Bleeding Tarts Page 4

  Gordon emerged from the saloon with Chief Shaw.

  The chief grimaced. “Sorry, little lady. Those pies are evidence.”

  “What?” My hands twitched. “But they had nothing to do with the murder. The only pie with any connection to the crime is lying dead in the street.” I pointed, but the box had been removed.

  A portly cop waddled from the saloon and brushed golden crumbs off his blue shirt.

  My eyes narrowed. Were those piecrust crumbs? They were!

  “But . . .” Shaw lowered his chin. “Like your clothing, the pies could be integral to the crime scene.”

  “How?!”

  “They’re only pies, Val,” Gordon said.

  My eyes bulged. Only pies? Only pies! And I’d wanted to date the man? I sputtered.

  Charlene grasped my arm. “Someone nearly killed her today, one of our pies was brutally attacked, and then she found a corpse. It’s a lot for one morning. She’s a little sensitive.”

  “I am not,” I ground out.

  “I’d offer to return them,” Shaw said, “but I doubt they’ll be much use once we’re done with them.”

  I raised my chin. “It’s all right. I understand.” I whirled, crinolines swishing, and stormed to the Jeep.

  Gordon trotted after me. “I’m sorry about your pies. Look, I’ll make it up to you.”

  “There’s no need,” I said stiffly, and opened the rear doors. I slid a stack of boxed pies toward me. “They’re only pies. I have more.” Okay, there was a microscopic possibility I might be overreacting. Maybe Charlene was right. Maybe getting shot at had thrown me off my game.

  I strode to the photo shop and nudged the door open with my hip. The small room was a mass of costumes, with a backdrop at the back and an antique camera on a tripod. I set the boxes on the counter beside an old-fashioned cash register.

  “Are those pies really a problem?” he asked.

  I turned.

  He carried a stack of boxed pies and set them on the counter. His green eyes darkened with concern.

  Gordon was taking this seriously. This mess wasn’t his fault, and he was trying to help.

  I almost smiled. It was too easy to smile around Gordon. “No. I’m stressed out because I hired and promoted staff for an expansion, and we’re barely breaking even again. And finding that poor man . . . The shot at me must have had something to do with his murder.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions. We need to gather more evidence. At least we’ve got a limited pool of suspects. And if it helps, I don’t seriously consider you one of them. This is all procedure.”

  Gordon followed me to the Jeep, and I grabbed more pies.

  “I’m glad you’re in charge,” I said, and meant it. “You’ll figure this out.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the saloon.

  Chief Shaw gesticulated at Charlene, who stood, head cocked, arms crossed.

  “Mm,” he said. “‘In charge’ is a relative term.” He took a stack of pies from the Jeep and again followed me into the photo shop. “But thanks. And if it makes you feel any better, after seeing you in that outfit, I’m highly motivated to clear this up so we can go on that date.”

  In spite of everything, a bubble of laughter tickled my chest. “You should have seen the corset.”

  Grinning, he swaggered to the saloon and said something to Charlene.

  I shouldn’t have felt a warm, fuzzy glow at a murder scene. But with my almost boyfriend in charge, I knew everything would be okay.

  Charlene strolled to the Jeep and set Frederick on the dash. “Ready?”

  I shut the rear doors. “I’m more than ready. I’m rough and ready.”

  She groaned and stepped into the car.

  I slid into the passenger side. “And speaking of rough, what’s up with you and Marla?”

  “Oh, you noticed that, did you?”

  “Kind of hard to miss the nails-on-a-chalkboard tension.”

  “That woman’s made a point of one-upping me in everything.” She started the Jeep. “Her life has been a whirl of trips to the Riviera and wealthy husbands, and she’ll never let me forget it.”

  “Oh, come on. It’s not as if you’ve lived a dull life. You were in the roller derby.”

  Charlene tore down the street, the Jeep’s tires kicking up a cloud of dust in our wake. “She was in the Ice Capades.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Serious as a heart attack. It’s where she met her first husband.”

  “He was in the Ice Capades?”

  “He saw her picture in the paper and deluged her with roses and expensive champagne until she agreed to go out with him.”

  We careened around a bend in the road, and I clutched Frederick and the dash for balance.

  “Roses and champagne?” I asked. That was old school.

  “She makes sure I know every detail.”

  “So, she grew up here?”

  “She moved away every time she got married, and then returned every time one of her husbands dropped dead. She’s been married more times than Liz Taylor and not a single divorce.”

  “That’s—”

  “Suspicious.”

  I was going to say “tragic.”

  “Enough about that woman,” she said. “Did Carmichael give you any clues?”

  “No. Gordon said it was too soon to know anything. What about Shaw? Did he spill about the crime?”

  “There’s only one thing you need to know. If Shaw’s in charge, we’re doomed.”

  * * *

  “Oooh! A spot on the street!” Charlene whipped the Jeep into an open space in front of Heidi’s Health, a local gym and Pie Town’s next-door neighbor. The uber-fit owner, Heidi Gladstone, stood on the sidewalk in her trademark green hoodie and black yoga pants. She frowned at a workman adjusting a sign behind her gym window.

  “Wait here,” I said. “I’ll run inside and get the—”

  Charlene stepped from the Jeep and stretched, her hand brushing a flower pot hanging from an iron street lamp.

  I got out of the car and slammed the door on my striped satin skirt. Cursing beneath my breath, I opened the door, setting myself free.

  Heidi turned, her blond ponytail bobbing. “Like my new sign?”

  I brightened. “You took down the SUGAR KILLS sign?” Heidi, the health fanatic, had been at war with Pie Town since she’d moved in next door. She was also dating my ex-fiancé. I’d come to terms with their romance, but the SUGAR KILLS sign sent steam spewing from my ears.

  Smiling, she stepped aside, revealing a new SUGAR KILLS sign approximately the size of a highway billboard, and complete with a skull and crossbones.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “Really? Do you have to put that in your front window?”

  “No time for chitchat, ladies.” Charlene winked, draping the cat over her shoulder. “Got to get those pies for the pie-eating contest. Picture it, Heidi, all those people, jamming pie down their gullets as fast as they can.” She sauntered into Pie Town, setting the bell above the glass front door ringing.

  Heidi’s nostrils flared. “I can’t imagine a worse tradition. Obesity is at epidemic levels, and you only encourage—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I hurried after Charlene. Pie Town did offer sugar-free, savory potpies, but Heidi wouldn’t be satisfied until every pie was sugar-free and probably crust-free as well. Yeeesh.

  I walked inside, and the tension in my shoulders released. Pie Town was my happy place, with its retro, 1950s decor and pink booths and big glass case filled with pies. Two old men—Graham and six foot six Tally Wally—sat at the counter and sipped coffee. The booths were filled—tourist families with sunburned, sticky-faced kids, and regulars from the town. A group of college-age kids, overflow from the comic shop next door, debated over a role-playing game in the corner booth.

  Joy, the owner of said comic shop, swiveled on her barstool and stared, her dark brows lowering. Her silky black hair was done up in a top knot held in place by a pe
ncil.

  Normalcy. I loved it.

  Joy braced her elbow on the linoleum counter. “Nice get up, Val. But it’s a little early for a costume party.”

  Charlene stopped dead in the middle of Pie Town’s checkerboard floor. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “The police confiscated her clothes.”

  There was a spattering of applause from the gamers’ table. Diners in the pink Naugahyde booths put down their forks and stared. Looking interested, the old men swiveled on their barstools.

  “Someone tried to kill Val again,” Charlene said. “She had to change her knickers.”

  “Not my knickers—”

  “I told you that gym owner was trouble,” Graham said. His rolls of belly fat swelled beneath his frayed, tweed jacket. His white hair was rumpled, the soft cap he usually wore lying on the counter beside his coffee mug.

  His lanky friend, Tally Wally, cackled. “About time Val got tarted up. Get it? Tart? Because she’s in a dress like that, and she sells ’em.”

  I raised my hands in a warding gesture. “It wasn’t—”

  “It’s got nothing to do with tarts,” Graham said. “She sells pies.”

  “What’s the difference?” Wally asked.

  “A tart has a more vertical crust and is thinner than a pie, right, Val?”

  “They tend to have layers too,” I said, drawn into the argument in spite of myself. “Such as a cream filling on the bottom and berries on top.” Mmm . . .

  “Why’d that gym owner try to kill you?” Graham asked.

  “It wasn’t—”

  “Val’s killing me in that outfit,” joked the red-head, Ray, one of our regulars. He tossed a set of twenty-sided dice across the table. They banged into a shiny gaming book, its cover sporting a babe clad in a fur bikini and wielding a sword.

  “Ignore him,” said Henrietta, a fellow gamer. She brushed her sandy hair from her eyes. “He doesn’t do suave or deeboneair.”

  “That’s not how you say that word.” Ray shifted his bulk.

  “See what I mean?” Henrietta asked me.

  “I need pies,” I said, and flounced through the Dutch door by the register and behind the counter.

  Petronella, my assistant manager, braced her elbow on the cash register. She was a dedicated Goth: pale face, pixie-cut hair dyed black, and cat’s-eye eyeliner. “Was Charlene serious about an attempted murder?” she asked.

  I hurried to a rack of pies at the other end of the counter and grabbed a cherry. “A stray bullet hit one of the pies at the Bar X. The police confiscated the other pies I was carrying at the time. I need six more cherries.”

  She winced, jamming her hands into the pockets of her pink Pie Town apron. “Oooh. I just sold two. We’ve only got five left.”

  “Did you say a pie was shot?” Joy asked in her rat-a-tat, just-the-facts-ma’am voice. A drop-dead gorgeous Eurasian woman, she hid her light under a bushel of gray business suits and high collars.

  “Right out of her hand.” Charlene sat on the vacant stool beside her. “Whiz! Splat!” She slapped her palms together.

  “Then I’ll take six of anything,” I said to Petronella, “as long as it’s fruit.”

  “I think we’ve got enough apricot to do you,” Petronella said. “I’ll help you box ’em. Say, do you have a minute?”

  “I will after I get these pies to the Bar X.” I grabbed a handful of flattened pink cardboard boxes from beneath the counter and popped them into shape. “Is it urgent?”

  Petronella shrugged. “No. It’ll keep.”

  “Why would someone want to kill a pie?” Joy asked.

  “It probably had something to do with the murder,” Charlene said loudly. “Val found another body.”

  The old men edged closer.

  “Time to go,” a mother said from one of the booths, looking pointedly at her three sunburnt kids. They left, trailing sand from their flip-flops.

  Petronella hustled around the counter.

  “You found another body?” Joy said. “That seems excessive, even for you.”

  “Well, who was it?” Graham asked.

  “The bartender at the Bar X,” Charlene said.

  “Shoot, I’ve always wanted to go there.” Wally fidgeted on his seat, and I hoped he was comfortable on the stool. He walked with a limp because he’d gotten “ass shrapnel” (his words) in Vietnam. “They’ve got a bar?”

  “In the saloon,” Charlene said.

  “Who’s the bartender?” Wally rubbed his ruddy nose.

  “Guy named Devon Blackett,” Charlene said. “New in town.”

  “Huh.” Losing interest, the old men swiveled forward and resumed their caffeine meditations.

  “If he’s new in town,” Joy said, “why kill him?”

  I paused in the act of lowering an apricot pie into a box. “That’s a good question.”

  “Well, he’s not that new in town,” Charlene said. “Devon’s been working at the Bar X for the last three months, enough time to drive someone to murder.”

  “He’d have to be pretty irritating,” Joy said. “But that still doesn’t explain your cancan girl fashion.”

  “It’s part of a, er, lady of the evening costume,” I said. “You know, from one of those Wild West photo booths.” Without the corset, and with the striped skirt, it did have something of a Parisian hot-cha-cha feel. I whipped a Pie Town T-shirt from beneath the counter and darted into my office to change.

  Charlene walked inside as I was pulling a PIES BEFORE GUYS T-shirt over my head.

  I glared. “Don’t say it.”

  “That now you look like a bag woman who knocked over a dinner theater? Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “My VW’s in the alley,” I said, wanting this day to end. “I’ll drive to the Bar X with the pies. It shouldn’t take long.”

  “Sure you want to do that?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Joy was right. Shooting that pie doesn’t make sense. And I’m not loving the stray bullet theory either. Anyone want you dead? Because maybe the killer really was shooting at you.”

  Chapter Four

  I survived my return trip to the Bar X, and the next day dawned bright and sunny. Pie Town’s kitchen AC fought a losing battle against the summer heat and the massive pie ovens. Charlene left after her morning shift and returned in the afternoon, by which time I was a sweaty mess.

  But I was an optimistic sweaty mess. Ewan had suggested we meet again today to discuss future pie sales.

  Now, Charlene and I puttered up the winding road in my sky-blue VW Bug. She hated my car for its smallness and oldness, but I was no fan of Charlene’s quick-draw braking. Ignoring her running critique of my driving skills, I took my time evading potholes on the dirt road.

  “Have you considered a girdle?” She stroked Frederick, puddled in her lap.

  My hands jerked on the wheel. The VW bounced over a rut. “A what?”

  “A girdle. For your first date.”

  “This is not the nineteen fifties,” I said, enunciating, “and I do not need a girdle.”

  “It’s not a matter of need,” she said. “The retro-burlesque look is hot. Though now that you mention it, a little tightening up never hurt.”

  “No gir—”

  A coyote bolted from a tall stand of dried grass and loped across the road.

  I braked, startled, and it vanished into the sagebrush. “Did you see that?” I asked. It was rare to see a coyote in the daytime.

  “See what? I was too busy thinking about Marla.” She shifted Frederick to drape over the collar of her olive-green tunic.

  Sighing, I put the VW into gear and lurched forward. “I wonder how her fundraiser went.”

  “It was huuuuge.”

  “Did Ewan tell you?”

  “No one told me. It doesn’t matter how the fundraiser did. That’s what Marla will tell everyone.”

  I squinted into the afternoon sun.

  “You should clean that windshield.” She stroked
Frederick.

  “It looked fine when we left Pie Town.” And I felt like a shirker for leaving. Late afternoons were always slow, mostly folks dropping by to take pies home for dinner. Petronella could handle it, but Pie Town was still my responsibility.

  We rounded a bend and slowed to a halt in front of a closed, wooden gate. A sign above it read: BAR X.

  “Hang on,” Charlene said. “I got it.” She lumbered from the VW and unlocked the gate, pushing it open and waiting while I drove through.

  She closed the gate and got into the car.

  “The gate was open yesterday,” I said, driving forward.

  “And your point is?”

  “Maybe the killer was a hunter. There wasn’t anything to stop someone from coming onto the property.”

  “Even if the gate was locked,” she said, “the killer could have been anyone. I could jump that gate. Turn the car around. I’ll show you.”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “What? You think I’m too old?”

  I thought she really would try to prove her high-jumping abilities. “Of course not. I don’t want to be late for our meeting with Ewan.” I glanced at the backseat and the pink-and-white Pie Town box filled with hand pies. Nothing beats free samples to close a sale. I’d found recipes for hand pies dating back to the California Gold Rush, but I preferred to use my own. Besides, Charlene’s crusts were amaze-ola.

  We drove through the ghost town and parked in the driveway to Ewan’s sunny Victorian.

  I stepped out and unstuck my pink-and-white Pie Town T-shirt from my back. Maybe I wore my own tees too often. But my slogan gets smiles, and that’s worth any fashion faux-pas. Besides, I was standing next to a woman wearing her cat as a stole. By comparison, I was a fashion plate.

  On the porch, Ewan sat at a wicker table and frowned over an old-fashioned ledger. His white shirt looked freshly pressed, and his jeans well-faded. A pitcher of iced tea and three empty glasses sat on the table. Glancing up at us, he waved. “Charlene! Val! Come on up. Can I offer you iced tea?”

  I lifted the pie box from the backseat, and we walked up the porch steps.

  The silver-haired man rose, the lines around his eyes crinkling more deeply. He pulled out two wicker chairs. “Sit. Sit.”