Pie Hard

by Kirsten Weiss

  I touched the sleeve of his tweed jacket. “Can’t you get out of this, um, work?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what else I’d do.”

  “Anything,” I said. “Anything has to be better than this.”

  “It may not look like it,” my father said, “but I really do help people. I keep them from coming to harm, and I’ve been able to turn some people around.”

  Doran snorted and tossed his head. His hair slipped into his eyes.

  “He’s not wrong.” Nigel joined us. “If it hadn’t been for your father, things would have been much worse for me. I’m on a payment plan now.” His handsome face fell. “Though I’ve no idea how I’ll continue making payments now that I’m out of a job.”

  My father clapped him on the shoulder of his golf shirt. “Are you kidding? After the disaster of your final show, everyone will want you. I’ve got connections. I’ll hook you up, never fear.”

  Nigel brightened. “Brilliant!”

  “That’s how I managed to swing taking over Regina’s job,” my father said. “I know people, son. As long as you keep our, er, connection out of the press, my employers will work with the plan. Otherwise, they’ll insist on making an example of you.”

  Nigel paled. “Thanks?”

  A blue Prius pulled to the curb.

  “I believe that’s my ride,” Nigel said. “I’ll see you.” He stepped into the car and zoomed off.

  My father rubbed his hands together. “So, all’s well that ends well.”

  “Is it?” Charlene stroked Frederick, sleeping on her shoulder. “What exactly are your intentions?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “You have two children,” she said, “standing here in front of you. What are you going to do about it?”

  He shuffled his feet. “I admit it has been nice spending time with Val.” He turned quickly to Doran. “Had I known who you were—”

  “Whatever,” Doran said.

  “I’m glad we had this chance,” I said. I still hadn’t completely forgiven him, but I was willing to try. “But I don’t want to be tangled up with your associates any more than my mother did.”

  He lowered his head. “I understand. But maybe . . . There’s always email.”

  “I would like to be able to chat,” I admitted. “Every now and then.”

  Doran shook his head. “Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how easy it is to crack into most email systems? You’d need to use encryption—real encryption, not one of those lame programs you download for free online.”

  My father eyed him. “I suppose you know something about that. Could you, er, help set something up?”

  His gaze slid sideways. “I guess it’s the least I can do. For Val.” Doran lightly touched my hand. “Stay in touch.” He turned and strode down Main. The street lamps flickered to life.

  “He’s so angry,” my father said.

  “Can you blame him?” Charlene pointed at me. “You’re lucky this one still wants to have anything to do with you.”

  Frederick yawned.

  A police car double parked in front of the gym. Chief Shaw and a uniformed officer stepped out.

  “I’ll call you later.” My father hurried down Main Street.

  Shaw stared at the gaping hole in the gym’s front window, then at my matching broken window. “What’s this about another confession?”

  “You spoke with G—Detective Carmichael?” I asked eagerly. “Did he catch Steve?”

  “Mr. Katz? The cameraman? Not that I know of.”

  I frowned. Where was Gordon? He’d have reported to the police after he’d collared Steve. But maybe word hadn’t reached the chief yet.

  “Tell me what happened,” Shaw said, “from the beginning.”

  And so Charlene and I did. Sort of. We didn’t confess that we’d gathered the suspects together like something out of an Agatha Christie novel. As Charlene told it, we’d simply invited them to Pie Town for a final thank you and farewell. Discussion had grown heated. Accusations were hurled. And Steve had admitted his guilt and fled.

  Ray emerged from Pie Town with a wide piece of plywood. “I found this in the alley by the dumpster. Think we can use it for the window?”

  “Were you here when this mess went down?” Shaw asked.

  Ray shifted the plywood in his arms. “Um. Yeah.”

  “Now, you tell me what really happened.”

  I tensed. Don’t tell him about Gordon. Don’t tell him about Gordon. Gordon was off the case, and he wouldn’t want us to admit he’d been investigating.

  Ray blinked his brown eyes. “What really happened?”

  “Sure,” Charlene said, “tell him all about—”

  “No,” Shaw said. “I want to hear this from Ray.”

  He gulped. “Well. They were having this party for the Pie Hard crew, now that everything was over.”

  I started breathing again.

  Shaw’s eyes narrowed. “And why were you invited?”

  “Val knows I’m a huge fan.”

  “Why was Carmichael here?”

  Ray blinked. “He and Val are dating. Anyway, we were all talking, and no one could believe Luther had done it. And then it kind of came out that Steve had done it, and he jumped through a window.”

  The chief lowered his chin. “And exactly how did it come out?”

  A bead of sweat trickled down Ray’s broad forehead. “Um, they were talking about the past, how they’d known each other for so long, and then we were talking about that old Movie Myths show, and how a boat had got blown up, and suddenly we all knew that Steve could have blown up Frank’s car. You know?”

  Shaw through his hands in the air. “I know that you’re all coming to the station with me.”

  “But, the window!” I pointed.

  After some arguing, Shaw let us nail the plywood over the broken window before we were all dragged down to the station.

  Two hours later, he released us, so I guess our stories hung together. Or else he’d just stopped caring.

  Charlene and Ray piled into her Jeep, and I drove home. I stepped from the van and admired my view.

  The waxing moon lit a trail across the ebony Pacific. The goddess gals were gone. So was the yurt. Around, flattening of the grass like an underachieving crop circle was the only sign it had ever existed.

  I smiled. Last week, the thought of a crop circle would have sent me into a mild panic. Now it seemed funny.

  The sky deepened to a lurid violet and tangerine above the darkening ocean. Seated on the picnic table, I called Gordon.

  The call went to voicemail, and my stomach tightened. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since he’d gone chasing after Steve. But Shaw would have said something if Gordon had been hurt. Wouldn’t he?

  Worried, I went inside and poured a glass of root beer and Kahlua, keeping everything on the counter, just in case.

  Thirty minutes later, the headlights from Charlene’s Jeep swept the lawn. She parked beside the picnic table and climbed the steps to my door.

  I opened it before she could knock.

  “Heard anything from Grumpy Cop?” She gently removed Frederick from her shoulder and laid him on the dining nook table.

  “No. I tried calling him and had to leave a message. Root beer and Kahlua?” I raised my glass and took a long drink. The alcohol didn’t calm my jittery nerves.

  “We’ve earned it. Another killer, caught by the Baker Street Bakers.”

  “We couldn’t have done it without Gordon.” Why hadn’t I heard from the detective?

  I poured the root beer and Kahlua into a tall glass and handed it to her.

  We clinked glasses, and Charlene angled her head at the door. “It would be a shame to waste this night.”

  I held the front door for her, and we walked to the cliff. High above us, stars cut the black-velvet sky. Gratitude surged within me. I’d reconnected with my father, discovered a brother I never knew, and I had true friends here in San Nicholas. The moon
hanging above the ocean was just the ice cream on the pie, if you liked that sort of thing.

  “What are you grinning about?” Charlene asked.

  “I was thinking about how lucky we are.”

  “Yep. We’re above ground, and that’s something.”

  Behind us, a man howled, a primal scream that raised the hair on my neck.

  A gray, bearlike shadow lurched from a nearby stand of Eucalyptus trees.

  I took an involuntary step back, toward the cliff.

  Steve’s face contorted with rage. “I’ll see you both dead!” Hunched low, he barreled toward me.

  Unthinking, I jerked left, grabbing for Charlene and missing.

  He brushed between us, knocking me sideways.

  Charlene shrieked. Dizzy with fear, I whirled toward her and the cliff.

  Charlene and Steve were gone.

  CHAPTER 33

  My heart stopped. I stared, disbelieving, at the inky horizon. “Charlene!” I screamed.

  Wind soughed in the branches of the nearby eucalyptus trees.

  No, no, no. Not Charlene! “Charlene!”

  “Help!” A thin shadow wriggled on the earth by the cliff’s edge. Charlene lay flat on her stomach, her lower half vanishing over the side.

  “Charlene!” Heedless of the crumbling earth, I raced forward and grabbed the back of her knit jacket.

  She slipped through the jacket. One hand clawed at the ground.

  I fell to my knees and grasped beneath her shoulder. Desperately, futilely, I heaved her toward me.

  At an odd angle, Charlene slipped farther over the cliff’s edge.

  “You’ve ruined everything.” Steve’s voice floated up from the cliff.

  I wormed closer to the cliff and peered over.

  Steve dangled, clinging to Charlene’s wrist. His feet scrabbled for purchase at the sheer cliff side.

  “Let her go!” I threw my weight backward.

  Charlene yelped with pain.

  My hands were slick with fear. “I can’t hold you both!”

  She slid backwards. “Save yourself!”

  Bits of dirt and rock fell, rattling against the earth below.

  I lunged forward and grabbed a fistful of her jacket and I think her bra strap. Leaning over the edge, I tried to pry Steve’s grip from her wrist. His fingers curled inside her watch band.

  “It was better for Regina.” He panted. “She would have died in pain. I was doing her a favor.”

  “Your wife wanted to live,” Charlene said, gasping. “You didn’t want her to spend all your money doing it.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Steve, you need to let go.”

  “If I have to die, I’m taking you with me.”

  I clawed at his fingers. It was too much weight. “If you don’t let go, you’ll both fall.”

  “Good!”

  “You asked for it.” I unsnapped Charlene’s watch.

  His eyes widened with terror.

  Freed, Charlene tumbled into my arms. There was a dull grunt, a thud.

  We lay panting.

  Charlene stared at me, horror scrawled across her face. “Is he . . . ?”

  Breath ragged, I crawled to the edge and peered over.

  Steve huddled on a narrow ledge eight feet below us. He reached for me, trying to scrabble up the cliff. Bits of dirt and rocks gave way beneath his feet.

  “He’s alive.” I rolled onto my back. “And he’s not going anywhere.”

  “Shame.” Charlene staggered to the edge of the cliff. Hands braced on her knees, she looked down. “Jerk.”

  He called her a rude word.

  “That’s no way to talk to a lady!” She kicked dirt over the edge.

  “Cut it out!” He wiped dirt from his face.

  I patted her shoulder. “Okay. We got him. I’m going to call 9-1-1.” I fumbled my cell phone from my pocket.

  “It was a mercy killing,” he said from the ledge beneath us. “Can’t you see that?”

  Charlene and I looked at each other.

  I scuffed dirt over the edge for good measure.

  * * *

  Blue and red lights from half a dozen police cars strobed across my lawn.

  I sat on the picnic table and watched the show. Not even Shaw could blame me for this one.

  Gordon raked a hand through his dark hair. “If I’d any idea he was coming after you—”

  “How could you?” I asked. “We all thought he was headed for Mexico or Canada.” Coming here had been banana-pants crazy. “You don’t think anyone will believe this was a mercy killing?” I watched a uniformed officer guide Steve into the backseat of a squad car.

  “I doubt that angle will play, not after everything else he’s done.”

  Charlene ambled up to the picnic table and jerked her thumb toward the officer shutting the squad car door. “Steve’s singing like a canary. He said he had to kill Ilsa, because she was blackmailing him. According to him, it was her fault she’s dead.”

  “I suppose he was forced to come after you two as well?” Blue light from the police cars flickered across Gordon’s chiseled face.

  “What’s scary is, I think he kind of believes he did,” she said.

  “It’s amazing how people can justify their actions,” Gordon said.

  I made a face. “People like my father.” Was it wrong for me to let him into my life, even if it was only via email? Was I justifying the unjustifiable?

  He looped an arm over my shoulder, and I snuggled closer to his warmth. He still wore his fisherman’s sweater and smelled of clean sweat and his piney aftershave. Steve may have given him the slip, but Gordon was alive, and I wasn’t going to back away from him.

  “I tracked down one of the officers who came to your house the night of your kidnapping,” he said. “He was retired, but he remembered it well. The officer knew there was more to the story. Later, he found out how deep in debt your father was and to whom. Without your parents’ testimony, he was never able to prove or pursue anything. He even returned to your house a week later to check in, but your father had left by then. When he pressed your mother on it, she told him Frank was out of your lives and had handled everything.”

  “You believe my father’s story? That he went to work for the mob to protect us?”

  “I’m a trust but verify sort of guy, but Frank’s story fits what we know. When did you first start suspecting Steve?”

  “From the beginning,” Charlene said. “The spouse is always the most likely suspect.”

  I sighed into his broad chest. The sweater was a little itchy against my cheek, but I didn’t care. “It usually is the spouse, but Regina had only a couple years left, and I couldn’t imagine him risking killing her when all he had to do was wait. Then we remembered things other people had said, about her search for miracle cures and Steve grumbling about expenses on the set. In the end, it came down to the car explosion. I couldn’t see the mob blowing up Frank’s car because he wasn’t working fast enough. Maybe that was naïve.”

  “Yes, it was,” Charlene said. “Oh! I forgot to tell you in all the excitement. You know that true crime show, Live and Deadly?”

  “Yeah,” Gordon said. “They’re pretty good.”

  “Well, they’re produced by the same outfit that makes Pie Hard. They want to take the Pie Hard footage, interview us, and expand it to a two-hour Live and Deadly made-for-TV movie! Isn’t that amazing?”

  “No.” I crossed my arms. “No way. Not after everything we went through with Pie Hard.”

  “Think of the publicity!”

  “We were magnets for a killer!”

  “I know,” she said. “We’ll be notorious.”

  “That’s not a good thing. Gordon, tell her.”

  He grinned, pulling me closer. “I gave up trying to tell either of you anything long ago.”

  And he kissed me.

  Peach-Raspberry Pie

  Ingredients

  2 pre-made piecrusts at room temperature

  3 lb
s firm-ripe peaches (about 6 large) cut into 1” slices

  2 tsp lemon juice, or to taste

  2½ T cornstarch, divided

  9 T sugar, divided

  ½ tsp ground ginger

  Pinch salt

  8 oz raspberries (about 2 cups)

  Directions

  Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

  In mixing bowl, toss cut peaches, lemon juice, and ½ C of the sugar. Let rest for 30 minutes, then pour off any excess juice, reserving ½ C. Return the reserve juice to the bowl. Add ginger, salt, and 2 T cornstarch, and toss.

  In a separate bowl, toss the raspberries with 1 T sugar and remaining ½ T of cornstarch.

  Line the pie tin with one crust and poke it with a fork 4-5 times. Pour half the peach mixture into the crust and layer on top of it half the raspberry mixture, then add the remainder of the peaches, and then what’s left of the raspberries.

  Cut the second crust into strips and weave it over the pie in a lattice top. Trim the edges so that ½ inch hangs over the pie tin and crimp. Place pie into the freezer for 20 minutes.

  Remove pie from freezer and dust crust with a bit of sanding sugar. Put the pie on a cookie sheet and bake approximately 30 minutes, until the crust is slightly brown. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees and bake another 45-60 minutes, until the crust is deep golden brown.

  Cool before slicing!

  Lemon-Blueberry Cream Pie

  Ingredients

  1 pre-made piecrust at room temperature

  Blueberry Sauce

  3 C blueberries

  ¾ C cold water

  ¾ C sugar

  3 T cornstarch

  1 tsp lemon juice

  Lemon Cream

  1 C heavy cream

  8 ounces cream cheese, softened

  ⅓ C sugar

  1 T lemon zest

  2 tsp lemon juice

  Directions

  Heat oven to 450 degrees F. Line pie tin with crust. Poke it several times with a fork. Layer dried beans inside it (this will keep it from puffing while baking). Bake for 10 minutes. Allow to cool completely and remove and discard dried beans.