Gourd to Death. Kirsten Weiss

but did anything odd happen last night?” I pulled open the door.

      “You’ll ruin the temperature control,” she shouted.

      I released the handle as if scalded.

      “And what do you mean by anything odd happening?” she called through the door. “What do you think I get up to after I go to bed?”

      “Nothing, but—”

      “Nothing? There could be something. I’m not a monk, you know.”

      Ugh. “Never mind.”

      I snapped on a hairnet, tied on an apron, and ran a round of dough through the flattener. Roughly, I slipped it into a pie tin and turned it, pinching the dough around its edges. A murder had been committed yesterday. Was there a connection between that and the graffiti? It didn’t seem likely I’d become a target because I’d found the body. Two different criminal minds were likely at work—one deadly, one dippy.

      At six, I hauled the coffee urn to the dining area and turned the sign in the glass front door to OPEN. I set the day-old hand pies on the counter.

      Aged regulars trickled into Pie Town for self-serve coffee, cheap snacks, and gossip.

      As much as I wanted to hear what they thought about Dr. Levant’s murder, I had about a dillion autumn pies to bake. I’d decided to go heavy on the pumpkin, for obvious reasons. But there were other fall favorites, such as apple-cranberry, mincemeat, sweet potato, and pecan. The festival menu also included Wisconsin harvest pie, tart cherry, a maple-pumpkin with salted pecan brittle, and pumpkin chiffon.

      Insides jittering, I hurriedly filled piecrusts. This would be one of our biggest days of the year. There was no margin for error.

      Gordon and three uniformed cops presented themselves for duty at nine. The tables were already nearly full of early festival arrivals grabbing coffee.

      Tally-Wally sat beside the urn. He explained how the self-serve basket worked, ensuring there were no java scofflaws.

      Outside, the fog had begun to lift. It blanketed the rooftops and revealed giant black spiderwebs strung across Main Street.

      I explained our system of numbered tent cards to the cops. The cops would take the orders for people standing in line and speed things along. I just hoped we were busy enough to justify the system.

      “A word, Val?” Gordon nodded to the hallway. Even Gordon was in uniform blues today. He looked even hotter in them than in his usual detective’s power suit.

      “Sure.” Who can resist a man in uniform?

      Gordon followed me into the hallway and stopped me with a hand to my arm. I turned, and he was close, so close I could smell his bay rum cologne. He lowered his head, his emerald eyes intent.

      My heart beat more rapidly. “Maybe we should go into the office,” I said in a low voice. His colleagues might see.

      “You’re right,” he said. “And we need Charlene.”

      Charlene? “Um, what exactly did you have in mind?”

      Gordon’s handsome brow furrowed. “What did you?” His expression cleared, and he laughed shortly. “Oh. Not that.”

      Kissing me quickly, he zipped into the kitchen, the door swinging in his wake, and returned with my piecrust specialist. Charlene looked like an autumn leaf in her orange tunic and brown leggings.

      So much for a romantic interlude. I followed them into my utilitarian office.

      Gordon shut the door behind us, and the VA calendar on its back fluttered. “Thanks for sending me those crime scene photos, Charlene.”

      “You took crime-scene photos?” I sat against the metal desk and folded my arms. “When?”

      She shrugged. “When you weren’t looking.”

      “I need your help,” he said. “I can’t get anywhere near this case—not officially.”

      Charlene leaned against the closed door, rumpling the VA calendar. “It goes without saying, the Baker Street Bakers are at your disposal.”

      “Great.” He looked around the office. “Have you got a whiteboard?”

      “Why would we have a whiteboard?” Charlene asked.

      “It’s fine.” He grabbed paper from the printer tray and rummaged in my desk.

      “Can I help you?” I asked, bemused.

      “Got it.” Extracting a roll of tape, he taped five sheets to the wall behind my desk. “I know you haven’t had time to take those PI courses, so I’m going to give you a crash course.”

      “PI courses?” Charlene asked, looking intrigued.

      He wrote across the five sheets of paper and tapped the first page that said EVERYTHING. “One, you need to document everything in your murder book.”

      “We do keep case files,” Charlene said. “We’re not total noobs.”

      “Everything.” He underlined the word and pointed to the next sheet: TIMELINE. “Next, we need to nail down the timeline. When exactly did Dr. Levant die? Where were all the suspects at the time?”

      “Her partner, Tristan Cannon, was setting up their festival booth that morning,” I said. “But we don’t know when Dr. Levant died or when exactly he arrived.”

      “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said.

      Charlene straightened off the door. “But you asked about the suspects.”

      “Before we decide who the suspects are, we need to talk to potential witnesses.” He numbered that three on the paper. “And that includes talking to everyone who was on the street at the time the body was discovered.”

      “Everybody?” I squeaked. That seemed like a lot of work. And speaking of work . . . I surreptitiously checked my watch. I needed to get back to the kitchen.

      Charlene yawned. “Boring.”

      “This is how an investigation is conducted,” he said.

      “That’s how the police conduct an investigation,” she said, “not us.”

      “We need to follow every lead.” He turned to the wall and marked that number four. “And treat everything you discover as evidence.” He wrote EVIDENCE on the final sheet of paper.

      I folded my arms. One of the benefits of having your own business is there’s no one above you to tell you what to do. I wanted to help Gordon. Being taken off the case was obviously bothering him. But, well, Charlene and I had been in charge of the Baker Street Bakers too....

      Charlene squinted at the wall. “Everything, timeline, evidence . . . ETE? What kind of acronym is that? You work for the government. You people are supposed to be coming up with acronyms all day long.”

      “It’s not an acronym,” Gordon said.

      “It should be,” she said. “If you want us to remember anything, you need an acronym like SNOT or WHAM or BANG or something. Whiteboards. Huh! I’ve got to get back to my crusts.” She strode from the room. The door banged shut behind her.

      “We’ll help in any way we can,” I said. “Like we always do.” I could think of him as a client.

      “She’s right. This is wrong.” He scraped his hands through his hair. “What am I doing?”

      “Educating us. It’s interesting.” Okay, that was a lie. “We can stand to be more organized in our amateur investigating. It’s just that . . . organization and Charlene aren’t really the peanut butter and chocolate of the investigation world.”

      He scrubbed his hands across his face. “Crazy. I’m going crazy. That’s all. And why wouldn’t I be?