The Pickled Piper (11 page)

Finally, Nate thanked the crowd for being such a great audience, and the spotlights illuminating the stage dimmed. Nate hopped down and headed toward Piper and Will's table, his progress slowed by people complimenting his performance along his way. By the time he reached them, Will had grabbed a fourth chair for him.

“Nate, that was just wonderful,” Tina said, and Piper and Will agreed.

“Thanks,” Nate said. “And thanks for coming tonight. I just might have a job for a while longer because of this turnout.”

“That'd be great,” Piper said. “Did you get a chance to talk with the plumber?” she asked, adding, “Tina's been helping with our information gathering, too.”

Nate threw Tina a grateful look, then said, “I did have a talk with Mr. Farber this afternoon.” He paused, taking a thirsty gulp from the beer he'd snagged along the way. He wiped his mouth, then said with a lopsided grin, “It was quite interesting.”

“I
went to the shop right after we met up this afternoon,” Nate said, describing his visit to Ralph Farber's plumbing showroom. “When I walked in, Farber was on the phone with one of his employees, and he wasn't happy with the guy.”

Nate laughed. “Farber would be an intimidating man when he was in a good mood. He's got shoulders at least three feet across and biceps that make you wonder if he does daily curls with the sinks and sump pumps he sells. When he's in a bad mood, as he sure sounded when I walked in, well, let's just say I felt like backing out of there, pronto.”

“What was he mad about?” Tina asked.

“Something to do with a job he'd sent one of his workers out on. It sounded like the guy messed up and Farber was trying to figure out how he could make things right. Eventually, with plenty of cuss words, Farber worked out a solution, though when he hung up, he looked ready to spit nails. That's when he noticed me and said, ‘Yeah?' like I'd better have a darn good reason for taking up his time.”

“Ouch!” Piper said. “What did you say?”

“Luckily,” Nate said, smiling, “I had time on my way over there to come up with a story. I still didn't know if I'd end up being thrown out of his store, but I gave it a shot. I told him I'd seen an old-style sink at Alan Rosemont's shop—which was true, actually—but that since the antique shop was now shuttered, I wondered if Farber carried anything like that.”

“Oh, a vintage sink?” Tina asked. “I love those.”

“Farber doesn't,” Nate said. “But he did pull out a catalog that he was willing to order from if I found something I wanted. As I flipped through the book, I talked about Rosemont's inventory, which led pretty smoothly, I thought, to Rosemont himself.”

“Good for you,” Piper said. “Did you get Farber talking about him?”

“Yeah, and without too much trouble. Farber's not one to keep his thoughts to himself. I'd love to play poker with him sometime.”

Will grinned and said, “Me, too!” then added, “Assuming he's not our murderer, of course.”

“What do you think?” Piper asked. “Could he have done it?”

“Well,” Nate said, and took another swallow of beer, “he sure didn't have much use for Rosemont. He might have barely tolerated his existence if Rosemont didn't happen to live right next door. Farber shared at one point that he would have liked to wrap Alan's bagpipe around his neck more than once.”

“Wow!” Tina said. “That's incriminating. Except,” she added, “would a murderer come out and actually say that?”

“Good question,” Nate agreed. “However, I did learn that Farber was at the fairgrounds Friday night.”

“Really?” Piper said, excited. “What for?”

“He told me one of the toilet facilities had backed up, and he had to run over and take care of it. He mentioned it because we got talking about my having to work late hours, and he said it beat getting called out in the middle of watching a good game on TV.”

“Right,” Piper said. “There was a Yankees' game on that night, wasn't there, Tina?”

Tina looked blank until Piper reminded her that Dennis Isley had been watching it. She then nodded vigorously. “Of course! The game with the fight in the stands.”

“Was Farber at the fairgrounds alone?” Will asked, and Nate shrugged.

“It sounded like it, but he didn't actually say. He just groused about having to miss his game.”

Just then Aunt Judy walked up, giving Piper a squeeze on her shoulders and gesturing for the two men to keep their seats. “I loved your performance, Nate,” she said. “I can't think why we haven't come before, but we'll certainly be here again.”

Nate thanked her, and Piper jumped in to tell her what he'd learned that day.

“Ralph Farber?” Aunt Judy said uncertainly. “He came to our place last May to install the new water heater. He's not exactly what you'd call a charmer, but he does good work. I can't imagine him murdering anybody.”

“Maybe that's because you never had to listen to somebody's incessant bagpiping ten feet from your bedroom window.” Uncle Frank had come up behind and caught most of what had been said.

“No, I haven't,” Aunt Judy agreed, “but still. Ralph Farber?” She shook her head. “It's just hard for me to imagine anyone I know doing such a terrible thing. But I need to focus on keeping Nate from being wrongly accused.”

“Amen to that,” Tina said. “We're all working toward that.”

Amy suddenly appeared at the swinging doors to the kitchen, dressed in her white chef's jacket and hat. She waved to Nate, and he pushed back his chair.

“If you'll excuse me, I think I have some dinner waiting for me.” He took off, and Aunt Judy slipped into his chair.

“Such a nice young man,” she said, watching him head toward the kitchen. She shook her head slowly, adding, “But I wish for his sake that he'd never come to Cloverdale.”

• • •

T
he next morning, Piper woke to bright sunlight streaming into her bedroom and the sound of birds chirping outside her window. She stretched leisurely, thinking pleasant thoughts of her preceding evening with Will until she read the digits on her bedside clock: seven forty-five. She'd overslept! Her stretch ended with a rapid whipping off of the covers. As her feet hit the floor, her thoughts raced over her morning schedule. Mrs. Peterson had arranged to come at eight to take a refresher course from Piper on canning. Piper needed to be dressed and ready for her arrival within fifteen minutes.

Water splashed and clothes flew as Piper dashed about, brushing her teeth with one hand while closing buttons with the other. At four minutes past eight, she hopped down the stairs to her shop, one shoe on, the other still in hand. As she slipped her foot into the second shoe, Piper paused to take a deep breath, then raised the shade on her shop door. There stood Mrs. Peterson, hands crossed in front over a large purse and a strained look on her face.

Piper unlocked her door and pulled it open. “I'm so sorry to be late, Mrs. Peterson,” she began, then stopped as she realized her customer wasn't looking at her but rather to the right.

“Miss Lamb, did you see that?” Mrs. Peterson asked, pointing.

Confused, Piper couldn't think for a moment. Then an ominous feeling fell over her. Piper stepped out to see what Mrs. Peterson was pointing to and groaned. On the brick section of wall between her shop window and the outer door to her apartment, someone had splashed paint—lots of it, and white, all the better to show up against the dark red brick.

“Oh no!”

“I think you'd better report this,” Mrs. Peterson advised solemnly. “It couldn't have been an accident.”

• • •

“S
o, you didn't see this when you arrived home last night?” Sheriff Carlyle asked. He'd responded to Piper's call within the hour with Ben Schaeffer, for some reason, at his side.

“No, I didn't.” Piper didn't add that she hadn't exactly been focusing on her shop's front wall at the time, having been escorted to her door by Will and thinking of other things, such as the possibility of a good-night kiss (which, happily and quite pleasantly, had occurred). But surely she would have noticed something as glaringly obvious as that paint splash, especially since the streetlight illuminated the area quite well (much to the delight, she was sure, of any Piper-and-Will watchers).

“And you didn't hear anything during the night?”

Piper shook her head. “But I'm a fairly sound sleeper.”

“The paint is dry,” Ben said, stating the obvious, as all three of them had already pressed a finger against it. “Taking last night's temperature and humidity into consideration, I'd say this was perpetrated no later than four
A.M.
”

“It was already dry at eight, when I discovered the mess,” Piper said. “Including the dribbles along the sidewalk. I checked to make sure paint wouldn't get tracked into my shop.”

“Three
A.M.
, then,” Ben amended.

“Let's just say sometime between twelve, when you stated you turned out your lights, Miss Lamb,” the sheriff said, “and daylight, when we'll assume our vandal wouldn't want to be seen out and about.”

“Shouldn't be too hard to track down, wouldn't you say?” asked Ben. “Just look for kids with white paint on their sneakers.”

“Possibly,” Sheriff Carlyle said, nodding. “Do you have any thoughts as to who may have done this?” he asked Piper. “Any problems or threats recently?”

Piper frowned. “The only thing I could mention is what happened two days ago. My garbage can was tipped over in the middle of the day, causing a huge mess for me out back. I would have thought it was kids except that my garbage can was the only one pushed over in a long string of cans in the alley.”

“Hmm,” Sheriff Carlyle said as Ben's chin shot up in indignation.

“Such behavior can't be tolerated in Cloverdale,” Ben said. “As we all know, juvenile delinquents left undisciplined grow up to be hardened criminals, and we don't need that element in our town.”

“The garbage thing I can see as kids fooling around,” Sheriff Carlyle said. “But defacing a shop front with paint in the middle of the night seems much more than a prank. If it was graffiti, maybe. But this strikes me as something done in anger, as if someone was sending a message to you, Piper.”

“A message? To me? But what would that be?”

“I guess we're going to have to figure that out.”

Sheriff Carlyle looked so serious that Piper shivered, though the temperature had already climbed close to eighty. But almost immediately she shrugged off the thought. Surely no grown person could be so upset with her, except . . . Charlotte Hosch suddenly popped into her mind. The candy maker had been angry and threatening over what she claimed were noxious pickling odors oozing from Piper's shop. But Charlotte's threats involved legal complaints, not petty vandalism. Piper couldn't really imagine the woman sneaking about in the middle of the night and . . .

“Daddy! What's going on?” Amy called out as she climbed out of her orange Toyota. Erin Healy was with her, and the two rushed over, soon spotting the cause of everyone's concern. “Oh gosh!” Amy said. “What happened?”

“Nothing to worry about, sugarplum. Piper can fill you in,” the sheriff said as he jotted something in his notebook. Ben gazed at Amy with an odd combination of pseudo-official sternness and dewy-eyed pining, while Erin, Piper noticed with surprise, watched Ben with similar enthrallment, though in her own, much shier way.

Piper explained what she knew to the two girls, and the sheriff flipped his notebook closed. “Well, I've got to be going.” He gave Amy a peck on her cheek, then said to Piper, “You think about what I said. Get back to me if you come up with anything.”

“What?” Amy asked as her father and Ben took off. “What are you supposed to think about?”

Piper hustled them into her shop. “Your father thinks this might have been done by someone with a vendetta against me.” She pulled the Cloverdale phone book from under her counter and started flipping through the yellow pages.

“A vendetta? Who could have anything against you?”

Charlotte Hosch, for one
, Piper thought but didn't say out loud. The idea still seemed too far-fetched to be true. “I don't know. All I know is I have to find someone to clean that mess off in a hurry or I'll be losing more customers. Mrs. Peterson already took off instead of staying for her pickling and canning lesson.”

“She'll be back,” Amy said.

Piper smiled, hoping she was right about that. But the thought of anyone doing such damage to her property deliberately and out of anger or spite lingered, making her highly uneasy.

A
s Piper waited to hear back from her insurance agent as well as the handyman she'd left messages with about her paint problem (did anyone answer their phones anymore?), she pulled out from under her shop counter the spiral notebook that contained her list of suspects.

“Did Nate tell you about his visit to the plumber yesterday?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” Amy said, looking pleased.

“And Amy told me,” Erin said. “It sure sounded like Mr. Farber was angry enough to kill Alan Rosemont.”

“Plus he was at the fairgrounds late Friday night,” Amy said.

“Where he must have heard Rosemont playing his bagpipes,” Piper said, nodding. “Which just might have tipped him over the edge if he truly wanted to wrap Alan's bagpipes around his neck. I think he deserves to be added to our suspect list.” She wrote Ralph Farber's name into the notebook under Robby Taylor's.

“So we have Gordon Pfiefle, Robby Taylor, and Ralph Farber. I'll have to cross off Dennis Isley since he has an alibi.” Piper's pen moved toward Isley's name.

“What's his alibi?” Amy asked.

“He was home watching a Yankees' game—alone, but he knew about the fight in the stands. I checked, and there was a fight that night.”

“He could have heard about that from someone else,” Amy argued. “I'd say keep him on.”

“Hmm,” Piper said. “It seemed credible to me because he'd mentioned the fight to Tina in passing, not as a defensive answer to ‘Where were you Friday night?' But maybe you're right and that's not enough. I'll keep him.” She set down her pen.

Tina walked in at that moment, her eyes wide with shock. “Good heavens, Piper! What happened to your storefront?” A faint aroma of coffee and cooked bacon wafted in with Tina and reminded Piper she hadn't had time for any breakfast. She told Tina all she knew about the vandalism, while Erin quietly excused herself and took off, promising to give Amy a call.

“Who could have done such a thing?” Tina asked.

“That's what the sheriff and I have been wondering. I can't imagine who.”

Tina's eyes took on a funny look as her lips pursed. “I can,” she said. “That fudge-making harpy, Charlotte Hosch.”

“Oh my gosh, you're right!” Amy cried.

“No, it couldn't be,” Piper said. “Though I admit her name crossed my mind.”

“There! See?” Tina said. “I'll bet she took her complaints to the town council and got no action. So she took her frustration out in another way.” Tina paused. “She's also been heard ranting against Nate, wondering why he hasn't been arrested yet for Alan Rosemont's murder.”

Amy gasped.

“Don't worry,” Piper assured Amy. “I'm sure Charlotte's opinion won't weigh heavily with your father.”

“Probably not,” Tina agreed. “But now that I think of it, maybe she's throwing out the accusation as a smoke screen. Maybe she killed Rosemont.”

“Why do you say that?” Piper asked.

“Oh,” Tina said, shrugging, “just because she's so nasty, I suppose. But I'll bet if we looked hard enough, we'd find a pretty good motive for her to have done it.”

Piper had to admit the idea of locking Charlotte up for the crime was appealing, but she said, “We'll keep her in mind. I've been thinking we should probably be looking into Alan Rosemont's background. Maybe there's something in his past that brought about his murder.”

Piper's phone rang. It was one of her spice wholesalers calling with an urgent question concerning Piper's latest order. Did she want regular yellow mustard seed or whole brown or both? Piper scrambled to find her order list and found that she needed both. She'd barely settled that and hung up when her phone rang again.

“You got some bricks need cleaning? How soon d'ya need it done?”

Instantly
came to mind, but Piper got into a discussion of method and cost, knowing she'd need to run it by her insurance agent. As she finished with that call, a customer in a bright pink tee walked in.

“Why don't I do that background search for you,” Tina offered. She'd been browsing the shelves while Piper was occupied and laid several jars of chutney on the counter. “I'm pretty good on the computer, and I'll have time.”

“Would you?” Piper said, happy to have one chore taken off her plate.

Amy packed up Tina's purchases as Piper turned to the pink-clad woman, asking, “How can I help you?”

Clutching her bag of chutneys, the coffee shop owner waggled her fingers and headed for the door, promising, “I'll get back to you.” Piper waved back, then continued her discussion with her new customer on the various merits of white, cider, and malt vinegars for use in the pickling process. Her phone rang again, but Amy picked up, and as she did, Piper's empty stomach grumbled its own bid for attention. Piper sighed, mentally telling it to get in line.

• • •

F
or the next couple of hours it seemed half the town popped in—one or two at a time—to ask about the paint on the front of Piper's shop. With all the repeated explanations—and no return in the form of helpful information on the vandalism—Piper felt her energy draining to near zero despite the two cups of coffee she managed to down from the pot Amy set to brew. As soon as there was a lull, Piper scurried up to her apartment for a bite of lunch, leaving Amy to hold down the fort.

With the need for speed in mind, Piper popped a cheese sandwich into her toaster oven, then added two homemade bread-and-butter pickles to her plate. She'd just taken her first, absolutely delicious bite when she heard a clear-pitched woman's voice carry up the stairs.

“I wish to speak to Miss Lamb. Immediately.”

The voice was familiar, and Piper found herself inexplicably picturing bunny rabbits and dancing turtles. Then it hit her: her visitor was Lyella Pfiefle, children's librarian and wife of Gordon Pfiefle, chief suspect on Piper's murder list!

Piper coughed, choked, then managed to swallow her food with the help of a gulp of water. About that time, Amy's head poked up from the stairwell. “There's a . . .” she began, but Piper nodded.

“I heard.”

“She looks mad,” Amy whispered, her eyes wide.

Amy's head disappeared from view, and Piper got up to rinse the crumbs from her hands. She could well imagine what Lyella Pfiefle might be mad about. The question was how did she know about it?

“Miss Lamb,” Lyella said as Piper appeared, then paused and shot Amy a stern look. “Leave us, please.” Amy glanced at Piper—who nodded—then disappeared into the back room.

With false bravado, Piper said, “How nice to see you again, Mrs. Pfiefle.” The librarian looked dressed for work in a tidy, though bland, blouse and skirt. Her hair was pulled into the same severe ponytail she'd worn before, and though she stood with a ramrod-straight back and chin jutting high, she still didn't reach five feet above the floor. Her manner, however, did, and more.

“I'm not here for your pickling spices, and I have to be at the library very soon, so I'll get right to the point. Miss Lamb, I realize my husband is a very attractive man. You are a single woman, whose heart, I'm sure, must be more than ready to be engaged. I fully understand that, as well as the weaknesses of human nature. Understanding, however, does not mean overlooking. Gordon Pfiefle is my husband and fully intends to remain so. I strongly advise you to keep that in mind and to look elsewhere for your romantic interests.”

“My—?” Piper's lips continued to move but produced no intelligible words.

Lyella misinterpreted Piper's shock. “There's not much I miss, I assure you. And believe me, Miss Lamb, you're not the first woman I've had to speak to in this way. I've never held it against any of them, and I won't hold it against you. In fact,” she said, “I feel I'm doing you a favor—saving you from a waste of time and certain disappointment.”

“I, ah,” Piper stammered, floundering for a response. If she protested that she had no romantic interest whatsoever in Gordon Pfiefle, how would she explain what her true interest was? That she saw him as a possible murderer?

“That's all right,” Lyella said, again interpreting Piper's silence in her own way. “No apologies necessary. We'll simply leave it at that. There'll be no need to speak of this again. Good day, Miss Lamb.”

Piper nodded, knowing she should say something. But since “thank you for coming” seemed totally inappropriate, she simply raised one hand in a weak farewell as Lyella turned and left the shop.

As the door closed behind the librarian, Amy peeked out from the back room. “Did I hear what I think I heard?”

Piper turned a stunned face toward her assistant and nodded.

“She really thinks you're after her husband?”

“Apparently so.”

“But she forgives you!”

“Generous of her, isn't it?”

“Oh!” Amy cried, pulling out a stool to support herself as she collapsed in laughter. “That's so amazing! Gordon Pfiefle! I mean, he's nice and all, but . . . And doesn't she know you and Will Burchett are an item?”

“We're not an item,” Piper said. “But since Lyella seems to be the only person in town who hasn't heard about us, the question is how did she link me up with her husband?”

“GPS?” Amy suggested, then suddenly grew serious. “What if it's all a smoke screen? Like what Tina said about Charlotte Hosch? What if she knows you have good reason to be suspicious of her husband and is doing this to throw you off the track?”

Piper looked at Amy. Good question. “I don't know if that's the case. But I'm starting to realize that we probably all need to be much more circumspect in our investigations.”