“Like the time she caught her shop assistant passing out free rentals to her friends,” Peggy stuck in. “She fired her on the spot. When she’s angry, she doesn’t take time to think, she just explodes.”
“But the more time passes,” Sue went on, “the more she gets involved in something else, and whatever infuriated her before doesn’t seem as important.”
She turned her back on the sheriff and placed a warm, damp, herb-steeped cloth over my face. The pack began to soften, and I scrubbed at it until I could move my mouth. When I looked up, I saw Sarkisian at the door, grinning.
“Cleaning that off ought to keep you too busy to follow me for awhile,” he said.
I glared back. “But I have to. Remember the key to the Grange Hall? I’ve got to have that today.”
His eyes lit. “Certainly. I’ll deliver it to your aunt’s house-so there’s no need for you to go rushing around any more this afternoon.”
“It’s almost night,” I muttered, but at that moment Sue draped another herb-scented towel over my face, and I went to work de-mudding myself. When I emerged, the sheriff had left. Peggy and Sue stood in front of me, watching the process with apparent fascination. “Okay, he’s gone. Tell me what my aunt’s been up to.”
Peggy shook her head. “We told him the truth. Well, some of it, at least. Gerda did go on for a little while about coming up with a trap for him, but she couldn’t think of anything, and then she got sidetracked over the video rental problems, and she stopped fuming about Brody. Honest!” she added at my piercing stare.
Sue nodded in earnest agreement. I sighed, not knowing whether to believe them or not. If they told the truth, then all we had to do was convince a very suspicious Sarkisian of that fact. If not-well, I’d have to figure out what kind of a fiendish trap my resourceful aunt might have contrived-and what consequences it might have brought.
I was beginning to think that getting over three hundred pies baked by Friday morning just might be the easier task facing me.
Chapter Eight
My clock radio went off with a violent fit of static, which sent poor Vilhelm into a screaming fit. Thanksgiving morning. Too soon, my mind whimpered. Too soon. I tried to bury my head under the pillow. That’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It was stifling, and my neck bent at the wrong angle. With a sigh, I threw the pillow aside and sat up with a cavernous yawn.
My mind jumbled with lists and tasks-completed, coming up today, and those still in the not-distant-enough future. I’d set the alarm for five-thirty, which didn’t leave me much time to spare-or much sleep, for that matter. We hadn’t gotten to bed until at least one a.m. I couldn’t be sure of the exact time, by then, my eyes were too bleary to see a clock. Suppressing a groan, I climbed out from under my warm comforter into the chill of the room, pulled the cover off the parakeet’s cage, and found him glaring at me with his beady eyes.
“I’m a pest,” he yelled at me.
“I think the entire SCOURGE elite have replaced you, there,” I muttered and turned to find my jeans.
Pies, I still needed to find people to bake pies. And how could I talk them into doing that when I already had them scrambling eggs or flipping pancakes? But I’d have most of the rest of the town coming to eat, and if I could escape the kitchen, I could corner the unenlisted before they left and hand out tubs of pumpkin. Feeling much better, I exited my room to the tinny cries of “Yummy bird, here kitty, kitty.”
I found Aunt Gerda, already dressed for the day in a denim skirt and a sweater she’d knitted back when I was in high school, slumped over a cup of tea at the kitchen table. Siamese Olaf overflowed her lap, while calico Birgit and orange Mischief rubbed against her ankles, and the tiger-striped manx Hefty sprawled on her feet. The aroma of peppermint filled the room.
“That’s not going to do it, this morning,” I warned her. I scooped up Dagmar, who was doing her best to trip me, and cradled the fluffy ball of gray and white fur and claws in one arm. “Nothing like good old caffeine to get you going.”
Aunt Gerda yawned. I’ll swear she didn’t even notice when black Clumsy leapt onto the table and hunkered down beside the teapot. “Can’t drink caffeine. Not even decaf.”
Which only went to show how worn-out the poor dear was. She always lectured me, in that healthier-than-thou manner of hers, that caffeine could kill you. Apparently, in her case, that might be the literal truth. I joined her in her herbal brew.
I’d barely sat down, settled Dagmar in my lap, and taken my first sip, when Gerda dragged herself to her feet, scattering cats in all directions. “We’d better get going.” She drained her own mug. “Bring your tea with you, dear. We’ve got the key, remember?”
We did, thanks entirely to a nine p.m. phone call from Owen Sarkisian. He surprised me even more by meeting us at the school’s kitchen, for which he’d also obtained the keys. He would have endeared himself to me forever if he’d stuck around and helped, but he claimed pressing business to do with the murder-which I took the opportunity to scoff at loudly-to leave us to it. Aunt Gerda and I had spent the next hour and more lugging pancake mix, sausage, bacon, eggs and oranges into the hall’s kitchen. But we’d done it, and all the breakfast makings, even that damned giant coffeepot, awaited us there.
“I wish the turkey company had called back,” Gerda fretted as we climbed into Freya for the trip to the Grange.
That was beginning to sound like a broken record from both of us. I’d left several frantic messages for the company supplying the smoked breast for the raffle, but so far hadn’t received any answers.
“At least you made up a gift certificate,” I said. She had-at about midnight. Not exactly a professional job, since she didn’t have any certificate-making software for her computer. But we’d cobbled one together, then had to print it out on plain paper, with Gerda protesting that I should have warned her so she could have sent me out to buy something embossed and fancy.
Peggy, bless her brightly colored socks, sat in her old Pontiac in the Grange lot. She waved gaily to us, as if getting up before dawn on a holiday morning was her idea of a great time. As a group, we ran through the light drizzle, Gerda unlocked the door, and we piled inside. I headed straight for the heater, and in a few minutes warm air began to mingle with the icy chill. We might even be able to shed our coats and wooly hats before it was time to go home again.
Shoving up the sleeves of my sweatshirt, I strode into the kitchen. It was a large room, as kitchens go, with three stoves and ovens, two refrigerators, and two sinks. Cupboards and countertops lined the walls, with two preparation tables evenly spaced in the center of the floor. You could just walk between them, if you weren’t too large. What it would be like with a whole crew working in here defied my imagination. Of course, with my luck, I wouldn’t have the chance to find out.
Not much to my surprise, no good fairies or brownies or whatever had come during the night to magically squeeze oranges or mix batter. Which at the moment left it up to me, since Gerda and Peggy were arguing over whether or not to try to find the Grange’s harvest decorations.
The front door opened, and feet shuffled in the hall. “Damn, it’s cold in here. Why didn’t someone get here early to turn on the heat?” Art Graham demanded.
“You could have volunteered,” I shouted back.
“How’d I know someone hadn’t already?” came his prompt reply. I could hear the grin in his voice.
“Well,” put in his wife Ida, “we’re the decorating committee. I suppose heat might come under that category.”
“Nope. Decorating’s a luxury,” Art told her. “Heat’s an essential.”