Pies and Prejudice (27 page)

“Hugh’s been…amazing. He took Chewy to doggie day care too.” Ella Mae cut a slice of tomato basil quiche and added a bowl of triple berry salad to a plate, garnishing the fruit with a sprig of fresh mint. “You told me that a special volunteer would show up today.” She placed the finished plate onto Reba’s tray. “How did you know?”

“Call it woman’s intuition,” Reba replied airily. “You never returned the man’s calls and I bet that made him curious. Not too many women ignore a man who looks good enough to eat.” She picked up the black tray and paused. “Be careful with that boy, Ella Mae. He’s not for you.”

“And why not?” Ella Mae felt her cheeks flood with color. Reba had obviously recognized the charge in the kitchen air when she’d first arrived. She could tell that something had happened between Ella Mae and Hugh. “Is it because I’m still married? I told him that Sloan and I are done.”

Reba shook her head. “Not until the papers are signed, you’re not. And it’s more than that, sugar. Hugh’s left a trail of broken hearts as long and wide as the Mississippi. He’s not available even though he acts like he is. Trust me on this one. He’s not for you. He can never be free to be the man you need him to be. He’ll always be bound to another.”

The words hung around well after Reba left to serve her customer. Ella Mae tried to ignore them and focus on the next order ticket, but they hovered like persistent wasps until she wished she could swat them from the room.

When Reba next appeared, there was a marked bounce
in her step. “Remember that plan you mentioned about usin’ your feminine wiles to get Chandler’s keys?”

Still irritated, Ella Mae answered with a curt, “Yeah?”

“No need!” Reba declared and then triumphantly flourished a set of keys. “He’s out there havin’ lunch and lookee what he dropped bending over to help an old lady pick up her cane.”

Widening her eyes, Ella Mae forgot that she was annoyed. “How will we know which one unlocks the clinic?”

“How about this one?” Reba pulled a brass key from the ring. “Says ‘clinic front door’ clear as day.” Grinning slyly, she dropped the key into her apron pocket, winked at Ella Mae, and disappeared through the swing doors with one of the dozen shoofly pies lined up on the wire racks.

Ella Mae was glad that she’d reserved a pie for Hugh, because by the time the lunch rush had ended, there were none left. She came out to the front room and presented him with a white bakery box tied with red-and-white-striped string while Reba was back in the kitchen loading the dishwasher.

With the exception of a young couple lingering over slices of peach tart, the pie shop was empty. Ella Mae felt suddenly uncomfortable and shy as she handed Hugh the box and thanked him for his help.

“This isn’t much of a payment considering how hard you worked today,” she said.

He held the box under his nose and inhaled. “Smells just like Granny Glattfelder’s. If it tastes anything like hers, then I came out ahead.”

Feeling like an awkward teen, Ella Mae shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I’ll pick up Chewy after we close. Will you be there to give me a tour?”

He shook his head. “No, but the staff will take good care of you.” Smiling at her once more, he said good-bye and walked out the front door, the bells chiming in his wake. Ella Mae was tempted to rip them down. Their sound had
heralded the death of Annie Beaufort and now the swift departure of a man she’d kissed with more passion than she had ever known. It left her hungry for more.

“Oh, dear,” Reba said as she entered the front room to deliver the bill to the young couple in the window seat. “We always want the ones we can’t have.”

After locking up the shop, Ella Mae pedaled over to Canine to Five to collect Chewy. The doggie day care was thirteen thousand feet of canine bliss located directly behind the firehouse. Ella Mae was astounded by the nonslip rubber flooring, the play equipment, the exercise pool, the resting areas, and the outdoor space. Everywhere she looked, happy dogs were being trained, groomed, or given physical therapy while others were engaged in swimming games, eating, or resting in one of the dozens of unique dog beds.

Chewy was curled up in the middle of a pack of dogs in the small breeds room. He was the picture of contentment but still had the good grace to show Ella Mae that he’d missed her by leaping to his feet and covering her cheek with wet kisses.

“He’s definitely teething,” a Canine to Five staff member informed her. “And he’s also really smart and very social. He’s made tons of new friends today and we treated him to a massage and grooming session. Mr. Dylan wanted this little guy to have the star treatment. Not that he had to convince us to do anything extra. Charleston Chew has won us all over with his good manners and sweet smile. He’s been a perfect gentleman today.”

Ella Mae felt a rush of pride and wasted no time enrolling Chewy in the day care program.

Pedaling home in the late afternoon heat drained Ella Mae of every ounce of remaining energy. She still wanted to ask her mother what had transpired in the back garden last night but could manage only to drink a large glass of
sweet tea, take a brief shower, and settle down on the sofa with a book. She read about five pages before her eyelids drooped closed.

Hours later, the combined sounds of a rumbling engine in the driveway and Chewy’s barking woke her. Groggily, she sat up and stumbled to the front door. Reba’s Buick was parked outside.

“Good thing you had a catnap!” Reba sauntered in and went straight into the kitchen. “You were probably as wrung out as a dish towel. Now come sit at the table and eat your supper. Oh, and this package was at the door.” She placed a cardboard box on the table.

While Reba fixed a plate of fried chicken, okra, and corn and poured two glasses of iced tea, Ella Mae opened the box from the restaurant supply company. She’d ordered another marble rolling pin to replace the one taken from her mother’s kitchen, and when she freed the pin from its layers of bubble and plastic wrap, she began to examine it carefully.

“I sure wouldn’t want to be clobbered on the head with that,” Reba remarked.

Ella Mae nodded, cradling the marble pin in her right palm. Her memory took her back to the sight of the smoldering façade of the nail salon, and she could almost smell the smoke and the harsh, acrid scents of chemical fumes. She pictured Hugh moving through the wreckage, ax in hand, searching for the tiny orange sparks burrowing deep into the heart of the charred wood.

She was so absorbed by the image that she lost her hold of the rolling pin when Chewy barked at a squirrel racing up the tree outside the window. The pin hit the floor with a crack, breaking neatly in the middle.

Ella Mae swore and bent over to collect the two halves. She peered into the hollow inside the pin and showed it to Reba. “Maybe this helps answer part of the mystery of the rolling pin.”

“Why?” Reba shrugged. “What would somebody put in there? Cobra venom?”

“I don’t know,” Ella Mae admitted. “I haven’t puzzled it all out yet, but look, see how these handles unscrew? You could slide something inside and replace the handles and no one would be the wiser.”

Reba took one of the halves and held it up to her eye, spinning it like a kaleidoscope. “I could put a whole pack of Twizzlers in there. Now eat up. We’ve got places to break into, people to incriminate.”

She consumed several licorice twists while Ella Mae ate, chatting about the day’s customers and marveling over the generous tips she’d received. “I’ll wash up,” she said after Ella Mae had finished every scrap of food, leaving only a tidy pile of stripped chicken bones on her plate. “You’d better change into darker clothes. I don’t want to get caught because somebody saw those white pants and thought you were a ghost.”

“I feel as transparent as one,” Ella Mae said glumly. “Until these murders are solved, I won’t be welcome in Havenwood. People will see me as the woman who grew up here and left the town behind for bigger and better things, only to return bearing a curse.”

“Folks don’t think that. Not the ones comin’ into the pie shop anyway.” Reba shrugged. “And if they ain’t payin’ customers, I don’t give a fig what they think. Now scoot upstairs and change so we can get our hands on that snake bill.”

Ella Mae insisted on driving. She couldn’t handle Reba’s reckless speed or wild curve hugging on a full stomach. By the time they crossed into Little Kentucky, the sky had morphed from a dark pewter to a bruised blue black and millions of stars glittered above the fields of the equine center.

“It’s a good thing people are spread out in this county,” Ella Mae remarked. “This car is not stealthy.”

Reba gave the dashboard an affectionate pat. “You can’t
beat a real American-made engine. Those foreign tin cans might save on gas money, but they don’t have a shred of personality.”

Parking behind the largest barn, it occurred to Ella Mae that someone might be bunking with the horses, especially if one of the clinic’s patients was recovering from surgery, but there were no other cars in sight.

“I hope this place isn’t wired with some fancy alarm system,” Reba muttered as she pulled Chandler’s key from her pocket. “We won’t have much time to rifle through drawers with a siren ringin’ in our ears.”

Ella Mae peered in through the glass double doors. “I don’t see anything mounted on the wall. What would people steal? It’s not like they have lots of cash on hand.”

“What about drugs?” Reba countered. “Aren’t they the cause of this whole mess?”

“Good point,” Ella Mae conceded and held her breath while Reba fit the key into the lock, turned, and opened the door a crack.

No alarm sounded. In fact, the center was preternaturally quiet. Expecting to hear muffled noises from the horses in the barn or those recovering from surgery inside the clinic, Ella Mae was spooked by the heavy silence.

Unperturbed, Reba switched on her flashlight and directed the beam at Peggy’s desk. “Where’d you see that bill?”

After a quick examination of Peggy’s papers and file folders, it was clear that the bill was no longer in her possession. Ella Mae couldn’t find a single reference to Uraeus Pharmaceuticals nor was there a hanging folder for the Malones or Hollowells in Peggy’s file cabinet. There was no paper trail indicating that Bradford Knox had ever treated any of their animals.

“This is going from bad to worse,” Ella Mae murmured morosely.

“Don’t go all doom and gloom on me,” Reba ordered and
flipped Peggy’s desk calendar over. “Well, well. Looks like Peggy spent her coffee breaks fantasizin’ about the Boss Man.”

There, taped to the cardboard of the calendar, were candid shots of Bradford Knox surrounding a photo of Peggy and Bradford taken in front of the clinic. Balloons were tied to the door and Bradford appeared to be much younger, so Ella Mae deduced that it was from the equine center’s grand opening. The two were laughing and had their arms wrapped around each other’s waists and Peggy had drawn a red heart around the photo.

“Poor Peggy. I wonder how long she carried a torch for him.” Ella Mae passed the flashlight beam over the pictures again. “According to his children, Bradford was devoted to his wife. A few years after she passed away he took up with Loralyn Gaynor. That must have torn Peggy’s heart in two—to have been passed over like that.”

“I thought you said that Peggy spoke kindly of Loralyn,” Reba remarked.

“She did. I certainly didn’t detect any animosity. Peggy actually defended Loralyn by saying that she wasn’t a gold digger.”

Reba replaced the calendar. “This just gets weirder and weirder. Let’s go root through Chandler’s office.”

Chandler wasn’t nearly as organized as Peggy. Ella Mae couldn’t see how he functioned among such dishevelment, but then recalled a college professor telling her that some of the world’s most brilliant people had their own unique classification system. Still, it made finding the incriminating bill impossible. The pair searched for nearly an hour but found nothing useful.

“We’ll be here all night,” Ella Mae complained, watching as Reba fanned the pages of a
Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association
. Tossing it on top of a teetering stack of similar publications, Reba turned her attention to the slim center drawer of Chandler’s desk.

“Locked.”

Ella Mae slammed a file cabinet drawer in exasperation. “We’ve got to see what’s in there.”

Reba unzipped her purse and produced a small utility knife. Selecting the nail file, she inserted the blade into the keyhole, turned, and smiled as the lock disengaged with a click.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” Ella Mae asked in amazement.

Reba shrugged. “I can’t curl my tongue. Other than that, I’m damned near perfect.”

Inside the drawer was a single file folder. Ella Mae whipped it open and discovered that the equine center was mortgaged to the hilt. Underneath this bank statement were several bills from Uraeus Pharmaceuticals. Apparently, an order for cobra venom had been placed six months ago. Vials containing powdered venom were delivered in a timely fashion, but no payment had been received by Uraeus. The company sent several letters addressed to Bradford Knox requesting that the outstanding balance be paid. Interest was added to the amount due until Knox was in debt to Uraeus Pharmaceuticals for tens of thousands of dollars.

“Bingo!” Reba whispered.

Ella Mae pointed the flashlight beam into the drawer and spotted a piece of white paper stuffed to the back of the drawer. She did her best to flatten the wrinkles and then read the typed missive aloud, “We’re coming for our money. Have it ready or your center will burn. And there’s no telling who will be inside this time.”

Below that was a date and time.

Ella Mae and Reba exchanged horrified glances.

“That’s today’s date,” Ella Mae rasped and checked her watch. “We only have a few minutes to get out of here!”

Reba’s eyes were dark and wide with dread. “Too late. Someone’s comin’.”