Pie Hard

by Kirsten Weiss

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  “Better than Ilsa,” I said sadly. The pastry chef could be abrasive, but she knew how to braid a piecrust like nobody’s business. She convinced Charlene to try a variant on her sacred piecrust recipe. There was more to Ilsa than met the eye. “The funny, not-funny thing is—I was starting to think Ilsa killed Regina.”

  He angled his head. “Because of the kitchen fire at the last restaurant she worked at?”

  “You knew?”

  He grinned. “I have Internet access too. Word is there were conflicts with Ilsa in the Pie Town kitchen.”

  “Not that you’re investigating,” I said wryly.

  He shrugged. “It’s not my case.”

  Because of me. My chin lowered.

  “And that isn’t your fault,” he said, as if he could hear my thoughts. “I’d like to hear more about this Doran character.”

  “Usually I’m trying to wheedle information out of you.”

  A single, elegant brow lifted. “Then I guess you owe me.”

  “I guess I do. The only thing I learned about Doran is that he’s a graphic designer. I don’t even know his last name. But I’ll tell you everything I can.” I glanced over my shoulders at the light streaming through the police station’s windows. “Just not here.”

  “Why don’t I follow you back to your place?”

  My heart turned over. “Perfect.”

  I climbed into my pink van and waited for Gordon’s sedan to pull up behind me. We caravanned down the empty streets and drove into the scrubby hills.

  A shiver of nervicitement ran through me. Gordon was coming back to my place. He’d been there before, but not after a kiss like that.

  I maneuvered the van up the dirt drive and let it drift to a halt by the tiny house. Tiki torches flickered in front of the yurt entrance, but no goddess gals were in sight.

  He parked beside the picnic table and stepped out, meeting me at the front steps. “What’s with the yurt? Wait.” He held up his hand. “Do I want to know?”

  “A goddess group.”

  “Oh, I definitely want to know.”

  I opened the door and ushered him inside my tiny house.

  “Tea?” I asked from my elf-sized kitchen.

  “Why not?”

  Stomach fluttering, I heated water in the microwave and set boxes of tea on the fold-out table. “Charlene lets this group rent the yard every year for their annual retreat. A fact that she forgot to mention in the excitement of her big Pie Hard surprise.”

  “Pie Hard was a surprise?”

  I handed him a mug. Our fingers brushed against each other and my skin jolted from the contact.

  I cleared my throat. “When Charlene contacted the producers, she told them we were business partners. They insisted she keep it a surprise to add to the drama.”

  He sat at the small table, his knees bumping against its bottom. “And has there been much drama?”

  “Charlene didn’t like Ilsa criticizing her crusts—you know how she is. But Charlene wouldn’t kill over that.”

  He smiled. “I’d already put Charlene in the ‘highly unlikely’ category of suspects. And Abril?”

  “And Abril?”

  I pulled out a chair and sat across from him. “Why? Did Petronella say something?”

  “She is my cousin.”

  “Abril wasn’t thrilled about being on TV,” I said, “and Ilsa’s criticism unnerved her. But in the end, they were getting on okay.”

  “What else happened?”

  “Honestly, the crew were surprisingly mellow. I’m not sure if it was because Frank told them he wanted this to be a positive show, or—”

  “Frank said what?”

  “He told them he wanted the show to end on a positive note,” I said.

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes, and Luther confirmed it. Why? Do you think he would lie about it?” We were chatting like old friends, but that kiss . . . To hide my confusion, I looked away.

  His craggy profile reflected in the darkened window. “Just trying to get clear on the facts.”

  “Most of the conflict happened behind the scenes—between crew members. Steve wasn’t happy about Luther’s absences, which apparently were drinking-related. Ilsa defended Luther. Luther was broken up about Regina’s death—”

  “And the cameraman?”

  “Steve seemed upset too,” I said, “but he said he wanted to work to keep his mind off things. The only person who seemed to be calm about it all was Nigel.”

  “And then there’s your father. Did he give you a better explanation for why he turned up?”

  I opened my mouth, closed it. If Nigel was getting help for a gambling problem, he deserved his anonymity. This was a murder investigation, and Ray turned up rumors of Nigel’s gambling.

  “What?” Gordon asked.

  “Frank told me he’s a kind of coach for people with addiction problems. That’s what brought him to San Nicholas.”

  The detective’s handsome face darkened. “A coach,” he said. “And who is his client?”

  I hesitated. Why was I stressing over this?

  “Val, if his client is a member of the crew, I have to know.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.” Of course I could trust Gordon to do the right thing with the information. “Nigel apparently has some gambling problems.”

  “Nigel? Your father specifically said Nigel was his client?”

  “He was kind of vague for confidentiality reasons.”

  “Confidentiality.” Gordon rose and looked through the sliding glass door. He sipped his tea.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked. “Whenever I bring up Frank, you seem annoyed.”

  Swiftly, he turned. “No. I’m working an ugly case right now. A stabbing. They were teenagers, and now two lives are . . .” He rubbed his forehead. “You can’t just leave that stuff at the office.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “There’s no reason you would. You’ll see it in the papers tomorrow. Forget about it. I’m worried about what you’ve landed in.”

  A knot formed in my belly. “Do you mean the murders or Frank?”

  “Both.” He set the mug carefully on the square table. “You haven’t seen your father for a long time. A lot of things have happened in both your lives.”

  “And?”

  “And I think you should move slowly.”

  “I am, but Frank and the crew will be going as soon as the chief tells them they can.”

  “And that means you have to lay it all on the table while he’s in San Nicholas? Aren’t you going to see him after he leaves?”

  “I don’t know, but Frank’s here now.”

  He studied me. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Ray did some Internet digging on the Pie Hard crew. He said Frank wasn’t anywhere online, that he was an Internet ghost. I guess a part of me is worried I won’t see Frank again.” He’d disappeared so completely from my childhood. How could I believe he wouldn’t disappear again? I turned the mug on the table and studied the ripples in my chamomile tea. “Though I’m not sure why I care.”

  I looked up and again caught that strange, hard expression on Gordon’s face—part anger, part regret.

  My brain cleared in a sudden flash, leaving me dizzy. “You know something about him.”

  “No.”

  “You do.” My grip tightened on the mug. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I don’t know anything. I’m a cop. I’m naturally suspicious.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s more than that.”

  “Sure it is. Your father is a suspect in a murder investigation.”

  It was more than that. I could see it in his eyes. Gordon was lying.

  CHAPTER 19

  Laughter and cheerful feminine voices woke me at seven a.m. I groaned, pulled the blankets over my head, and turned from the sunlight streaming through the vertical blinds. Monday was my day off.
The smell of bacon lured me, nose twitching, from beneath the covers. Throwing a robe over my pie pajamas, I staggered out the front door and into the yard.

  “Good morning!” Maureen caroled, her broad face wreathed in a smile. She wore a brick-red, Moroccan-style caftan with gold embroidery at the collar. The hood hung down her back.

  A buffet in metal warming trays ran down the center of the table, decorated with banana leaves and ginger flowers. Women in flowing robes wandered the lawn in clusters, noshing and gossiping. A caterer’s van parked near the cliff’s edge. On the horizon, the ocean was pale blue against the sky.

  I yawned and stretched. “Morning. How’s yurt living?”

  “The yurt is now a contemplation zone from ten at night until seven in the morning. That means no talking.”

  I grinned. My nights were about to get quieter.

  “Help yourself.” She nodded toward the table. Was I imagining it, or had its wooden legs sunk deeper into the soft earth beneath the weight of all that food?

  I heaped a plate with bacon, eggs, fruit, and a slice of coffee cake.

  Maureen watched, frowning.

  I hesitated, my hand hovering over cups of OJ. “Am I being greedy?” I asked, self-conscious.

  “No, of course not. But your aura looks disturbed. Is everything all right?”

  “I suppose you’ll hear about it soon enough. Ilsa Fueder, the French pastry chef who was part of the Pie Hard crew? She was found dead last night at her hotel.”

  Maureen gasped. “Not Ilsa! I have all her cookbooks! But she’s marvelous. Such a strong force, such vitality. I can’t believe she’s dead.”

  Strong force was one way to put it. “She was pretty intense on camera, but she gave us some great ideas for Pie Town.” She was passionate about doing baked goods right. Ilsa might have come on strong, but she had my respect.

  “I’ll have to call my sister. She used to work with Ilsa.”

  I straightened. “Really? When?”

  “This was before Ilsa became big, of course. They worked together in a fancy, European-style restaurant and bakery in Vegas.”

  “In Vegas?” I asked, excited. Did I have an actual lead? Now that Ilsa was dead, I wasn’t sure it mattered, but I pressed on. “Was that the restaurant that had to close because of a fire?”

  “It was awful. My sister was out of work for weeks. The restaurant never recovered.”

  “Is there any chance I can talk to your sister?”

  “Annie sleeps late, but if you want to call her later, she’s usually off on Mondays.” She drew a slim, leather notebook from the pocket of her caftan and scribbled a phone number. “Just tell her you’re a friend of mine.”

  “Thanks.”

  Maureen ambled into the crowd as Charlene’s sunshine-yellow Jeep rumbled up the drive.

  I bit into my bacon, which was starting to cool.

  Charlene parked beside my shipping container, and she and Ray hopped from the Jeep.

  “I got your text.” Charlene tugged down the sleeve of her green knit tunic. Beneath her matching leggings, she wore pink and purple striped socks.

  Frederick, eyes shut, lounged over her shoulder. An odd sound emerged from his parted mouth. I think it was a snore.

  “I didn’t get a text,” Ray said accusingly. His skin was splotchy, his spine bowed. He shifted his backpack over his rounded shoulder. The movement rumpled his black t-shirt with its cartoon-character front. He hitched up his faded, saggy jeans. “And it was Ilsa!” He blinked rapidly. “I can’t believe she’s dead. It was like she knew me.”

  “Sorry.” I winced. I’d sent Charlene a text after I’d escaped Shaw’s clutches last night, but I’d forgotten Ray. “It was really late when I left the station, and I haven’t gotten into the habit yet of sending you updates. But I just got a lead,” I said, trying to make up for my lapse. “Maureen’s sister worked with Ilsa at that Vegas restaurant. Ray, do you want to call her?”

  He jerked his gaze from the table. “But I don’t know her.”

  “You can say you know Maureen,” I said, nodding toward her, at the far end of the table.

  “But I don’t know Maureen,” he whispered. “It would be weird. I’m not good at talking to people I don’t know. No, you can make the call.”

  Charlene cleared her throat. “I figured we could use Ray at the hotel today.”

  “Hotel?” I gave myself a slight shake, nearly upending my paper plate. “Today?” I didn’t remember making plans to visit the hotel. Besides, my father would still be there. What if I ran into him?

  Maureen wandered up to us, her hip scarf jingling. “Would you two like some breakfast?”

  “No thanks,” Charlene said, ignoring Ray’s obvious interest in the spread. “We’ve eaten.”

  “Come inside,” I said. “You can tell me about the hotel.” I didn’t think the goddess gals had anything to do with, well, anything. It just didn’t make sense to blab about our investigation in front of strangers.

  Ray snagged a piece of bacon and followed me inside my tiny house, which felt even tinier with three people inside. “Um, have a seat.” I motioned to the dining nook.

  Ray sat and hunched over the table like Papa Bear stuck in Baby Bear’s chair. He took a bite of the crispy bacon, then sighed and dropped it on the table. “It’s no use. I can’t eat. Not with Ilsa dead.”

  “Val, tell us everything.” Charlene arranged Frederick on the table and sat.

  Leaning against the kitchen counter, I explained about finding Ilsa’s body and my interrogation at the police station. When I finished, my plate was clean. I pulled a footstool to the table, even though it really wasn’t meant for more than two people. I pushed the discarded bacon aside with one finger.

  Ray stared at his empty hands, limp on the tabletop. “But why Ilsa? She was innocent.”

  “Obviously, because she knew too much,” Charlene said, bumping elbows with me.

  “Knew what about who?” he asked.

  “Whom,” I corrected absently and scooted the wooden footstool closer to the table. “We’ve only got three murder suspects left: Nigel, Steve, and Luther.”

  “And Frank,” Charlene said. “And that weird ninja kid Doran.”

  “I don’t care what she knew,” Ray said, his voice rough. “Ilsa didn’t deserve to be murdered.”

  Frederick yawned, exposing sharp, white teeth and a rough, pink tongue.

  “Frank couldn’t have done it,” I said, uneasy. Even though Ray didn’t know Ilsa, her death clearly affected him. “I left him in the wine bar when I went chasing after Doran.”

  “But you don’t know when Ilsa died,” Charlene pointed out. “She could have been killed before you arrived.”

  “We need to learn her time of death,” Ray said.

  “Oh,” Charlene said, “can you hack into the police station’s files?”

  Ray’s jaw set, determined.

  “That would be illegal,” I said, afraid of his answer. Gordon would never forgive me if we hacked the SNPD. “Ilsa’s body was still warm when I found her.”

  “But what does that mean?” Charlene asked. “Bodies don’t drop to room temperature in an instant. It takes time.”

  “Bodies lose one point five degrees per hour,” Ray said promptly, “varying on the corpse’s environment.”

  We stared at him.

  “I’m a student engineer,” he said. “I remember formulas.”

  “She was lying out in the open,” I said. “Most likely she was killed after dark, when the killer had less chance of being seen. I got to the hotel at eight, around sunset. So it must have happened while I was with Frank.” The murderer had taken a terrible chance—killing her on the golf course. “Ilsa’s body was hidden from the hotel and cliff trail by the golf course’s hills. But people cut across the golf course at night. Killing her there was chancy.”

  “Or a mark of desperation,” Charlene said.

  “But this gets us closer to time of death.” Ray whipped a
graph pad from his backpack and sketched a black line across it. “The lighting gets dim before the sun is completely down.” He made a mark on the line. “But it doesn’t get completely dark immediately after sunset.” He made another mark, noting the time—8:05. “What time did you say you found the body?”

  I dumped my paper plate in the garbage bin beneath the sink and returned to my perch on the wooden footstool. “Eight forty. I called 9-1-1 at eight forty-three.”

  He nodded. “If the killer needed darkness, he had a narrow window—say between eight twenty and eight forty. It won’t be exact, but we can time things tonight to learn how long it takes after sunset to get real dark.”

  “At least we know the killer is a man,” Charlene said. “We’re all out of female suspects. And since it’s our day off, there’s no better time for suspect interviews. We need to go to the hotel.” She pointed to the glass doors, and the cliff and horizon beyond.

  “Good idea, but you can’t bring a cat to the Belinda,” I said.

  On the table, Frederick yawned and stretched his furry white legs.

  “That’s not a problem,” she said. “The goddesses will watch him.”

  I heaved myself off the footstool. “All right. Let me get dressed.”

  It didn’t take me long to slip into jeans and a tank top. Since you never knew about the weather, I tied a black Pie Town hoodie around my waist. Soon we were bouncing down my dirt driveway in Charlene’s Jeep. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass blasted on the CD player. I’d never admit it to Charlene, but I was becoming a fan.

  “I don’t trust Nigel,” Ray said. “The guy with the British accent is always the villain.”

  “Only in the movies,” Charlene argued. “Nigel’s no killer. It’s got to be Steve. The spouse always does it.”

  I rested my elbow on the rear window ledge and watched traffic drift past on the One.

  Charlene veered right into the hotel driveway and squeezed her Jeep into a compact spot.

  Three local news vans sat parked in a far corner of the lot.

  “You don’t think they’re here because of Ilsa?” I asked, rubbing my lower back. Charlene’s Jeep had hit every bump on the rutted dirt road from my house.