Death by Deep Dish Pie Read online

  “He really, really prides himself on that rock—” I said.

  “That this rock be moved to the center of town,” Winnie went on, “right smack in the middle of the traffic circle, because what could be more historical than that?”

  “The historical society members were meeting to decide on some historical monument to go in the middle of the circle,” I added.

  “And they didn’t want Tom’s rock?” Owen asked, sounding a little bewildered already.

  “They didn’t,” Winnie said. “And they really didn’t want their meeting crashed. Tom got very hysterical when someone—I think it was Nancy DeWitt—told him a flat rock in the middle of a traffic circle would not only be unappealing as a monument but that the rock needed to stay on the farm where it belonged.”

  Owen frowned. “But there’s no monument in the traffic circle.”

  “No. They could never come to an agreement on that. But they did decide that visitors have to be sponsored.”

  “Which is why Trudy needed me to sponsor her visit,” I said, bringing the conversation full circle to Owen’s original question.

  “And the penalty for her showing up without your sponsorship would be what, exactly?” Owen asked.

  I frowned at the amusement in his voice. So our town’s quirky. So what. “None, considering she’s a Breitenstrater. But she also said she didn’t want this getting around town beforehand. I have a feeling she wants to make her appearance as proper as possible, to avoid trouble with her dad. From something her cousin Dinky said, her dad would just as soon she stays away from town. I guess she wants her attending the meeting to be as proper as possible. Then, at least, people won’t mutter about her crashing the meeting. It would get back to him, no matter how careful people tried to be about not upsetting him.”

  “Well, as long as you didn’t tell her you’d try to get her in the play,” Winnie said. “I don’t think the historical society would approve of that, even for a Breitenstrater.”

  “Is she really that bad of an actress?” Owen asked.

  “That’s not the point, Owen,” Winnie said, sloshing a bit of coffee as she put the go cup back in the holder while taking a hairpin turn. “The point is that Trudy Breitenstrater can’t just ask for a role in the play.”

  “Well, of course not. She’d have to try out, like everyone else, of course, because in an egalitarian society—”

  I groaned. This was why Owen would always be an outsider. Things like this have to be explained to outsiders, but go as unspoken tradition for Paradisites.

  “Maybe it would help if Owen understood the whole Founder’s Day background,” Winnie said.

  I twisted in my seat, so I could face Owen. His hazel eyes had gone wide, bewildered. “You have to understand,” I said, “this goes back to 1928. That’s when we started having a Paradise Founder’s Day celebration, to go along with July Fourth.”

  “Not to be confused with the Beet Festival in the early fall,” Winnie added.

  “Right,” I said. “Or the Paradise Appalachian Homecoming Days in the spring.”

  Owen looked slightly panicked. While he likes to give long lectures, hearing them is another matter. So, of course, I warmed right up to my subject. A dose of his own medicine would be good for him.

  “Now, the Founder’s Day celebration started out pretty simple. Just a July Fourth picnic on the grounds of the Paradise United Methodist Church. Then someone thought to add in a play about how Paradise was founded—just a quick skit—and it was put on by the Paradise Historical Society.”

  “Didn’t Mrs. Beavy write the script?” Winnie said.

  “No, that was Mrs. Oglevee,” I said, shuddering at the memory of my junior high history teacher, God rest her soul. She’s been dead for ten years, but she still comes back to haunt me in my dreams.

  “Then a few years later, someone else said, let’s have a parade, too,” I went on, “which mostly consisted of people dragging their lawn chairs down along Main Street and watching a few pickup floats go by.”

  “Pickup floats?” Owen asked.

  ”Sure. Any group that had access to a pickup—like the Little League, or 4-H, or the junior high cheerleaders, or the Moose Lodge, or—”

  “Josie, that would be any group in Paradise,” Winnie said.

  “Right. Anyway, groups would decorate up the bed of a truck with signs and displays and stick a few kids in the back to wave real nice to the gathered crowds while the trucks drove slowly down Main Street.”

  “Ooh—and don’t forget to tell him about the pretty-baby contests,” Winnie said, wistfully. “That was always my favorite part.”

  I sighed. I love babies. “Mine, too. See, of course we’d have Miss Beet—from the previous fall’s Beet Festival—and her court, and Miss Junior Beet, and her court, and Miss Petite Beet, and her court, all riding in the back of pickups.”

  “Of course.” Owen’s face was turning red just like a, well, a pickled beet, because of the strain, I reckoned, of trying to imagine all of this.

  “Anyway, all the Miss Beets and the courts pretty much took care of all the Paradise girls fromage four to eighteen who wanted to be in the parade, but that left out all the babies.”

  “And we do love to coo over our baby Paradisites,” Winnie said.

  “So we started having pretty-baby contests, so they could also—while being held by their mamas, of course—ride in the parade.”

  “What happened to the losing babies?”

  “What? There were no losing babies,” Winnie said. “How could there be an ugly baby?”

  “But—if there’s a contest—”

  “Don’t fret, Owen,” I said, “it always worked out. Categories can expand to accommodate any pretty baby.”

  “You’re leaving out the best part of the parade.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “For the last few years of the parade, the final part was the Masonville State Prison Guards—the off-duty ones—marching at attention.”

  “Didn’t they look sharp with those rifles?”

  “And the uniforms. Spotless. Sharp creases in the pants legs.” I had a professional interest, even if a big Masonville laundry got their uniform cleaning business.

  “And then, of course, we had the fireworks display,” Winnie said. “It was beautiful. The Dairy-Dreeme stayed open extra late so we could all get soft-serve ice cream. No one minded the crowds.”

  “This all sounds incredibly . . . lovely,” Owen said. “But I still don’t see how this fits with the Founder’s Day annual play.”

  “We’re getting there,” I said. “You just have to understand what the Founder’s Day celebration was in order to understand what the Founder’s Day celebration now is.”

  Winnie and I had a moment of silence, in honor of past Founder’s Day celebrations.

  Then I went on with the story. “See, about twelve years ago, there was no Founder’s Day celebration. Things had gotten harder than usual, what with people moving out of Paradise, and one of the nearby quarries closing up, and so there just wasn’t enough money left in the town coffers after the Beet Festival to also hold a Founder’s Day celebration, and since the Beet Festival draws outsiders and their money, the Founder’s Day celebration was canceled.”

  “Yep,” Winnie said. “No parade.”

  “And no fireworks. You had to drive all the way up to Masonville for that.”

  “And no soft-serve after,” Winnie said.

  “I see,” Owen said.

  “That was when the Breitenstrater family stepped in,” I said. “We thought it was a great idea when the Breitenstrater Pie Company offered to take over the celebration. Pay for it. Community service. Little did we know . . .”

  “People aren’t happy with how the Breitenstraters are running things?” Owen asked.

  “The problem is that now it’s actually called the Breitenstrater Pie Company Founder’s Day Celebration,” I said, “because of all the money the family’s pie company has put into it. We still h
ave the parade—but all the floats have to be pie-themed.”

  “The Ranger Girl one from last year was pretty good,” Winnie offered. “With that sign—’we sell cookies but we eat Breitenstrater pies.’”

  “And to kick off the whole thing, the Breitenstraters have the picnic on the lawn of their company—not at the church lawn—a week before July Fourth, to hold a pie-eating contest among contestants that Alan Breitenstrater—the owner of the pie company—always picks, supposedly based on their excellent work performance,” I said. “The winner and a few runners-up get to ride with Alan in his yellow Jaguar convertible at the front of the parade. This year’s contest is a week from today.”

  “Yeah,” Winnie said, “but of course Cletus Breitenstrater always wins. No one would dare beat a Breitenstrater.”

  “What’s Cletus’s story?” Owen asked.

  I explained about his title-only position and the Fireworks Barn and Dinky and the car wreck that had killed Jason and how people laughed at Cletus behind his back, what with his overbearing way of droning on to people about his obsessions with Utopias and local history and health foods.

  ”Let me guess—all of the fireworks for the Founder’s Day celebration come from Cletus’s Firework’s Barn,” Owen said.

  “Which isn’t so bad. We have a fireworks display that outdoes Masonville’s,” Winnie admitted.

  “Guy loves the fireworks display every year,” I said. “Except for the red fireworks.” Guy hates anything the color of red. “And except for the big booming sounds.” Even though it’s July, he wears his earmuffs to stifle the sound.

  “But at the pie-eating contest and parade all these Breitenstrater employees run around forcing you to take leaflets with pie coupons. It’s so annoying. No one wants to keep track of the leaflets, so we end up with a huge litter problem every year.”

  “But what about the play?” Owen said.

  “Well, the play was never a big hit. Not much drama in six people—representing the three original couples who founded the town—the Breitenstraters, the Schmidts, and the Foersthoefels—each taking a turn describing the weather and the crops in the town’s early history.”

  “Well, they do go on to describe about how canals came through the area and then trains. And about famous people from around here.”

  “Famous people?” Owen wanted to know.

  “Sure. We have the Talawanda Sisters. They were a hit singing group in the sixties. Plus Ricky Stygers. He played major league baseball. A few other people like that.”

  “Basically, though,” I said, “the play is a recitation of what we learned in junior high local history class. Probably because Mrs. Oglevee, the teacher, wrote the play. No drama. Not well attended except by the friends and families of the six actors—the same six over the past twenty years.”

  “Sounds dull,” Owen said.

  “It is,” Winnie agreed. “But when the Breitenstraters took over the whole Founder’s Day celebration, the only thing they changed about the play was its title. What was it before, Josie?”

  “Something like An Erudite Recitation of the History of Paradise and the Surrounding Region.” I yawned. “Now, the title is, The Breitenstraters’ A Little Taste of Paradise.”

  “That sounds familiar,” Owen said.

  “It’s the Breitenstrater slogan, printed on every box.”

  “Oh,” Owen said. “Well—it is a pretty good title.”

  “True. But the thing is, while the Breitenstraters rescued our Founder’s Day celebration and pay for it. . . they’ve basically taken it over.”

  “They’ve branded it,” Owen said.

  ”What?”

  “You know—take something simple like, say, toilet paper,” Owen said. “The people who make toilet paper want to advertise their toilet paper so everyone will buy theirs, instead of another company’s toilet paper. Which is fine. But before you know it, you have the Toilet Paper Bowl and the Toilet Paper New Year’s Day Parade, and so on. I mean, take a look at that barn.” I glanced out at another barn with another remnant of CHEW MAIL POUCH on its side. “A little advertising like that is a great American tradition. But branding’s become a burden every product in America must bear as if just being, say, toilet paper isn’t enough of a purpose in the world. So what the Breitenstraters have done is stamp their pie brand all over your entire Founder’s Day celebration.”

  There was a bit of silence as we took in what Owen had just said. Winnie slowed down to turn off the state route onto the county road that would take us, within five minutes or so, to Stillwater.

  “Well,” I said finally, “I guess you’re right. And what’s happened is that the play is the one thing that the Breitenstraters didn’t touch, except to rename it, so now, even though everyone still privately thinks the play is boring, no one wants it to change because it’s the only remnant of the pre-Breitenstrater Founder’s Day celebration.”

  “And you agreed to sponsor a Breitenstrater for the play meeting tonight?” Owen said, the horror growing in his voice as the enormity of what I’d done—at least in Paradise terms—struck him. Maybe he’d fit in sooner than I’d thought.

  I slunk down in my seat as Winnie pulled through the Stillwater gates and drove slowly down the lane to the big white farmhouse that had, with a few additions, been converted to a residential home for people with severe autism.

  Winnie, of course, wasn’t saying anything.

  “Maybe Trudy just wants to observe the meeting,” I said defensively, even as a voice in my head said doubtfully, you really believe that about young Miss Breitenstrater? “Look, I agreed to sponsor her tonight because I needed her to watch my . . . I—I thought it would be good for her . . . and I really wanted to spend the whole day here, with the two of you and Guy.”

  Winnie patted me on the knee and Owen rubbed my shoulders.

  “It’ll be okay,” Winnie said.

  “Things’ll work out,” Owen said.

  See why they’re my best friend and my boyfriend?

  If only they could have also been right.

  3

  An hour later, we were in the middle of the best part of Family Day at Stillwater—at least as far as Guy Foersthoefel was concerned.

  During this part of the day, when residents show their families their special projects, Guy introduces me (and this year, Winnie and Owen) to every pumpkin.

  Now, in the midst of the pumpkins, Guy was rocking back and forth on his feet and heels, and pointing to pumpkin number one. He said, “Matilda Pumpkin!”

  Guy is my cousin, Aunt Clara and Uncle Horace’s son. He’s forty-four—fifteen years older than me—and I think of him more as a big brother than a cousin, except when he seems more like a little brother. He has autism, severe enough that he can’t live on his own. My aunt and uncle worked hard all their lives—my uncle running the Foersthoeful Laundromat in Paradise, and my aunt working at Breitenstrater Pie Company and helping my uncle in her off hours. They spent as little as possible to cover basic needs, putting the rest aside for a trust fund for Guy so he can remain at Stillwater for the rest of his life .. .

  Pumpkin twenty-seven: “Joey Pumpkin!”

  Guy was my aunt and uncle’s only child. My aunt was an only child, too, and my mama (Maybelline Foersthoefel-Toadfern) was Uncle Horace’s only sibling. And I’m an only child. So on my mama’s side of the family, it’s just Guy and me now. My daddy (Henry Toadfern) took off after my mama was pregnant but before I was born. Then my mama took off not long after a fire destroyed our trailer when I was about eight. The Foersthoefels and the Toadferns never got along—the Toadferns thought the Foersthoefels were snooty (being one of the original founding families of Paradise, and never letting anyone forget it) and the Foersthoefels thought the Toadferns weren’t snooty enough.

  So after my mama took off, none of the Toadferns (of which there are plenty in Paradise) wanted to take me in, and neither did Uncle Horace, who blamed the Toadferns for his sister running off. I lived for a time wi
th the then Paradise chief of police and his wife, then in a local orphanage (now an abandoned building outside of town), until Aunt Clara (whose family was the Millers, who only came to Paradise in the 1930s to work at the Breitenstrater Pie Company) declared that both the Foersthoefels and Toadferns were, in her words, a bunch of silly geese.

  Pumpkin sixty-three: “Georgeanne Pumpkin!”

  Aunt Clara took me in, cleaned me up, encouraged my love of reading, and made Uncle Horace teach me the laundry business. The had been in his family for two generations and he knew he couldn’t leave it to Guy. Eventually, Uncle Horace warmed up to me. When he died, my junior year in high school, he told Aunt Clara to leave the to me and let me rename it Toadfern’s Laundromat if I wanted to. Aunt Clara died a few years later, suddenly. She left the and house (both paid for) to me, and named me Guy’s official guardian. Guy is the last Foersthoefel of the line that helped settle Paradise.

  I sold my aunt and uncle’s house and put the funds into Guy’s trust fund, then moved into one of the two apartments over the . (Every now and again, I rent out the other apartment.) I ignored everyone who said a young woman in her early twenties couldn’t possibly run a by herself and started teaching myself everything I could to become a stain expert. And a few years ago, I renamed the : Toadfern’s Laundromat. And every now and then I get a call from as far away as Columbus asking for my help with a stain problem. I like to think that Aunt Clara and Uncle Horace would be proud of me.

  Pumpkin 102: “Roxie Pumpkin!”

  The Toadferns—on account of my renaming the laundromat—decided I wasn’t purely evil. At least, most of my Toadfern kin of my own generation accepts me, plus some of my daddy’s eight brothers and sisters. Mamaw Toadfern, though, who still lives out on the Toadfern farm on Big Holler Road, even yet won’t talk to me. I figure she blames my mama for her son running off, and since my mama ran off, too, she can’t take it out on her, so she takes it out on me. She gets mad at the few cousins and uncles and aunts who talk to me, and since she is the iron-fisted ruler of the Toadfern clan, that means the Toadferns who do talk to me usually want something.