Apple Pie A La Murder Read online




  Apple Pie

  A la

  Murder

  A Cozy Baked Murder

  by

  Kate Bell

  Copyright © 2016 by Kate Bell. All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  1

  *****

  I’d had it. I couldn’t take one more slice of Henry Hoffer’s cheap, store-bought pie. The coconut cream was one of those cheap, frozen concoctions that the Shaw’s Market put on sale for $1.99 every other month. The pecan pie had no pecans and the cherry pie resembled congealed cherry Jello in a crust. How could he even call these monstrosities pie?

  I knew better than to try another slice of Henry’s pies. I really did. But I had been running errands all morning and when my friend Lucy and I stopped in for a quick lunch, I noticed the time. 12:48. I was worn out from giving blood at the blood drive van and from paying bills and shopping until I had nearly dropped and there was no way I would have the time or the energy to bake my customary daily pie. Yes, that’s what I said. Customary daily pie. Don’t judge. There was a method to my madness. Or at least, a reason for it.

  I rolled out my piecrust, ensuring that it had an even thickness all the way around. It was early September, almost the beginning of fall and that meant apple season. My peeled, sliced apples were in a bowl beside me, marinating in sugar and cinnamon, their juices pooling in the bottom of the bowl. My apple pies were as American as you could get.

  You see, I, Allie McSwain had grown up in the Deep South of Alabama and my grandmama was the best pie baker in the country. She made a fresh pie every day. It was fortunate for me that she lived right next door, so I got to sample her wares every day and by the time I was fourteen, I could make a piecrust that would make you cry. Also fortunate for me, I had the genes to keep myself from weighing four hundred pounds from all that sampling.

  Or I did have. But after having two babies and hitting forty-something years of age, that genetic disposition had abandoned me. No worries, I took up running. I was currently in training for my first marathon in the spring. Nature may have taken its toll on my metabolism, but I found I could correct that with a little roadwork. Sometimes a lot of roadwork.

  But it wasn’t always that way. When I moved away to college, I gave up the pursuit of pie baking for the pursuit of men, namely one, Thaddeus McSwain, from Maine. We married and lived a happy life, including having two children, a son, Thaddeus McSwain the second, and a daughter, Jennifer McSwain. The first. Thaddeus number two would have been a junior had we lived in Alabama, but Mainers used numbers. You could say that this Southern girl had married into a rather upper middle class Northern coastal family, and you’d be right. But they were all a happy, close, warm family, very much like my own. Only with a different type of accent.

  But Thaddeus’s life had been cut short by a drunk driver. And my life and those of my children would never be the same. I began the pie baking after his death. It was therapy.

  I finished crimping the crust and slid it into the preheated oven. I could hardly wait to smell the apples and cinnamon baking.

  My cat, Dixie, rubbed up against my calf, purring loudly.

  “Hey guy, how are you?” I murmured as I squatted beside him and rubbed his head. Dixie was all black with yellow eyes and like most cats, seemed to be able to take or leave my companionship. I straightened up and set a timer for the pie.

  My friend Lucy Gray is a Northerner and is in awe of my baking prowess. Apparently she had never met anyone that baked the Southern way before she met me. Real butter. Sugar. Real heavy cream in the cream pies. She dropped in on a regular basis to sample my daily offerings. Lucy really needed to hit the running trail with me to avoid the sampling bulge, but I had yet to convince her of this.

  It was all her fault I was now standing, dead on my feet after my rushed morning, baking this pie. My legs and my feet ached, but I gritted my teeth and got the pie baked anyway.

  “Tell Henry that you want to bake pies to sell at his restaurant. The pies alone will double his business,” she had said.

  I had protested. I had a blog on grieving to write and I didn’t have the time nor the inclination to start a side business.

  “But you’re baking a pie every day as it is. You may as well get paid for it. Maybe make enough money to help pay off the kids’ college tuitions.”

  She was right. I was baking a pie every day. And whenever a holiday rolled around, it seemed there was always someone asking me to bake them a pie. I wasn’t sure I could handle baking more than a couple of pies a day regularly, but Sandy Harbor Maine was a small town, and how many pies could Henry sell? If he even agreed to it.

  ***

  It was almost five in the evening by the time the pie had cooled off enough for me to take over to Henry. I didn’t want it to cool off completely. It was best while it was still warm.

  I got out of my car and headed over to the passenger side door and carefully picked up the pie keeper. I had put it in one of my grandmama’s ceramic pie keepers and I hoped Henry would appreciate all the gaily painted dancing apples on it. Presentation is everything.

  Ralph Henderson was weeding one of the garden planters out front. I nodded at him and smiled as I passed. Ralph snorted and turned back to his work, his large square body bent over the dark soil. My eyebrows shot up, but I kept to myself and pushed open the restaurant door. Sometimes Northerners were odd. Ralph was a quiet one that kept to himself.

  Henry’s Home Cooking was a quiet, out of the way restaurant that served dependable and plain fare. Most of the time it was tasty, except for his pies, of course. But my home cooked food was always better, even if that home cooking was fried bologna sandwiches.

  The smell of pine cleaner hit my nostrils as I headed toward the back of the restaurant. The dinner crowd was starting to trickle in and Henry had been cleaning in between the lunch rush. But that’s what Henry always did. One thing you could always count on at Henry’s. It would be immaculately clean. Henry was a germaphobe.

  I asked the waitress, Eileen Smith, for Henry.

  She was popping her gum and wiping down a table. She looked over at me without stopping what she was doing. “Ayuh, he’s in the back,” she said and pointed toward the open doorway that led to the backroom.

  “Thanks, Eileen,” I said with a smile and a nod. My hair was a deep red and done up in a messy bun. I was a natural redhead, of course. I wondered if I should have checked it before I left the house. I had been on the run all day and had hardly given a second thought what it looked like. Oh well, it wasn’t like Henry hadn’t seen me at my worst. On many occasions, I had stopped in for breakfast fresh from the running trail. At that hour there were only the regulars sitting at the front counter drinking black coffee and gossiping and pining away for the way things use to be in the world.

  My mama would have had a fit if she had known I was out around town looking like a drowned rat. Appearances are everything in the South. I decided it didn’t matter anyway. This was a ridiculous idea anyway. Henry was cheap and he wasn’t going to split any pie profits with me.

  “Charles,” I nodded as I passed the cook.

  Charles stopped stirring a huge silver-colored pot and stared at me. I was trespassing. He didn’t say a word though, and I continued on my mission.

  The door to what looked like Henry’s office was at the end of the hallway and it was op
en. Henry sat at a makeshift desk, pouring over a journal with tiny cursive writing on the pages. A half sheet of plywood had been attached to the wall with brackets. Must have set Henry back twenty dollars. A neatly stacked pile of papers sat on top. Henry didn’t look up when I entered. His bald spot was growing and his blonde stringy hair could use a good combing. I smiled. Come into the computer age, Henry, I thought.

  I cleared my throat.

  Henry jumped as if stung by a bee. “What? What do you want?” he asked, staring wide-eyed at me.

  I smiled bigger. “Henry, I have a proposition for you. I don’t want to insult you, but your pies are, shall we say, disgusting? Why don’t we go into business together, at least as far as pie goes? I make the best Southern pies in the country, thanks to my grandmama’s training early in my childhood. I brought a sample for you to try,” I said, holding the pie keeper in front of me.

  I know it sounded harsh, calling his pies disgusting, but they were and you have to know Northerners. They appreciated the truth.

  “This ain’t the South and I don’t want none of your pies,” he said. “Get out.”

  See? What did I tell you?

  “Henry, try my apple pie. While it’s still warm. I guarantee you it’s the best you’ve ever tasted.” I smiled for all I was worth.

  “Get out of my restaurant, unless you’re here to buy something,” he said tersely, yellow number two pencil gripped in his hand.

  “Now, Henry, I’ve known you for twenty years. You can’t even bake a pie. You buy them at Shaw’s Market. Everyone hates your desserts. Think of all the money you could make.”

  “I said get out!” Henry said, narrowing his eyes at me.

  “I just want you to try it,” I coaxed. “I guarantee you it’s the best apple pie you’ve ever eaten.”

  “Out!” he said, pointing the pencil at the doorway. “Now, or I’ll call Sam Bailey!”

  Sam Bailey was the police chief, and he moved slower than a turtle running through peanut butter, so I had no worries there. But Henry was getting on my nerves. He needed to learn to be nice.

  “Listen, Henry, I’ll leave. Right now. If you promise to at least try my pie. We can work out the details later.”

  Henry stared at me, his face turning redder by the second.

  “Fine, I’ll try your pie,” he said through gritted teeth. “But the dinner rush is about to begin and I need to concentrate.”

  I smiled. That was more like it. “Promise to taste it while it’s still warm?”

  He forced air through his teeth and nodded his head without another word.

  “Great, I’ll talk to you later. Oh, and I need that pie keeper back. It was my grandmama’s,” I said and exited his office. I passed Charles on my way out. He stopped stirring again and stared at me.

  I don’t know why people have to be so difficult. It was a free pie for goodness sake!

  2

  *****

  I woke up bright and early the next morning while it was still dark out. I wrapped my pink fuzzy robe around me and stumbled to the coffeemaker. I poured water into it and ground up some fresh French Vanilla coffee beans and yawned. Fall running, or nearly Fall running was tough. Winter running was worse. All I wanted to do was stay all nice and warm in my cozy flannel pajamas and hunker down for the rest of the increasingly colder days. My late husband had laughed at me every morning that first winter we moved back to Maine. I wasn’t a runner back then, but the cold Northern winter had caught me by surprise. I cried almost every time I had to go outside and start my car.

  My mind wandered back to that first year as newlyweds. We were in love, regardless of the cramped apartment with paper-thin walls. We didn’t care.

  Thaddeus had been killed by a drunk driver almost eight years earlier. My world had crumbled. We would have made it to sixty years of marriage, easily. We rarely argued, and when we did, we somehow managed to find some sort of common ground. That or he gave in. Either way, we got along famously. Being married was all I had ever dreamed of as a little girl. And now it was gone.

  I poured a cup of coffee, and bit back the tears. The anniversary of his death was October ninth. I would wait until then to lose it.

  Ten minutes later, I had my running shoes and gear on. I grabbed a water bottle and headed out. On the way to the running trail, I passed by Henry’s restaurant and decided to stop in when I saw Henry’s car parked in the back. He served a great scrambled egg and bacon breakfast. Simple, yet tasty. I needed something light in my stomach to start my run so I wouldn’t run out of steam. I made a mental note to teach him to make real Southern biscuits and gravy.

  He had better of tried my pie while it was still warm, I thought as I knocked on the back door. The back door creaked and slowly swung open a few inches when I knocked a second time.

  “Henry?” I called out. I stood rooted to the spot and waited for an answer, but none came. Would it seem rude for me to go in? It was early and the restaurant wasn’t open yet. Maybe he was in the bathroom? I stabilized the door with one hand and knocked harder. Henry was so cranky, I didn’t want him to see me and call the cops for breaking and entering.

  “Henry?” I called out again.

  I pushed the door open wider. The back door was off the kitchen and I took two steps inside. “Henry?” I called out again. Where could he be? I took a couple more steps inside and called for him again.

  Then I saw him. He was lying in front of the double wide stainless double door refrigerator in a pool of blood. I sucked air in, hard. Had he fallen and cracked his head open? Nope. The steak knife plunged into his chest ruled that out.

  I screamed.

  “What is it?” Someone said from behind me. I jumped and screamed again.

  Charles stood beside me, mouth open. “Oh, wow.”

  I looked at him, eyes wide and screamed again.

  “Can you stop doing that?” he asked, annoyed.

  I stared at him in silence for a few seconds, then looked at Henry again. “We better call the police,” I managed to say.

  “Yeah,” he said, but neither of us moved. I had never seen a murder victim before. Then I noticed my pie, smashed on the floor beside him. Had someone fought him over my pie? That seemed harsh. I would have made another one. And grandmama’s pie keeper was smashed on the floor as well. I swallowed back the lump forming in my throat. I loved that pie keeper.

  “Okay, I’m going to call the police now,” Charles said, but stayed rooted in place.

  “Yeah, you do that,” I said. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. There was so much blood. So, so much blood.

  Finally Charles moved over to the phone on the wall and picked it up. I looked at him. His hands trembled as he dialed. He spoke slowly, with a tremble in his voice as he answered the 911 operator’s questions. I looked back at Henry. Had he moved? My eyes must be playing tricks on me, I thought.

  Charles placed the telephone receiver against his chest. “They want us to check for a pulse.”

  “What?” I asked, my head whipping around toward him. “Uh uh. No way.” I shook my head at him. Henry was clearly dead. I didn’t need to touch him to figure that out.

  “Do it!” he hissed at me.

  I shook my head. He was on his own with this one. He sighed loudly and then spoke back into the receiver. “He’s gone.” After a few more questions, he hung up the phone.

  “You should have checked,” he said, not taking his eyes off Henry.

  “You should have,” I said, keeping my eyes off of Henry. “I can’t stay in here.” I was feeling like I would faint. I left by the door I had come in by.

  Charles followed me, looking a little green around the gills. I imagined I looked the same way.

  “This is really bad,” I said, hearing sirens in the distance. “Maybe we should go around front so they see us?”

  Charles nodded and followed me to the front of the restaurant. We stood near the planter that the gardener had been working on the previous evening. A garde
ning hoe and some unpotted flowers still sat there. The flowers were in yellows and oranges. Perfect fall colors. I sighed. Henry would never see another fall. I wondered if he was married, but I didn’t know him well enough to know and I couldn’t remember anyone ever saying he was.

  “Was he married?” I asked Charles.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. He married a gal from Chicago three years ago.”

  “Oh.” Newlyweds, kind of. That made it worse somehow. I blogged about grief. I thought of all the emotions his wife was soon to go through and I felt tears spring to my eyes. I blinked them back and looked toward the sound of the sirens.

  3

  *****

  A cold shiver went through my body. It was a horrible tragedy. Sandy Harbor was such a small town, and I couldn’t believe anyone here would do this. Perhaps a stranger passing through town had done it? The 95 ran along the edge of town. It would be easy enough for someone to pull off the highway and do it. Maybe they were looking for someone to rob. Maybe Henry had been working late and the killer, seeing a light still on at the restaurant and only Henry’s car in the lot, decided it would be an easy take. And things went from bad to worse and Henry had ended up dead. As cantankerous as Henry had been, that wasn’t hard to imagine.

  Three police cars pulled up to the front of the restaurant, followed by an ambulance and a black, unmarked police car. I hugged myself. All I wanted was to go home and go to bed. Forget about running. Forget about everything.

  Yancey Tucker got out of the first police car. George Feeney and Stuart South were in the others.

  “Allie, Charles,” Yancey said, nodding first at me, and then Charles.

  “Yancey,” I said.

  “Where’s he at?”

  “Around back in the kitchen,” Charles said. “I got a key to the front here though. We can go in this way.” He produced a large ring of keys from his front pocket and stuck one in the front door lock. The back door was still open, but I guessed he didn’t want to look at Henry again.