“Yeah.” I studied the two elderly men. “Have you been sitting here all morning?”
Graham sipped his coffee. “It’s a mission.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Wally agreed.
I edged away. “Okay. Well. Thanks.” What had Charlene started?
“Order up!” Petronella, called.
I spun to the kitchen window and grabbed the tray of breakfast pies.
Now, I don’t usually bus food to tables, but these were extraordinary circumstances and the gamers were my best customers. Besides, Ray still hadn’t picked the dice off the checkerboard floor. They were a slip-and-fall hazard.
I slid the breakfast pies (served all day!) onto the Formica table.
The gamers edged their books and dice aside.
I bent to pick up the dice and extended them to Ray.
Staring at the kitchen window, he didn’t notice. “That’s Ilsa Fueder,” Ray said in a strangled tone, his freckles pale.
“I know,” I said. “It’s Pie Hard. They’re giving us a consult.” I bit my lower lip. “I hope they’re not too brutal.”
“The carnage is the best part of the show.” His broad face filled with longing. “Ilsa Fueder. How long will they be here?”
“Only for a few days,” I said. “Three tops.”
Ilsa walked past the kitchen window and nibbled on a hand pie, her expression sour.
I rubbed my hands in my apron. What did she have against hand pies?
Ray’s gaze tracked her movements. “I think she looked at me.”
“Pie Hard?” Zack, a narrow, bespectacled gamer with an uneven beard asked. “Like Die Hard?”
“Yeah,” Ray said. “Haven’t you seen it?”
“I’ve seen Die Hard,” Zack said, “the greatest Christmas movie ever made. But nothing about pies.”
“Christmas movie?” Henrietta, Ray’s maybe-girlfriend (I was uncertain of their status), raised a brow. She wore an over-sized Army-green t-shirt and cargo pants. Henrietta shook her tousled head. “Die Hard’s not a Christmas movie.” She tugged down the front of her usual oversized Army-green t-shirt.
“Are you kidding me?” Zack asked. “Of course it is. What do you think?” he asked me.
Nuh-uh. I knew better than to wade into that controversy. “Sorry, gotta go.” I hurried to the register and stopped short by the Dutch door. Uh oh. Had Ilsa been eating a day-old hand pie? Was that why her nose had wrinkled like she’d tasted something foul? Not that the day-olds were foul—they were just a day old. She should know what it was—the day-olds were labeled clearly. The show had never been about being fair, though. It was about drama.
Through the kitchen window, Charlene gave me a thumbs up and grinned.
I smiled weakly.
I was probably overreacting. Everyone who watched the show knew Ilsa was tough on everyone. We ran a clean bakery, and I might even get some good advice.
I smiled with more confidence. After all, how bad could it be?
CHAPTER 3
The crew was as good as their word, observing our work and trying to stay out of our way. I was still aiming for think-positive mode when I drove home that evening—but I couldn’t shake the sense of disaster hovering in the wings.
My back to the tangerine and raspberry streaked sunset, I turned east toward home. I was exhausted, and the weather had turned balmy. All I wanted to do now was relax in my yard.
I’d forgotten about the goddess circle.
Women in gauzy clothing drifted about my lawn. One group danced in a circle around a drummer. A catering van sat in my van’s usual parking spot. A team of uniformed caterers bustled around the picnic table. They loaded it with large bowls and foil-wrapped containers.
A yurt stood near the cliff. Torches lit the fabric entrance. Two portable toilets were tucked discreetly in a stand of eucalyptus trees.
My stomach plunged, and I slowed the van. So much for kicking back in my lawn chair. How long did Charlene say they were staying? A week? I groaned. But Charlene had done me a solid getting Pie Hard to do an episode in my shop. I could live with goddesses for a week.
Forcing a smile, I parked near the corner of my deep blue tiny house/shipping container and stepped onto the loose soil. A drum boomed, and I repressed a wince.
The caterers glanced at me as I walked past the table and reached to unlock my door. I turned the key. The door was already unlocked.
I frowned, puzzled. In the morning’s excitement, had I forgotten to lock it? Even if I had, people had been here all day. There should be nothing to worry about. I stepped inside.
Nothing appeared disturbed. My kitchenette’s linoleum counters held a neat stack of unopened junk mail and nothing more. To one side of the kitchen, the wooden chairs sat pushed beneath the table in the square dining nook. I leaned sideways so I could see past the bookshelf. My futon was made, the closet doors shut.
Behind the kitchen, a toilet flushed, and I started. Water whooshed in my bathroom sink.
A zaftig redhead in a long, sunset-colored Moroccan-style gown stepped from my bathroom. She extended her hand. “Hi! You must be Val!” A coin scarf around her hips jingled.
“Ah . . .” Blindly, I shook her hand. There was something maternal about her freckled presence, and I guessed she was in her fifties. This, combined with her broad smile, made me want to like her, but she was an intruder, and I let go of her quickly.
“I’m Maureen,” she said. “Are you okay?”
I took a deep breath, counted to three. “Um, what are you doing in my house?”
“Charlene said you wouldn’t mind. We have two portable toilets, but your trailer has all the running water. Will she be by tonight? I’ve got a check for her.”
Panic rose in my throat. My tiny house was a designated bathroom? “How many women are in your group?”
“Only fifteen.”
I ran quick feminine bathroom-usage calculations. “Oh, my God.” Charlene!
She winked. “Oh, my Goddess, please!” Her brow furrowed. “Wait, you didn’t know?”
“No!”
“Oh, no. Charlene told me she’d forgotten to tell you about the morning yurt delivery. I didn’t realize she didn’t tell you about the water issue either.”
Cleansing breaths, cleansing breaths. I could manage this for a week. “That’s all right,” I said, determined not to be a drama queen.
“Thank you. We don’t want to inconvenience you any more than we have to.”
The drumming speeded, its pace frenetic. There was a whoop and an answering call. My muscles clenched.
“Since you mention it,” I said, “I have to get to work early in the morning. That means I need to go to sleep at a reasonable hour.”
She squeezed my arm. “I understand completely. No drumming after nine p.m., and we’ll move into the yurt then so you won’t hear us. But why don’t you join us for dinner? We have plenty of food. In fact, you’re welcome to join in the dance circle. It’s such a lovely evening, we might even go skyclad.”
“Skyclad . . .”
“Naked.”
“Right.” Riiight. There was no way I was exposing my pasty white body to strangers. I might live near the beach, but I spent most of my time indoors, baking. “Thanks, but I’ll probably turn in early. It’s been a long day.” Note to self: keep the blinds shut.
Her broad face creased with sympathy. “Charlene called today and told me about your TV show surprise. I imagine it was rather unsettling on top of the four a.m. yurt delivery.”
“It threw me,” I admitted. “Since my house is on blocks, that big delivery truck shook it so much that it felt like an earthquake. And the headlights shining through my windows were like UF . . .” I motioned to the front, sliding glass doors and shuddered at the memory.
She canted her head. “Were like UF?”
My cell phone rang. Glad for the excuse to stop talking, I dug it from the pocket of my hoodie and saw it was Gamer Ray. “Sorry,” I said. “I need to
take this.”
“Sure. And please join us for dinner. We’d love to hear more about the baking life.” She hustled outside, shutting my front door gently behind her.
“Hi, Ray,” I said. “What’s up?”
He gulped. “You have to help me.” His words were low, quick, and urgent.
I straightened. “What’s wrong?” Ray had basically saved my life a month or so back and was still limping from his heroics. He also ate more pies than anyone I knew, and I was a big believer in gratitude. I owed him.
“I’m at the Belinda Hotel. The trail beneath the cliffs.”
“What’s happened?”
“She’s dead.”
I swayed and my pulse revved. “Dead? Who’s dead? Not Charlene?”
The line went dead.
Nausea swam up my throat, and I braced my hand on the small dining table for balance. Not Charlene? I pressed the redial button.
Someone banged on the front door. I flung it open.
Charlene looked up at me from the base of the metal steps.
I sagged against the doorframe. “You’re alive!”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” She rubbed her wrinkled chin.
Her white cat, Frederick, lay draped around her neck. She claimed the cat was deaf and narcoleptic. I was convinced he was just milking her for free rides.
“I think I might have forgotten to discuss the bathroom situation with you,” she said.
“No time.” Frantic, I hurried down the front steps, turned to lock the door, and remembered there was no point. “Ray’s in trouble.”
“Ray?” Her white brows rocketed skyward. “What’s happened to Ray?”
“I’ll explain on the way. Come on.” I hustled her and Frederick into my pink van, and we roared down the hill.
“What’s happened to Ray?” she repeated.
“He said he saw someone die.” I told her about the call and handed her my cell phone. “Try calling him back. We got cut off.”
“Cut off?” she asked, dialing.
My heel bounced on the van floor. “Or he hung up. I couldn’t tell.” I whizzed past a stand of Eucalyptus trees and around a tight curve. The van’s tires squealed. “But he sounded pretty upset.”
“Ray witnessed a murder? He could be in serious trouble! If the killer knows he was seen—”
“He didn’t say it was murder.” I gripped the wheel more tightly. “It could have been anything. Maybe he was mistaken about the whole thing.”
“Ray’s not stupid.” She passed the phone to me. “And he’s not answering his phone either. I don’t like this.”
We turned south on the One and promptly got stuck behind a slow-moving garlic truck. I wrinkled my nose at the smell, my hands clenching and unclenching on the wheel. “Come on, come on,” I muttered. This section of the highway was one lane and prone to jam ups.
“Honk at him!” Charlene said.
“We’re almost there.”
Reaching across me, she pressed her hand on the horn. Charlene leaned out her open window, Frederick’s snowy fur whipping in the breeze. “Get moving or get over!”
The truck didn’t increase its pace, and it didn’t get over either. Finally, we reached the turn-off for the luxury hotel, built of gray wood and stone on the ocean cliff. Emerald lawn rolled toward the setting sun, the sky a livid bruise.
Pulse racing, I parked at the back of the lot. Police cars, blue lights strobing, sat in front of the massive hotel.
“I thought you said he was on the cliffside trail,” Charlene said.
“That’s what he said.” I unbuckled my seatbelt. “I’m guessing this was as close as the police cars could get.”
“The trailhead’s that way.” Charlene stepped from the van and pointed toward a gabled outbuilding, nestled in the rolling hills of the golf course.
We jogged to the paved trail. Thick rope linked low wooden posts, making a fence along the ocean cliffs. The trail quickly sloped downward, the cliffs purpling as the darkness deepened. A cluster of California poppies drooped, their orange petals closed for the night.
From the darkness beneath us, voices rose over the steady crush of waves.
“I should have brought a flashlight,” I muttered.
We descended the trail and rounded a bend.
“No need,” Charlene said. “Look.”
People clustered on the trail ahead. A standing light had been set up, and lights from people’s phones bobbed.
A broad figure with sloped shoulders parted from the group and limped toward us.
“Ray!” I hurried to him. “Are you all right? What happened?”
Even in the dim light, his freckles stood in stark relief against his pale skin. He shook his head. “I was walking the trail, you know, for, um, exercise, and I heard a woman shouting on the cliff up there.” He pointed. “And then . . .” He swallowed. “She just came flying off.”
“Wait,” Charlene said—her voice frosted with disbelief. “You were exercising?”
I glared at her.
“Humph,” Charlene said.
“You’re sure the woman was shouting, before she went over the cliff? That means she wasn’t alone on that cliff. It’s suspicious, Val.” She raised her phone and snapped a picture of the crowd.
“Maybe she was shouting to someone at a distance,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” Ray said, “she sounded angry, but . . .”
“But what?” I asked.
He looked away and didn’t answer.
Charlene shot me a look. “But you didn’t see anyone up on the cliff with her?”
“I looked up when I heard the shouting, and then . . .” He swallowed and looked sick. “She took a long time to fall.” His jaw clenched. “It isn’t right. I tried to help her, but she was dead.”
Charlene hugged him. “Don’t beat yourself up. You couldn’t have done anything more.”
“She was so alive at the taping this morning,” he said, mournful.
“Not Ilsa!” I rubbed my arms. The French baker had spent most of the day sneering at us, but what a terrible way to die. I imagined her foot slipping, a terrified grab for safety, then the fall.
“What?” His brown eyes widened. “No, it was that older woman on the crew. You know, with the cat earrings?”
“Old? Regina was only in her fifties.” Charlene’s expression tightened.
He shot her a sideways glance. “Her name was Regina?”
“The woman with the cat earrings was the producer,” I said. This was awful. “Regina Katz.”
“She was pushed.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I saw it happen.”
“You saw someone push her?” I asked, horrified.
“No, but the trajectory of her fall . . . I’m studying to be an engineer. She was pushed. I know it.”
A wave crashed, abnormally loud. Suddenly cold, I pulled my hoodie over my head.
“You need to talk to the police,” I said.
“And then we need to talk to her husband,” Charlene said.
“Her husband?” I asked. “We’re not investigating.” I didn’t want Charlene to get carried away with her idea.
“Condolences,” Charlene said.
“But he doesn’t know us,” I protested. Charlene just wanted to investigate another murder, and that would so not be a good idea.
“Of course he does,” Charlene said.
I blinked.
“He’s the cameraman,” Charlene said.
“She was married to the cameraman?” I asked. That explained why he’d called her honey.
“Nepotism,” Charlene said darkly. “So?”
“I don’t suppose it would hurt to talk to the crew,” I said, reluctant. “But anything we learn goes straight to the police.”
She nodded. “Great. Let’s get closer.”
Feet dragging, I followed the two to the cluster of onlookers.
“I ran to help her,” Ray told Charlene, “but she was . . .” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “
So I called 911, and then I called Val.”
“Let me through,” a man shouted. “She’s my wife!” The cameraman pushed through the crowd.
A beefy policeman I recognized stopped Steve and said something in a low voice.
The cameraman crumpled, his broad hands covered his face. His shoulders quaked.
Ilsa, the highlights in her hair luminous beneath the artificial lights, placed a hand on his upper back.
He turned to the pastry chef and buried his head on her shoulder.
Her knees buckled, but she straightened. Her expression was unreadable.
Charlene stepped toward them, but I touched her arm. “Let’s wait a bit,” I said, not wanting to intrude. In spite of Charlene’s delusions and Ray’s misplaced faith, we weren’t murder investigators. However, my heart ached for Ray. What an awful thing to witness—to feel so helpless.
The skin between my shoulders prickled. I glanced behind me, up the trail.
The stranger from Pie Town, Frank, stood with his hands in the pockets of his tweed jacket and watched the action. Something in his man-about-town slouch reminded me of the golden-age actor, David Niven—when he was playing a villain. My dark thoughts were probably because of the atmosphere—the tragic whisper of the ocean, the fluttering police tape, the deepening night.
Behind and slightly above him, the slim young ninja crouched at the base of the cliff. The Eurasian man tossed his head, his dark hair falling over one eye.
Uneasy, I turned to Charlene. “Hey, those guys from this morning are here.”
“What guys?” she asked.
“Professor Patches and the ninja.”
“Sounds like a boy band,” she said. “Where?”
I pointed to the top of the cliff, but the younger man had vanished. “He disappeared.”
“Maybe he’s a ghost ninja,” she said, wry.
“Are those a thing?” Ray asked.
“Sure.” She glanced at me, and I thought I caught the shadow of a wink.
Charlene was distracting Ray. Good.
“Anyone can become a ghost,” she said.
Leaving them to argue the afterlife, I pondered the day. Something had felt off from the beginning. Had my subconscious somehow seen this coming? Two customers, who’d shown up at Pie Town the same morning as the TV crew, were on the scene of Regina Katz’s death. It probably didn’t mean anything. This was a big hotel in a small town. Lots of people stayed here, and lots of people who didn’t stay here walked its trails. The coincidence didn’t sit well, and I gnawed my bottom lip.
Pie Hard Page 3
