Death by Deep Dish Pie (12 page)

Again, a quick little polite nervous twitter ran through the crowd. Alan Breitenstrater clearly did not appreciate his nephew's interruption or his humor. His face was quickly turning red, and he looked very upset and unhappy.

“So, Uncle Alan, why don't you fill in for my dad in the pie-eating contest, and then finish your announcement while the crowd tries the new pies? C'mon, everyone, what do you say? Let's have Alan Breitenstrater in the pie-eating contest for once!”

The crowd, of course, gave a big cheer—while Alan suddenly stared with horror at the pie behind Cletus's name. Maybe he really hated chocolate cream?

Suddenly, he picked up the pie and threw the whole thing into the trashcan next to the table—but not without first smearing at least a quarter of the pie's filling down the side of the table cloth. Great, I thought. This was going to be extra challenging to clean up.

Alan took over the microphone from Dinky. “Sure I'll fill in—but I'll have one of these wonderful lemon ginseng health pies, instead.”

A ripple of applause went through the crowd as someone—with all the people around Alan, it was hard to see who—took a lemon ginseng pie from the cart behind him and put it at Cletus's spot.

Dinky frowned, but said into the microphone, as Alan took his seat at Cletus's spot and tied on his bib, “All right contestants. I'll count down, and then I'll start timing. Uh, Uncle Alan, your stopwatch?” Alan handed over his stopwatch to Dinky, glaring at him as though he feared his nephew would run off and hock it at a second-hand shop. Dinky fiddled with the stopwatch—until Geri showed him how to use it—and then held it aloft. “All right, the two who finish their pies first get to ride with, well, I guess with me this year, huh, Uncle Alan, since you're competing!” The crowd gave a little laugh, which cut off when Alan scowled angrily up at Dinky. “Contestants, hands behind your backs.”

The other nine contestants looked at Alan, to be sure to give him a head start, just as they would have for Cletus. “Three, two, one, on your mark, ready,
Go!”
hollered Dinky.

Alan started eating his lemon ginseng health-food pie first as the crowd began chanting encouragement, then, after thirty seconds or so, the other contestants began tucking into their not-so-healthy chocolate cream pies.

But a few seconds later, suddenly Alan Breitenstrater reared up from his pie and stared out at the crowd, wide-eyed. His chin and mouth were covered with lemon ginseng cream . . . but the rest of his face was red and contorted in a pained expression. He gave a high keening gasp that sounded, for all the world, just like Slinky's wail.

And then Alan fell face-forward into his pie.

The other contestants looked up, their chocolate cream-covered faces all turned toward Alan.

Geri was the first one over to Alan.

‘Alan? Alan?” She shook his shoulders, but he didn't respond. “Oh my God, someone call 911! Alan's had a heart attack!”

8

And so it was that Alan Breitenstrater died of a heart attack while eating a lemon ginseng health-food pie at his own company's pie-eating contest.

Right after his collapse, there was a moment of stunned silence. Then Geri screaming for someone to call 911. Then people starting to rush in around Alan and the table with the pies. Then Dinky, Todd Raptor, and a few of the contestants trying to keep everyone else back while Chief John Worthy moved Alan to the ground and (from the murmurs that passed back through the crowd, since we didn't have a direct view) then did CPR on him, to no effect.

To Chief Worthy's credit, he kept going—no matter the mess of the lemon ginseng health-food pie—until the ambulance came, its sirens blasting, right up by the pie-eating contest table. Two patrol cars rushed in behind them—their officers, plus Chief Worthy, representing the whole of the on-duty Paradise Police Department at the moment. The paramedics rushed out with a portable defibrillator, working on Alan until it became obvious that Mr. Alan Breitenstrater, CEO and president of Breitenstrater Pies, Inc., and feared descendent of one of Paradise's founding families, was beyond recovery.

The paramedics covered his body and lifted him on a gurney into the ambulance, which left silently and slowly. I reckon there's rarely any need to rush to the county morgue.

Todd and Dinky escorted a sobbing, inconsolable Geri to a patrol car. All three piled in and were driven away.

Chief Worthy and two other officers started asking the crowd to go home. People began wandering off, but I gestured to Owen and Winnie to come closer to me.

Owen was wiping his brow with a handkerchief, his hand shaking. Winnie just looked drained and tired. I felt shocked, too, but I didn't have time to examine my feelings and neither did they. I'd been thinking, while the ambulance crew was trying to save Alan, and I had a theory. To see if it was right, we all had work to do.

“Listen up,” I whispered. “Owen, you get the lemon ginseng health-food pie—the one Alan fell into—and close its box and put it in this bag.” I thrust a trash bag at him. “Winnie, you get the chocolate pie—the one Alan threw away in the garbage can—and put it and the tablecloth in this bag.” I thrust another trash bag at her. “You'll both be working the end of the table where Alan was. I'll cover for you by making a distraction at the other end. Just do it fast, and bring the pies to my laundromat, and for pity's sake, whatever the two of you do, don't eat any of either pie.”

Winnie looked at me in horror. “Josie, why would we want to eat from a pie Alan Breitenstrater died in? And why do you want us to—”

I swatted her on the arm. “Shush up! I didn't mean I thought you were going to cut yourself a nice slice and eat it along with a nice cup of coffee—or, I guess, herbal tea, in the case of the ginseng pie. Just, if you happen to get some of the pie on your hands, wipe it off quickly, don't lick it off absent-mindedly. And as to why I want you to do this—trust me. I had plenty of time to come up with a theory while we waited for the ambulance. I'll tell you at the laundromat. Now, hurry, before someone takes the pies away.” Nervously, I eyed a Breitenstrater Pie Company security guard heading over our way.

Winnie, giving me her raised-left-eyebrow-you'd-better-have-a-good-reason look, took her bag and headed toward the garbage can.

Owen just stood, staring into space.

“Owen!” I whispered. “Are you okay? Did you hear what I just said?”

Owen startled, then refocused on me. “What? Oh. Yes, certainly, Josie. It's just—it's awful to see someone die like that, unexpectedly.”

Sure it was, I thought, watching him head toward the table. Funny, though. I got the feeling he wasn't really talking about Alan Breitenstrater.

But I didn't have time to wonder about that. The security guard had noticed Winnie (digging through the trash) and Owen (eyeing the health-food pie, well, distastefully) and was hotfooting it over to them.

I needed to distract him somehow. And as the good Lord would have it, the moment I realized that, the most recent Breitenstrater TV ad—the first one to ever run nationally—popped into my head.

I ran over to the last table in the row of three tables on which there were four untouched chocolate cream pies. And I grabbed the end of the tablecloth. And yanked as hard and suddenly as I could.

Of course, on TV, that tablecloth snapped out from under the pies as smooth as silk. In real life, the few people still milling around started yelping as the pies went flying like pie grenades, then hit the ground, sending chocolate cream pie filling splattering up. Fortunately, only a few people had their pants legs splattered, although one toddler in new white tennis shoes ambled right on through a pie that had somehow landed whole, right side up, even as his mama ran after him hollering. The pie ruckus made everyone in the area turn and glare at me. I just gave a little wave back. They all knew they could come by my laundromat later for free stain-removing advice. The important thing was that the ruckus distracted the security guard from Winnie and Owen, and made him come trotting over to me.

“Josie Toadfern, what in tarnation do you think you're doing?” he hollered.

I peered closer at the heavy-set man huffing at me. His face was mottled red, his brows pulling together so hard and fast that they changed the pitch of his security-guard company-issued ball cap.

“Why, Chuck Winks, I about didn't recognize you in that uniform.” I lifted my eyebrows. “You look right nice in it, too.”

Truth be told, Chuck Winks Sr. looked miserable in his uniform. It was too tight, and, from the scowl on his face, it was also too itchy in several unmentionable spots. His forehead was shiny with sweat.

“Hmrnph. Had to get an extra job to start putting something aside for retirement. It's become clear Junior isn't gonna be the major league star I thought he'd be,” Chuck groused. “And after all those years of me coaching his Little League teams. He wants to quit now. Can you imagine?”

Yes, yes, I surely could. I couldn't blame Chuck Jr., aka Chucky, aka Charlemagne, one bit, in fact. A quick glance past Chuck Sr.'s shoulder gave me the happy view of Winnie and Owen casually ambling away from the contest table with their pie-laden trash bags. I smiled sweetly at Chuck Sr.

“Now, don't give up on Chucky just yet,” I said. “Maybe his baseball experience is really just leading him to some other destiny.” I patted Chuck Sr. on the arm. “You shouldn't worry so much.”

“Aww, easy for you to say. You ain't got a pinched nerve from pitching for years to your boy,” he said, holding out his right arm. “See that? I can't bend it out all the way without all kinds of pain—”

“Josie Toadfern, what's going on over here?”

I cringed. That was Chief John Worthy. He came up along beside Chuck Sr. and me.

‘Yeah, Josie, what was it with the pie thing?” Chuck Sr. asked, suddenly all business. He looked at Chief Worthy. “I was just asking her about that.”

I pulled my face into reverent surprise. “You mean to tell me the two of you haven't seen the latest Breitenstrater Pie Company ad?”

I looked from Chuck Sr. to Chief Worthy. The corner of his left eye twitched, which it often did whenever he glared at me.

Of course they'd seen it, and I let them think about the ad for a moment: in it, Geri Breitenstrater, dressed up like an angel, sat at a cloth-covered table, a pie before her. She took a bite when suddenly an actor dressed like the devil—forked tail and all—popped in, grabbed the edge of the tablecloth, and whipped it out from under the pie, without the pie even moving. Then Geri took another bite, calmly, as if nothing weird happened, while a voice-over stated, “Breitenstrater Pies. A Little Taste of Paradise—no matter what the circumstances.”

Rumor had it that Alan had paid some mega ad agency in Boston to create the TV ad—a real departure from him standing in front of the camera, stiff as a board, holding a pie and saying in a monotone, “The Breitenstraters have been making pies for many generations, based on my great-great-great-great-grandmother Gertrude's recipes. Breitenstrater Pies—A Little Taste of Paradise.”

It was the first nationally run Breitenstrater ad, made in an effort to boost sagging sales, and rumor had it that it cost so much, Alan had let two long-term employees go to cover the expense . . . but of course, he kept driving the company-leased Jaguar . . .

Maybe, I thought, there were lots of people who would like to see Alan dead. A whole company's worth. Would his announcement have anything to do with more layoffs or ads?

“So what about the ad?” Chief Worthy said impatiently, pulling back my attention.

“I have to take the tablecloths to my laundromat for cleaning—I have a contract with Breitenstrater Pie Company to do all their linens. And I just thought—” I paused, gave a little sniffle, “—that I'd remove the tablecloths that way as an homage, you know, to Mr. Breitenstrater, because he was so darn proud of that ad.”

″Aww, Josie,” said Chuck Sr. “That is just so darned sweet.”

Chief Worthy, on the other hand, was not impressed. He leaned a little closer to me, glaring. “You need a little practice,” he said, “because you've made a mess.”

”Don't worry about it, Josie, I'll go round up some guys to clean up those pies,” Chuck said.

Chief Worthy waited until Chuck Sr. ambled off. “I'm not so easily fooled,” he said. “What's really going on?”

“Just what I said already. But, along the lines of what's really going on, do you really think Alan Breitenstrater had a heart attack?”

“What? Of course he did. Why would you—”

“Now hear me out. Did you see how he stared all worried at the chocolate pie and insisted on a substitute? Plus Cletus isn't here. Neither is Trudy, but she's a teen, so I can see where she might not want to be at a pie-eating contest. But Cletus's absence is mighty curious, don't you think?”

Chief Worthy gave me a hard look. “Are you trying to tell me that you think Cletus somehow rigged Alan's heart attack?”

“No. I'm just trying to tell you that something's going on that bears investigating. I mean, Alan and Cletus each had important announcements to make today but Cletus didn't show up—and I don't have to tell you how much he loved this contest—and Alan died before making his full announcement. And did you see how Alan stared at the chocolate pie that was reserved for Cletus? Like he was frightened? I'm just saying—something's definitely wrong with this picture, and what
if
it does play into Alan's heart attack somehow? Don't you think—”

Chief Worthy jumped in before I could finish. “What I think,” he said, his face red and his lips tightly clenched, “is that you think too much about stuff that's none of your business.” He bared his teeth in what was supposed to be a grin, reminding me of one of those aggressive monkeys on the cable TV nature channels.