Death by Deep Dish Pie (3 page)

So I said, “Hey, Trudy, before you go off with Mrs. Beavy, I need to ask you a favor. Could you watch my laundromat tomorrow? It's pretty simple—I'll leave you a list of the orders people will be picking up—and I'll pay you. Five bucks an hour okay?”

She gave me a hard look, and for a second I thought maybe five bucks an hour sounded like an insult to a Breitenstrater. Then she said, “Why?”

“It's the annual family picnic over at Stillwater tomorrow. And I need to be there with Guy.”

I didn't need to explain the rest to Trudy. Like I said, Paradise is a small town. Everyone knows my cousin Guy is fifteen years older than me, is more like a brother than a cousin, has autism, and lives at Stillwater Farms (so named on account of the nearby Stillwater River), fifteen miles north of Paradise.

I reckon all of us in a small town trail around our invisible mantles of family history.

“No—why do you want
me
to help you?” Trudy asked.

I shrugged. “Just thought you might want to.”

I started to turn away, but then Trudy said, “Wait. I'll—um—I'll do it, but not for five bucks an hour.”

“That's what I can afford, Trudy.”

She grinned. “No, I want something else that won't cost you anything. But it has to be a secret.”

It was my turn to give her a hard look.

“Nothing bad,” she said. “Just secret.”

And she whispered the secret of what she wanted in my ear, and I hesitated, just for a moment, but then thinking of Guy and the picnic and not really understanding yet how secrets yearn to be set free as truth, I agreed, as Mrs. Beavy toddled over, chirping, “Are you ready to get your widowed earrings, dear? Or would they be brow-rings . . .”

2

By twenty minutes past noon on Saturday, Winnie Porter, Owen Collins, and I were finally on the road, on our way to family day at Stillwater. Our noon start time had been delayed four minutes because Winnie had had to rearrange a stack of books in the backseat of her truck to make room for Owen. (Winnie was driving because my old Chevrolet was at Elroy's Gas Station and Body Shop for the day, getting a new muffler, among other things.) Then I'd delayed us another thirteen minutes by running back and checking that everything at my was really going to be okay for the afternoon with Trudy Breitenstrater (who'd promised to keep Slinky in a cage in my combo office/storeroom).

It took another three minutes for us to get out of Paradise and northbound on the state route that led to Stillwater, after curving through corn fields and stands of trees and cow pastures and free-range chicken farms and barns and hamlets that were tinier, even, than Paradise: New Hope, population 52. Stringtown, population 29. Ferrysburg, population 238. Plus a business every now and again—the Fireworks Barn. The Bar-None (a bar that was obviously not picky about its patrons and that was owned by Bubbles Brown, my cousin Sally Toadfern's ex-mom-in-law).

It was a bright summer day, the sky opening into forever blueness, the road surface already shimmering with heat, the kind of day I love most for country drives, if I weren't so worried about my and about being late for family day, worries I'd already voiced.

“Josie, would you stop fussing?” Winnie said. If anyone could make up our lost half hour and get us to Stillwater on time, it was Winnie. Her job was commandeering the Mason County Public Library Bookmobile across the back roads of Mason County (with stops in Paradise twice a week).

Winnie was a tall, slender fifty-something who dressed as if every day were a celebration of a 1960s that never really reached Paradise. Even though Winnie had been fifteen and in the Jackie Kennedy-pillbox-hatted Midwest at the height of Flower Power, she now always dressed as though Janis Joplin had gotten fashion tips from her. Somehow, on Winnie, this didn't seem at odds with the fact that she also drove a full-cab, bright red Dodge Ram truck named Dolly (in honor of Dolly Parton, Winnie's favorite country-and-western star), or that she loved to wear a Dolly wig on Saturday nights and go two-stepping with her husband, Martin, at the Bar-None. Or that while checking out copies of
Star Reporter
magazine to the locals, she also talked them into trying Jane Austen.

Any woman who mixes Janis Joplin, Dolly Parton, and Jane Austen to come up with her unique identity is not to be messed with, not even by a country road that's put fear into the diesel-powered hearts of many a snow plow. That's why Winnie is my best friend.

Still, I looked at her and said, “Did I mention Slinky the ferret?” I'd quickly told Winnie and Owen about the previous day's events with Dinky and Trudy (leaving out Mrs. Beavy's blouse, which I thought was a kind of personal detail), and the deal I'd made to get Trudy to watch my this morning—that I would sponsor her attending this evening's Paradise Historical Society meeting to discuss the annual Founder's Day play.

“You've told us about twenty times,” Winnie said, referring to the ferret.

“Did I mention ferrets smell bad and eat anything?”

“About another twenty times. But I thought Slinky's been demusked and is in her favorite cage for the day in your storeroom?”

Okay, so Slinky only smelled slightly musky. Still.

“What if Slinky gets out?” I fussed. “What if Mrs. Schroeder comes in to drop off Pastor Schroeder's shirts and the choir robes and sees Slinky? She'll swear Slinky is a manifestation of Satan come to Paradise—you know how she is about anything remotely rodent.”

“Ferrets aren't rodents—” Winnie started.

But I went on. “What if Trudy gets lonely and reattaches Slinky to her neck with the ferret leash?”

“Now, Josie, you must look beyond the physical fact of Trudy's shoulder-laden ferret to the psychological ramifications. In short, Trudy has attachment issues. She needs to be attached to someone or something that will provide a loving response to her nurturance, reciprocating her love, something she's obviously missing at home, and you should be pleased that she's willing to detach enough from Slinky to let the ferret stay in a cage today because this shows that your response to her is boosting her sense of . . .”

This, obviously, was not Winnie, who was now frowning with asphalt-curling concentration at the road slipping at seventy-plus mph beneath Dolly's wheels.

This was Owen. He was thirty-something, a few years older than me (I'm twenty-nine), and not as fussy or boring as his remarks about Trudy made him sound. He carries the weight of triple PhDs—in psychology, philosophy, and religious studies—which is why, I think, it's hard for him to simply say, for example, “Trudy's family is really screwed up. No wonder the poor kid's trying to get affection from a ferret leashed to her neck.”

His heart's in the right place, though. Besides teaching at Masonville Community College and at the state prison, on Sunday afternoons he reads the Bible and other books to a group of blind women at the Paradise Retirement Village, even though he's agnostic, because he feels he ought to do
something
in the way of spirituality, what with his religious studies degree. The old ladies dote on him and call him “cutie pie” and “sweet pea” even though they can't see him, but they're right, he is cute—in a lost-puppy-dog kind of way, although they probably wouldn't approve of his long blond ponytail. I do, though.

And any man who mixes prisoner-teaching, elderly lady-reading, philosophy, psychology, religious studies, agnosticism, and cuteness—plus is one very fine kisser—is not a man to interrupt, even when he's rambling on. That's why Owen is my boyfriend.

“Uh, Josie, aren't you listening?” Winnie said.

“What? Oh, sure,” I said. I'd drifted into a cow-pasture-cornfield-tree-stand-hamlet-old-barn-watching reverie. “Owen was just describing Trudy's psychological condition—”

“I'd moved on from that,” Owen said, kindly, no spite. He'd gotten used to people drifting off midramble. “I wanted to know why Trudy wants to come to the play meeting tonight. What's this play all about anyway?”

Owen is a newcomer to Paradise, which means he wasn't born there. I met him when I signed up for a popular-culture class of his at Masonville Community College. Owen has lived in Paradise for almost a year, having moved here from his hometown of Seattle when he got the college job. We've been dating for about nine months. But it wouldn't have mattered if Owen had lived in Paradise ten, twenty, or thirty years. He was a newcomer, and always would be until the day he died. Even if he keeled over right at the intersection of Maple Avenue and Main Street. Even if he never so much as stepped a toe across the Mason County line, except for the vacation every Paradisite takes at least once in a lifetime, up to Lake Erie and Cedar Point Amusement Park.

Now, Owen's kids—especially if born of a native Paradisite, such as me,
might
be considered real Paradisites, especially if one of them became, say, a football hero or a head cheerleader. Grandkids, most likely, would definitely be considered Paradisites, no matter their social status. But although I'd allowed myself a thought or two about happily-ever-after with Owen, we really weren't that far along in our relationship. And in any case, Owen would always be a newcomer in Paradise. I didn't hold it against him.

“Trudy wants to be an actress,” I said. “And she wants to make her debut in the annual Founder's Day play, A Little Taste of Paradise.”

Winnie gasped. “My goodness, Josie. You didn't agree to that, did you?”

“No,” I assured Winnie. “I just promised to sponsor her as a guest at tonight's meeting. It's supposed to be to go over details about the play.”

“Why couldn't she just come to the meeting?” Owen asked.

“It was
understood
for years that Paradise Historical Society meetings were for members only, and by invitation for everyone else,” Winnie told Owen. “Then old Tom McGalligan crashed a meeting about ten years ago demanding that a huge fossil rock—”

“He really, really prides himself on that rock—” I said.

“That this rock be moved to the center of town,” Winnie went on, “right smack in the middle of the traffic circle, because what could be more historical than that?”

“The historical society members were meeting to decide on some historical monument to go in the middle of the circle,” I added.

“And they didn't want Tom's rock?” Owen asked, sounding a little bewildered already.

“They didn't,” Winnie said. “And they really didn't want their meeting crashed. Tom got very hysterical when someone—I think it was Nancy DeWitt—told him a flat rock in the middle of a traffic circle would not only be unappealing as a monument but that the rock needed to stay on the farm where it belonged.”

Owen frowned. “But there's no monument in the traffic circle.”

“No. They could never come to an agreement on that. But they did decide that visitors have to be sponsored.”

“Which is why Trudy needed me to sponsor her visit,” I said, bringing the conversation full circle to Owen's original question.

“And the penalty for her showing up without your sponsorship would be what, exactly?” Owen asked.

I frowned at the amusement in his voice. So our town's quirky. So what. “None, considering she's a Breitenstrater. But she also said she didn't want this getting around town beforehand. I have a feeling she wants to make her appearance as proper as possible, to avoid trouble with her dad. From something her cousin Dinky said, her dad would just as soon she stays away from town. I guess she wants her attending the meeting to be as proper as possible. Then, at least, people won't mutter about her crashing the meeting. It would get back to him, no matter how careful people tried to be about not upsetting him.”

“Well, as long as you didn't tell her you'd try to get her in the play,” Winnie said. “I don't think the historical society would approve of that, even for a Breitenstrater.”

“Is she really that bad of an actress?” Owen asked.

“That's not the point, Owen,” Winnie said, sloshing a bit of coffee as she put the go cup back in the holder while taking a hairpin turn. “The point is that Trudy Breitenstrater can't just ask for a role in the play.”

“Well, of course not. She'd have to try out, like everyone else, of course, because in an egalitarian society—”

I groaned. This was why Owen would always be an outsider. Things like this have to be explained to outsiders, but go as unspoken tradition for Paradisites.

“Maybe it would help if Owen understood the whole Founder's Day background,” Winnie said.

I twisted in my seat, so I could face Owen. His hazel eyes had gone wide, bewildered. “You have to understand,” I said, “this goes back to 1928. That's when we started having a Paradise Founder's Day celebration, to go along with July Fourth.”

“Not to be confused with the Beet Festival in the early fall,” Winnie added.

“Right,” I said. “Or the Paradise Appalachian Homecoming Days in the spring.”

Owen looked slightly panicked. While he likes to give long lectures, hearing them is another matter. So, of course, I warmed right up to my subject. A dose of his own medicine would be good for him.

“Now, the Founder's Day celebration started out pretty simple. Just a July Fourth picnic on the grounds of the Paradise United Methodist Church. Then someone thought to add in a play about how Paradise was founded—just a quick skit—and it was put on by the Paradise Historical Society.”

“Didn't Mrs. Beavy write the script?” Winnie said.

“No, that was Mrs. Oglevee,” I said, shuddering at the memory of my junior high history teacher, God rest her soul. She's been dead for ten years, but she still comes back to haunt me in my dreams.

“Then a few years later, someone else said, let's have a parade, too,” I went on, “which mostly consisted of people dragging their lawn chairs down along Main Street and watching a few pickup floats go by.”