Cold Turkey (13 page)

Peggy turned on the man, outrage shivering from every pore. “How dare you!” she cried. “Gerda, of all people…”

“Look,” Sue interrupted her fellow SCOURGEie, “everyone was always annoyed with Brody. Cindy’s story is absolute nonsense.”

“She was probably just trying to divert suspicion from herself,” Peggy stuck in.

I tried to agree, but found my mud pack had dried tight. I couldn’t move my mouth. Apparently I rated a different formula than Judy Wharton. I made irritated noises, and all three of them looked at me.

Sarkisian brightened, and a distinct chuckle sounded in his voice as he said, “Okay, you might as well wash it off, now. It’s obvious I’m not going to get anything out of you three—especially you,” he grinned at me. “For the moment, at least. But don’t bother concocting some farfetched story to explain it all. My bullshit detector works remarkably well.”

“What was he trying to get you to say?” Peggy demanded as soon as the door closed behind him. Sue explained, and Peggy’s brow wrinkled as she turned to me, earnestness radiating from her. “Honestly, Annike, I don’t know of any plot. Oh, Gerda fumed about coming up with something, she really was mad at him. But then other things came up and she forgot about it.”

Sue nodded. “That’s Gerda, you know. If she’d been going to do something, it would have been at once, as soon as she got mad at him. She always acts so quickly and decisively.”

“Like the time she caught her shop assistant passing out free rentals to her friends,” Peggy stuck in. “She fired her on the spot. When she’s angry, she doesn’t take time to think, she just explodes.”

“But the more time passes,” Sue went on, “the more she gets involved in something else, and whatever infuriated her before doesn’t seem as important.”

She turned her back on the sheriff and placed a warm, damp, herb-steeped cloth over my face. The pack began to soften, and I scrubbed at it until I could move my mouth. When I looked up, I saw Sarkisian at the door, grinning.

“Cleaning that off ought to keep you too busy to follow me for awhile,” he said.

I glared back. “But I have to. Remember the key to the Grange Hall? I’ve got to have that today.”

His eyes lit. “Certainly. I’ll deliver it to your aunt’s house—so there’s no need for you to go rushing around any more this afternoon.”

“It’s almost night,” I muttered, but at that moment Sue draped another herb-scented towel over my face, and I went to work de-mudding myself. When I emerged, the sheriff had left. Peggy and Sue stood in front of me, watching the process with apparent fascination. “Okay, he’s gone. Tell me what my aunt’s been up to.”

Peggy shook her head. “We told him the truth. Well, some of it, at least. Gerda did go on for a little while about coming up with a trap for him, but she couldn’t think of anything, and then she got sidetracked over the video rental problems, and she stopped fuming about Brody. Honest!” she added at my piercing stare.

Sue nodded in earnest agreement. I sighed, not knowing whether to believe them or not. If they told the truth, then all we had to do was convince a very suspicious Sarkisian of that fact. If not—well, I’d have to figure out what kind of a fiendish trap my resourceful aunt might have contrived—and what consequences it might have brought.

I was beginning to think that getting over three hundred pies baked by Friday morning just might be the easier task facing me.

Chapter Eight

My clock radio went off with a violent fit of static, which sent poor Vilhelm into a screaming fit. Thanksgiving morning. Too soon, my mind whimpered. Too soon. I tried to bury my head under the pillow. That’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It was stifling, and my neck bent at the wrong angle. With a sigh, I threw the pillow aside and sat up with a cavernous yawn.

My mind jumbled with lists and tasks—completed, coming up today, and those still in the not-distant-enough future. I’d set the alarm for five-thirty, which didn’t leave me much time to spare—or much sleep, for that matter. We hadn’t gotten to bed until at least one a.m. I couldn’t be sure of the exact time, by then, my eyes were too bleary to see a clock. Suppressing a groan, I climbed out from under my warm comforter into the chill of the room, pulled the cover off the parakeet’s cage, and found him glaring at me with his beady eyes.

“I’m a pest,” he yelled at me.

“I think the entire SCOURGE elite have replaced you, there,” I muttered and turned to find my jeans.

Pies, I still needed to find people to bake pies. And how could I talk them into doing that when I already had them scrambling eggs or flipping pancakes? But I’d have most of the rest of the town coming to eat, and if I could escape the kitchen, I could corner the unenlisted before they left and hand out tubs of pumpkin. Feeling much better, I exited my room to the tinny cries of “Yummy bird, here kitty, kitty.”

I found Aunt Gerda, already dressed for the day in a denim skirt and a sweater she’d knitted back when I was in high school, slumped over a cup of tea at the kitchen table. Siamese Olaf overflowed her lap, while calico Birgit and orange Mischief rubbed against her ankles, and the tiger-striped manx Hefty sprawled on her feet. The aroma of peppermint filled the room.

“That’s not going to do it, this morning,” I warned her. I scooped up Dagmar, who was doing her best to trip me, and cradled the fluffy ball of gray and white fur and claws in one arm. “Nothing like good old caffeine to get you going.”

Aunt Gerda yawned. I’ll swear she didn’t even notice when black Clumsy leapt onto the table and hunkered down beside the teapot. “Can’t drink caffeine. Not even decaf.”

Which only went to show how worn-out the poor dear was. She always lectured me, in that healthier-than-thou manner of hers, that caffeine could kill you. Apparently, in her case, that might be the literal truth. I joined her in her herbal brew.

I’d barely sat down, settled Dagmar in my lap, and taken my first sip, when Gerda dragged herself to her feet, scattering cats in all directions. “We’d better get going.” She drained her own mug. “Bring your tea with you, dear. We’ve got the key, remember?”

We did, thanks entirely to a nine p.m. phone call from Owen Sarkisian. He surprised me even more by meeting us at the school’s kitchen, for which he’d also obtained the keys. He would have endeared himself to me forever if he’d stuck around and helped, but he claimed pressing business to do with the murder—which I took the opportunity to scoff at loudly—to leave us to it. Aunt Gerda and I had spent the next hour and more lugging pancake mix, sausage, bacon, eggs and oranges into the hall’s kitchen. But we’d done it, and all the breakfast makings, even that damned giant coffeepot, awaited us there.

“I wish the turkey company had called back,” Gerda fretted as we climbed into Freya for the trip to the Grange.

That was beginning to sound like a broken record from both of us. I’d left several frantic messages for the company supplying the smoked breast for the raffle, but so far hadn’t received any answers.

“At least you made up a gift certificate,” I said. She had—at about midnight. Not exactly a professional job, since she didn’t have any certificate-making software for her computer. But we’d cobbled one together, then had to print it out on plain paper, with Gerda protesting that I should have warned her so she could have sent me out to buy something embossed and fancy.

Peggy, bless her brightly colored socks, sat in her old Pontiac in the Grange lot. She waved gaily to us, as if getting up before dawn on a holiday morning was her idea of a great time. As a group, we ran through the light drizzle, Gerda unlocked the door, and we piled inside. I headed straight for the heater, and in a few minutes warm air began to mingle with the icy chill. We might even be able to shed our coats and wooly hats before it was time to go home again.

Shoving up the sleeves of my sweatshirt, I strode into the kitchen. It was a large room, as kitchens go, with three stoves and ovens, two refrigerators, and two sinks. Cupboards and countertops lined the walls, with two preparation tables evenly spaced in the center of the floor. You could just walk between them, if you weren’t too large. What it would be like with a whole crew working in here defied my imagination. Of course, with my luck, I wouldn’t have the chance to find out.

Not much to my surprise, no good fairies or brownies or whatever had come during the night to magically squeeze oranges or mix batter. Which at the moment left it up to me, since Gerda and Peggy were arguing over whether or not to try to find the Grange’s harvest decorations.

The front door opened, and feet shuffled in the hall. “Damn, it’s cold in here. Why didn’t someone get here early to turn on the heat?” Art Graham demanded.

“You could have volunteered,” I shouted back.

“How’d I know someone hadn’t already?” came his prompt reply. I could hear the grin in his voice.

“Well,” put in his wife Ida, “we’re the decorating committee. I suppose heat might come under that category.”

“Nope. Decorating’s a luxury,” Art told her. “Heat’s an essential.”

“Do you know where everything’s stored?” Peggy asked, and any hope I had of getting help vanished as all four of them started opening cupboards and closets and exclaiming for the others to come and see the treasures—none of which pertained to Thanksgiving—they unearthed.

I, too, opened cupboards in a search for mixing bowls and utensils. “Batter up,” I muttered, and dumped half a bag of mix into a stainless steel container with a handle.

“Need help?” came a gentle, tired voice from the door.

I looked up to see Nancy Fairfield leaning against the jamb, looking fragile and quite pretty in a corduroy skirt and bulky sweater—apparently her favorite outfit. She had dragged back her fair hair and fastened it behind her neck, and wore only lipstick in a shade of dusty pink that set off the blue of her eyes.

“Up to it?” I asked. I might be desperate for assistance, but I didn’t want to be responsible for her suffering a relapse.

“If I can sit down,” she admitted with a wry face for her enfeebled condition.

I fetched a chair, and with relief saw Sue Hinkel had arrived and commandeered Art, and they now carried the first of the tables—the long, foldable variety that seats at least ten—from their storage place leaning against a wall.

“You don’t know Simon Lowell, do you?” she asked as I set her up at the stove to watch a pan of bacon and another of sausages.

“Met him yesterday.” I flicked a few drops of water onto the skillet, but they sat there instead of dancing away. Not hot enough, yet.

“Isn’t he great? So intense.”

So hairy, I thought, but I managed to keep from saying that aloud.

“I’ve never met anyone like him, before,” she added.

“He’s one of a kind,” I agreed with perfect honesty.

“He makes politics come alive for me. I mean, I never really thought about the government’s role in society until I met him. And I go to Stanford!”

“Should have gone to Berkeley.” I tested the skillet, and this time the drops of water sizzled away in a satisfactory manner. I poured the first batch of pancakes. “Is he coming to help today?” I added, forever hopeful.

She turned vague. “He said he had some business he had to take care of.”

“On Thanksgiving morning?” I demanded, but she was off and running on Simon’s brilliance in general, and his concern for the downtrodden masses in particular. But since nothing she said implied this earnest young Communist held accountants—specifically Clifford Brody—in abhorrence, I allowed my thoughts to return to making sure I’d done everything necessary to get things running smoothly today. Everything except make sure that damned turkey breast showed up in time for the raffle, I concluded at last.

By seven a.m., we were up to our elbows in pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausages and bacon, and the place smelled like heaven for the hungry and had my mouth watering. At least enough people had arrived to help, so I no longer despaired of the event getting off the ground. Lesser members of the SCOURGEs now set up and positioned the tables, while others stacked plates and silverware at one end of the serving counter. Things were beginning to hum smoothly, except for the minor squabbles over who forgot to bring the scissors and thumb tacks for some of the decorations.

The first of our cooked offerings now rested beneath a heat lamp—but not for long. Art Graham bore down on them with a gleam in his eyes. Well, we all had to eat before the customers arrived, so why not? I let him serve himself, then dragged off my coat and tossed it in a corner. The kitchen was the one place you could count on getting warm.

“I need someone to squeeze oranges,” I shouted, and as usual, no one came running to volunteer. Muttering under my breath, I went in search of a knife.

“Don’t worry, Simon’s bound to get here soon.” Nancy forked a sizzled piece of bacon onto the draining plate lined with paper towels. “He never shirks any task. I just can’t understand why Dad doesn’t like him.”

I was beginning to get an idea why, if she talked about him like this all the time. I was getting pretty sick of hearing how dedicated and noble was this latter-day hippie, myself. “How’re your studies going?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject. “You’re a senior, now, aren’t you?”

“I may change my major,” she said. “I can’t believe how politically naïve I am.”