The Pickled Piper (4 page)

“That's great. That'll put an end to it.” Piper added a cup of mustard seeds to her bowl.

The radio station had moved on to Gilbert and Sullivan's light music. Piper smiled and hummed along for a measure or two, then scooped out a tablespoon of nutmeg. Amy added her cinnamon to the mix, and Piper stirred. She was ready to portion out her batch of mixed pickling spices into jars.

Piper got the funnel, and Amy pulled out labels from one of the drawers. They worked carefully in companionable silence, Piper filling and Amy pasting labels, until Piper happened to glance up. Erin Healy was hurrying toward her shop. Erin, she knew, had been Amy's friend since kindergarten, and with her dark hair and large brown eyes was a contrast to her friend in looks as well as temperament, being generally quieter and more reserved. At the moment, however, “reserved” was not the word Piper would have applied to her, especially as she burst through the shop's door.

“Amy, did you know your father's been questioning Nate!”

“I know,” Amy cried, jumping up from her chair, all her hard-won calm disappearing in a moment. “I hate it, and I can't wait till it's over and done with!”

“But did you also know Nate's getting a lawyer?”

“What! Why? How can he get a lawyer? He can barely afford food.”

“All I know is he was seen going into Darryl Huggard's office.”

“Oh Lord.” Amy sank down in her chair, her shoulders drooping.

“Who's Darryl Huggard?” Piper asked.

“Only the worst lawyer anyone could have to represent him,” Amy said with a dramatic eye roll. “But he's cheap, which is why Nate probably picked him. Why should he need a lawyer at all?”

At that moment, Nate himself walked in, looking grim.

“Nate!” Amy bounced up and hugged him. “Are you okay? What happened?” She pulled back, looking at his face. “And why are you talking to Darryl Huggard?”

Nate gave a half smile. He looked at Piper, who'd stayed behind her table. “Sorry to bring all this into your shop. It's just, I wanted to see Amy. To explain.”

Erin had eased away, giving her friends space, but Nate put a friendly hand on her shoulder and drew her back. Piper remembered that Erin was on the bus the day Amy and Nate met and had fully endorsed their budding romance. Nate probably remembered, and appreciated, that, too.

“I'm glad you came, Nate,” Piper said. “Now, please tell us what's going on.”

Nate ran his fingers through his hair. “Things have been happening so fast I can barely wrap my head around it. But I seem to be a ‘person of interest.' Maybe front and center.”

“But why?” Amy asked. “You were home all night, weren't you?”

“Yes, I was.” Nate looked steadily at her. “I absolutely was from nine o'clock on. But I was alone. Nobody can back me up.”

That's not good
, Piper thought, but she kept silent.

“Around maybe eight or so, I needed to replace a string on my guitar,” Nate said. “I went out to the music store, but it was closed. Ninety percent of the stores in town seem to be closed because of the fair. So I didn't see anybody I know, went back to my apartment, watched some TV, and turned in early. Nobody heard me practicing because I
couldn't
practice. But I was home the rest of the night, and that's the truth.”

He slumped into the chair opposite Piper. “That's why I went to talk to Huggard. I'm sure I'll be called back for further questioning or worse. He wants a retainer, and I don't have it right now. But I'll scrape one up.”

“Nate, this is awful.” Amy said it quietly, fully grasping the pickle Nate was in. “We know you didn't kill Alan Rosemont. Why should you have to prove you didn't?”

“It hasn't come to that, yet,” Erin pointed out softly. “Maybe they'll find evidence that will point to someone else.”

“And maybe they won't look as hard if they think they already have their man,” Amy said worriedly, and Piper feared she had a point. Then Amy said something that totally caught her by surprise.

“Piper,” she said. Amy leaned earnestly her way. “I'll bet you could come up with something that would help Nate. Would you try?”

“A
my wants me to look into Alan Rosemont's murder.” Piper sat at Aunt Judy and Uncle Frank's kitchen table, having been urged to come for dinner. After the day Piper had just experienced, her aunt hadn't needed to press hard. Gracie, Aunt Judy's plump gray cat and another of a string of rescued strays, leaped up onto Piper's lap and offered an ear to be scratched.

Aunt Judy glanced over her shoulder from the stove where she was testing the doneness of her boiling potatoes with a fork. “Why you?”

Piper sighed. “She seems to think that because I was once engaged to a criminal lawyer, I have some kind of special, insider-type knowledge.”

Aunt Judy smiled knowingly.

“I know,” Piper said. “If only it were that easy.” She shifted Gracie to a more comfortable position. “Although Scott did talk an awful lot about what they did on the investigating end of their cases.”

“Well, there you go. You're all set.”

Piper laughed. “I wish. Though I really would like to do something to help. Nate seems so alone, except for the few friends he's made here in Cloverdale.”

“He seems like a nice young man.”

“I like him, too. Unfortunately, not everyone does. Alan Rosemont, for one, obviously really, really disliked him.”

“Well, Alan . . .” Aunt Judy set down her testing fork and took a peek at the roast in her oven.

“I don't suppose it would hurt to just poke around a bit,” Piper said. “It sounds like Alan Rosemont ruffled enough feathers to make more than one person want to do away with him.” She shifted Gracie to the floor, then stood to take plates from her aunt to set the table. “I've already heard about the terrible paint job on the library that Rosemont was responsible for.”

Uncle Frank walked into the kitchen, chuckling. “Lyella Pfiefle was fit to be tied,” he said, leaning over to give Piper a peck on the cheek.

“Don't laugh, Frank,” Aunt Judy scolded. “How would you like one of your barns to end up looking like that?”

“I wouldn't like it one bit. But I wouldn't run around clucking like a wet hen for weeks on end about it.”

“She surely didn't fuss that long. Here, pull that roast out of the oven for me and set it on the carving board, will you?” Uncle Frank grabbed the oven mitts, and Aunt Judy waited until her roast was safely settled before adding, “But Lyella was upset, that's for sure. Alan had Dennis Isley do the painting when Lyella was away for a library convention. It must have been a terrible shock for her when she got back. People said she marched into Alan's antique shop and chewed him out royally. He ended up pushing her out and locking his door.”

“Maybe I should find out where Lyella Pfiefle was around the time Alan Rosemont was murdered?”

“Amy's asked Piper to find out who might have wanted to kill Alan other than Nate Purdy,” Aunt Judy explained to her husband. “Oh,” she said, snapping her fingers. “I forgot my wax beans. The ones I put up with honey and ginger. I want you to try them, Piper.”

She disappeared into her pantry, and Uncle Frank picked up a carving knife and began swiping it against the sharpener. “Sure,” he said to Piper, “go talk to Lyella. See if she has an alibi. Someone that upset? No telling what she might do.”

Piper nodded but wondered about Uncle Frank's sudden lip twitch. When he ducked his head and began poking at the roast with the carving fork, she decided he must be starving and got out the butter and milk for the potatoes to get things moving along.

• • •

B
y midafternoon on Sunday, Piper's wares had been released by the crime scene crew and safely hauled back from the fair to her store with the help of many. Since she wouldn't have opened for business that day anyway, and Aunt Judy had assured her the library would be open, Piper decided to run over to see if she could catch Lyella Pfiefle. She headed off on foot to cover the few blocks there, enjoying the exercise but also appreciating the shade offered by the trees that lined both sides of Beech Street on that warm day.

Piper had visited the library often during her summers with Aunt Judy and Uncle Frank but hadn't been back since her move and all the hustle and bustle of setting up her new shop. But she remembered many happy hours spent browsing through the children's books, then graduating to more grown-up sections. She may have seen Lyella among other library workers in those days, but the adults might as well have had fuzzy blobs for faces, focused as Piper had been on finding the perfect book.

She turned off Beech Street, remembering that the library would be one more turn off of Third Street two blocks ahead. With her thoughts busy with what she wanted to learn about Lyella, Piper forgot for the moment about the library's drastic color change. As she turned onto Maple, however, it hit her full force.

“Whoa!”

Her informant from the fair's livestock barns had compared the look to a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and he hadn't exaggerated. The library, which Piper remembered as a stately, decades-old converted house with white siding and black shutters, had been turned into an amusement park fun house. The shutters were still black, but that only served to emphasize the garish pinkness of the rest of the building.

Piper was at once horrified and on the verge of giddy laughter. It was just too awful. She could only imagine how Lyella Pfiefle must have felt to see it and to hear her beloved library become the butt of jokes. Did it make her mad enough to want to kill the person responsible? Piper hoped to find out.

Fighting down the feeling of walking into a giant clown's mouth, she entered the library and was relieved to find the interior pretty much as she remembered it. A scattering of patrons browsed among tall shelves of books, and one or two sat at computer tables. The overall quiet gave an air of both study and coziness and brought back all of Piper's good feelings of years ago. To her, going to the library had always been like a treasure hunt, with riches only waiting to be discovered. Today, however, she was on a totally different kind of hunt and wasn't all too sure what she might find. Piper went up to the checkout desk and asked the plump, friendly-looking woman there if Lyella Pfiefle was around.

“She's in the meeting room right now,” the woman said. “It's story time for the preschoolers. You can go in if you like and wait. She'll be done in a few minutes.”

“Thanks.” Piper headed toward the meeting room at the back, catching the sounds of a woman's reading voice and children's titters as she drew closer. The open doorway allowed her to slip in quietly, and she joined a line of mothers—and a few fathers—at the back, who shuffled together to make room for her. Once Piper settled in and got a good look at the librarian standing at the head of the room, she sputtered out a laugh—luckily during a loud shriek from the children.

Lyella Pfiefle looked about as unlikely a murderer as anyone could. She was tiny, for one thing, barely reaching five feet tall by Piper's estimation. Most storytellers who Piper remembered from her childhood days had perched cozily on chairs to read to their groups. But it was clear if Lyella sat, she'd disappear from view.

The librarian was slim to the point of too thin, causing Piper to think a rogue puff of wind from the window might easily blow her over. Piper would, at first guess, have put her at late middle age. But a look beyond the simple blouse and cotton skirt showed an unlined face framed by dark, shiny hair that, despite being pulled back severely into a ponytail, signaled a woman at least ten years younger.

Taken altogether, though, Piper could not imagine Lyella Pfiefle—currently describing the antics of bunnies and turtles—having the strength to kill a man plus lift his body into Piper's pickle barrel, no matter how furious she might be.

Piper flashed back to the kitchen and Uncle Frank's twitching mouth as they discussed Lyella as a possible suspect. She shook her head and laughed silently at herself. After all these years, she still fell for her uncle's jokes. Still, since she was here, she might as well talk to the woman.

The story ended, and the children scrambled to their feet, a few dillydallying but most rushing over to their parents. Lyella gathered up a small pile of books and waited for the group to move on. Piper made her way to the front of the room.

“Miss Pfiefle?”

“Mrs.,” she swiftly corrected, then offered an efficient smile. “What can I do for you?”

Piper introduced herself and asked, “Would you mind talking a bit about Alan Rosemont?”

The librarian's smile disappeared, but she nodded. “Quite a shocking turn of events.”

“Yes, it was. I was the one who found him, along with Ben Schaeffer. It was my pickling booth.”

“Oh! So you're the owner of the new pickling shop.”

A little girl with blond curly pigtails dashed over and gave the librarian's knees a hug. “Thank you, Mrs. Pfiefle.”

“You're welcome, Kayla. See you next week.”

The girl ran back to her mother, and Lyella murmured to Piper, “A pleasant age. Ten years from now she'll be shooting me dirty looks for breaking up a giggling session in the stacks. But you had a question about Alan Rosemont?”

“Yes. I never met the man, but I witnessed a nasty argument he instigated the afternoon before he was murdered. I've since heard that was fairly typical of him—that he was difficult to get along with.”

“Horrible man,” Lyella said flatly. “I was hoping for years that his business would go belly-up and that he'd leave town for parts unknown. Preferably Siberia. Who would have guessed it would be he who'd go belly-up? But life,” she said, looking down at the books in her arms and shifting them, “is unpredictable.”

“I heard he was responsible for the paint job on your building.”

Lyella gave a choking laugh. “Lovely, isn't it?” The group of mothers and children had cleared, and Lyella made a move to leave. “Let's continue this out there, shall we? I need to reshelve these books.” With Piper hustling to keep pace, the librarian spoke as she briskly led the way toward the children's books section. “Alan claimed he chose the paint to save the town money, which would be bad enough. But I know he took a special satisfaction in doing something he knew would aggravate me.”

“Oh?”

“I once had the audacity to organize a petition against one of his council proposals. He wanted to stop funding for maintenance of our town's historical marker. No way was I going to let that happen. He didn't like that.”

“There's a historical marker?” As soon as Piper said it she could have bitten her tongue, for Lyella threw her a severe look.

“In front of the courthouse. It details Cloverdale's founding in 1821, among other things.”

“I'll check it out,” Piper promised. “Alan Rosemont apparently didn't like opposition.”

“Alan Rosemont liked being a big fish in a small pond.” Lyella slipped two of her slim books into place on a shelf.

“A fish that liked to play the bagpipes, apparently. His pipes were found next to him at my booth.”

Lyella rolled her eyes. “He took that up after digging into his genealogy here. We have quite good resources for doing so,” she said and slipped another book onto the shelf. “He traced his roots to a particular clan and suddenly became more Scottish than Rob Roy. Unfortunately for Cloverdale music lovers, having Scottish genes doesn't guarantee you can play the bagpipes. Alan seemed to think the more he played them, the better he'd be. He was wrong.”

“Do you think he was practicing when he was killed?”

“That'd be my guess.”

“But you didn't happen to see him that night?”

“Oh no! Gordon and I were home all evening. We retire early. From what I understand, what happened to Alan occurred late, after the fair had closed down.”

“Yes, it must have. Gordon's your husband, of course?”

“Of course.” For the first time, Piper saw a softening in Lyella's face and warmth creeping into her smile. She became close to lovely for the moment or two it lasted. Then the efficient-librarian face returned. “I have things to do in my office. Was there anything else?”

“No, but thank you very much.” Piper glanced around. “Perhaps I'll go look over your cookbooks.”

“Section 641,” Lyella pronounced crisply, indicating the area with a quick wave. She bid Piper a good day and strode off.

Piper started to head for section 641—there was always the possibility of new pickle recipes to be found—when she heard, “Psst.” A stooped, gray-haired woman dressed in wrinkled beige linen was beckoning her over. Piper glanced toward the office to check that Lyella had disappeared into it before going over to the woman.

“I overheard you talking with Lyella,” the woman whispered. Her deep-set eyes fairly glittered. “She and Gordon don't always retire early.”

“No?”

“That Gordon Pfiefle worships the ground she walks on. Anyone who upsets Lyella, upsets Gordon, if you take my meaning.” The woman nodded vigorously before pulling a balled-up handkerchief out of a pocket and dabbing at a corner of her mouth. “I'm Martha Smidley. I live right across the street from the Pfiefles. Not that that meant Lyella ever condescended to save a person a bit of trouble by bringing a book or two back for them.” She sniffed.

“Did you see the Pfiefles go out Friday night?” Piper asked.

“No,” Martha Smidley said, shaking her head with regret, “I didn't. I'm just saying it could happen. Their lights aren't always out by nine. Oh, there you are, Betty,” she exclaimed as a younger woman—a daughter?—approached. “I'm ready to check out now, dear.” Martha turned away from Piper without a further word and walked off with Betty, gabbling energetically to her about the particular book she'd chosen. But she managed to shoot a meaningful look over her shoulder at Piper before she'd gone too far.