“Do I look that irresponsible?” Andrew threw me an injured look. “I spotted Theo at the fairground today, so I asked him to watch the booth while I came here.”
“Theo? Theo’s a baker. He doesn’t know anything about sales.” I didn’t need to add that Theo suffered from crippling shyness. Andrew knew my Berry Basket baker grew anxious and uncomfortable when surrounded by too many people.
“Theo will be fine,” Andrew replied. “You baby him too much.”
Ryan crouched down beside me. “Concentrate, Marlee. The contest is about to start.”
“He’s right.” Andrew massaged my shoulders, as if I were a boxer about to go into the ring. “Keep your head down. Focus. And eat like a pig.”
Taking a deep breath, I readied myself. Except I couldn’t get rid of the image of a panic-stricken Theo left alone at the store’s booth. Now I had another reason to gobble up that pie. As soon as I did, Andrew could be sent to relieve my skittish baker.
The blare of the air horn made me jump. As shouts rose up from the crowd, I looked at the blueberry pie before me. I’d taken part in pie-eating contests at summer camp and knew exactly what to do. Clamping the side of the aluminum pie plate with my teeth, I flipped the contents of the pie onto the table. It spread before me in a gooey blue mass. Like a human vacuum cleaner, I started to slurp up the blueberry filling.
The sticky filling coated my face and lashes; some got into my eyes, but I continued to eat, running my tongue along the tablecloth to scarf up as much as possible. Turning my attention to the crust next, I reminded myself to chew the pieces a few times before swallowing. The woman next to me hadn’t and began to choke, just as Ryan’s brother had.
With Ryan and Andrew cheering me on, I quickly devoured what was left of the pie. Smeared with blueberries, I raised my head and sat back. The crowd hooted and yelled. The judges who stood at the end of the table signaled to Piper, who once again blared the air horn.
“We have a winner!” Piper yelled into the microphone. “Marlee Jacob, owner of The Berry Basket, is this year’s women’s champion of the Blueberry Pie–Eating Contest!”
Relief washed over me, accompanied by a wave of nausea. I hoped I wasn’t about to be sick. Andrew clapped me on the back, which didn’t help.
“Fantastic!” Ryan grabbed my face and gave me a jubilant kiss. When he pulled away, I giggled to see his own face now smeared with blueberry filling. “You’re the best, Marlee. The best! No one else came even close.”
When I glanced over at the pillaged pies on the table, I saw he was right. I could have eaten much slower and still won. At least, everyone had a good time. My fellow contestants, covered in varying amounts of blueberry pie, laughingly extended their congratulations to me. Except for Sloane Gale. As soon as I had been declared the winner, Sloane ripped off her plastic poncho. A stony-faced Porter shook his head. I didn’t know why they seemed upset. Sloane’s pie looked like she had taken all of three bites out of it. More like nibbles, actually.
While I wiped my face clean with a wet towel, Sloane got to her feet. Tossing her shower cap to the ground, she marched off into the crowd.
“It’s not over, Zellar,” Porter snapped at Ryan.
“You got that right. In an hour, we’ll be humiliating Blueberry Hill in the tug-of-war.” Ryan gave a playful tug to my ponytail. “And my victorious girlfriend is going to help beat the crap out of the Gales one more time.”
I stopped cleaning my face. “Wait a second. I’m in the tug-of-war, too?”
Porter shot Ryan a disgusted look. “How pathetic. Leave it to a Zellar to expect his girlfriend to do all the work for him. You’re a loser, Ryan. Always have been. Always will be.” He turned his attention to me. “I’ve heard you’re a smart woman, Marlee. If so, you should know better than to marry someone like him. Get out while you can.”
“You’re the one who’s pathetic!” Ryan shouted at Porter as he left to join his wife. “Can’t even handle losing one little contest.”
I looked up at Ryan. “You never said I was supposed to be part of the tug-of-war.”
Ryan reacted as if I had spoken gibberish. “Of course I expect you to take part. All my sisters-in-law have begged off. Emily can’t this year because she’s pregnant. Adam would deck me for even suggesting she take part. Amanda has no upper body strength, so she’d be as little help to us as her husband was at the pie-eating contest. Barry’s wife sprained her ankle in the tug-of-war last year. Now Melissa flat out refuses to do it again. And Jim told me that Beth has cramps today, which is the worst excuse ever. But it doesn’t matter. You’re in much better shape than they are. You’re strong, too. I’ve seen you carry around heavy crates of berries. You’ll be fine. Only I wish you’d worn jeans instead of those shorts. Your legs might get scraped pretty bad.”
My mouth fell open.
“I’m with Porter on this.” Andrew put his hand on my shoulder. “Let Marlee sit out the next contest. She won’t have time to digest all that pie before then.”
Ryan laughed. “You’re both overreacting. If we pull hard enough, the contest will be over in seconds. No time for her to get sick. And what if she does? It will be worth it if Marlee helps us beat Blueberry Hill.”
Another wave of queasiness swept over me. This time I wasn’t certain if it was the blueberry pie I had wolfed down—or the suspicion that Ryan cared more about his feud with Porter Gale than he did about me.
Chapter Two
Gluttony has its rewards and drawbacks. The fifty-dollar check counted as a reward, as did the fervent gratitude of the Zellar family. The entire Zellar clan had to be prevented from hoisting me on their shoulders and parading me about the fairground in a victory lap. The drawbacks included too many photos of me slathered in pie. A local news station from Grand Rapids had filmed the event, which would allow the rest of west Michigan to witness my victory on the six-o’clock news. The worst drawback: a nasty stomachache to accompany my blue ribbon. I swore to never let Ryan sign me up for another pie-eating contest.
I felt relieved when Ryan and his family left to check out things at the Zellar Orchards tent set up at the fair. I also ordered both Cabot brothers back to work at our vendor booth. And I managed to escape after only a five-minute conversation with Piper, most of it filled with her complaints about the disorganized behavior of the Blueberry Blow Out volunteers.
That left only Tess, who waited until everyone was gone before coming over to give me a friendly hug. “Congratulations,” she said. “You and Porter Gale have proven yourselves to be Oriole Point’s most eximious pie eaters.”
“I don’t know if I’d call our achievement either distinguished or excellent. But I’d describe my current state as crapulent.” Tess Nakamura and I became best friends back in fifth grade when we tied for first place in the regional spelling bee. Since then, we’d kept our spelling skills in shape by using the occasional uncommon word.
Tess pulled a bottle of Tums from her purse. “I figured you might be feeling sick.”
“You’re a lifesaver. Now I need to get out of the sun. Otherwise I may faint or throw up. Possibly both.”
Tess looked around for a shady spot. “Follow me.”
A few minutes later we sat down at an umbrella table near the kiddie pony rides.
“All right, what’s going on? You don’t look happy. And I’m betting it’s not just from gorging on pie.” Tess waited while I chewed three fruit-flavored Tums.
“It’s Ryan,” I said finally. “He entered me in the pie-eating contest without asking me. And that was okay. After all, I do love to eat, especially anything with blueberries. But now I learn he signed me up for the tug-of-war, too. A contest scheduled to take place in less than thirty minutes. My stomach will not be ready.”
“That was presumptuous of him. And rude.”
“It’s not just him signing me up for contests. Ryan won’t stop pressuring me to put my family’s lake house up for sale. He’s determined to have us live at the Zellar Orchar
ds. And he wants to break ground on a house there before the end of the month. I’m afraid he’ll build the house no matter how much I protest.”
I held up my ponytail to allow what little breeze there was to reach the back of my neck. The lakeshore felt like a rain forest today. Not for the first time I envied Tess her short, asymmetrical haircut. “And last week, I discovered the ceiling fan on my back porch had vanished. Without a word to me, Ryan hauled it off to the county dump.”
“What!”
“Ryan hates fans. He always complains about them. But it was my fan and he removed it from my house.” Although Ryan spent a lot of nights at my lakeside home, we maintained separate residences. I resented him treating my possessions as if they already belonged to him.
“He needs to stop making decisions for you. It’s disrespectful.” She frowned. Tess in a disapproving mood brought to mind a fierce female samurai. “If this is any indication of what your life with Ryan will be like, maybe you should reconsider your decision to marry him.”
This startled me. “I thought you liked Ryan.”
“I do. However, there are lots of people I like whom I don’t think you should marry. And until recently you seemed happy to be his future bride, so I never said anything. But for weeks you’ve joked about bridal jitters and getting cold feet. Maybe it’s time to stop joking.” She paused. “I wish you’d follow the example of David and me, at least for a couple of years.”
David Reese and Tess met as eighteen-year-old art students and quickly became a romantic couple. Twelve years later they were still together, with their partnership also a professional one. Oriole Glass, their studio shop in the village, had become one of the most successful art glass galleries in Michigan. But even after a dozen happy years together, the pair had no intention of walking down the aisle.
I nervously tapped the bottle of Tums on the table. “My parents told me to postpone the wedding if I’m having doubts.”
“Sounds like good advice,” Tess said. “Although I doubt Ryan will agree.”
“I did suggest we slow things down a bit. After all, he has one bad marriage behind him. A longer engagement would really be for his benefit. He didn’t buy that excuse. Instead, he accused me of refusing to grow up, being afraid of commitment. And he could be right. After all, I’m thirty and never been married.”
She shrugged. “Same here.”
“But you and David share the same view about marriage. And the two of you are perfect for each other. I’m not so sure about Ryan and me.”
“Marlee, I love David, but no relationship is perfect. Trust me, we fight and get on each other’s nerves sometimes. But we also like and respect each other. Neither of us would dare make a decision without talking it over with the other. Ryan seems to be doing that more and more lately. Not a good sign. You’re too strong a person to put up with a controlling husband.”
“I know.” I watched the children being led around on ponies in the adjacent ring. I remembered doing just that at the Blueberry Blow Out when I was growing up. I suddenly missed being eight years old, with nothing to worry about except trying to convince my parents to let me have another pet bird. Even though I had recently seen them, I also missed my parents, who now lived in Chicago. Fortunately, they were only a two-hour drive away.
Tess scrunched up her nose. “We need to move. This is way too close to the ponies.”
I took a deep breath. “Perfect for me. I’ve always loved the smell of horse manure.”
“I remember. Maybe you should marry the owner of a horse farm, not an orchard.” Tess took my hand. “Or maybe you shouldn’t be getting married at all. At least not to Ryan.”
This conversation hadn’t made me feel any better, even if the Tums had. And I needed to find Ryan. Tess had convinced me to make at least one decision this afternoon. My stomach felt awful, and I dreaded what might happen if forced to pull on a rope with all my might. No matter how much Ryan insisted, I refused to take part in that tug-of-war.
* * *
I found Ryan huddled with his brothers, like a football team before the kickoff. Intent on the upcoming contest, they ignored everyone in the vicinity, including me. I had little choice but to mingle with the Zellar women, who instructed me on the finer points of tug-of-war competition. Too bad Tess left the fairground to go back to work at her studio. When she was around, I always had at least one person in my corner. At the moment, I even missed the Cabot brothers.
A sizable crowd had gathered along the stretch of field marked off for the tug-of-war contests. In an hour, potato sack races were scheduled to start here. I prayed Ryan hadn’t signed me up for that as well. Although I’d missed the first three tugs-of-war between other fruit growers in the region, I did catch the start of the latest contest between the O’Neill Blueberry Farm and Janssen Blueberries.
Evenly divided between male and female, the O’Neill and Janssen teams comprised family members and employees. While taking their places for the tug-of-war, they yelled insults to each other, but the mood felt playful. And if I had to bet on the outcome, I gave the edge to the O’Neill team led by the farm’s husband-and-wife owners, Brody and Cara O’Neill. In their forties, Brody and Cara boasted sturdy muscular frames, a product of long days spent working on their farm. Their hardy physiques came in handy as they dug their heels in and leaned back as far as possible while straining on the tug-of-war rope. If I tried to do the same in my current queasy state, my stomach would probably explode.
Rallied by Brody and Cara, the O’Neill team soon dragged the Janssen team toward them with one great pull. When the white bandanna hanging from the middle of the rope edged over the bright red line painted on the ground, everyone collapsed in a heap of sand and laughter. Cara O’Neill laughed the loudest. Since Cara was also the sister of Porter Gale, it appeared the Gale siblings shared a healthy competitive drive.
I scanned the area for Porter and his team. Like the Zellars, the Gales stood close together talking; no females were part of the group. A few yards away, Sloane sat cross-legged on the ground, fanning herself with a carnival program. She looked bored to death.
An unattractive young man I recognized as Cara’s son, Wyatt, joined her. When he crouched down and kissed her on the neck, she shoved him hard and he fell backward onto the dirt. Sloane wore an angry expression, but Wyatt merely laughed before ambling away. What was that all about? I knew Sloane and Wyatt were close in age, but nuzzling your aunt on the neck ranked as creepy. I also wondered why he hadn’t competed with his family in the tug-of-war.
“There you are.” Ryan trotted over to give me a hug. “Your stomach feeling any better?”
“A little, but I don’t think it’s wise for me to pull on a rope right now.”
“Don’t worry. We found out the Blueberry Hill team will be men only. I guess Porter got spooked about going up against my pie champion fiancée. Marlee, I’m sorry I volunteered you for the tug-of-war, but I forgot it began so soon after the pie-eating contest. And I should have asked you first. I guess you’re engaged to a stupid, selfish idiot. One who doesn’t deserve you.” He kissed me, making me feel a bit guilty about my conversation with Tess. “Forgive me?”
“Yes.” I kissed him back. “But I haven’t forgiven you for taking my ceiling fan.”
He chuckled. “You don’t need it. That’s why God invented air-conditioning.” Ryan gestured at the Zellar tug-of-war team. “The contest might get rough. So me and my brothers asked J.J., Tommy, and Boblo to join us.” J.J. was Ryan’s teenage nephew, while Tommy and Boblo were Zellar cousins who worked at the orchards.
I looked over at the Gale team. “I assume most of those guys work for Blueberry Hill.”
He snorted. “Yeah, Porter has to literally pay to put together a team.”
“Not every family is as big as your own. You can’t blame him for including employees.”
“I blame him for everything.”
“I don’t get this hatred of Porter Gale. Blueberry Hill is much bigger
than Zellars. They’re a national brand, like Dole. It doesn’t make sense to be so competitive with them. Why can’t Blueberry Hill and Zellar Orchards peacefully coexist? Like Kosovo and Serbia?” I put my arms around his waist and pulled him closer. “Or Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.”
“Because we can’t. At least Porter and I can’t. And now it’s time to whip his ass.”
With a sinking heart, I watched as Ryan ran to join his brothers and cousins. This whole thing promised to be even more absurd than the pie-eating contest.
Porter and his team now busied themselves with kicking at the sandy ground where the previous tugs-of-war had taken place. Ryan yelled at them, prompting an angry response from Porter. I wondered what happened last year at the tug-of-war. I missed the entire Blueberry Blow Out when my dad broke his leg and I spent the week helping him and my mom in Chicago. During the rest of the year, I was too busy at The Berry Basket to keep tabs on any disputes out in the orchards. However, Ryan and I had been dating since last summer, and this was the first I’d heard about his personal animosity toward Porter.
Cara O’Neill walked up to me. “Hi, Marlee. Looks like the next one is boys only.”
“I’m glad they decided to go stag. My name was on the original team roster. But I did my part today.” I tapped the blue ribbon pinned to my BERRY BASKET T-shirt. “And congratulations on winning your tug-of-war. I thought your son would be taking part.”
“You know kids. He thinks all these games are juvenile. But we didn’t need him. And congrats on the pie-eating win. Porter should never have entered Sloane. The girl hates pie.”
“Surprised you didn’t compete again.”
She took a sip from her water bottle. “I’m forty-two, past the age anyone should be embarrassing themselves in a pie-eating contest. Also your soon-to-be sister-in-law Emily has beaten me every time. Who knew she’d let a little thing like pregnancy stop her this year?”
Killed on Blueberry Hill Page 2
