Death by Deep Dish Pie (29 page)

Truth be told, I hadn't remembered. I worked very hard to forget that incident. I resisted the urge to say, oh thank you, cuz, for reminding me. But I also didn't ask for Uncle Otis's map again either.

Suddenly, Sally moaned.

“What's the matter now?”

“We don't have a flashlight. How are we going to see once we get to the cave?”

“Just a sec,” I said. I got back in the cab of the truck, rooted around in the toolbox that sat in the passenger-side floor, and popped back out with a flashlight and a utility knife.

“Ta da!” I said. “One flashlight, plus a knife.”

“What do we need a knife for? Are you planning on skewering a deer for our lunch?”

“No. But if Uncle Otis tied Cletus up, we can use the knife to cut the rope.”

“Oh. Damn. I wish I hadn't mentioned lunch. Now I'm hungry.”

I grinned. “Life's short. Eat dessert first.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“We just hijacked a pie delivery truck.”

“So? We're wearing the pies—at least the ones that didn't fall out the back.”

“Betcha there's a box of mini-pies in there.”

Sally scowled at me, a look that had once driven terror into my heart. Now, with cherry pie filling on her head, and flies making a buzzing halo, the look had lost its power.

I went around to the back of the truck, and sure enough, found a box of Breitenstrater mini-pies, unharmed. I got two chocolate ones and popped out.

“Will chocolate do?” I asked with a grin. “Or do you prefer cherry?”

“Don't press your luck,” Sally said.

I didn't. I tossed her the chocolate mini-pie.

20

Sally ate her pie as we hiked, but I saved mine, tucking it in my roomy jeans-shorts pocket. (I'm pleased to say Sally was not a litterbug. She handed me her pie wrapper to put in my other pocket.) I was saving my pie as a treat for later—when, I prayed, we'd found Cletus.

Twenty minutes later, though, we were in the front room of the cave, and I was shining the flashlight around, and no one except Sally and me was there. Just take-out boxes from Sandy's Restaurant, and three kerosene camp lamps to prove someone had once been here.

“Well, that's it, Cletus isn't here. Might as well head back to town and talk to Chief Worthy . . .”

“I'm going farther back. This cave could extend quite a ways,” Sally said.

I gripped the flashlight harder. “I've got the flashlight,” I said, waving its light all over the cave walls and ceiling. “You can't go anywhere without that.”

“Whatever. I've got matches.”

With that, Sally knelt down, lifted the glass globe to the top of one of the kerosene lamps, pulled a book of matches out of her pocket, and lit the wick to the lamp. The lamp put out far more light than the flashlight did. Suddenly, we could see the whole front room of the cave—and darkness at the back where it continued farther under the earth.

She grinned at me. “Knew carrying Bar-None matches for the occasional cigarette would pay off some day,” she said. Then she stood and started toward the back of the cave.

I watched her take a few steps, and a few steps more, and then I grabbed one of the other kerosene lamps and trotted after her. “Wait!” I said. She paused, turned, and tossed me the matches.

The cave went pretty far back, at least a quarter mile or so, I reckoned. But it didn't have any tunnels running off of it. And soon enough we came to a dead end, which was appropriate enough, considering that at the end of the cave were two graves with crude stone markers, shaped like crosses.

Above ground, the markers would have worn to nothing by our lifetimes. But they were below the earth, protected from the weather, and so, with our kerosene lamps, both burning, we could clearly read the hand-hewn names in the side-by-side crosses:
A. BREITENSTRATER
. And
C. BREITENSTRATER
.

At first, Sally and I didn't say anything. We just stared in awe at the old graves.

Then Sally cleared her throat and said, “Urn, Josie, you reckon one of us should say some words here?”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe a prayer.”

“You don't reckon a prayer was said over them back when they were buried?”

“Well, sure, there was, but it's been a while. It could have worn off. Maybe it's bad luck, finding them like this, after all this time, and so maybe a prayer . . .”

Sally sounded scared, so I decided the best thing to do was go along with her. I'm not much for praying out loud, so nervously, I ran my hand over my head—then wiped the stickiness of the lemon meringue pie off on my jeans-shorts leg. Then I cleared my throat, too. And said, “Dear God, only you knew the hearts of these men. Like I always say, love ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out. Well, however you've sorted them is great, of course. You being God and all. Just guide us to know what to do with this knowledge we've discovered about how Paradise was founded. And help us find Cletus. And let Trudy be okay. And let Uncle Otis end up okay, too. Amen.”

Sally sniffled. “Josie, that was beautiful.”

“Thanks,” I said.

We turned and started back to the front of the cave.

I should have prayed for us to be okay, too. Todd Raptor and Dinky Breitenstrater were waiting for us in the front room of the cave—but they weren't exactly waiting with a warm welcome.

Dinky was on his knees on the ground, so scared he was shaking. And there was a big blotchy darkness on the front of his pants. No wonder. Todd stood behind him, a gun pointed at his head. The third kerosene lamp burned near him.

“Nice prayer,” Todd said snidely. “Oh, yeah, I could hear you,” he added in response to our surprised looks. “You must have spent a lot of time in Sunday school classes in this stupid small town of yours. Noah's ark. David and Goliath. All of that.” He spoke in a taunting voice. “But we made sure to be quiet out here. So we could surprise you. Right, Dinky?”

Todd shoved the gun hard into Dinky's head, and Dinky whimpered. For the first time ever, I felt sorry for Dinky.

“What the hell's going on here?” Sally said, putting her lamp down.

I pushed back a moan. What was going on was pretty obvious—and I was hoping she'd have the same idea I did, to throw the kerosene lamps at Todd to distract him long enough to get the gun from him.

Instead, Todd had the same idea. “Glad you put the lamp down. Now, Josie, take a few steps forward, and do the same.”

I hesitated. He shoved the gun into Dinky's head again. Dinky whimpered again. I did as Todd had told me.

“Now, to answer your question—what's your name?”

“Sally.”

“And you're here because?”

“My dad told Josie—she's my cousin—and me that Dinky had hired my dad to kidnap Cletus and bring him here, but then my dad got arrested for ginseng poaching and couldn't come back for Cletus. We were hoping to find Cletus and rescue him and then maybe he'd go easier on my dad . . .”

Todd laughed. “Cletus won't be going hard on anyone. He's dead. Now, this is interesting. What should I do with the two of you? Obviously, I'm going to have to kill you—”

At that, Sally roared and ran forward—but Todd lifted his gun, shot her through the shoulder, and had the gun back at Dinky's head before Sally hit the ground. I started to her, but Todd's voice stopped me. “Don't move, Josie. I could have killed her right then, but I didn't.”

“Why? So you can prolong your fun?”

“You think this is fun? Really? I've already had to dispose of Cletus's body in the explosion.”

“You started the fire?”

“Yeah. And now I have to get rid of Dinky, plus the two of you. This is getting complicated. Only so many places to hide bodies.”

I thought of the two graves at the far back of the cave. They'd remained there two hundred years and no one had found them until this day. Todd could just shoot us all, drag our bodies back there, and forget about us.

Why didn't he? Maybe he didn't know the cave went that far back? But he'd heard our voices coming from back there—in a few seconds, he'd figure out that the cave ended fairly far back.

I decided to take a chance. “Sally, why didn't you listen to me when I said we should go out the back entrance? Now look what you've gotten us into. No, you said, that would put us too close to the hiking trail, you said . . .”

“S-s-sorry, Josie. You were right.” Sally's voice was full of pain. “We'd have been better off if we'd gone out the back entrance.” God love her, I thought. Shot in the shoulder, probably wondering what would happen to Harry, Barry, and Larry if she died, and still sharp enough to go along with me.

Well, somehow, I decided, I wasn't going to let her die in the cave. Or me, either. Dinky I'd try to save, but one must have one's priorities.

And while something Todd had said gave me another idea about how to distract him, I couldn't guarantee my method of distracting him wouldn't cause the gun to go off. But if I didn't try my plan, we were all goners for sure. At least if I tried, we stood a chance.

Todd looked nervous. “There's a back exit?”

I nodded. “Runs right by the purple path.”

“What?”

“You know, the path that's marked with purple dots on posts. The park service has put in all sorts of paths, marked off with posts, and each path is given a color. Yellow is the shortest loop—a half mile I think—and red is . . .”

“I didn't see any paths out here,” Todd said suspiciously.

“That's because the purple path goes by the back entrance to the cave. I reckon it would make more sense to have it go by the front entrance, but then, the rangers don't want people coming in here too often—cave-ins, you know.”

Todd glanced up nervously, as if the cave, which had been there only God knows how long, might suddenly collapse like a house of cards. Sheesh, I thought. Would this guy fall for an invitation to go snipe hunting, too? But thank God for his lack of knowledge of nature. I was going to work it to my advantage.

“But kids come in here all the time to, you know, make out, stuff like that,” I went on.

Todd looked at Sally. “Your old man told me this place was secure! That no one knew about it!”

“My old man knew you'd believe it,” Sally stammered out. “Why should he bring Cletus out somewhere that was hard to get to, when he'd have to keep bringing Cletus meals? He pro-probably just brought you in the hard way so you'd believe it was se-secure.”

Todd kneed Dinky in the back. “Did you know about this?”

I held my breath. God, Dinky, I thought, don't ruin this.

“No—no—I didn't, I swear! I never came out here as a kid—just the one time when we met Otis.”

I breathed again.

“Damn it, so now I'm going to have to move you people. All right. I'm going to have to think of a new plan, fast.”

“One question, Todd,” I said.

“What?” he snapped.

“You mind if I take off my bra?”

“What?” he said again, incredulous. Then he leered at me. “If you think that's going to help . . .”

“No, Todd. It's just—well, let's put it this way. You ever worn a bra?”

He stared at me.

“Ah. I guess not. Well, if you had, you'd know they're right uncomfortable.” Actually, I wear a brand of cotton bra that is very comfortable, but obviously Todd didn't need to know that. “And if I'm going to die, it's not going to be in my bra. So while I slip out of this thing, you might as well tell me the whole story here. Did you kill Alan, too?”

I reached behind my back, acting as if it was really hard to unsnap my bra.

“Dinky, while we watch Josie's fascinating display—and you'd better make it fast, Josie—why don't you tell her the story,” Todd said, sounding amused.

“My dad came up with the idea for health-food pies and told me I should present the idea to my good friend Todd,” Dinky said weakly.

I unsnapped my bra and went to the next step—reaching with my right hand around to my left arm, then under my sleeve to grab my bra strap. Easy, really. I'd done this maneuver a gazillion times when I wanted to fully relax in the privacy of my own home and watch late-night TV. But I was stalling for time, so I twisted around as though this were a major contortionist act while Dinky went on.

“Of course Uncle Alan thought the idea of health-food pies was stupid, until Todd contacted him and said his company loved the idea. Then Uncle Alan took credit for the health-food pie concept. Todd's company wanted to buy out our company.”

“Just the thing,” Todd said, “for boosting profits.”

“Then Dad found out the truth—that Uncle Alan and the rest of us weren't the only owners.”

“The truth about the Toadferns and the Breitenstraters?”

”How did you know that?” For a moment, Dinky forgot to be scared and just sounded surprised.

“I finally found where your dad hid the diary that reveals the truth. But go on,” I said. I hoped Dinky would keep talking, realizing as I did that we were all better off if we could stall Todd.

“Oh. Well, he threatened to expose the truth if Uncle Alan tried to go through with the sale. He told me that's what the new play and his announcements were going to be about and he told me not to let Uncle Alan know that I knew about the family history.”

“A complicating factor,” Todd said.

“So I hired Otis to kidnap dad so he wouldn't play his hand too soon with the information. Plus, I'd overheard Uncle Alan and Geri arguing—she was trying to talk Uncle Alan out of putting poison in my dad's pie.”

Ah. So Alan had planned on doing away with Cletus. Would Dinky have been next on his list, if Alan found out Dinky knew the true family history?

“I figured with that knowledge, and with Dad out of the way for a while to keep from interfering, I could talk Uncle Alan into not selling,” Dinky added.