Death by Deep Dish Pie Read online

  With his next comment, Dinky went too far. He glanced around my laundromat, a look of distaste growing on his face, and he said, “God, Trudy, what are you doing in a dump like this? You don’t belong here! You know your dad wants you to stay away from town. Why do you think he’s been sending you off to private school?”

  I went over to Trudy and started helping her load black jeans and shorts and T-shirts, most of which were too big for her, into a washer. And I looked up at Dinky’s piggy eyes—Dinky is six feet five and well over 260 pounds—and said, “Trudy is welcome here anytime she likes. And as for the condition of my establishment—well, your Uncle Alan has been using the services of this laundromat for twenty years to have uniforms and linens from your pie company laundered. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”

  Dinky started turning red at the collar of his hunter green polo shirt. He opened his mouth, about to tell me I was fired, I reckoned, when Mrs. Beavy spoke up.

  “And stop taking the good Lord’s name in vain, young man,” she said. “I’ve been working with your father on a special project for the Paradise Historical Society—it’s a secret for now. He’s a dear man, and I’m sure he wouldn’t approve of your language.”

  At that, Dinky finished turning red all the way up to his receding hairline. And we all stared at Mrs. Beavy. She was working on a secret project with Cletus? And she thought he was a . . . dear?

  Dinky turned, stalked out. Through the big pane window that fronts my laundromat, we could see bits of his blue sports car (rumored to be the fifth one he’d owned) through the legs of the toad on a lily pad I’ve painted on my window, right below my slogan: TOADFERN’S LAUNDROMAT: ALWAYS A LEAP AHEAD OF DIRT.

  We heard his door slam, then his tires squeal as he sped off.

  Trudy looked at Mrs. Beavy, then me. “Thank you,” she said.

  For a moment, her face brightened. Then she withdrew into a scowl and, as her wash load started churning, she sank into a chair and opened her book, Thomas More’s Utopia. Hmmm. Must be Uncle Cletus’s influence, I thought.

  I went back over to Mrs. Beavy. “Did you want me to take that blouse for you?”

  Mrs. Beavy was gazing thoughtfully at Trudy. “What, dear? Oh, yes. Please do.” She handed me her pink blouse and kept glancing up at Trudy as she finished folding up the rest of her laundry. Other customers had also begun staring at Trudy and Slinky, when they thought Trudy wasn’t looking.

  I whispered to Mrs. Beavy what I’d whispered to them. “Don’t worry. Trudy’s ferret has been demusked. And it’s never gotten loose or anything . . .”

  “No, no, that’s not the problem,” Mrs. Beavy said, squinting over at Trudy. “There seems to be something wrong with her right eye.”

  And in fact, just as Mrs. Beavy said that, Trudy grabbed at her eye, which caused Slinky to jump, run over Trudy’s head, and reposition itself on her left shoulder, while giving a little squeal.

  “Her eye is fine,” I reassured Mrs. Beavy. “It’s just that her earring keeps popping off.”

  Mrs. Beavy looked confused. “Then why isn’t she whacking at her ear instead of at her eye?”

  I sighed. “She wears a clip-on earring on her right eyebrow because she’s not allowed to get her eyebrow pierced.”

  “She doesn’t want to wear earrings on her ears?”

  “No, on the eyebrow. It’s a style statement.”

  “Then why doesn’t she have them on both eyebrows?” Mrs. Beavy whispered at me. Now Trudy, having figured out that yet again I was trying to explain her to a customer, was glaring at us as best she could, given that she was also pulling her right eyebrow forward while trying to reclip on a silver loop earring.

  “I guess just having one eyebrow pierced—or clipped—is also a style statement. Now, about your blouse,” I started, trying to get Mrs. Beavy’s attention back on laundry.

  But it was too late. Mrs. Beavy was already walking with a half-toddling gait—a recent change that was a result of her having fallen on her porch steps the past winter—over to Trudy.

  Oh, Lord. I didn’t want Mrs. Beavy to lecture Trudy about her fashion sense. And I didn’t want Trudy to be rude to Mrs. Beavy. Truth be told, I liked both of them.

  Trudy stood up. Even slumping, she was five feet nine. Mrs. Beavy faced her, looking up. Even trying to straighten, she was barely five feet one.

  They looked like the oddest of odd couples: a lanky, teenaged Goth queen sporting black dyed spiky hair and a live ferret. And a tiny, eighty-something Historical Society queen in a flowered dress and a beauty-salon-set for her dandelion-seed-puff of white hair.

  “Josie here tells me you like to wear earrings on your eyebrow, but just one,” Mrs. Beavy said.

  “Yeah,” Trudy said. “So?”

  Slinky stared at the Widow Beavy. My heart thudded. I knew Mrs. Beavy was on medicine for high blood pressure. Was it strong enough to help her heart take the shock if Slinky decided to bungee jump down from Trudy’s shoulder to, say, Widow Beavy’s head?

  But Mrs. Beavy didn’t seem to notice the ferret. “Well, dear,” she was saying, “I was just thinking about how my children keep nagging me about clearing out things. Maybe they’re right. Anyway, I have a box of widowed earrings, waiting for their mates to show back up. But it seems that they never do.”

  Mrs. Beavy sighed deeply, in great sympathy for those single earrings who awaited their mates and never quite accepted that they were truly alone.

  ”So I was thinking,” Mrs. Beavy went on, “maybe you’d like them.”

  Trudy stared at Mrs. Beavy so hard that if the earring had been back on her eyebrow, it surely would have popped off and fallen right into Mrs. Beavy’s tuft of white hair.

  Mrs. Beavy misunderstood Trudy’s incredulous stare. “Now, don’t worry, dearie,” she said, patting Trudy on the forearm. “I won’t get offended if I see you in here and you’re not wearing one of my old earrings. You’d just be doing me a favor by taking them. I can’t throw things out on the curb—it’s just never been my way—and I can’t think of anyone else who’d want widowed earrings.”

  Trudy finally found her voice. “You—you’re giving me your old earrings? To wear on my eyebrow?”

  “Just the ones without a mate, dear.” Mrs. Beavy tilted her head the other way, studying Trudy. “You know, I have one with a fake emerald in a dangly silver setting that would really bring out the green of your eyes. Well, of your right eye. Seeing as how you’d be wearing it on your right eyebrow. Or do you ever switch sides?”

  Trudy shot me a look—which clearly asked, is she serious or is she making fun of me?

  I smiled at Trudy. “That’s a right generous offer Mrs. Beavy is making you.”

  “And a red one. I have this bright ruby-colored one I think you’ll really like,” Mrs. Beavy was drifting, not paying any attention now to either Trudy or me. “Why, I got the ruby earrings to go with the red dress I wore back when I met Mr. Beavy at the canteen back in 1942. It had fringe, that dress did, and a hem that went all the way up to my knees, and when I snuck out to meet Mr. Beavy in secret. . .”

  “Um, I’d love the earrings, really! Thank you!” Trudy said, apparently not wanting the details on what happened more than sixty years before between Mr. and Mrs. Beavy. Personally, I was curious to hear the truth behind this secret.

  But Mrs. Beavy said, “Well, that’s just fine, dear. If you don’t mind walking home with me now—I just live one street behind here, and I could use some help carrying my laundry basket—I’ll go ahead and give the earrings to you while we’re thinking of it.”

  She toddled back over to the table where she’d been folding laundry.

  “I’ll keep an eye on your laundry for you,” I said to Trudy.

  “Uh, thanks,” Trudy said.

  Now, I could have left it at that—the widow and the Goth girl, becoming friends. That would have been nice and sweet and simple.

  And maybe what happened later—the murders, the explosion, my Uncle
Otis Toadfern getting arrested, and everything else—maybe all of that wouldn’t have happened. Or at least, maybe I wouldn’t have been involved when it did happen.

  But I was caught up in the bonding moment the Widow Beavy, Trudy, Slinky, and I had just shared. I’m a real sucker for such things.

  So I said, “Hey, Trudy, before you go off with Mrs. Beavy, I need to ask you a favor. Could you watch my laundromat tomorrow? It’s pretty simple—I’ll leave you a list of the orders people will be picking up—and I’ll pay you. Five bucks an hour okay?”

  She gave me a hard look, and for a second I thought maybe five bucks an hour sounded like an insult to a Breitenstrater. Then she said, “Why?”

  “It’s the annual family picnic over at Stillwater tomorrow. And I need to be there with Guy.”

  I didn’t need to explain the rest to Trudy. Like I said, Paradise is a small town. Everyone knows my cousin Guy is fifteen years older than me, is more like a brother than a cousin, has autism, and lives at Stillwater Farms (so named on account of the nearby Stillwater River), fifteen miles north of Paradise.

  I reckon all of us in a small town trail around our invisible mantles of family history.

  “No—why do you want me to help you?” Trudy asked.

  I shrugged. “Just thought you might want to.”

  I started to turn away, but then Trudy said, “Wait. I’ll—um—I’ll do it, but not for five bucks an hour.”

  “That’s what I can afford, Trudy.”

  She grinned. “No, I want something else that won’t cost you anything. But it has to be a secret.”

  It was my turn to give her a hard look.

  “Nothing bad,” she said. “Just secret.”

  And she whispered the secret of what she wanted in my ear, and I hesitated, just for a moment, but then thinking of Guy and the picnic and not really understanding yet how secrets yearn to be set free as truth, I agreed, as Mrs. Beavy toddled over, chirping, “Are you ready to get your widowed earrings, dear? Or would they be brow-rings . . .”

  2

  By twenty minutes past noon on Saturday, Winnie Porter, Owen Collins, and I were finally on the road, on our way to family day at Stillwater. Our noon start time had been delayed four minutes because Winnie had had to rearrange a stack of books in the backseat of her truck to make room for Owen. (Winnie was driving because my old Chevrolet was at Elroy’s Gas Station and Body Shop for the day, getting a new muffler, among other things.) Then I’d delayed us another thirteen minutes by running back and checking that everything at my was really going to be okay for the afternoon with Trudy Breitenstrater (who’d promised to keep Slinky in a cage in my combo office/storeroom).

  It took another three minutes for us to get out of Paradise and northbound on the state route that led to Stillwater, after curving through corn fields and stands of trees and cow pastures and free-range chicken farms and barns and hamlets that were tinier, even, than Paradise: New Hope, population 52. Stringtown, population 29. Ferrysburg, population 238. Plus a business every now and again—the Fireworks Barn. The Bar-None (a bar that was obviously not picky about its patrons and that was owned by Bubbles Brown, my cousin Sally Toadfern’s ex-mom-in-law).

  It was a bright summer day, the sky opening into forever blueness, the road surface already shimmering with heat, the kind of day I love most for country drives, if I weren’t so worried about my and about being late for family day, worries I’d already voiced.

  “Josie, would you stop fussing?” Winnie said. If anyone could make up our lost half hour and get us to Stillwater on time, it was Winnie. Her job was commandeering the Mason County Public Library Bookmobile across the back roads of Mason County (with stops in Paradise twice a week).

  Winnie was a tall, slender fifty-something who dressed as if every day were a celebration of a 1960s that never really reached Paradise. Even though Winnie had been fifteen and in the Jackie Kennedy-pillbox-hatted Midwest at the height of Flower Power, she now always dressed as though Janis Joplin had gotten fashion tips from her. Somehow, on Winnie, this didn’t seem at odds with the fact that she also drove a full-cab, bright red Dodge Ram truck named Dolly (in honor of Dolly Parton, Winnie’s favorite country-and-western star), or that she loved to wear a Dolly wig on Saturday nights and go two-stepping with her husband, Martin, at the Bar-None. Or that while checking out copies of Star Reporter magazine to the locals, she also talked them into trying Jane Austen.

  Any woman who mixes Janis Joplin, Dolly Parton, and Jane Austen to come up with her unique identity is not to be messed with, not even by a country road that’s put fear into the diesel-powered hearts of many a snow plow. That’s why Winnie is my best friend.

  Still, I looked at her and said, “Did I mention Slinky the ferret?” I’d quickly told Winnie and Owen about the previous day’s events with Dinky and Trudy (leaving out Mrs. Beavy’s blouse, which I thought was a kind of personal detail), and the deal I’d made to get Trudy to watch my this morning—that I would sponsor her attending this evening’s Paradise Historical Society meeting to discuss the annual Founder’s Day play.

  “You’ve told us about twenty times,” Winnie said, referring to the ferret.

  “Did I mention ferrets smell bad and eat anything?”

  “About another twenty times. But I thought Slinky’s been demusked and is in her favorite cage for the day in your storeroom?”

  Okay, so Slinky only smelled slightly musky. Still.

  “What if Slinky gets out?” I fussed. “What if Mrs. Schroeder comes in to drop off Pastor Schroeder’s shirts and the choir robes and sees Slinky? She’ll swear Slinky is a manifestation of Satan come to Paradise—you know how she is about anything remotely rodent.”

  “Ferrets aren’t rodents—” Winnie started.

  But I went on. “What if Trudy gets lonely and reattaches Slinky to her neck with the ferret leash?”

  “Now, Josie, you must look beyond the physical fact of Trudy’s shoulder-laden ferret to the psychological ramifications. In short, Trudy has attachment issues. She needs to be attached to someone or something that will provide a loving response to her nurturance, reciprocating her love, something she’s obviously missing at home, and you should be pleased that she’s willing to detach enough from Slinky to let the ferret stay in a cage today because this shows that your response to her is boosting her sense of . . .”

  This, obviously, was not Winnie, who was now frowning with asphalt-curling concentration at the road slipping at seventy-plus mph beneath Dolly’s wheels.

  This was Owen. He was thirty-something, a few years older than me (I’m twenty-nine), and not as fussy or boring as his remarks about Trudy made him sound. He carries the weight of triple PhDs—in psychology, philosophy, and religious studies—which is why, I think, it’s hard for him to simply say, for example, “Trudy’s family is really screwed up. No wonder the poor kid’s trying to get affection from a ferret leashed to her neck.”

  His heart’s in the right place, though. Besides teaching at Masonville Community College and at the state prison, on Sunday afternoons he reads the Bible and other books to a group of blind women at the Paradise Retirement Village, even though he’s agnostic, because he feels he ought to do something in the way of spirituality, what with his religious studies degree. The old ladies dote on him and call him “cutie pie” and “sweet pea” even though they can’t see him, but they’re right, he is cute—in a lost-puppy-dog kind of way, although they probably wouldn’t approve of his long blond ponytail. I do, though.

  And any man who mixes prisoner-teaching, elderly lady-reading, philosophy, psychology, religious studies, agnosticism, and cuteness—plus is one very fine kisser—is not a man to interrupt, even when he’s rambling on. That’s why Owen is my boyfriend.

  “Uh, Josie, aren’t you listening?” Winnie said.

  “What? Oh, sure,” I said. I’d drifted into a cow-pasture-cornfield-tree-stand-hamlet-old-barn-watching reverie. “Owen was just describing Trudy’s psychological
condition—”

  “I’d moved on from that,” Owen said, kindly, no spite. He’d gotten used to people drifting off midramble. “I wanted to know why Trudy wants to come to the play meeting tonight. What’s this play all about anyway?”

  Owen is a newcomer to Paradise, which means he wasn’t born there. I met him when I signed up for a popular-culture class of his at Masonville Community College. Owen has lived in Paradise for almost a year, having moved here from his hometown of Seattle when he got the college job. We’ve been dating for about nine months. But it wouldn’t have mattered if Owen had lived in Paradise ten, twenty, or thirty years. He was a newcomer, and always would be until the day he died. Even if he keeled over right at the intersection of Maple Avenue and Main Street. Even if he never so much as stepped a toe across the Mason County line, except for the vacation every Paradisite takes at least once in a lifetime, up to Lake Erie and Cedar Point Amusement Park.

  Now, Owen’s kids—especially if born of a native Paradisite, such as me, might be considered real Paradisites, especially if one of them became, say, a football hero or a head cheerleader. Grandkids, most likely, would definitely be considered Paradisites, no matter their social status. But although I’d allowed myself a thought or two about happily-ever-after with Owen, we really weren’t that far along in our relationship. And in any case, Owen would always be a newcomer in Paradise. I didn’t hold it against him.

  “Trudy wants to be an actress,” I said. “And she wants to make her debut in the annual Founder’s Day play, A Little Taste of Paradise.”

  Winnie gasped. “My goodness, Josie. You didn’t agree to that, did you?”

  “No,” I assured Winnie. “I just promised to sponsor her as a guest at tonight’s meeting. It’s supposed to be to go over details about the play.”

  “Why couldn’t she just come to the meeting?” Owen asked.

  “It was understood for years that Paradise Historical Society meetings were for members only, and by invitation for everyone else,” Winnie told Owen. “Then old Tom McGalligan crashed a meeting about ten years ago demanding that a huge fossil rock—”