I pressed a hand to my mouth and forced myself not to cry. Glass glittered on the sidewalk outside Pie Town. Had the firemen had to break a window? And then I remembered the crash I’d heard, and my gaze clouded.
My nemesis, Heidi, stormed down the street, her blond ponytail bouncing. She shook her finger at me. Even her knuckles looked fit. “This is just typical. Is there anything you won’t do to disrupt my business?”
“Oh, put a sock in it,” Charlene growled, and began hacking. She bent, hands on her knees, her body racked by rough coughs.
Heidi stepped back, eyes widening.
A chill tightened my gut. My lungs were rough after the smoke I’d inhaled, but Charlene was somewhere north of seventy. In the amber light from the street lamps, she looked greenish.
I looked around for help and spotted a paramedic truck parked slightly down the road.
“Wait here.” I ran to the two paramedics, a man and woman. “My friend was in there. She’s elderly and is coughing badly.”
They straightened off the red truck’s bumper. “Where is she?”
“This way.” I raced back to Charlene, and the EMTs followed.
I fretted, and Charlene snapped, while the paramedics peered into her eyes and put an oxygen mask on her face.
“She’ll be okay,” the man told me. “But we’re taking her to the hospital for observation.”
“The hospital?” Charlene wheezed beneath her mask.
A firefighter emerged from the restaurant carrying a cannister. He conferred with Gordon and pointed to the sidewalk.
I moved toward them.
A police officer, hands raised, intercepted me.
“You’ll have to stay back, ma’am.”
“It’s my restaurant!”
“Oh, sorry, Val.” Officer Sanders grimaced. “I didn’t recognize you under all the soot. But you’ll still have to wait here until the fire department gives us the all clear.”
Expression stony, Gordon strode to us. “It’s all right,” he said to the uniformed officer.
Sanders nodded and walked away.
“Is the fire out?” I asked, hopeful. Say it’s not bad. Say it’s not bad.
“There was no fire,” he said.
“But—The smoke!”
“A smoke bomb. Someone kicked in your front door and tossed it inside. That must have been the crash you heard.”
I went limp with relief. “Oh, thank God. I mean—that’s terrible, but at least it wasn’t a fire. I can fix the door.”
“Yeah.” His gaze didn’t quite meet mine.
Something dark and cold slithered inside my gut. “Why are you not looking at me like that? What’s wrong?”
“The smoke made a real mess in there.”
My breath caught. “How big of a mess?”
“The fire department is checking for more incendiary devices. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to go inside.”
I shook my head, my lips clamped together. If he wasn’t telling me how bad it was, it was bad.
“I’m sure it will be okay.” Gordon rested his hand on my shoulder. “There are specialists for this sort of damage.”
Which wasn’t in my budget to pay for. But there was insurance. I smiled tightly and brushed off some of the soot I’d deposited on his button-up shirt. “It will be fine.” At least, I hoped it would be fine. “I’ve got to check on Charlene.”
“I’ll come with you.”
We walked to the spot where I’d left my piecrust maker. The paramedics were loading a struggling Charlene into the ambulance.
She wrenched the oxygen mask from her face. “They won’t let me bring Frederick! I can’t go without him.”
An exasperated EMT shook his head. “Honestly, Mrs. McCree—”
“Where is he?” I asked.
She pointed to her yellow Jeep, parked in front of the comic shop.
The white cat sat on the hood grooming himself.
“I’ll take care of Frederick,” I said.
“You’d better.”
They pushed her gurney all the way inside the ambulance. An EMT hopped inside and shut the doors.
Gordon pulled me into a one-armed hug. “She’ll be all right. Charlene’s a tough old bird.”
I nodded, because I was having a hard time speaking. “I’d better get Frederick.”
I made my way to the Jeep.
Frederick regarded me warily, pink tongue out, one leg raised.
“Okay,” I told the cat. “Charlene’s going to be fine, but you and I are stuck together. So don’t try anything.”
He laid his head on his paws and closed his eyes.
Taking that for assent, I picked him up and, not knowing what else to do with him, laid him over one shoulder. His weight and warmth were weirdly comforting, even if he did weigh a ton.
I paced outside my pie shop. A smoke bomb. Who would have done this and why?
The obvious answer was that it had something to do with our investigation. Was the killer trying to scare us off? Anger replaced my anxiety, and I forced myself to think calmly.
But why kick in the door when you can just break a window? And whoever’d done it had been taking a chance with a frontal attack on a Tuesday night.
Or maybe they hadn’t been. There wasn’t a lot of activity on Main Street at this hour. In San Nicholas, the sidewalks tended to roll up early. The restaurant across the street was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. There was the gym, but that was twenty-four hours, so there was no avoiding that.
It was all . . . weird.
An hour later, the fire department finally let Frederick and me inside Pie Town.
My white ceiling was dark gray. Smoke smeared the walls and left an oily film on the pink booths and tables and glass counters. Near the broken door, shards of glass littered the checkerboard floor.
I clawed my hands through my hair.
Frederick’s tail curled, tickling my chin.
Gordon came to stand beside me. He set several pieces of plywood against a grimy table. “I’ll take care of the glass in the door, but the lock was damaged. You’ll need a locksmith. I know a guy, if you need one.”
Gratitude surged through me with such force that tears sprang to my eyes. I blinked rapidly. “That would be great. Thank you.”
“I’ll call the locksmith.” He pulled out his phone.
“Val!” Gamer Ray crunched across the broken glass and stopped short, staring. “Are you okay?”
“I’m . . . fine. How—? What are you doing here?”
“Charlene’s been tweeting,” he said. “She said she saved your life. How can we help?”
I ignored the lifesaving comment and focused on the last bit. “We?”
His girlfriend, Henrietta, and three other gamers piled behind him in the open door.
“Damn,” she said. “Is this only a cleanup job, or do we need to repaint?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, my voice wobbly.
“One way to find out,” she said. “Buckets in the kitchen?”
Gordon pocketed his phone. “The locksmith will be here in an hour.”
I stopped blamestorming and started cleaning. We didn’t miraculously clean Pie Town overnight. The oily schmutz on the booths, tables, and counters wiped off fairly easily. The damage in the kitchen was minimal and cleanable. But the ceiling and walls in the restaurant needed repainting, and the smell . . .
I swallowed back tears. Pie Town wouldn’t be opening tomorrow.
CHAPTER 14
Pie Town’s front door shuddered beneath someone’s fist. I took the mop I’d been using to clean the ceiling and balanced it in the bucket. Tiptoeing to the door, I peered out the bottom glass pane, since the top was covered in plywood. Two pairs of dingy male trousers stood on the sidewalk.
I unlocked the door and opened it to Tally Wally and Graham. “Hi, guys.”
Outside, the fog hadn’t lifted, the dour skies matching my mood.
“What’s going on?” Graham demanded.
“Why aren’t you open?” Tally Wally said. “It’s six o’clock.”
The blinds in the front windows rattled with the breeze. I’d opened all the windows in the hope the acrid smell would fade.
It hadn’t.
“Someone threw a smoke bomb through the door last night.” I motioned to the plywood. “We’re closed today and probably tomorrow morning as well.” At least it was midweek, when sales weren’t at their Sunday best. If we’d had to close Pie Town on a beach weekend, I would have lost my mind. As it was, I was still stress-eating from the trauma.
Charlene waved from the bar. “Hello, boys. Come in and take a load off.”
“You got coffee?” Graham asked.
She motioned to the urn. “For you, we’ve always got java.”
They ambled past me and seized their regular seats at the counter.
“So what’s the word?” Tally Wally looked around. The counters, pink booths, and tables were shipshape, thanks to Gordon and Ray and his friends.
I dunked the mop and took another swipe at the ceiling, leaving a long streak of pale gray.
“Val’s got to repaint the entire ceiling again, except for the office,” Charlene said. “She’ll need to redo the walls in the dining area too. Fortunately, I know a guy. His team is coming this afternoon.”
And the rush job was costing me a mint. But I’d rather pay extra for a speedy paint job than have Pie Town closed the rest of the week. The ceiling issue was cosmetic, but in food service, appearances counted.
I kept mopping, ignoring the ribald comments from the oldsters at the counter.
What worried me was the smell. Even though the grime had seemingly come off the furniture, the restaurant reeked. The pie oven was running this morning for our wholesale orders, but the scent of baking pies did not cover up the smoke-bomb’s stench.
Depending on how quickly the paint dried, we might be open tomorrow for lunch. But paint came with its own chemical smell, and I suspected we’d have to wait to open until Friday.
Abril stacked pink boxes of pies for delivery on one of the tables. She shot me a worried glance.
Charlene and I had decided to plow ahead with the pie-making class on Thursday night. Except for some staining near the order window, the kitchen was in good shape. My jaw clenched. Which one of my pie-making students was responsible for the smoke bomb? Or was there an X factor? Someone involved we still hadn’t pegged?
Graham and Tally Wally helped me carry pies to my van. I delivered them to our clients, who were still blissfully unaware of our little tragedy.
I pulled up beside a newspaper kiosk and crossed my fingers. Would the smoke bomb be small enough news to escape notice by our local paper?
Avoiding the gum stuck to the kiosk’s handle, I grabbed a paper, still warm from the presses. “Oh, come on,” I whined. We were front-page news.
I stormed inside Pie Town and brandished the paper. “Have you seen this?”
Charlene blew on her coffee. “Sure. They called me for an interview.”
Graham and Tally Wally swiveled on their barstools.
I sputtered. “That’s—This—”
“If people show up and see we’re closed,” she said, “they’ll get angry or worried we’re shut for good. This way, we get sympathy and community support. Any business on this street could have been vandalized.”
“But that’s the thing,” I said. “It wasn’t any business. It was Pie Town. What are the odds it was a prank?”
“You think this has to do with the murder?” Graham asked.
“Pie Town’s always connected to murder,” Tally Wally said.
“It is not! And what are you two still doing here?” Usually by this hour, he and Tally Wally were long gone. I wasn’t sure if they were staying to see what happened next or if they just liked having Pie Town to themselves.
“We’re here to support you,” Graham said, slurping coffee. But his eyes twinkled.
“I just keep wondering why the vandal broke the door instead of the window,” I said to Charlene.
“Because the door was easier to break?” she asked.
“Maybe because he or she wanted to get inside,” I said. “Maybe the smoke bomb was a distraction to get us out of Pie Town.”
Tally Wally pulled a face. “That seems like a stretch.”
“Wally’s right,” Charlene said. “The smoke bomb didn’t give them much time to themselves, if that’s what they wanted.” Charlene sipped from her white mug. “The fire department was here in five minutes.”
We’d been lucky. The fire department was at the south end of Main Street, seven short blocks away.
“I didn’t say it was a smart vandal,” I grumped.
The door rattled, and I bent to see a pair of black-clad male legs. Doran.
My half brother never stopped by this early. Had he read the newspaper article and come to see how we were managing? I unlocked and opened the door. “Doran!”
He brushed past me. “Is Abril okay?”
Seriously? My shoulders slumped. What was I? Chopped liver? “Thanks, I’m fine,” I said, my voice clipped.
His skin darkened. “I can see you’re all right.”
“Nice save. And I am all right, and so is Abril. She wasn’t here last night, and she’s in the kitchen.”
“Do you mind . . . ?”
“Go ahead,” I said, resigned.
He strode behind the counter and through the swinging door to the kitchen.
“There you go.” Charlene raised her mug in a toast. “My plan is working.”
“What plan?” Tally Wally asked.
“Operation Young Love.”
“Operation Make Me Sick is more like it,” I said.
“Someone’s jealous,” Charlene said in a singsong voice.
“I am not.”
In her elegant trench coat, Marla strode inside, diamonds flashing and a Gucci purse slung over one arm. “Hm.” She scanned the room, her lips pressed into a line. “It’s not a total disaster.”
“Why do you sound disappointed?” Charlene asked.
“Well, a place like this”—she motioned languidly—“the materials are all plastic and chemicals, aren’t they? I expected the furniture would either melt into a puddle or be utterly indestructible. Clearly, the latter is the case. Oh, is that coffee?” She beelined for the urn.
I sighed. At least she’d finally figured out we were self-serve.
While Charlene and Marla bickered, I returned to my ceiling cleanup. If I could get the roof cleaned properly, it would save the painters time and me money. But it was slow going, and ashy water kept dripping into my face.
The bell over the door jangled.
Exasperated, I turned. “We’re closed.”
Brittany, the teaching-assistant-turned-engineer, hesitated, one denim-clad leg raised over the threshold. Slowly, she placed it on the checkerboard floor. “Um, have you got a minute?” She tugged on the collar of her green turtleneck sweater.
“Oh. Right! Sorry.” I put the mop in the bucket and locked the front door behind her. “I thought you were a customer. You’re not a customer, are you?”
“No.” Her voice dropped. “I mean, I love pie, but that’s not why I’m here.”
“Why are you here?” Tally Wally shouted.
“Speak up,” Graham said. “I forgot my hearing aid.”
My gaze flicked to the dingy ceiling. “Come into my office.”
I led Brittany past the old-folks society and into my Spartan office, shutting the door behind us. “Sorry about them,” I said. “Watching the world from Pie Town is their jam.”
Her gaze traversed the metal bookshelves, the dented metal desk. It stopped on the poster of the Acropolis. Charlene had taped it up last week for reasons known only to herself. “I don’t mind. I’m sorry we left you high and dry at Father Serra. Did you get away?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
She covered her mouth with her hand, and her
brown eyes sparkled. “Oh no. You got caught.”
“The police let us off with a warning due to Charlene’s advanced age.”
“I feel terrible.”
“You getting caught too wouldn’t have done us any good, so don’t worry about it.”
Her gaze landed on the veterans’ charity calendar on the back of the door. She tapped the photo of ocean cliffs. “Acadia National Park. It’s right by where I used to live.”
“In Maine? When did you move to California?”
“Three years ago. Look, I’m really sorry about the thing with Father Serra.”
“It’s okay.” I cleared my throat. “Er, is that why you came? To apologize?”
Her back straightened. “I came to hold up our end of the deal. You wanted to know about Professor Starke.”
“Yes. Yes! Sit down.” I motioned to the rickety chair in front of the desk. Walking to the opposite side, I sat in the rolling “executive” chair. “What can you tell me? Anything, and I mean anything, will help.”
She sat and drew in a deep breath. “Okay. Well. You know we dated?”
“You and Professor Starke? Um, no. But I heard . . .” I trailed off. Never mind what I’d heard. “So, it didn’t end well?”
She sighed and clasped her hands between her knees. “It was amazing.” Her brown eyes glowed.
“It was?” I asked, disbelieving.
“Michael was wonderful,” she enthused. “He made me feel magical, like anything was possible. He believed in me, and then I started to believe in me.”
“But it ended.”
Her gaze shifted away, and for a moment I thought I caught something hard and angry in her eyes. In an instant, it was gone.
Brittany shrugged. “I realized English wasn’t for me. I was an engineer at heart, and when I changed majors, I had to quit working for Michael. We just drifted apart. I think it really hurt him.”
I shook my head. “I’m a little surprised. When we first met, I got the impression you didn’t want to talk about Professor Starke, and I assumed—”
“I was a jilted lover.” Her lips compressed, one corner angling upward. “I didn’t want to talk about him because he’d just died. We were over, but I don’t like to gossip. He really was a good guy.”
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