Death by Deep Dish Pie (28 page)

“But when Jason died, his shares reverted to Alan, and of course Alan holds Trudy's in trust until she's of age. So Alan felt he could do whatever he wanted with the company, including selling it, no matter what Cletus and Dinky wanted. But think about it. We're all direct descendants of Leo Toad-fern . . . but so are the Breitenstraters. In fact, the Breitenstrater family really ended when Clay and Adolphus died. Which makes all of us Toadferns cousins with Alan and Cletus and Dinky and Trudy.”

I stopped, letting Sally think about what I'd just said.

She frowned for a while, then stared at me wide-eyed. “Oh my God. That means that each Toadfern owns a piece of the Breitenstrater pie, too. So to speak.”

“That's right,” I said. “Which means Alan never really had majority control of the company—because there are plenty of Toadferns. And if Cletus knew that, he could blackmail Alan into not selling the pie company—otherwise he'd reveal the truth.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We go talk to your daddy.”

Sally frowned. “Why?”

“Think about it. Cletus told me he'd had many a nice talk with Uncle Otis here at the theatre—here where Cletus hid this information. And Uncle Otis quit working on the theatre to poach ginseng, something Cletus was very much into, and the lemon ginseng pie was why Good For You Foods wanted to buy Breitenstrater, which Cletus certainly wouldn't want. And Alan is dead . . . and Cletus and Trudy are missing . . . and the Fireworks Barn blew up and a body was found there this morning. Somehow this all connects. It's just possible Uncle Otis knows something that shows how.”

19

For a few, long minutes, Uncle Otis just stared at Sally and me when we told him about what we'd learned from Gertrude Breitenstrater's diary. Our grandfather Leo Toad-fern from way back (we hadn't yet figured out the number of ‘greats' that should go in front of ‘grandfather') had actually sired two bloodlines—the Toadferns. And the Breitenstraters. Which made us cousins with the Breitenstraters and which, we were pretty sure, according to the way the Breitenstrater Pie Company was set up, also made us part owners.

Then, suddenly, Uncle Otis broke into a great big grin. “Does this mean we're all gonna be rich after all?”

I moaned, but stopped short of rolling my eyes. “No,” I said. “For one thing, there are too many Toadferns. What it does mean, though, is that Cletus and Dinky had one big motive for killing Alan. And you and Cletus were buddying up and you're in jail for ginseng poaching and ginseng is something Cletus was big on. Now Cletus is missing—and a body was found in the rubble of the Fireworks Barn.”

And someone had tried to kill Cletus by poisoning his chocolate pie at the contest. . . yet it was Alan who keeled over dead into the lemon ginseng pie.

Uncle Otis looked confused. I didn't blame him. This was confusing. Just who had tried to kill who? Or was it a case of each brother trying to kill the other?

“What happened to the Fireworks Barn?” Uncle Otis asked.

“It blew up, Daddy,” Sally said. “If you know anything about the Breitenstraters you're not telling us, you'd better let us know, and . . .”

Suddenly, Uncle Otis was weeping.

“Daddy?” Sally looked at me, worried.

“Th-th-the Fireworks Barn blew up?” Uncle Otis blubbered.

“Oh, for pity's sake,” I snapped. “We have Alan dead, someone else dead at the Fireworks Barn, Cletus and Trudy Breitenstrater missing, a very confusing family history that involves the entire Toadfern clan, and you're worried about the fact the Fireworks Barn is gone? There are all kinds of fireworks outlets. You can find your July Fourth rockets somewhere else—assuming you're out of here by then.”

Sally punched me on the arm.

”Ow!” I wailed.

“Don't talk mean to my daddy,” Sally said. Then she turned on Uncle Otis. “Daddy, what the hell's the big deal about the Fireworks Barn?”

He stopped blubbering long enough to glare at both of us.

“That,” he said, “was where I hid my ginseng stash! Now it's all gone . . . thousands of dollars worth . . .”

We finally got Uncle Otis to calm down enough to confess to us that he'd actually been selling his ginseng directly to two clients—Cletus and Todd.

“See, last fall, I sold a small amount of ginseng to Cletus. It's easy to harvest and everyone knew about Cletus's interest in ginseng. So one day, when I saw him in town, I just told him I could get him some fresh ginseng. Then this spring Cletus started asking me to sell him a whole bunch for some pies he was making over at the company. He was running an experiment, he said. I told him it wasn't ginseng season yet, that I'd be running a big risk getting it now, but he offered me pretty good pay, so I got him the ginseng he needed.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean to tell me that it was really Cletus who developed the lemon ginseng pies?”

Uncle Otis thought a moment, and then shrugged. “I reckon so. We didn't talk about it much. I just harvested the ginseng, brought it over to Cletus at the Fireworks Barn. Then next thing I know, a few weeks ago Todd Raptor, who says he's in on this lemon ginseng pie deal, follows me home one day. Right there, in my front yard, tells me he'll pay me all this money for the ginseng, that it's for his company and this deal they're doing with Cletus, said he heard Cletus talking to Mr. Alan Breitenstrater about how he got ginseng from me. So I even hired the Breitenstrater girl and some of her pals to help me, considering as how they were camping out right near where the ginseng grows.

“But the thing is, he didn't want it over at the Fireworks Barn. It was a special project, he said, that had to be hush hush for a while.”

This time, I rolled my eyes. “And you believed all that?”

I stepped out of reach of Sally—who was giving me a hard look.

“All I know is he was willing to pay me thousands of dollars. So I harvested the ginseng and stashed it in my special place in the woods instead of taking it over to the Fireworks Barn.”

“But then, Daddy, why were you just saying you had your ginseng stash at the Fireworks Barn?”

“Because I had to move it there from my place in the woods, on account of another special project.”

“And what was that project,” I ground out through clenched teeth.

Uncle Otis shook his head. “I don't reckon I'd better tell you, given all that's happened. I could get in a heap of trouble.”

Sally sighed. “Daddy, you're already in a heap of trouble. And if you don't tell us everything—and I mean everything—I'm not going to bring Harry, Larry, and Barry over to visit anymore. I'll just tell ‘em their granddaddy's a crook.”

Uncle Otis's eyes welled up at that. “You'd do that to your old pa?”

Sally crossed her arms and glared at him. I had no doubt she would, and I reckon neither did Uncle Otis, because he ended up—after some more blubbering and Sally saying I mean it and so on—telling us the rest of the story.

“See, I had to move my ginseng out of my special place to make room there for, well, for Cletus. Dinky hired me to kidnap his dad on the day of the pie-eating contest. He didn't tell me why—only said it was just for a few days until some business could get worked out. So I moved my ginseng stash over to the storage room at the Fireworks Barn—Dinky gave me a key to the place and took his dad out to lunch somewhere.

“Then I met up with Dinky and Cletus over by the state park. Cletus was very trusting of Dinky and I guess Dinky had told him he wanted to see this Utopia or something that the little girl Breitenstrater—”

“Trudy,” I put in.

“Yeah, Trudy, that she'd organized. Cletus was all proud of that because Dinky'd always thought his dad's obsessions, especially the one on Utopias, was really dumb. Anyway, I did feel kinda bad when Dinky held a gun on his dad and had me tie up and gag Cletus.”

Sally put her head to her hands. “Oh Daddy, you didn't.”

“Well, now, it was Dinky's idea, and he was paying me lots of money, and it was just for a few days, and I treated Cletus really good, I swear, and made sure I fed him a real nice meal before I left him there.

“But then I had a patch of bad luck. A ranger caught me harvesting a bit more ginseng—and here I am. I suspect he was tipped off. Anyway, I wasn't ever able to go back for Cletus.”

“So he was just left there—tied up?” Sally said, horrified. “And you didn't tell anybody?”

“Now, baby girl, calm down. Todd and Dinky knew where my secret place is. I reckoned they'd go back and release him in a few days, which was all Dinky wanted him held for.”

I sighed. “Remember the body that we told you was found in the Fireworks Barn?”

Uncle Otis frowned, like he was thinking this over.

“What if it happens to be Cletus? You know, you could be an accessory to murder.”

Uncle Otis sat down on the bench in his cell and started shaking.

At least he was shaken up enough to tell us where his secret place was.

It was in a cave deep in the woods of Licking Creek State Park. Uncle Otis even told us how to get there.

Out on the sidewalk in front of the town building, Sally and I stood blinking at the sun and arguing with each other.

“You know darn well we ought to tell Chief Worthy about this.”

I couldn't believe those words were coming out of my mouth. But they were, and I knew I was right.

“But Josie, if Cletus is still there, and we set him free, maybe the law won't come down so hard on Daddy.”

“C'mon, Sally, Cletus has been missing for several days, now, and what about the body that was found at the Fireworks Barn? That's probably Cletus.”

“What if it's not? What if it's Trudy? Or what if it's someone else and Cletus can tell us where Trudy went? What's wrong with just going out to Daddy's cave and seeing? I mean, what do you think Chief Worthy is going to do if you tell him everything Uncle Otis told you?”

“Probably go out and investigate the cave himself,” I said.

Sally grinned. “Not if I tell him you're making it up. And I will, too. And Daddy will go along with me.” She crossed her arms, just as she had when she was threatening to keep her triplets away from Uncle Otis if he didn't cooperate. Sally is one tough woman. “So we might as well go look and hope that Cletus is still there and we can set him free and maybe he'll be so grateful he'll get Daddy out of trouble.”

She grinned optimistically. Now I'm a born optimist, too—I guess it runs in the Toadfern genes—but I thought her plan was about as likely as her ex whizzing up to Bar-None on his motorcycle with a bouquet of roses, an apology, and a winning lottery ticket. Still, I did know that Chief Worthy would believe a garden snake over me, given the choice. And if I told him what Uncle Otis had told us, but Sally and Uncle Otis denied it, I'd never get him to believe me.

So what choice did I have? “Fine,” I said. “We'll go out to the cave. Just one problem, though. Neither one of us has wheels.”

That got her for a minute—but just for a minute. We'd started walking back down the street and were near Sandy's Restaurant.

She grinned and pointed at the delivery truck pulling up to Sally's—a Breitenstrater Pies delivery truck. The deliveryman hopped out, went around to the back and did something, closed the back doors again, and went into the restaurant, leaving the truck idling.

“We've got wheels now,” she said, taking off in a run toward the truck. And like a fool, I ran right after her.

The pies were loose.

After we heard the third or so pie plop off the rack in the back, we figured out that the delivery truck driver had been getting the pies ready to bring in to Sandy's and the pies were no longer secure on their racks.

Which wasn't so bad, since the back door of the delivery van wasn't fully shut, either, and all the pies went sliding out the back end of the van. We left a trail of pies behind us as Sally screeched out of Paradise.

If John Worthy or any of his officers wanted to pursue us for stealing a van, it wouldn't be hard to follow us, at least up to Sweet Potato Ridge Road, where the last of the pies plopped out.

So we thought, until we came up behind a tractor.

Sally was driving too fast. She had to brake hard to keep from plowing into the tractor's back end, and when she braked, we went flying forward into the dash, and some pies that were still on the top racks came flying forward, too—and landed on our heads and all over the cab of the truck.

I yelped, wiping lemon pie—regular lemon meringue, not lemon ginseng—from my eyes, while I said a few choice curse words that would have curdled the cream on top of the chocolate pies—if there'd been any left in the back of the truck.

Sally just stared straight ahead with ferocious intensity as she swerved around the tractor, ignoring the cherry filling that dripped down her back.

“For pity's sake, Sally, you're going to kill us.”

“No, I'm not! I'm getting us to that cave and rescuing Cletus and setting everything right!”

Twenty minutes after that, Sally hard-parked the delivery van right at the exact spot where I'd parked when I'd come out to find Trudy and her buddies at their Utopia.

I stood in the heat, watching Sally stare at the directions her dad had written down for us, and wished for the rain that had poured on me the last time I'd been out in these woods. Being pie-drenched on a hot day in the middle of the woods is not a pleasant experience. It turns out that flies and gnats and other bugs really like pie, so we kept swinging our hands in front of our faces.

“Are you sure you have a clue which way we're supposed to head? Let me see that map,” I said.

“Are you kidding? Don't you remember how you got lost on the orienteering club overnight in high school and it took two search parties three hours to find you?”