I wanted was to get out of here.
I hunched over my remaining pie boxes and speed-walked toward the saloon, the nearest shelter. It now seemed light years away. Its front doors were shuttered closed.
I scooted up its porch steps and set my pies by the door, rattled the heavy wood shutters.
Locked. I gave a small whimper.
Abandoning my pies, I ducked into the alley between the saloon and a bath house. Panting, I peeked into the main street.
I was probably safe here. I’d probably been safe behind the watering trough. This was twenty-first century California, not the wild west. But cold sweat trickled down my neck. I backed deeper into the shade of the alley.
My heel bumped something. I staggered and braced my hands against the rough, wood-plank wall. Legs wobbly, I exhaled, turned.
A man lay sprawled on the dirt, his plaid shirt soaked with blood. Mouth open, he stared sightlessly at the cloudless sky.
The Quiche and the Dead Page 27