Pies Before Guys Read online

  “Same thing we were doing. He got word an old TA of Starke’s would be there. So he contacted a friend of his in the local PD, and they came.” Fortunately, the other cop was a good friend of his, or we’d have been arrested for trespassing.

  The alley door to the kitchen rattled and swung open.

  Abril, wisps of near-black hair escaping from its thick knot, slipped inside the Pie Town kitchen.

  “Abril!”

  Charlene and I hurried around the butcher-block work island to hug her.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She laughed unevenly. “You heard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was okay.” She gulped, grabbing a hairnet from the box. “Just some questions.”

  “They sure took a long time,” Charlene growled.

  Abril adjusted the hairnet over her glossy, black bun and slipped a Pie Town apron over her head. “The police were thorough.”

  “But why focus on you?” Charlene asked.

  I nudged Charlene’s tennis shoe with mine. I’d gotten the distinct impression Abril had become a suspect for good reason. Gordon thought she’d been romantically entangled with Michael Starke.

  Abril colored. “It’s embarrassing.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to tell us.”

  “Yes, she does,” Charlene said.

  “It’s just—I’m so ashamed.”

  “Never mind,” I said.

  Charlene’s eyes narrowed. “Ashamed about what?”

  Abril tied the apron behind her back and didn’t meet our eyes. She closed her eyes, her nostrils flaring, and nodded. She met my gaze. “You should hear it from me, because you’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Maybe not,” I said with increasing desperation. Couldn’t Charlene just leave it?

  “Professor Starke hired me to be his teaching assistant this year.”

  I stared. If Starke hit on all his assistants, it explained why Gordon had thought them romantically involved.

  “Going to class, working at Pie Town, and being a TA?” Charlene asked. “That’s a lot of hours.”

  Abril’s flush turned a deeper shade of crimson.

  “Oh,” I said, cast iron weighting my stomach. “You were planning on quitting Pie Town.”

  “It’s not that I don’t love this place,” she said hurriedly. “But I want to be an English professor someday. Working as Professor Starke’s TA would have looked great on my application when I transfer to a university. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. You understand, don’t you?”

  “I do.” My voice lowered, and I looked away. Well, of course she didn’t want to work here forever. This was my dream, and she had her own, and I needed to cowgirl up. I patted her upper arm. “Honestly, it’s okay. Petronella wants to become a mortician. I get that Pie Town isn’t a lifetime career for most of the staff.” Or for anyone but me.

  Charlene coughed. “Well, at least you came clean.” She took the plate from my hand and gave it to Abril. “Table twelve.”

  Abril bustled into the restaurant.

  “Pie Town’s my career,” Charlene said.

  I smiled. “Thanks.”

  She looked at me expectantly.

  “Good thing your piecrust is the best on the coast,” I added.

  “But Pie Town’s really just a cover for my work as a secret agent,” she whispered.

  “I suspected as much.”

  “Order up,” Petronella called through the window to the dining area and spun the ticket wheel.

  I pulled the ticket—an order for a banana cream pie—plated a slice, and set it on the window.

  An hour later, Abril, Charlene, and I were lounging at the counter. We’d hit one of those four o’clock ebbs—the beachgoers on their way home for the day, and the locals finding it too early for pie.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Abril said. “Professor Starke was here, right here in Pie Town. And now he’s gone.”

  “I can believe it,” Charlene said. “Your professor had an ex-wife and a horde of angry ex-girlfriends.”

  There was a crash from the kitchen, and I winced, rising from my barstool.

  Charlene grasped my arm. “Don’t do it. Hunter will take care of the mess.”

  With Hunter in the kitchen, none of us doubted there was a mess.

  “He wasn’t like that,” Abril insisted. “Professor Starke, I mean. But . . .”

  “But what?” I asked, frowning at the glass display case. It was low on pies and pies in a jar and hand pies, which was good for this time of day. But I needed to shove everything closer, fill in the gaps, so the display didn’t look so empty.

  “It’s crazy, but I can’t help thinking how ironic it was that he read that poem and then he was killed.”

  Charlene and I looked at each other.

  “What poem?” I asked.

  “You know, Val,” Abril said, “the last one. That night was the launch of that poem—it wasn’t published yet, and Professor Starke had never read it for anyone before.”

  “I didn’t hear it,” I said. “I was in the kitchen with Doran.”

  “But you must have heard it, Charlene,” Abril said. “You were there.”

  “Mm . . .” She thumbed her ear. “Refresh my memory.”

  “You know, the poem about the murder. The dark parking lot. The wrong car in the spot.”

  Murder? My pulse accelerated.

  “That was the poem?” Charlene made a face. “The meter’s all wrong.”

  “No,” Abril said. “That’s what it was about. I didn’t mean to rhyme.”

  Abril hadn’t been rhyming or poeticizing for days now. The murder of her professor seemed to have knocked the poetry out of her. I hoped it didn’t last.

  “That’s okay,” Charlene said. “It wasn’t a very good rhyme.”

  “Abril, do you have a copy of that poem?” I asked quickly.

  “Who would want that?” Charlene asked. “No offense,” she said to Abril. “But I prefer poems you can rap to. Like Poe.”

  “Well,” I said, “it does seem weird that the first time he reads his new poem about a murder, he got killed.”

  “Oh, no,” Abril said. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant it was ironic. The poem was fiction.”

  “Still,” I said. “I’m curious. Is there any way you can get that poem?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t give away any handouts of his work.”

  “But he was reading off a paper,” Charlene said.

  “Which means Gordon might have it,” I said.

  The bell jangled over the front door, and I slid from the pink barstool.

  Charlene grinned. “All you need to do is put on something low-cut and slinky—”

  “I’m not going to Mata Hari that poem out of Gordon.”

  “Mata Hari?” he rumbled from behind me. “I wouldn’t mind if you tried.”

  I lowered my head and sighed, turned, smiled. “Hi, Gordon.”

  Abril flushed. “Detective Carmichael.”

  “Thank you for your help yesterday, Abril,” he said. “You cleared up a lot for us.”

  She smiled. “You’re welcome.”

  A light wave of relief flowed through me. I’d hate it if things were awkward between the two of them after yesterday’s questioning.

  He kissed my cheek. “At least I’ll never be bored with you,” he murmured into my ear, and I shivered. He wore a neat blue suit and looked heavenly. “Nice to see you on terra firma,” he said in a louder voice. “Now, what’s this about a poem?”

  “I didn’t mention it at the station,” Abril said, twisting her apron. “I didn’t think of it then, but now it seems kind of weird.”

  “What was weird?” he asked sharply.

  “The last poem he read that night,” Abril explained to Gordon. “It’s probably a coincidence, but it was about a murder.”

  “You must have read it,” I said to Gordon. “Do you remember what it was about?�
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  He shook his head. “Why do you think I read it?”

  “Because he had the poem on him the night he died,” I said. “He read from it at Pie Town.”

  “There was no poem on him when we found him,” Gordon said. “Maybe he threw it out after he was done?”

  Charlene and I stared at each other.

  Threw it out? In Pie Town?

  “No,” I said, horror dawning.

  “Garbage comes on Monday,” she said.

  I shook my head. There were limits to being a Baker Street Baker. “No!”

  “You’re talking about the dumpster,” Gordon said, “aren’t you?”

  “The dumpster filled with the detritus of days of rotting fruit,” Abril said. It was almost poetic, and I almost smiled.

  “But he was killed a week ago Friday,” Gordon said. “Wouldn’t the trash have already gone out?”

  I shook my head. “No. We don’t keep a waste basket at the front of the restaurant. Normally, napkins and things are collected by whoever’s busing tables with the dirty dishes. But that night, there were some papers lying around after the reading. I tossed them into my office waste bin, which didn’t get emptied until Wednesday.”

  “So . . . recycling?” he asked hopefully.

  “San Nicholas doesn’t have a recycling service for businesses yet, only residential,” I said.

  Grim-faced, Gordon pulled off his navy suit jacket and folded it neatly, setting it on the counter. He pulled two sets of gloves from the pockets and handed one to me. “Let’s go.”

  “What? Me? Shouldn’t only official police personnel search for evidence? What if I contaminate the chain of whatever?”

  “You’re a Baker Street Baker,” he said, “aren’t you?”

  “Go on.” Charlene nudged my shoulder. “It’ll be fun.”

  “You’ll help?” I asked her.

  “Are you kidding? With these joints?”

  I groaned. “Can you manage things here?” I asked Abril.

  She nodded eagerly. And Abril usually hated working the front restaurant. But when dumpster diving was the alternative. . . well, it puts a lot of things in perspective.

  Gordon and I trudged through the kitchen and into the alley.

  “This one yours?” Gordon angled his head toward the closest dumpster and snapped on the gloves.

  I nodded, unenthusiastic.

  He lifted the lid and let it drop, clanging against the metal side and echoing down the narrow brick alley.

  Noses wrinkling, we peered inside at the garbage bags.

  “Any idea which are from your office trash?” He rolled up his sleeves.

  “I combined it with the kitchen trash,” I said, eyes watering. The slimy, smelly, rotting-in-the-late-summer-heat kitchen trash.

  “Oh.” He swallowed and grabbed a bag. “Let’s get this over with.”

  An hour later, Pie Town garbage was spread across the alley, Gordon was inside the dumpster, and my gloves were sticky. Charlene sat on her wooden stool by the open kitchen door and made unhelpful comments.

  I brushed sweat from my forehead with the back of my wrist. Even my wrist felt dirty.

  “What about that bag?” Charlene asked, pointing.

  “I already checked that bag.” My gaze flicked skyward.

  “Maybe you should check again.”

  I moved to jam my hands on my hips and thought better of it. “I’m checking this bag.” I pulled it open and looked inside. Damp envelopes and a goldenrod flyer lay on top. My heart jumped. “I think I’ve found it!” I pawed through the papers, then grabbed them and spread them on the road.

  “Anything?” Gordon asked.

  “I’m not sure. This is definitely from my trash.” I stared at the flyer. The tiny symbol in the corner kept drawing my eye.

  “But we can’t be certain Starke left his poem at Pie Town,” Charlene said. “This whole affair could be a complete waste of time.”

  I glared at her, and she shrugged.

  “Well,” she said, “it could be.”

  Triumphant, I retrieved a sheet of laser paper with a double-spaced poem down the center. “This is it!”

  Gordon sprang from the dumpster, which was super impressive (the leap, not the dumpster). He crowded behind me. “What’s it say?”

  I cleared my throat and read out loud.

  Death in a Parking Lot

  A woman taken,

  Her ghost,

  A silver shimmer on asphalt,

  A gleam of the wrong fender,

  In the wrong spot.

  A woman found,

  Upon the water,

  But no one knows,

  Her spirit wanders

  The fateful lot.

  I work my way through

  And try to forget

  But I stand, keys in hand

  And wonder

  What I am not.

  There was a long silence.

  A seagull landed on a bag of trash and cocked its head.

  “I don’t get it,” Charlene said, scribbling in a notepad. “How can someone be found and no one knows?”

  “You don’t have to get it.” Gordon plucked the page from my hand. “It’s evidence.”

  “Of what?” Charlene asked.

  “Nothing, probably,” he said, “but I spent an hour digging for it in that dumpster, so it’s damn well going in an evidence bag.”

  I winced. “I’m sorry, Gordon. I guess Abril heard something in it that we didn’t.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Just don’t tell anyone how we got it. If the guys at the station learn about this little adventure, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  I stooped, picking up the flyer from the reading, and pointed to its tiny symbol. “Have you seen this before?”

  He squinted. “Nope.”

  “What?” Charlene asked, snatching the paper from his hands.

  “In the lower-right corner,” I said. “It’s probably nothing.”

  She sucked in her breath. “An occult symbol.”

  “You know it?” Gordon asked.

  “No,” she said. “But look at it! If that’s not occult, I don’t know what is.”

  Lightly, he plucked the flyer from her grasp and slipped it into another evidence bag. “I’ll do a reverse image search online.”

  Whoa. You could do that? Why hadn’t I done that?

  He tucked the page into another evidence bag, and helped me return the garbage to the dumpster. Unpeeling his gloves, he left.

  I picked up Charlene’s chair and lugged it into the kitchen. She closed the alley door behind us.

  Abril poked her head through the order window. “Did you find the poem?”

  “Yeah,” I said, scrubbing my hands in the sink and scrubbing them again. “For all the good it did.” Me and my dumb ideas. I pulled off my apron and exchanged it for a fresh one.

  “Why?” Abril asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Charlene brandished her notebook. “This poem is useless. It’s not even about a murder. A woman found, and no one knows? That doesn’t even make sense!”

  “Sure it does,” Abril said. “Her body was found, but no one knows she was murdered. And I need a slice of blackberry pie.”

  “It doesn’t say she was murdered,” Charlene said, “just taken.”

  “Exactly,” Abril said. “She didn’t leave of her own accord. She was taken. She becomes a ghost. Something happened to her.”

  “It’s a little, um, oblique,” I said, plating the slice. Blackberries oozed from the crust, and my mouth watered. “But at least the police have the poem now.”

  “But they won’t understand it,” Abril said, “will they?”

  “I’m not sure I do,” I said, walking through the swinging door into the restaurant.

  Charlene trailed after me.

  “You just need to do a close reading.” Abril gently detached the notepad from Charlene’s hand. “Okay, a shimmer on asphalt. That implies night and dampness.”
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  I glanced around the near-empty restaurant, saw a pieless diner in one of the booths, and brought him his dessert. I rejoined the two women.

  “A dark and stormy night,” Charlene was saying. “Gotcha.”

  “Her spirit’s wandering the parking lot,” Abril said. “Whatever happened to her, happened there.”

  “And the line about the water?” Charlene scratched her head with the eraser-end of her pencil.

  “The author is in conflict about what happened. He may have killed the woman himself. Is he a killer or not?”

  “So Professor Starke killed her?” Charlene asked.

  “Well, of course not. He’s no—He was no killer. He’s imagining it from the killer’s point of view. Don’t you see?”

  “All right,” I said, “so it is fiction.”

  “Well,” Abril said, “yeah, that’s what I told you.”

  I lowered my head, my shoulders slumping. Had we been on the wrong track all along?

  CHAPTER 12

  Fortunately for we amateur detectives, Professor Jezek’s Monday class schedule was posted online. Unfortunately, we were still suffering under Gordon’s no-interviewing-outside-of-Pie-Town rule.

  “It’s not interviewing,” Charlene said, stepping from the Jeep and stretching. The shadow of the sixties-era, concrete bell tower pointed across a short lawn and ended at her bumper. “It’s dropping off an invitation.” She walked to the rear of the yellow car and opened the door, pulling out a fishing pole.

  “An invitation we could have emailed.” I looked guiltily around the college’s parking area.

  Sun glittered off fenders in the packed lot. It had taken us way too long to find an empty visitor’s spot, but we’d finally snagged one, right next to the dean’s reserved space. Set high on a hill, the lot had an amazing view of the bay. The spires of San Francisco skyscrapers rose in the distance, and massive ships plied the far-off bay. I sighed. It was good to be dean.

  “Any luck on that reverse-image search?” she asked.

  “None.” I’d tried my hand at it after Gordon had given me the idea. I’d found pieces of the symbol though. The five-spoked wheel could symbolize Vedic astrology, or Thespis, the Greek god of actors. And the snake could symbolize change, or the gods Mercury or Dionysus, or a hundred other things.