Pies and Prejudice (11 page)

The fear she’d held in check broke free and Ella Mae began to cry. Pressing her shoulder blades against the truck,
she slid down the warm metal until she ended up sitting on the steel running board.

Hugh took a seat beside her but said nothing. He waited in silence while she cried it out and then offered her a bottle of water.

“This will make you feel better,” he promised, his gaze slightly guarded.

Ella Mae accepted the bottle, unscrewed the top, and drank. The water was cool and sweet in her throat. It smelled faintly of oranges, and when she closed her eyes and titled her head back to swallow, she imagined herself standing alongside a clear stream. The sounds of the firemen at work dropped away. She could hear only the gurgles and whispers of the pristine brook as it rushed through a sunny glade.

“Lord, that is the best water I’ve ever had,” she said and examined the bottle. She did feel better. Lighter, revitalized, hopeful. “What brand is it?”

Ignoring the question, Hugh reclaimed the empty bottle. “Do you want to talk about this? I mean, I can’t right now, but if you wanted to grab a cup of coffee tomorrow…”

Ella Mae felt a sudden longing to touch Hugh, to make certain that he was flesh and blood and not a figment of her imagination. Just one touch of his Mr. Darcy–like dark locks would prove that she was really sitting here, in an oasis of beauty and calm, before she had to return to the mess that was her life. “That would be nice. I’d really like to convince you that I had nothing to do with this.”

“If you’re an arsonist, then I’m an ax murderer.” Hugh picked up his clipboard and turned his face back to the destroyed salon. “This fire was set in a hurry and it was sloppily done. Gas was splashed near the front door and the perpetrator or perpetrators used just enough to wreck the structure. The back room where Doc Knox was discovered was completely intact. Even the rolling pin we found was undamaged. Smoke killed Mr. Knox. The fire never reached
him and, somehow, that gives me a little comfort.” He gazed at the wreckage, his expression grim.

“I know what you mean. The thought of being burned alive…” Ella Mae swallowed the rest of the thought. “And the rolling pin didn’t burn? Was it made of wood?”

“Marble, actually,” Hugh answered. “My granny Glattfelder had one just like it. She made the world’s best shoofly pie. She was from a Pennsylvania Dutch community and could bake like no one else I’ve ever known.”

Ella Mae pictured a big-boned woman with blond hair and blue eyes rolling out dough on a pine table, her cheeks flushed from the heat of a cast-iron stove. She could see her mixing ingredients in a yellow ware bowl, pausing only to wipe her strong hands on her apron and to give her beautiful grandson a taste of the filling. “Tell you what. If you provide the coffee, I’ll bake something in honor of Granny Glattfelder.”

One of the other firemen called to Hugh and he instantly straightened and waved in acknowledgment, sending Ella Mae a subliminal message that he needed to go.

“I’ll be working my other job tomorrow,” he said quickly. “At Canine to Five. It’s a doggie day care and grooming center on Satyr Lane. It’s not very quiet. Someone’s always barking.”

She smiled. “Could I bring my dog along?”

“Sure. Dante, my Great Dane, is always looking for a new playmate.” Apologetically, he began to move away from her, but Ella Mae felt a thread connecting them. It was a fragile thing, woven with fibers of curiosity and desire and a shared childhood, but it was there nonetheless.

As Hugh hustled into the building, Ella Mae wished that one day, after the pain of Sloan’s betrayal had disappeared, that single thread would multiply to form hundreds of interlaced strings, binding her to the man who smelled of dew-covered grass and had eyes like a secret Grecian cove.

“But not now,” she murmured aloud in resignation. “I’ve got a husband to unload and a pie shop to open.”

Walking past the truck toward the orange cones, Ella Mae turned to watch a wisp of gray smoke curl upward from the row of broken ceiling beams. Again, she thought of a dragon. This time, however, the creature did not resemble a charred skeleton, but a living beast, exhaling smoke and waiting in its ash-filled lair until it was ready to take wing.

Ella Mae shivered. There had been no dragon inside the nail salon, but something evil had left its signature behind. She wanted to distance herself from that evil, to be surrounded by the droning of bees and the industrious fluttering of butterflies, to feel the warm sunlight on her shoulders and hear the gravel of a garden’s walking path crunch under her feet. She wanted to see flowers of every color. She wanted proof of life.

Ella Mae turned and began walking home. Home to Reba, to her mother, and to the roses.

Ella Mae walked all the way home, a forty-minute hike. In the cool of her mother’s kitchen, she stood in front of the sink and gulped down a tall glass of ice water. She then splashed her face with tap water and leaned over the counter, staring out the window at her mother’s lush herb garden as droplets rolled down her skin and soaked into the fabric of her T-shirt.

Reba was out, leaving only a scent of strawberries behind. There were no other sounds within the house.

Ella Mae pulled on the pink rubber gloves Reba used when she cleaned pots and pans and then opened a deep drawer filled with an assortment of cooking tools.

Buried under two wooden spoons and a steel ladle was the marble rolling pin Ella Mae had used to make a dozen crusts since she returned to Havenwood. Placing it on a paper towel on the kitchen table, she sat down to give it a thorough inspection. The white marble looked just as she remembered when she’d last held the pin to make a tomato basil tart. The striations of pale gray running down the white surface were
the same hue and the smooth hardwood handles were unblemished.

That gave Ella Mae pause. She doubted the implement was old, but Reba had surely used it many times before. Shouldn’t the wooden handles show some sign of wear and tear?

Slipping the rolling pin in a large plastic bag, Ella Mae tucked it in a seldom-used cabinet and went outside in search of her mother. She found her in the lower garden, intently spraying a group of rose buses with something that smelled like eucalyptus. The roses, which had mango-colored petals, glistened in the light and seemed to lean toward her mother as she sang softly to them.

Chewy was there, too, fast asleep beneath a stone bench decorated with carved cherubim. Though he raised his head upon hearing Ella Mae’s tread on the gravel path, he didn’t get up to greet her. For some reason, his disinterest hurt her feelings. Had her mother replaced her in Chewy’s affections?

Sitting down on the bench, Ella Mae put her hand underneath the seat to make contact with her terrier’s smooth fur. He gave her fingers a compulsory lick and then returned to his nap.

Her mother set the spray bottle aside and mopped her forehead with a cotton hand towel. “I don’t usually work at this time of the day, but I was getting restless waiting for August to call with a report. We couldn’t imagine what the police wanted with you.”

Ella Mae noted that her mother’s handsome face looked pinched and weary in the noonday light.

Did worry for me cause that?
she wondered, feeling her heart constrict at the thought. She’d wanted nothing more than to run home and be comforted by Reba and maybe even her mother, but now that the moment was at hand, Ella Mae felt uncomfortable.

“Do you make that spray?” she asked, changing the subject.

Something happened in her mother’s hazel eyes. The concern she’d unveiled was quickly concealed again. “It’s a mixture of eucalyptus oil, biodegradable dish soap, and water. I’m constantly waging war against aphids, and the garden center hasn’t received my supply of ladybugs yet.”

“That shade is beautiful,” Ella Mae continued to focus on the flowers.

Her mother gave the grouping of bushes a fond glance. “It’s called Maui Sunset.” Her eyes swept the vast sun garden and its rainbow of blooms, and Ella Mae felt an age-old pang of jealousy. Her mother had always loved this garden and had spent so much of her time here, puttering among the roses. Throughout the winter months, her nose had been buried in seed catalogs and organic gardening magazines. Ella Mae was an only child, but she’d been competing with the roses for her mother’s attention all her life.

It was all too easy to allow childhood pains to well up again, to silently question why her mother hadn’t rushed down to the station to be at Ella Mae’s side. Was her battle against garden pests so important that she couldn’t at least have shown up in time to give her daughter a ride home?

Now, in this beautiful garden, Ella Mae thought of all the sporting events and recitals and plays her mother had missed over the years. Ella Mae curled her fists in anger, suddenly wishing she had the power to burn every petal into cinders.

“Where’s Reba?” she asked, unable to keep her voice flat. Hurt pricked her words like a thorn.

“Come inside. Let’s have a sandwich and some tea,” her mother said by way of reply. Collecting her spray bottle and towel, she headed for the house. Chewy shot out from under the bench, smiling back and forth between the two women as if to say, “Lunch?”

His tail wagged even harder as they entered the kitchen. Ella Mae dug around in the refrigerator until she found the supply of sliced ham, cheddar cheese, and bread. She fixed
sandwiches while her mother poured tea into tall glasses, cut half a lemon into thin slices, and pushed two into each glass.

“Tell me what happened this morning,” she said after they’d eaten for a few minutes in silence. Chewy sat on his haunches at her feet, his long pink tongue hoping to lasso a morsel of ham.

Ella Mae scowled at her dog and then slipped him a bite of cheese under the table. Taking a deep breath, she told her mother all that had happened from the moment Officer Hardy showed up at the front door of the carriage house to what she’d learned from Hugh about the crime scene.

“I was going to ask Reba how long she’s had her rolling pin,” she added before her mother could speak. “It sounds like the pin used to knock Bradford out is just like the one I’ve been using, but I can’t be sure.”

Her mother laced her long fingers together and gazed pensively at her sandwich. “We never lock our doors. Anyone could have come inside and swapped rolling pins. But who would want to do that? And why?”

Ella Mae shrugged. “Loralyn Gaynor?”

A hissing sound escaped from her mother’s lips, causing Chewy to raise his ears and grow stiff with alarm. “She wouldn’t dare. True, her mother and I had words during this year’s Garden Tour, but there’s nothing new about our mutual dislike. Opal Gaynor and I have never gotten along. Like you and Loralyn, we were at odds all through school. Later, when the Gaynor’s horse farm started producing champions, she used the money to influence crooked politicians and other white-collar thugs. All Opal Gaynor has ever cared about is money and power, and she delights in seeing those she considers beneath her suffer.”

“Sounds just like Loralyn,” Ella Mae said.

Tapping the pads of her thumbs together, her mother grew pensive. “Still, I don’t think the Gaynors are behind this. The police have confirmed that Loralyn was in Atlanta and
she had nothing to gain from her fiancé’s death. He seems to have recently developed a very exclusive clientele and Loralyn is very fond of high society.”

“She’ll have to troll for another rich senior citizen,” Ella Mae grumbled. “And if Loralyn isn’t behind this, then who is? Who would do this to me?”

Her mother met her frantic gaze. “Perhaps it’s not personal. Maybe someone at the bank overheard your threat and decided to use it to their advantage. I mean really, Ella Mae, what did you hope to accomplish by yelling at Loralyn like you were an angry drunk?”

“She was going to put nail clippings in my pies! She promised to ruin my shop before it could even get off the ground. She threatened
Chewy.
” Ella Mae tossed her sandwich onto the plate. “I’m done with people thinking they can push me around!”

Her mother arched her brows. “Like Sloan?”

“Yes, like Sloan. And Loralyn. When I was growing up, she took every possible opportunity to bring me down. Why do you think I wanted to get out of this place?”

“Because of one girl? A childhood bully?” Her mother was incredulous. “Opal and I were like that, but I’d never let her have that much influence over my future.”

Ella Mae shook her head. “I’d been cast in a role I didn’t want to play for the rest of my life. I figured if I got as far away as possible I could reinvent myself. And I did.” She sighed. “Now, just when I thought I could have a fresh start, I’m back in Havenwood’s social sinkhole. Ella Mae LeFaye, pastry chef and murder suspect.”

Her mother stood, stacked their sandwich plates, and placed them in the sink. She came back to the table but didn’t resume her seat. “Then refuse to be pushed around. Refuse to be a murder suspect. Find out who killed Bradford Knox on your own.”

Ella Mae nodded. As absurd as it sounded, her mother’s advice felt right. “I will. I’ll start by visiting Bradford’s
practice. I can bake his employees something.” She glanced at Chewy and grinned shyly. “It’s too bad I don’t have a sick horse. But I’m new in town. I could pretend I thought Knox was a regular vet.”