Pies Before Guys Read online

  “Why do you—?” I shook my head. Forget it.

  She stared through the binoculars. “There’s a whole lot of blood around the victim’s right armpit.” She frowned. “Wait. No. That’s my right, his left. And there’s a sword lying next to the body—must be the murder weapon.”

  “Or the professor might have dropped the sword when he was attacked,” I said. “Remember? I never really understood why he brought it in the first place.”

  “For ‘Charge of the Global Warming Brigade,’ ” Abril said. “Remember?”

  “Oh, right.” Was global warming what the poem had been about? I’d thought it was about zombies. I really should have paid more attention. “What can you tell us about Professor Starke?”

  “Oh, he was wonderful,” she said, her brown eyes glowing.

  “About who’d want him dead,” Charlene elaborated.

  “No one.” Abril hugged her arms beneath the cape of Doran’s jacket. “Professor Starke got along with everyone.”

  I raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t been getting along with his colleagues at the reading.

  “I mean,” Abril continued, “his ex-wife is an English teacher, and she runs the drama department. It was so great the way they still stayed friends.”

  Charlene snorted. “The spouse is always the most likely suspect. Here.” She handed me the tiny binoculars. “What do you see?”

  I adjusted the focus. Michael Starke lay beside a blue Prius. The discarded sword or saber lay on the pavement beside him. I focused on the blade. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but the tip looked bloody. I shuddered. “I think you’re right about the weapon.” It looked like Starke’s sword from the reading. How had the killer gotten hold of it? Maybe if Starke had put it down or on the Prius’s roof while he’d unlocked the car . . .

  I trained my gaze on the Prius. It would have one of those auto door unlocks. But still, he might have fumbled with the key fob. I frowned. The car tilted catawampus, sinking low on its far side.

  “What?” Charlene asked. “What do you see?”

  “Is there something weird about that car?”

  “Gimme.” Charlene snatched the binoculars from my eyes and looked through them. “It’s at an angle. That’s funny.”

  “Maybe he has a flat?” I asked.

  “I think you’re right,” she said. “Suspicious.”

  “You think someone flattened the professor’s tire to delay him?” Doran asked.

  I pursed my lips. “It’s possible. Or someone damaged his tire for a different reason. Or it’s just an ordinary flat. Or it’s not a flat at all, because we can’t actually see the other side of the car.”

  He gave me a look I was coming to recognize as his “Seriously?” expression.

  “What I’m getting at is we shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” I said. “We need more facts.”

  “So how are we going to get them?” he asked.

  “We—” I’d been about to say, “We aren’t.” But it was the first time Doran had suggested doing something together aside from eat. Maybe he wasn’t so eager to leave San Nicholas after all. “We’ll ask questions, like we have before.”

  Charlene nudged me with the binoculars. “Check it out.”

  I peered through the glasses.

  An annoyed Gordon Carmichael stared back, fists on his hips.

  I jerked the lenses away from my face. “Uh, Gordon saw us.”

  “Time to go.” Charlene scuttled across the roof. “Downstairs! We’ve been compromised.”

  We chased her down the stairs. She stumbled on the last step, and I grabbed her before she could fall.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, my chest squeezing. In spite of the age she’d put on her job application (forty-two), Charlene was no spring chicken.

  She straightened, panting. “I’m not feeling so well. Maybe I should go home.”

  Powerhouse Charlene calling an early evening? “I’ll take you,” I said quickly. That way I could keep an eye on her in case things got worse.

  Fear sparked through my veins. Don’t get worse. Don’t get worse. I still hadn’t gotten over the loss of my mother. I couldn’t lose Charlene.

  CHAPTER 3

  One hand beneath Charlene’s elbow, I piloted her up her porch steps, past ferns and dusty wicker chairs. The first tentacles of fog stretched across Charlene’s house, blotting out the stars in its path. Her hands trembled as she unlocked her front door, and my chest pinched.

  “Maybe we should go to an emergency room.” I’d wanted to take her there directly from Tally Wally’s, but she’d insisted on coming home. I lifted Frederick off Charlene’s shoulders. The white cat dangled limply and weighed roughly a ton.

  She wheezed and opened the door. “I just need to rest.” Charlene tottered inside.

  I flipped on the light, illuminating the yellowish, floral-print couch, wall photos of Charlene and her family on various adventures, and doily-covered end tables. It was the sort of mismatched mishmash a home acquires after decades of living.

  Frederick flinched, his head turning away from the overhead lamp.

  “Faker,” I muttered. He wasn’t sleeping at all.

  “What was that?” Charlene asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. Charlene loved that stupid cat, and my heart twisted again. I couldn’t imagine Pie Town without Charlene. I couldn’t imagine San Nicholas without Charlene. She’d been my first real friend here. “Charlene—”

  She made her way to the couch and plopped onto a cushion. “Oof. I think a glass of my special root beer is in order.”

  “You know, heart attacks in women manifest completely differently than heart attacks in men. Cold sweats, lightheadedness, nausea—”

  “I’ll get the drinks.” She leaned forward and grunted.

  “No, no. I’ve got it.” Setting Frederick on the faded cushion beside her, I hurried to the kitchen and poured a tall glass of root beer with a shot of Kahlúa.

  I whizzed into the living room and set it on a doily atop the end table. “Okay, what exactly are you feeling?”

  “My legs hurt.” She shifted on the couch and reached to rub her thigh, wincing. “Will you help me . . . ?”

  Legs? I hadn’t heard of that as a heart attack symptom. “Nothing in your upper body?” I propped her feet on the low, wooden coffee table.

  “Not with the shoes on! They’re dirty.”

  I grimaced. “Right.” I helped her with her tennis shoes and set her feet on the table. “What about an aspirin?” An aspirin couldn’t hurt, could it? But if I seriously thought she needed an aspirin for a heart attack, I needed to call 911. She might not like it, but this was no joke.

  Charlene made a face. “The edge of the table hurts my ankles.”

  I grabbed a faded pillow off the couch and set it beneath her feet. “Charlene, what exactly are you feeling?”

  She blinked up at me, her blue eyes innocent. “I feel fine. What’s the problem?”

  What? “You said you weren’t feeling well. You tripped on the stairs.”

  “Anyone can trip. I just wanted an excuse to get away from the noobs.”

  “The . . . You mean you weren’t feeling ill at all?” I asked, outraged.

  “Nope. I always was a good actress, even if Marla Van Helsing beat me out for the role of Elaine in Arsenic and Old Lace. But I stole the show as Aunt Abby.”

  I sputtered. “You—”

  “Of course, I never heard the end about how old I looked. Now about this murder—”

  “I was really worried!”

  “And I’m worried about you.”

  I pressed one hand to my chest. “Me?” Now she was just blame-shifting.

  “You were flip-flopping on whether to investigate. It’s not natural. What’s really going on in that head of yours?”

  I leaned one hip against the floral-print couch. “Well, we are getting pretty good at solving crimes.”

  “Even if it’s bound to infuriate your hot detective?”

&nb
sp; “And Gordon said Chief Shaw is starting to connect Pie Town with murder.”

  She raised a snowy brow. “And your brother’s got nothing to do with it?”

  “Doran?” Guiltily, I crossed my arms over my chest, rumpling my Pie Town hoodie. “No. What do you mean?”

  “He seemed awfully hot on this investigation.”

  “I wouldn’t say hot.”

  “Your brother’s a damned Vulcan. For Doran, that was jumping up and down with excitement. What gives?”

  “Nothing!” But yeah, his interest had surprised me. Doran didn’t know any of these people. Why did he care?

  “And you letting him come along tonight has nothing to do with him leaving San Nicholas?”

  I dropped onto the wing chair across from her. “I forgot you’d heard that.”

  “It’s obvious he’s been frustrated. And you two haven’t spent much time together, have you? He didn’t even make it to the poetry reading.”

  “In fairness, poetry’s not really his thing,” I said.

  “You sure about that?”

  “No.” I sighed. My shoulders curled inward, my hands dangling between my knees. “How do you make up for over two decades of separation? I know more about Doran now than I did—”

  “You didn’t know he existed two months ago.”

  “Exactly. He’s been too busy trying to scare up graphic-design jobs to spend much time with family bonding. But I can tell he’s a great guy. He’s also been through the same garbage with my father that I have.”

  Charlene snorted. “Not exactly. He’s lucky he didn’t go through everything you did.”

  “I guess I want more. And I’m afraid if Doran goes back to SoCal now, we’ll never build a real relationship.”

  “Hmph. All right. Then we’ll think of something to keep him here.” Her eyes narrowed with cunning.

  “We will?” I fiddled with the zipper on my hoodie. I wasn’t sure I wanted Charlene cooking up some scheme when it came to my brother. “I don’t think—”

  “Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk murder. First step?”

  Or maybe she’d forget the entire idea. “I’m not sure. I’m having a hard time getting past Chief Shaw thinking Pie Town is the town’s murder epicenter.”

  “And since Professor Starke was killed leaving Pie Town . . .”

  “Shaw’s going to be even more sure of it.”

  “So?”

  How was I going to break this to Gordon? “All right,” I said. “We start by making a list of suspects. Assuming someone followed Professor Starke from Pie Town”—an assumption I hated—“who was at tonight’s reading from the college?”

  She unfolded one of Abril’s goldenrod flyers and slapped it on the coffee table. “The poets.”

  I scanned the list. “Professor Aidan McClary, Professor Piotr Jezek, Abril Rivas—Abril was great, wasn’t she?”

  “I’ll say. That was some hot stuff!” Charlene frowned. “I’m just not sure if she knew it. That girl’s a little repressed, if you ask me.”

  We pondered that. The house creaked uneasily on its foundation. From the nearby kitchen, the refrigerator hummed. Frederick yawned and rolled onto his back.

  “And, of course,” I said, “the victim, Michael Starke. What was the name of the other guy from the English department? The one who bought the extra helpings of pie?”

  “Rudolph Prophet,” she said, patting her stomach significantly. “He’s a dean or some such.”

  I choked back a laugh. “Rudolph? Are you kidding me?”

  “What?”

  “He looks like Santa Claus, and his name is Rudolph Prophet? Was he born on Christmas?”

  “I don’t see what you’re getting at,” she said sniffily.

  “Whatever,” I said. “We know Professor McClary had a beef with Starke. He said something about plagiarism, didn’t he?”

  “Writers can get crazy about that sort of stuff. Plagiarism is definitely a motive for murder.”

  “So we’ve got three suspects to begin with,” I said. “And didn’t Abril say something about an ex-wife? She may not have been at the reading, but we can’t ignore the ex.”

  Charlene nodded. “And there’s someone else we should consider. Marla was at the reading.”

  I gave her a look. “Is there any reason to think your best frenemy killed Professor Starke?” Drama Queen Charlene and Marla Van Helsing had been competitors since their girlhood back in the Mesozoic era. I wanted to believe they’d gotten past it, but old habits were hard to break.

  “She was at the reading, isn’t that enough?”

  “Not really. What motive would she have to kill Professor Starke?”

  “She’s Marla!”

  On his cushion, Frederick coiled into a tight ball, nose toward the ceiling. His whiskers twitched.

  “Hold that thought.” Charlene leapt from the couch and strode into the kitchen.

  The muscles between my shoulders relaxed. She really had been faking her earlier feebleness.

  Charlene returned with her laptop, and we set it on the coffee table. I opened a social media site and entered Michael Starke’s name.

  A page popped up with photos of Starke and a middle-aged woman with blond, Shirley Temple ringlets. According to the tag, the woman was named Dorothy Hastings. I scanned down. More pictures of Starke standing behind podiums and speaking.

  “Except for that woman’s photo,” I said, “it’s all professional stuff.”

  “Well, that’s useless. Check out Aidan McClary.”

  I typed his name into the search bar and clicked on his page. Lots of pictures of Guinness and . . . I blinked. “Isn’t that the same woman?”

  “Yep. That’s Dorothy Hastings.” Charlene grabbed a pair of reading glasses off the end table and perched them on her nose. “And that’s definitely not a professional photo.”

  Aidan and Dorothy wore bathing suits and embraced on a sailboat.

  “Who is this woman?” Charlene asked.

  “Abril might know.” I found Dorothy’s page, and all I learned was she worked at the college as an English and drama professor. I sat back on the lumpy sofa. “Hold on, didn’t Abril say Starke’s ex was an English and drama professor? That must be her.”

  “Yikes,” Charlene said. “Right under Starke’s nose at the college? He and Dorothy may have had a good post-marriage relationship, but that had to be awkward. Check out that Jezek fellow, the one who looked like a bilious vampire. Maybe she was dating him too.”

  “Piotr Jezek,” I corrected, but I did as she asked and came up with zero. “There was a moment during the reading when I caught Jezek giving Starke an odd look, like he was angry or scared.”

  “So which was it? Angry or scared?”

  “Um, I’m not sure.” I clawed my hand through my hair. At least, I’d thought he’d been giving Professor Starke a weird look. “All right. Let’s try something else.”

  I left the social media site and did a general search. Jezek had written letters to an online paper complaining about tree trimming and removal permits. He’d also demanded a new “view ordinance.”

  “ ‘When trees block views,’ ” I quoted, “ ‘property values fall.’ ”

  “He’s not wrong,” Charlene said, sipping her root beer concoction. “Gimme.” She set the computer on her lap. Through an excruciatingly slow process of hunting and pecking, she found a writing site that Starke had posted on. “This is strange.”

  “What? What?” I craned my neck to see.

  “No poetry.”

  “Okay, that is strange. What’s he writing about then?”

  “They’re a bunch of plays.”

  I yawned. “Send me the link, will you? I’d like to read them.”

  “Better you than me.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Let’s check the college’s website. It might have staff bios.”

  And it did.

  RUDOLPH PROPHET

  Under Dr. Prophet’s ten-year stewardship
as dean, the English department has substantially expanded its offerings with theater and poetry tracks, and with the establishment of the Theresa Keller Memorial Award for Creative Writing.

  Charlene snorted. “Well, that’s useless.”

  But I persisted.

  DOROTHY HASTINGS

  Theater has the power to build meaningful internal and external connections. It can be transformative. This is why English professor Dorothy Hastings teaches theater.

  I continued down the list. But I learned nothing more useful than Starke had joined the college four years ago, and Aidan McClary a year before that.

  Charlene shook her head. “Like I said, useless.”

  But was it? Uneasy, I shifted on the couch. An ex-wife. Her lover. Had Starke fallen afoul of a romantic triangle?

  CHAPTER 4

  It was a perfect lazy Monday morning. I sat at the picnic table outside my tiny house and sipped OJ. A warm, light breeze rippled the dried grasses at the edge of the cliff, and cartoon clouds floated between ocean and sky. There were lots of beautiful places in this world, and the California coast was but one. But wow. It was gorgeous.

  Pie Town was closed Mondays, so I was brunching al fresco. A half-eaten slice of asparagus-and-mushroom quiche lay on a blue plate before me. I’d brought out the ceramic quiche dish as well, because you never know when you might want seconds.

  A car motor rumbled up the twisting road to my house.

  I sighed and dropped my head. It had been too much to hope that Charlene would let me take the day off from sleuthing.

  But instead of Charlene’s Jeep, my brother’s black MINI Cooper emerged from the eucalyptus trees. He parked near the side of my blue tiny house/shipping container.

  Grinning, I extracted myself from the picnic table and ambled to his car. It almost looked big beside my home.

  Abril, in jeans and a blue, flowered blouse, exited from the passenger side. “Hi, Val. I hope it’s okay—us bothering you like this. Doran said it was.” She brushed a strand of long, black hair from her face and tucked it behind one ear.