Pies and Prejudice (23 page)

“Did you know Bradford well?”

Blinking, Annie returned to the present. “Once, that pride of mine caused me to treat him like an underling, but over time, I saw that he had a gift with the horses and I came to admire him. However, toward the end…”

Sensing that they’d reached the purpose of Annie’s visit—the information that could put Respite Ranch, the chance for troubled boys and horses to heal, and Annie’s own life at risk—Ella Mae remained silent. As much as she
wanted to be in the clear, she didn’t want to cajole the information from Annie. Even when prepping the creamy lemonade pie, Ella Mae’s thoughts had returned again and again to Annie’s ranch and the feelings of safety and serenity the place evoked.

“In the end, Bradford became what I once was. He chose money over the creatures he was supposed to care for.” She sighed lugubriously. “I can’t show you a lick of proof, but I heard talk from a half dozen different stable hands. Bradford was injecting injured thoroughbreds with cobra venom.”

Ella Mae’s lip curled in repulsion. “Cobra venom?”

“It’s a painkiller. An injection can block the nerve, giving a horse one last race or two before his injuries are so severe that…” She trailed off. “You can guess the fate of a crippled thoroughbred.”

“Is cobra venom illegal?”

“It’s one of many substances banned on race day. If anyone could have proved what was going on, there would have been repercussions for both Knox and the horse owners. First, they would have had to answer to the racing authorities and, after that, to a district court judge. No hand slapping. We’re talking serious penalties.”

Pouring herself some more coffee, Ella Mae could easily imagine such a scandal permanently destroying the reputation of an elite thoroughbred farm.

Annie cut another piece of pie with her fork but didn’t raise it to her mouth. “You know, Bradford wasn’t interested in tending to the horses before a race until this past year. He’d preferred to maintain his dignity by treating only those patients who came directly to the clinic.”

“But if these people were all using cobra venom, why would anyone kill Bradford? He was helping them win and they were paying him for his assistance.”

Annie shrugged. “The stuff isn’t cheap. Maybe Knox didn’t pay his suppliers on time. Maybe one of the owners didn’t want to share his or her advantage over the other
racehorses. When you’re talking about hundred thousand–dollar purses, every advantage counts.”

A buzzer sounded in the kitchen.

Ella Mae pushed back her chair. “Those are pies for you to take back to the ranch. Let me just put them on a rack to cool.”

“Take your time, honey. I’m going to sit here and try to remember the name of the company who sold Knox the cobra venom. One of the hands saw it stamped on a box inside of Knox’s medical bag. It sounded Latin. Or Greek maybe…”

Thoughts of snakes and racehorses seemed incongruent inside the kitchen. Ella Mae opened the oven door and welcomed the breath of buttery dough. The scent of baked peaches and brown-sugar-crumb toppings stilled the questions battling one another to take precedence in her mind. Pulling on oven mitts, she began to transfer pies onto the metal racks, smiling at the thought of Annie’s boys devouring the treats after their evening meal.

While she was moving the sixth out of a dozen pies, the bells hanging from the front door chimed. Ella Mae paused. Had Annie stepped out of the shop? Did she want a closer look at the patio garden? Or had a prospective customer failed to notice the closed sign hanging from the window and entered in hopes of acquiring a snack?

“Whoever it is, they’ll have to wait,” Ella Mae informed the cheerful kitchen. Curls of cinnamon-laden scent nuzzled the skin of her neck and sank into her hair follicles and she started to hum as she drew forth the last two pies from the oven’s hot mouth.

The bells chimed again and the music died in Ella Mae’s throat. Something was wrong. The bright sunlight in the room became dull and the ribbons of warm aromas dissipated as if they’d found a safe place to hide.

The feeling of another presence inside the shop was overwhelming. It stretched into the kitchen like a long shadow,
and though Ella Mae sensed she should be afraid, she was enraged over the invasion of her sanctuary.

“I’m coming, damn it!” Ella Mae shouted and yanked off her oven mitts. She slammed them on the worktable and burst through the swinging door.

No one was there.

No one but Annie, that is.

Yet Annie’s posture made no sense. It took a long moment for the information Ella Mae’s eyes absorbed to be processed by her brain. Annie Beaufort was bent over the table, her face completely submerged in the creamy lemonade pie.

Annie looked like a zealous participant of an eating competition.

With one exception.

She never came up for air.

Ella Mae paused for only a fraction of a second, but it felt as if she’d delayed too long, that in that blink of time in which she’d stood still, trying to comprehend what she was seeing, she had robbed Annie Beaufort of any chance of survival.

When she did move, she crossed the room in a flash, lifting Annie’s face from the creamy slop that had once been a lemonade pie. She cradled Annie’s limp head against her chest and began to scoop the whipped sugar and cream from her mouth. Ella Mae flung the pale yellow filling on the floor and it struck the black-and-white tiles with sickening thwacks.

This process stole away more precious seconds and then Ella Mae sacrificed five more grabbing her cell phone from the counter and dialing 911 as she felt for a pulse in Annie’s neck.

She put the phone on speaker and set it on the table alongside the ruined pie. It had been caved in by the weight of Annie’s head. The bottom crust had separated in violent
fissures and exposed the celadon-hued ceramic dish underneath.

Ella Mae did not wait for the emergency operator to pick up before placing her lips over Annie’s slack mouth and blowing air into her throat. Her chest did not inflate. Ella Mae’s breath was obstructed by a blockade of moistened crust and filling.

“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?” a voice inquired though the cell phone speaker.

“I need an ambulance at The Charmed Pie Shoppe! There’s a woman…She’s not breathing!
Hurry!
”

The operator cautioned Ella Mae to remain calm and asked for the address. She then made assurances that paramedics were en route and suggested Ella Mae try breathing into Annie’s nose instead of the mouth.

Putting her lips on Annie’s lips had been odd enough. They’d been supple, unresisting, and laced with sugar. Covering the older woman’s mouth had been a necessary intimacy, but it felt both distasteful and invasive to press her lips over another person’s nose, to form a seal of flesh over the nostrils and send forth a burst of warm, desperate breath into Annie’s nasal passages.

Once again, the air found no place to go. A wisp of Ella Mae’s breath escaped from the narrow tunnels inside Annie’s nose, only to be instantly whisked away by the gentle downdraft created by the ceiling fan.

“It’s not working!” Ella Mae called out, the last word sounding more like a hiccup that a pair of syllables. Centipede legs of panic crawled up her spine.

“Keep trying,” the operator responded in calm, even tones that managed to increase Ella Mae’s distress.

But she kept trying.

Her breaths were wasted. Ella Mae knew it was over, but she wouldn’t give up until someone told her to stop.

Beneath her mouth and her hands, Annie Beaufort felt flaccid. It was as if her muscles had gone to sleep, allowing
the bones to fall any which way, making her limbs as floppy as a marionette’s.

Ella Mae could sense the quietness of Annie’s body. Her chest did not rise and fall, her fingers didn’t twitch, the wrinkles on her face didn’t crease in laughter. All the dozens of little actions the body makes within the space of a minute were stilled.

And Annie’s eyes…They were the worst. The lashes were clotted with pie filling and the corneas were coated with a sparkling layer of tiny sugar granules, as if they had been touched by Jack Frost.

Ella Mae shut her own eyes and concentrated on her task, silently pleading for a measure of air to be transferred from her lungs into Annie’s.

The minutes dragged on, stealing all hope away. Ella Mae’s tears dripped onto Annie’s cheeks and the cheerful café was filled with her exhalations and mutterings of “please” and “come on, breathe.”

She didn’t hear the bell hanging from the front door tinkle. Her mind was on autopilot. She blew air in, waited, and blew again. It took a strong, male arm to pull her gently away from Annie.

“Let us take it from here,” a voice said from miles off.

Ella Mae felt like she had been treading water for hours. Her limbs were stiff and heavy and could no longer support her weight. She sagged where she stood, fully expecting to slump onto the ground, but the man with the arms of stone kept her from slipping all the way down.

Instead, he eased her carefully onto the tiles and wrapped something soft and blue around her shoulders. A blanket. Ella Mae couldn’t look anywhere but at Annie, whose body was being hastily placed onto a gurney. One EMT performed chest compressions while the other searched for evidence of a heartbeat using a stethoscope. The paramedic pressed the round disc against the tanned and freckled skin stretching over Annie’s breastplate. The shiny metal caught
the late afternoon light. It flashed once. A bright, searing white glow. Annie was saying good-bye.

“Are you okay? Would you like some water?”

The man’s words floated somewhere above her head. Ella Mae stared at the floor. She put her hands out, palm down, like twin starfish, and pressed them against the tiles. Their coolness brought her back to herself and she looked up just in time to see Hugh Dylan walk through the doorway.

“Ella Mae!” He rushed over, dropped to his knees, and looked at her from head to toe with an agitated gaze. “What happened?”

As much as Ella Mae wanted to lose herself in the blue grottos of Hugh’s eyes, she remembered how he’d acted like Loralyn’s obedient dog at the Mint Julep Gala.

“What are
you
doing here?” she asked, her voice sounding harsh and unfamiliar. “There’s no fire.”

Hugh winced a little and the hand he’d been extending toward her shoulder fell away. “I heard the call come in over my radio. Volunteer firefighters never turn them off, and when the dispatcher recited the address, I had to find out if you were in trouble.”

Ella Mae swallowed hard. “Is Annie alive?”

Hugh obviously didn’t want to answer and focused his attention on the action beyond the display window. “They’re working on her.”

“Is she alive?” Ella Mae repeated, her fingers stretching forth and burying themselves into the cotton fabric of Hugh’s sleeve. She scrunched her hands into fists, certain that if she did not grip him this way, she would float out of the room like a child’s balloon.

“It doesn’t look good,” Hugh answered softly. “I’m sorry, Ella Mae.”

She continued holding on and he put his hands under her elbows to offer extra support.

“I’m right here,” he whispered. “It’s going to be all right.”

Ella Mae shook her head. It would not be all right. She
pointed at the walkie-talkie attached to his utility belt. “You need to call the police.”

Hugh seemed reluctant to move. “Why?”

“Because this was no accident. Annie didn’t just collapse face forward into my pie. Someone pushed her into it. Held her down.” She hated to continue but she did just the same. “Her mouth was stuffed with filling. It was far more than one bite.”

“She probably choked.”

Bit by bit, Ella Mae released her claim on his shirt. Pointing at the sleigh bells suspended by ribbons above the front door, she said, “They rang twice. I should have paid more attention to them because the shop is closed.”

Hugh followed her glance, his forehead creasing in confusion.

“Those bells rang to say that someone came in. And then again, about two minutes later, when they went out,” Ella Mae explained. “And I can guess what happened in those two minutes.”

“But who?” Hugh asked. “Who went in and out?”

Ella Mae drew the sea blue blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Annie’s killer.”

Ella Mae decided that death had a way of manipulating time. It could grab hold of a single moment and pull, stretching it lengthwise until sixty seconds were as long and elastic as newly spun taffy.

She didn’t remember leaving the dining area of the pie shop and retreating to the kitchen but was grateful to enter a quiet space. The scent of the freshly baked pies rolled over her like a lullaby. She shrugged off the blanket and, setting it on a stool, recalled how Reba had perched there the day before.

“Reba,” Ella Mae whispered as if she could summon her from thin air.

But she was alone.

Her finger traced a wobbly line through the flour dust on the worktable and, without thinking about what she was doing, Ella Mae pulled on a pair of yellow latex gloves and began to clean.

To her, time continued to stretch out. It yawned, slowed to a belly crawl.