Pie Hard

by Kirsten Weiss

  “This isn’t the time.”

  “Do you have better things to do?” he asked, panting.

  I steered him around a gap in the rocks. “I remember what happened when I was a kid.”

  He set Luther down and braced the unconscious man’s back against his knees. “You remember what, exactly?” Frank mopped his forehead with the back of a tweed sleeve.

  “I remember a strange man taking me from my room,” I said, talking rapidly. “You came to get me and snuck me past the police cars and in through a window.” Tell me it’s a false memory, it didn’t happen, it was a dream.

  “Oh.” He looked toward the far-off cliffs. “That.”

  My nails bit into my palms. “Oh that? That’s all you have to say? What happened?”

  He lowered his head, a muscle pulsing in his jaw. “I didn’t think they’d take you, but of course I wasn’t thinking at all. All I cared about was the gambling high. It was the lowest moment of my life. That’s why now I work to help people like N—”

  “Stop it, just stop it!” Disappointment skewered my gut.

  “I’ve known you a week and I’m already fed up with your lines.”

  “I guess I can’t blame you.”

  “And stop trying to be reasonable! Nothing about this is reasonable.”

  “I don’t suppose it is, but we should keep moving.” He hefted Luther’s bulk and walked backward.

  I started to argue, but angrily clamped my mouth shut. Not the time.

  We moved slowly, slower than the tide that swept around our shins and ankles, trying to suck us under.

  I guided Frank around more pits and crevices. “And why didn’t you tell the police what had happened?”

  “The police would have made it worse. You don’t understand what these people are like.”

  “I suppose that’s when mom threw you out,” I said, my voice rising.

  Frank’s grip loosened. He cursed, and Luther sagged to the left.

  I leapt forward, but my feet zipped from beneath me. I reached backward to brace myself, and hit the rocks hard.

  “Valentine! Are you all right?”

  I gasped from the cold and pain. My palm stung. My butt hurt. My pride festered. “I’m fine.” Reeling, I reached for Luther’s shoulder, but my father got there first.

  “It’s all right. I’ve got him. You just watch the rocks for us. And yes, that was when your mother and I agreed it was best I leave.”

  We edged backwards, and then my foot sank into sodden sand.

  Luther jerked, thrashing, and Frank dropped him onto the beach. A waved rolled over him, and Luther’s eyes blinked open.

  “Nice timing.” Frank kicked him lightly. “Now on your feet.”

  The assistant cameraman groaned. “Why’d you save me?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Frank said. “My daughter seemed to think you were worth saving.”

  Charlene hallooed, and I looked up the cliff. Blue lights flashing, an ambulance rolled to a stop at its edge.

  “He should get checked out,” I said, jerking my head toward the cliff. “He hit his head pretty hard.”

  “But he confessed before the fall,” Frank said. “He said he killed Regina.”

  Frank and I eyed each other.

  “Are you going to tell the police,” Frank asked, “or shall I?”

  I sighed. “I’m sure Chief Shaw will want to hear it from us both.”

  Luther lolled on the sand. It crusted one side of his face.

  “Unless you have something to add?” I asked him. I didn’t quite believe his confession. Luther was drunk and suicidal, and in his own way, I thought he’d loved Regina.

  He rolled to his side and vomited.

  “Ugh.” I wrinkled my nose.

  “This is why I don’t stick my nose in,” Frank said. “And I’m not carrying him up that trail.”

  I looked down at the man, arms wide and collapsed on the beach. “Can you stand?”

  “Blagh.” Luther shook his head. “I think so.”

  We helped him rise and hauled him up the path to the top of the cliff. A crowd of golfers and tourists gathered by the ambulance. Two men in blue uniforms hurried forward and took Luther off our hands.

  Charlene tossed a blanket over my shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Thanks.” My shoes squished with cold salt water, and my jeans were soaked, but I was sweating after our trek up the cliff.

  A uniformed police officer approached us.

  Frank intercepted them, and I turned away.

  “What’s up?” Charlene whispered.

  “Luther confessed,” I said, “but I don’t think it was a real confession. He was drunk and depressed.”

  “No kidding.”

  I stiffened.

  Doran, dressed in his usual black, lurked on the edges of the crowd and watched us. Watched! Luther had nearly been drowned, and he’d been looky-looing instead of helping. I stabbed my finger toward him. “Hey!”

  Doran turned and strode away.

  Anger flared inside me. I was fed up with being stalked by this jerk. “Hey!” I trotted after him.

  He glanced over his shoulder and broke into a run.

  What was he up to? I raced after him. “Stop!”

  Ninjalike, he jumped into an abandoned golf cart and zoomed toward the hotel.

  A man shouted.

  Huffing, Charlene grasped the side of a golf cart. At the wheel, a man in plaid pants and a flat cap gaped.

  She clambered into the passenger seat. “Follow that golf cart!”

  I piled into the back.

  Frank raced toward us.

  The driver swiveled to look at me. “What—?”

  “Well, don’t sit there like a bump on a log,” Charlene said to the driver. “He’s getting away!”

  The driver purpled. “Who are you?”

  Charlene reached across with her foot and slammed down on the accelerator. The golf cart lurched forward.

  Frank leapt, grabbing the grip bar. One foot landed on the bumper.

  The cart swerved, but stayed upright.

  “Are you crazy?” the driver shrieked.

  “Either I drive, or you do,” Charlene said.

  “I’ll do it, I’ll do it! Get off my foot!”

  Frank coiled sideways and sat heavily beside me. “What’s going on?”

  “Doran stole that golf cart,” I shouted over the roar of the motor.

  We zipped around a sand trap.

  “Hurry,” Charlene urged the driver. “You’re losing him.”

  The driver’s broad face reddened. “I can’t lose him on a golf course. There’s nowhere to go.”

  “He’s putting distance between us,” Charlene said.

  “That’s because we’re carrying more weight,” the driver snarled.

  “Good point.” She turned in her seat and tapped Frank’s shoulder. “We need to lighten the load.”

  Frank folded his arms. “I’m not leaving this golf cart.”

  “You’re slowing us down,” she said, giving him a useless push.

  He rocked against me, and I gasped, grabbing the handle.

  The golf course unfurled in front of me, leaving the ambulance, the crowd, the ocean shrinking in the distance. Suddenly, I felt sick. I never could ride backwards.

  I twisted, craning my neck to look forward, and swallowed hard. “He’s headed for the hotel parking lot.”

  “Step on it.” Charlene swatted Frank from behind. “And you be a better human.”

  “Ow!”

  The golf cart careened over a hillock. The rear wheels went airborne, and I shrieked.

  The back end of the cart hit the lawn, flinging me toward the edge of my seat.

  Frank grabbed the collar of my hoodie and yanked me against the seat.

  “Watch it,” Frank and Charlene hollered.

  We were getting closer. Doran was only fifty feet ahead of us.

  “How am I supposed to drive with you man
iacs trying to kill each other?” the driver asked.

  Doran’s golf cart stopped beside a decorative rock formation. He leapt from the cart and darted around the corner of the hotel, toward the parking lot.

  “He’s getting away,” Charlene said.

  The golf cart shuddered to a halt. The driver folded his arms over his chest. “Ride’s over.”

  “Thanks!” I scrambled from the cart and raced to the hotel. Plowing through a garden area of black tanbark and lavender bushes, I rounded the corner of the building. Footsteps and heavy breathing followed behind me.

  In front of the hotel, Gordon leaned inside the driver’s side of his sedan, the door open, a radio in his hand.

  Doran raced past.

  Ray, in baggy jeans and a comic book t-shirt walked around his white Escort, parked at the valet stand. Keys dangled from his extended hand.

  Doran ran toward the uniformed valet.

  “Everything’s under control here,” Gordon said into the radio as I pounded past.

  Ray made to hand the keys to the valet.

  Doran snatched them from his hand and jumped, skidding across the hood of the Escort.

  “Hey!” Ray shouted.

  “That’s my stalker.” I wheezed. “Stop him!”

  Doran whipped inside the Escort and started the car. It lurched forward.

  Ray hurled himself onto the Escort’s roof.

  “Don’t!” I screamed. Again, I was too late.

  The car putted down the driveway at a lazy crawl. Black exhaust spewed from the tailpipe. Ray gripped both sides of the roof, the side of his face pressed to the white metal.

  Charlene stopped beside me. Bent nearly double, she reached up to grasp my shoulder. “Idiot.”

  “What’s Ray thinking?” I asked, horrified.

  “Ray’s fine,” she said, panting. “Car troubles, remember? That car can’t do more than five miles an hour.”

  A siren wailed in the distance.

  She pulled her cell phone from her jacket pocket. Squinting, she aimed it at Ray and the car.

  At a crawl, the car made a ninety-degree turn. Ray’s hips slid sideways, his sneakers dangling off the edge. He inch-wormed back to the center, his jeans squeaking against the metal.

  Jaw slack, Gordon came to stand beside us in the shade of the hotel. “What the hell?” He shrugged out of his blue suit jacket.

  Ray’s body swayed atop the car.

  “Attempted car theft,” I said, watching the slow-mo action movie unfold. “I think.”

  “Remind me why I transferred to San Nicholas?” Swearing, Gordon handed me his blazer and jogged to the Escort, now doing an unhurried donut around an island lush with California poppies.

  Frank joined us, and we watched Gordon chase the car, meandering around the island.

  Ray’s curses floated through the air.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like that,” Frank said. “Is life in San Nicholas always this . . . eventful?”

  “No,” Charlene said, “but it’s always this weird.”

  The ambulance drove around the corner of the hotel, its siren shrieking, blue lights flashing. It bumped over the sidewalk and into the parking lot.

  Unhurried, the Escort escaped the gravity well of the flower island and puttered into the ambulance’s path.

  Brakes screeched. The ambulance bumped the side of the Escort.

  Ray rolled off at a leisurely pace, vanishing with a thud behind the car.

  “Ray!” I ran to the crash site. Henrietta was so going to kill me. Good boyfriends are hard to find. If I’d damaged hers a second time . . .

  Gordon yanked Doran from the car and jammed him against the hood. He cuffed his hands behind his back.

  I ran to the opposite side of the Escort.

  Ray lay on his back and stared into the blue sky, a silly expression on his face.

  I dropped to the pavement beside him. “Ray, are you okay?”

  “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he said. “Being a Baker Street Baker is the coolest.”

  The car coughed, sputtered. Another explosion of exhaust shot from its tailpipe.

  “He must have hit his head,” Charlene said. “I’ll get help.”

  “Tell me you got video,” he said to her.

  “Duh. Of course I got video,” Charlene said.

  Grinning like an idiot, he tried to sit up. “Lemme see.”

  I pressed my hand to his chest and forced him to the macadam. “Don’t move. Let the paramedics check you out first.”

  Charlene handed him the phone, and he settled on the pavement to view his antics on the small screen.

  A paramedic, black bag in hand, trotted around the front of the car and knelt beside us. “You’re supposed to ride inside the car, son.”

  Ray smiled dreamily.

  I shot the paramedic a worried look.

  “I can’t wait to tell Henrietta,” Ray said.

  Still a little motion sick, I rose and sloshed around the car to Doran. My jeans were cold, clammy and irritating.

  “Why?” I shouted. “Why are you following me?”

  Frank strolled to my side. “More importantly, why did you run?”

  “I’m not running,” Doran said—expression sullen.

  Gordon growled. “You stole a car.”

  “And a golf cart,” Charlene chimed in.

  Doran gazed skyward and blew out his breath. “I wasn’t following you, Val, not at first. I just wanted to figure out how you were connected to him.” He spat the last word.

  “Him, who?” Frank pressed a hand to his chest and his eyes widened. “Him, me? Why?”

  Doran glowered. “Because you’re my father.”

  CHAPTER 31

  I gaped at Doran, braced against the Escort, his hands cuffed behind his back against the car. “Your father? He’s your father? But that means . . .” I trailed off, stunned. Suddenly I could see it, his blue eyes, and his oval-shaped face. I’d seen it in my mirror every morning.

  The ambulance siren chirped, and I jumped.

  “Give her a minute,” Charlene said. “She’ll get there.”

  “I know what it means,” I snapped. “I just . . . You’re his son? Seriously? You’re my—”

  “Brother by a different mother.” Doran’s shoulders caved inward. “Sorry I was freaking you out.”

  “You were,” I said. “You seemed to be everywhere.”

  “Everywhere he was. Tracking his comings and goings. Like I said, it wasn’t about you. It’s not your fault you’re his daughter.”

  “Did Frank abandon you and your mother too?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Doran and I might have more in common than I’d suspected. “Did he get you kidnapped by loan sharks when you were a kid?”

  Gordon’s head whipped toward Frank, and his face hardened to granite. “What?”

  “It was a long time ago,” Frank said hurriedly. “Really, Val, you need to let that go.”

  “How are we supposed to let it go,” Doran said, “when nothing’s changed?”

  I braced my hands on my hips. “Yeah.”

  Frank raised his hands and backed away, his gaze darting about the parking lot. “All right, all right. I’m feeling a little ganged up on here.”

  “You’re complaining to us about gangs?” Doran tossed his head, flipping his long, black hair out of his eyes for roughly a millisecond. “You’re in the mob.”

  Frank drew away, consternation written across his face. “Let’s take a breath. Who’s your mother?”

  “You don’t even—” Doran lunged at him.

  Gordon wrestled him against the dust-covered white car. “Okay,” the detective said. “That’s enough.”

  “Wait—you’re not Takako’s son?” Frank asked.

  Doran ground his teeth. “How many different women have you been with?”

  I swayed. Did I have an even bigger family than I knew? “That’s why you’ve been lurking?” I asked. �
�Hold on. Doran, were you the one who broke into Pie Town?”

  Doran cut a glance at the detective.

  “If you were,” I said quickly, “I won’t press charges.”

  “Oh, yes you will,” Charlene said. “I dented my favorite rolling pin.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “And the golf cart wasn’t stolen. It was never removed from the hotel’s property. I’m sure Ray won’t press charges over the car.”

  Ray popped up from behind the Escort. “What?”

  “You got to ride on the car roof,” I said. “It was your dream, wasn’t it?”

  He rubbed his ginger head. “I dunno.”

  “Trust me,” Charlene said. “The video I shot’s gonna launch both our Internet careers.” She smirked. “Good luck topping this, Marla Van Helsing.”

  “I was trying to figure out Frank’s connection to you,” Doran said. “You were obviously important to him—more important than I was—”

  “I didn’t even know you existed,” Frank said.

  “Hey.” One of the blue-shirted paramedics nodded to the ambulance. “Can we leave now? I want to get our guy checked out at the hospital.”

  Gordon nodded. “Go.”

  “I guess I won’t press charges either,” Ray said, “not against Val’s brother.”

  Gordon made a disgusted noise, but he unlocked the cuffs.

  Doran rubbed his wrists. “When I learned Frank was in the mob, I wanted to figure out what game he was playing before I approached him. Or you.”

  “What did you learn?” I asked.

  “I’m not playing a game,” Frank said. “Everything I’ve done has been completely aboveboard.”

  “You’re putting the squeeze on Nigel for the mob,” I said.

  He rolled his eyes toward the detective. “Allegedly.”

  Frank was impossible! I clawed one hand through my loose hair and handed Gordon his suit jacket. “You must be so glad you’re off this case.”

  “No.” He slipped into the jacket. “Though I hear you got a confession from Luther.”

  “How’d you find out so quickly?” I asked.

  “We have these things called radios,” Gordon said. “The two officers at the scene took a statement from your father. I expect Chief Shaw will call you in to confirm.”

  “Then we need to prove who really did do it before that happens,” I said.

  “We?” Gordon asked. “You’re not supposed to prove anything. At least not publicly. You’re a civilian.”