Somewhere in all the chaos Gerda had arrived. She seemed to have put herself in charge of covering each newly delivered pie with a napkin—an excellent scheme, since the November rains hadn’t reduced the fly population noticeably. Even the contestants and their supporters began to appear. I couldn’t see a single place left where a car could be parked.
Except for a sheriff’s Jeep. Owen Sarkisian pulled up next to Freya and left his vehicle blocking the street. Privilege of office, I supposed. He got out, stopped by my car to say something cheerful to the resident turkey, then strolled over to join us. “Quite a shindig,” he said to me. “Anyone in town not coming?”
“You’ve heard about mob mentality,” I said.
Peggy beamed at us. “You can always count on Upper River Gulch. Such wonderful support.”
Sarkisian shook his head. “Must have taken a lot of organizing.” His gaze settled on Gerda. “These pies the reason you had to leave Brody alone in your house? For vanilla, wasn’t it?”
I shot him a suspicious glance, but he gave every appearance of it having been an idle question. I thought I knew him well enough by now not to fall for that.
Gerda sighed. “You don’t use vanilla for pumpkin pies. Besides, the fillings were already mixed before they were frozen.” She hesitated, then plunged on. “I’d only meant to be gone for a few minutes, you know, just down to the store.” She pointed across the street to Art and Ida’s mom-and-pop market.
“But?” Sarkisian’s friendly tone invited confidences.
Gerda scowled. “Doris Brody Quinn was in there.”
“Ahhh.” Nothing but sympathy showed on the sheriff’s face. “I noticed yesterday she wasn’t exactly your best friend.”
“She certainly is not.” Gerda glanced at him, then at me, and shrugged. “She was in full swing, with about five people for her audience, quoting her brother as saying the most vile things about my business sense. I got so furious I just stormed out and drove all the way into Meritville and had to stand in the most awful lines. It took forever.”
“It was such a rotten, untruthful thing for Brody to say about her,” Peggy declared, bristling in her indignation. “I could just kill—” She broke off, appalled.
“I know, figure of speech,” Sarkisian said. Peggy eyed him with suspicion, then hurried off as someone called her. He turned back to Gerda. “Look, I’m really sorry about this, but is there any chance you can find some way of proving you were in Meritville? It would make my life so much easier.”
“And mine,” Gerda agreed.
I marveled at Sarkisian’s ability to inform a suspect he wanted proof for her alibi, and make her think she’d be doing him a favor.
He looked around, frowning. “I don’t see that kid.”
“There are plenty here, take your pick,” I told him.
“The one who hangs around Ms. O’Shaughnessy. What’s his name, Tony something?”
“Ah,” I said, enlightened. “Tony Carerras. He’s probably working. He’s a janitor at the Still. Why?” I shot at him, suddenly suspicious.
“Just got used to seeing him tagging around after her.”
He sounded so innocent, the hackles of my suspicions rose. “What—” I
began.
A racket, rather like a herd of lunatics let loose with a cartload of noise makers, shattered the midday peace. It took me a moment to realize that was almost exactly the case.
“The entertainment!” Peggy cried, delighted.
I stared at her in horror as the elementary school band and chorus marched up the street, singing and playing—if it could be called that—their hearts out. I cringed, as did every music lover in the crowd. Don’t get me wrong. I think music education should be required for everyone. It broadens appreciation of something other than the current pop culture and it heightens mathematical ability. I just wish the early stages of it didn’t have to be inflicted on me. Every squeak of a reed, every blatted note from a brass, every badly tuned instrument assaulted our ears. And, in the true tradition of small neighborhoods populated by loving parents and aunts and uncles everywhere, our crowd cheered their arrival and proudly pointed out their offspring or junior relatives to each other. Yet in spite of all this parental pride, it occurred to me that our pie eating contest might be unusually short if the entertainment were to continue throughout. I wondered if that would make it worth the ear pain.
“I arranged for them,” Peggy shouted at me.
I forced a smile back. “Thank you,” I said, and meant it. She’d take the blame, not me. Yet in spite of the continuing cacophony of wrong notes and good intentions, people still thronged to the park to take part in the contest. To my delight, Peggy had Sheriff Sarkisian formally declare the event underway. Again, I could escape blame.
We had far too many participants for the number of tables, but we’d known that in advance. We split the contest into groups, with a time limit of thirty minutes each. The Women’s Division went first, and with only forty-seven entries, they all ate at once. Peggy, Gerda, Sue and I ran around making sure each contestant had what they needed, that no one interfered and that fairly accurate totals were kept. Luckily, since that was hard work, it didn’t take the full half-hour. I think most of the women only took part for the sake of taking part, and dropped out after a few delicate bites. Only a handful put in any real effort.
In the end—a mere twenty-one minutes into the contest—a fifteen-year-old girl, tall and lanky and I’d swear not an ounce over a hundred and ten pounds, came up the winner, having consumed six and a half pies. The rest of us hated her on principle. One piece of pie—even a low-carb, non-fat, sugar-free, tasteless variety—and I gain five pounds. With all due ceremony, Sheriff Sarkisian awarded her the T-shirt that read “Pumpkin Pie Eating Queen.”
We divided the men by age, with the over forty-five’s having more contestants than their juniors. We let the “age enhanced,” as Art Graham called his group, eat first, cheered on by the observers and those still waiting their turns, and at the end of the time declared a winner. The stockpile of pies had thinned noticeably, down to a mere hundred and twenty or so. What, I fretted, if we didn’t have enough? If we had to cancel for lack of supplies, would the “youngsters”—also named by Art—demand that we reschedule and do all this again on another day? The horror of that fear left me numb.
The final group took their places on the benches. We set a pie before each of them, the sheriff blew the starting whistle, and we raced to get replacements for the fastest eaters, keeping things—I hoped—running smoothly.
I don’t know who started it, but about ten minutes into the event the laughter started. A minute later a slice of pie went sailing past my head. A whole pie flew back in the opposite direction, then all hell broke loose. Everyone dove for ammunition, and all those pies, which I’d spent two days coercing and cajoling people into baking, which we’d slaved over and lugged around and worried about and brought with tender loving care to their appointed destination, were decorating people’s shirts, the checkered cloths, the ground, even the benches. I ducked for cover under a table as a glob of orange filling hit my shoulder.
I found myself face-to-face with Gerda. “Why did you bother rounding up all those bakers?” she demanded.
“Peggy forgot to put a pie fight on her list,” I shouted back to be heard over the racket.
Gerda snorted. “We’ll know better, next time.”
“Honestly,” I said in disgust, “we could have just brought the tubs over here and let them have at it. Think of all the time and effort we could have saved.”
“Next year—” Gerda began.
“No!” I interrupted before she could get into full swing. “We are not going to start an annual pie throwing contest!”
“But—”
“No!” I repeated.
When the last ammo had been flung, and the embarrassed laughter that follows such an outbreak had begun to die down, Gerda and I emerged. The wreckage lay about us in gooey, orange gobs. I closed my eyes and whimpered.
“All you pie throwers,” came Sarkisian’s shout. He stood in the center of the crowd, his uniform liberally splattered in orange. “You’re the clean-up crew.”
At that moment I think I loved him. At any rate, I could have kissed him if it wouldn’t have meant getting pie filling all over my face. He looked as bad as the rest of them, and I wondered if he’d taken a few pot—or pie—shots, himself.
It always amazed me how fast people vanished whenever there was any real work to be done. In the end, much as suspected, only the most dedicated of the SCOURGEs carried out the mopping up. There was too much mess to rely on the rags we’d brought, so Art ran across to his store and came back with an armload of paper towel rolls. These soon filled the trash bags we’d brought. And then it started to drizzle again. In Upper River Gulch, we don’t let anything as mild as that bother us. We just keep working. It takes a real downpour to drive us inside.
“If it would just rain harder,” Ida Graham declared as she tied off another filled bag, “it might wash the tables.”
“At least it’s making it easier to get this mess off my face,” said Sue. And yes, she even looked good covered in pumpkin custard.
“Where’s Ms. O’Shaughnessy gone to?” Sarkisian picked up another roll of towels but he was studying our few remaining workers.
“Self-defense class,” Gerda told him. “It’s almost five. That’s where most of the women have vanished to.”
Sarkisian’s bushy eyebrows rose. “I hadn’t heard about that. Good idea.” He glanced at me. “You taken it, yet?”
“Years ago, when Peggy first started teaching it,” I assured him.
That stopped the sheriff. He stared at me, grinning. “Ms. O’Shaughnessy is the teacher? This I’ve got to see.”
“Then you can help lug these sacks down to the school trash bins. The class is in the cafeteria.”
We set forth in the drizzle that threatened to increase to a full-blown storm, hauling the remains of the contest with us. Cars already stood in the school parking lot, and more arrived, swerving around our procession, splattering us with mud to go along with the pumpkin. Women of all ages and shapes, garbed in sweat suits or leotards and coats, raced to get inside the lit cafeteria before the rain really let loose. We tossed the bags into the bin, then Sarkisian strolled after the women. I joined him.
“How many years has she been teaching this?” he asked as he propped a shoulder against the doorjamb.
I looked into the brightly lit interior. “About seven. She’s really good at it.”
Sarkisian nodded. The women finished stretching and paired off, apparently reviewing break-away techniques covered in the previous class. I was impressed. Peggy had added quite a few things since I’d been one of her first pupils. I should probably take it again.
One of the women moved with incredible grace. She wore a knockout leotard outfit in lavender and blues, and threw off her attacker with ease. She shifted her position, taking her turn to do the grabbing, and I realized it was Cindy Brody.
“A woman who can do that,” murmured Sarkisian, watching Cindy’s tenacious hold, “would be quite an adversary. Well up to dealing with someone much larger and stronger.”
“Especially if he weren’t expecting it?” I asked.
The sheriff glanced at me. “Just musing,” he said.
I nodded. We watched as they segued into judo moves, which impressed me considerably.
“I should get her to teach classes to our department,” Sarkisian said. “She really is—“ He broke off as Peggy clapped her hands, and her class, amazingly obedient, stood to attention.
“Let’s review using whatever you can find as a weapon,” she called. Beside her on a table lay a motley assortment of everyday objects, from a running shoe to a pair of glasses. She demonstrated possible uses of each on a volunteer attacker. She set down a purse, which she’d used in a highly unorthodox manner, and her hand hovered over the next item, a letter opener. She shoved it beneath the purse and went on to a key ring.
A sigh escaped the sheriff, and he straightened. He didn’t say a thing, but I could almost hear his thoughts. Peggy was good with weapons and obviously an old hand at seizing opportunity. If she’d walked in, seen Brody sitting there, noticed Gerda’s letter opener… She could have killed him before she’d even thought through the consequences.
The sheriff strode down the covered walkway, and I hurried after him, trying to think of something to say to divert him. “She doesn’t have a motive!” I blurted out at last.
“You mean you don’t know of any,” Sarkisian corrected me. “And I’m not accusing her. There’s just something I’d like to settle for sure so her little display of expertise doesn’t keep haunting me.”
That sounded reasonable. The damned man made most things he did sound reasonable. If you could prove someone innocent to your own satisfaction, then you didn’t waste time and effort wondering about them.
He stopped at the end of the building, still beneath the roof’s protective overhang, and pulled his phone from his belt. A call to the office got him the number he wanted, and a moment later I heard the ringing. Peggy’s son Bill answered, and Sarkisian identified himself. “This’ll just take a second.” He sounded friendly. “Your mother finally confessed she wasn’t really with you at the time Brody was being murdered. If you’ll just confirm that for me?”
Even I could hear the heavy sigh. “Thank God for that. I hated her lying about it, and I hated knowing I’d have to back her up on it. But if she’s told you the truth, that means you don’t suspect her anymore. That’s great.”