by Carol Culver
If Heath was pursuing someone, maybe she was married like Lindsey and Tammy. I let my mind wander and I decided maybe whoever killed Heath couldn’t get away from him except by killing him. I couldn’t see how anyone would want to be with him. But then I’d only had one conversation with him. That was enough for me.
When the pie was done I was so happy with it I thought I’d make one like it for Jacques’ party.
The week dragged by. Or slid by, depending on how you looked at it. Sam left me alone, which made me wonder if he’d solved the murder but just didn’t tell me. Maybe he was already working on another case. Or he found me boring company and had discovered someone more interesting than a pie baker—like a cupcake maker. I refrained from calling him or knocking on the door of the police station. Instead I worked hard, baking, selling, schmoozing with customers, encouraging them to sit outside at my sidewalk café. I even ordered two tables with bright umbrellas and had them set up on the sidewalk with the others. And still Sam didn’t drop by. Not that I cared. I was just glad to see my business taking off.
Since my pie contest was a done deal I had to make time to promote it with posters around town at the library and in store windows. I had to. Grannie and her friends were judges and I had a call from Nina who asked me if I was sure she should enter.
“Of course you should,” I said. “There will be loads of people here and they’re all amateurs like you. You have an advantage being in the candy business already. You deal with sugar and butter every day.” Then I told her about a web site with lots of pie recipes.
She thanked me and said she’d give it a try.
Fortunately my bruises were gone, my head didn’t throb and I was ready for a big weekend, the fair, the party at Jacques’ and the contest on Sunday. Who said life in a small town was boring? Not if you make your own excitement.
What happens when life gets a little too exciting, for some people that is? Good question. On Saturday I was at the fair again, happily selling peach pies with lattice crust, strawberry-rhubarb double-crust pies, the local favorite—olallieberry pie, apple fritters, and double chocolate tart in a graham cracker crust. I didn’t expect to see Sam, so I didn’t worry about making anything savory. I was just handing out samples and answering questions like,
“Do you have a cookbook I can buy?”
Answer: “No, but I recommend The Pastry Lover’s Guide to
Perfect Pies.”
“Do you use all organic ingredients?”
Answer: “Our ingredients are all wholesome and natural.”
“What’s the most popular pie you sell?”
“Apple is the all-American pie, but my customers are very adventurous. Today’s special is wild Huckleberry with Crème Fraiche.” Wild huckleberries were hard to find. I paid some kids top dollar for them when they were in season and put bags of them into my huge stand-alone freezer.
When Grannie came by she volunteered to take over and I
accepted immediately. I was glad she wasn’t too busy with her advice column yet to help me out. As I left I saw she’d immediately
attracted more customers. I probably should have her come more often. I never knew if she was glad to be done with pie sales or if she ever missed the whole scene. She’d rolled up her sleeves and was chatting up a few customers so I took advantage of my freedom and made the rounds. I’d promised to introduce her to the knife man, but did I have time to do it the right way? With a proper buildup and a casual manner?
The first thing I noticed was Nina was not at the caramel booth. Instead a man was standing behind the counter looking bored. No samples. No customers. It had to be her husband, Marty Holloway, though I didn’t recognize him. I’d never really known him.
“Hi,” I said. “Where’s Nina?”
“She’s taking a break,” he said.
“Oh. Maybe I’ll run into her,” I said.
“I doubt it,” he said. “She’s out of town.”
Out of town? She’d just officially entered my pie contest. “So you’re filling in for her,” I said. “You must be Marty. I’m Hanna.”
“I heard about you,” he said.
The way he said it made me wonder what exactly he’d heard. I looked at the display of caramels. The boxes were stacked on top of each other and looked almost industrial. Not a sample in sight. It wasn’t what Nina would have done. “How’s business?” I asked.
“So-so,” he said. “Waste of time if you ask me.”
“It’s good of you to fill in for her, you must be busy with the large animals and everything,” I said.
“You got that right,” he said. “But she paid for the booth rental, and she had the candy, so …” He shrugged.
“Right. It’s really delicious. She’s a great, what do you call it, ‘confectioner.’ Well, I better get back to my booth. I sell pies.”
“I know,” he said.
I walked back to my booth. I couldn’t help thinking of my theory, the one that Sam pooh-poohed. I proposed looking at the vendors that Heath praised instead of the ones he’d trashed. I had this idea that if he shook down someone like Nina, she could have promised to pay him for a positive review but changed her mind. When he tried to force her, threatened to tell her husband she’d taken the money from their savings, she killed him. I smiled to myself admiring my clever solution even though Sam didn’t agree. But she had a serrated knife, which I presumed Sam had confiscated by now. Back to my original question, how could any woman sneak up on a big guy like Heath and slit his throat?
Then I wondered, where was Nina? Had she skipped out of town right before my pie contest because Sam was on to her? If he suspected her, he wouldn’t tell me. On a related matter, wouldn’t you think a veterinarian would have more social skills than Marty did?
Didn’t they have to have a bedside manner sort of like a doctor to attract patients? Since I didn’t have a pet, maybe I was all wrong. Or maybe I’d caught Marty on a bad day, a day when he would rather not be there. Then why was he? Filling in for the runaway Nina so no one would suspect she was on the lam. He wasn’t working the booth just to sell a few caramels, but for appearances. If only I could brainstorm with Sam. Unfortunately I had to brainstorm by myself, with no one to tell me if I was making sense or not.
I went back to my booth to relieve Grannie so she could meet up with her friends. I had just begun explaining how I only used local Meyer lemons from the tree in my back yard for my lemon tarts when a trio of two men in suits and one woman with a briefcase came marching down the aisle and stopped abruptly in front of one of the vegetable stands. I stepped out in front of my booth so I could listen in while the officials, if that’s who they were, demanded to inspect the scales the vendor was using.
I stood there frozen with dismay watching as they went through a series of tests. The man who was wearing a blue blazer said the household scales in the booth were faulty and until he could provide commercial scales, the vendor couldn’t weigh his stone fruit. After this week he’d have to give it away or sell it by the piece or stop selling it. I could hear the waves of discontent all the way down the aisle. Not just me but everybody. Commercial scales were expensive. No ordinary vegetable and fruit seller wanted to invest in them.
Of course I wasn’t in any danger of being shut down since I didn’t weigh any of my products, but still, I hated to see the long arm of the law reach into our own folksy, small-town food fair. What would Heath say if he were here, I wondered. And what about Sam? Did he know anything about this crackdown? No, that couldn’t be.
I’d just returned to my booth after watching the same scene play out several more times with the scales and the fruit and vegetable vendors. I was feeling lucky that I had nothing to worry about from the bureaucrats when the committee of three descended on my booth.
“Any of your wares made with milk, eggs, cream or other dairy products?” a woman in a skirt, low-heeled shoes, and a green jacket with the county insignia on the front asked.
“Yes, ma
ny of them,” I admitted.
“Where is your refrigeration unit?”
I showed her the large cooler in the back of my station wagon. She positively sneered as if I’d buried my pies in wet sand to keep them cool.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to improve your methods of refrigeration before you can sell these pies.”
“All of them?” I asked.
“Just the ones with the ingredients I mentioned.”
I was livid. My cream pies were kept frosty cool and safe in my cooler. The others like strawberry-rhubarb and peach didn’t need refrigeration.
“This is a small-town food fair,” I explained unnecessarily, I thought. “We make food for our friends and customers in our homes and bring it here to sell. We’re not a big commercial establishment.”
“Obviously,” she sniffed. “We are only here because we are following up on a complaint of non-compliance.”
“Who complained?” I demanded. Then I had a sinking feeling I might know who did it.
She leafed through a small notebook. “I’m under no obligation to tell you.”
“Was it Heath Barr, newspaper reporter?” I asked.
She looked startled, but said nothing. She didn’t need to. Her face said it all.
“You might want to put a check by his name. He’s no longer alive. You won’t be hearing from him again.”
“Is he the man who was murdered with the—?” she asked wide eyed.
I nodded.
She put her notebook in her briefcase and crossed the aisle to talk to one of her colleagues. They both turned to look at me as if they suspected me of the murder.
Welcome to the club, I thought. I just hoped I’d discouraged them. Maybe they’d be afraid to tinker with the Crystal Cove Food Fair and the natives who worked there or they might find their throats slit too. Not that I said that. I just thought it.
I checked with my neighbors who weren’t harassed by the inspectors. Apparently candied fruit and spicy nuts were not suspect. Lucky them. I wondered how Lurline fared. After the committee had moved on I went across to her booth.
“They couldn’t have found anything wrong with your cupcakes could they?” I asked.
“They wanted to know where I made the cupcakes, if it was a certified commercial kitchen.”
“Is it?”
“Of course not. I make them at home.”
“Did Heath know that?”
“How could he?”
“I just wondered, because guess who reported us all,” I said. “Before he died.”
Her lower lip curled. “That slime bag.”
“Exactly.”
“So it didn’t do any good to kill him. He’s like a vampire. His legacy lives on.”
I gave her a second look. Her baby blue eyes had turned dark with anger. I believed for one brief moment she could have slit Heath’s throat. She was small but she was tough. And she wasn’t sorry he died. Who was?
I explained to her about my refrigeration problem and how I couldn’t possibly afford a portable refrigeration unit. Just as the fruit and vegetable vendors couldn’t afford commercial scales.
“We’re screwed,” I said clenching my hands into fists.
She stood on tiptoe to look for the inspectors. They were now on the far edge of the parking lot.
“I don’t care,” she said, “I’m going to keep selling. That woman said she was going to inspect my commercial kitchen. Over my dead body. Look, I’ve still got customers,” she said in a loud whisper. She did and so did I. “They don’t care where I bake my cupcakes.” If Lurline was not cowed by those inspectors, why should I be? I was just as gutsy as Lurline and I vowed also not to give in until I had to. I also hadn’t learned enough to cross her off my personal list of suspects. In fact I moved her to the top of the Lindsey, Tammy and Lurline list.
After our unwelcome visitors left behind citations ordering us to comply by next week, the market seemed to rebound. I’d almost sold out by four o’clock, even the refrigerated pies sold well, as if my customers had decided that the county couldn’t tell them what they could or could not eat. I felt better about everything, but still the citation weighed heavily on my mind.
I didn’t stay around much longer. After I packed up with the help of Mandy, I stopped by Jacques’ cheese stand to find him fuming over the committee who he referred to as “Nazis” because they’d asked him for, among other documents, his pasture management plan to make sure the sheep and cows were humanely treated.
“They asked me if my ruminant animals are allowed to fulfill their natural behaviors. Can you believe the hubris of those idiots? As if they know what their natural behaviors are and I don’t.” He paused to catch his breath and recapture his French accent. “Is it true that SOB Heath pulled the plug on us before he bit the dust?” he asked.
“That’s what I heard.”
“I’d like to know who killed him,” he said. “So I could thank him and ask him why he didn’t do it sooner.”
“What if it was a she?” I muttered, but he didn’t appear to hear me.
When he calmed down, he asked me if I was coming to his party that night. I said I was and I was bringing a pie, and coming alone. He handed me a map and said he was dying to show me around the place.
I didn’t see Sam at the market at all. Maybe he had better things to do than watch while some county official handed out citations and warnings. I wanted to ask him how seriously I and all of us should take this woman’s appearance. On the other hand, maybe I didn’t want to know.
Maybe Sam was busy chasing down Heath’s murderer. We could only hope. I’d love to forget my list of suspects. I’d love to think about something besides the hateful food critic and his untimely demise. I was not worried the killer was after me. Heath was hated by so many people. I wasn’t. At least as far as I knew.
I refused to worry about the county and the end of the fair as we knew it. Somebody would come up with a solution. We’d agree to change our profligate, unsanitary ways and they’d give us some time to comply. Or something. I had a pie contest to think about.
I put my few un-sold pies away, hung a closed sign on my front door and went upstairs to find something to wear that was different from my usual jeans, T-shirt, and apron. Yes, it was a party on a dairy farm, but I couldn’t stand another event wearing skinny jeans or cargo pants, gladiator sandals, and a hoodie. Instead, recalling what Heath had said about Foggy Meadow being a misnomer, I found a beaded halter dress I hadn’t worn for months, maybe never in Crystal Cove, and high-heels. On second thought, picturing myself touring the pastures and remembering how it felt to be chased by a determined, surprisingly agile oversized pig, I changed into flat sandals, just in case.
Before I took off, I left phone messages for everyone who’d signed up for the pie contest the next day, including Grannie and her
fellow judges. I told them we’d gather at eleven the next morning at the shop. I’d have time to set up tables before that, but tonight I was going to try to forget about pie, murder, free publicity, or anything but having fun.
I had no idea if Sam was going to this party or if he was hiding out in his office huddled over his computer using his secure police search engine. If he came to the party or any party, it would only be to further investigate whatever crime he was investigating. Today it was the murder of the newspaper critic. Tomorrow—who knew? That was the reason why he did anything and the sooner I realized that the sooner I’d quit hoping he was interested in me other than as a suspect, an observer, or a witness. It wasn’t going to happen.
What better place to look for a killer than a cheese farm where many of the guests had an ax to grind with the victim. As for me, I no longer cared who killed Heath. I just wanted to have a good time at a party. Was that so wrong?
I got into my car, propped the map to the farm on the dashboard and heard a knocking. It was not from the engine but from the driver’s side window.
Startled, I looked out to see a strange man�
��s face looking in at me.
Nine
“You’re the pie lady?” the man said.
I cranked the window down, vowing that my next car, if I ever bought one, would have automatic windows. Until then I’d be exercising my biceps every day.
“I’m Hanna Denton, the owner of the shop. What can I do for you?” An enterprising business owner like myself wouldn’t mind dashing in to get a pie for a paying customer.
“I’m Heath Barr’s brother Barton.”
“Barton Barr?” I said blinking rapidly.
“Oh, so you’ve heard of me?” he asked raising his eyebrows.
“No, absolutely not. I just wanted to be sure …” I wanted to be sure someone had actually named his or her child Barton Barr. Heath Barr was bad enough.
He must have misunderstood because he pulled out his wallet and showed me his driver’s license. Sure enough it was made out to Barton Barr and the address was in Los Angeles.
“Do you see the resemblance?” he asked, leaning down so his nose was only inches from mine.
“To your brother? I’ve never met him.”
“Really? Then why …”
“Why would I kill him? I didn’t.”
“That’s not what I meant. Why did you hate him?”
I sighed. I was all dressed up and on my way to a party on a Saturday night, something rare for me and this nutcase who claimed to be Heath’s brother was interrogating me. I wished that Sam would meander out of the police station and cite him for loitering or at least bring him in for questioning.
“I don’t know why you think I hated him,” I said, my foot resting on the gas pedal so I could make a quick getaway if this guy was as nutty as I thought he was. “But if I did it would be because he wrote a nasty review of my pies for the newspaper.”
