Read Never Say Pie (A Pie Shop Mystery) for Free Online Page B

sold that scumbag one of my chickens last Saturday, they’re farm raised you know, and he had the nerve to say they were overcooked and overpriced. Sure they’re expensive, but they’re cooked perfectly and worth every penny. Come out to the ranch and I’ll give you a tour. I have nothing to hide. I didn’t kill Barr, but after I read that review I wanted to.”
    I nodded vigorously. “She’s right,” I said. “Her chickens are superb. I know because I ate half of mine for dinner that night. And I would have cheerfully stabbed him after reading what he said about my pies. But I didn’t,” I added quickly.
    Sam wrote something on a pad of paper. I wanted badly to look over his shoulder. Was he making a list of suspects? Was I on it?
    “You see, Sam, we’re all professionals in the food business,” I said. “And speaking as an unbiased judge of food I can say that everyone in this room has reason to be proud of his product. I’ve tasted them all. Mr. Barr was wrong. He obviously had an ax to grind.”
    I stopped when I realized that he’d been killed with an ax-like serrated knife. “I mean, he had no business trashing our food at the fair. We didn’t deserve it. He was wrong, dead wrong.”
    I bit my tongue. Dead wrong? What was wrong with me? Blurting the wrong words at the wrong time. Nerves, that’s what. I felt a bout of hysteria coming on. The harder I tried to control myself the more likely I’d have an attack of inappropriate laughter. I took a deep breath. I had a horrible irrational feeling that Sam’s presence here suggested he already suspected one of us in this room of killing the food critic. Even though I told him we’d been having a meeting and even if we were available, we were not homicidal. But deep down somewhere I too was thinking maybe someone in this room had killed him. I wanted to, they must have too. Sam never said what time he was killed. So could any of us have done it?
    “Thanks, Hanna,” Sam said in what I thought was a deceptively off-hand way. The others didn’t really know his modus operandi, but I wondered if Sam was actually trying to put everyone in the room at ease and off guard and then pounce on them, demanding to know where they were at such and such an hour. Which made me wish he’d tell us what hour did this so-called murder occur and where was I at that time? That’s the problem with living and working alone, I might not have an alibi.
    “I apologize for interrupting your meeting like this,” Sam said. “Sorry it has to be an unfortunate circumstance that brings me here tonight. But my job is to investigate crimes and misdemeanors. As it happens those are few and far between in our little town. Usually what I investigate is a fender bender, a missing pet, or a lost wallet. Yesterday it was a broken clothesline and someone driving on the golf course, which you’ll see if you read my weekly column ‘The Crime Beat’ in the Gazett e. But today, this time we have a murder on our hands.”
    He looked around my small shop. Everyone appeared to be suitably horrified. Some were wide eyed with pale faces and nervous fingers tapping on small tables. The tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with one of those serrated knives someone used to slash Heath Barr’s neck.
    “Are we under suspicion?” Dave, the thin sausage maker, said with a worried frown.
    “At this point I plan to talk to everyone who had dealings with Mr. Barr. If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.”
    “We have nothing to hide,” Bill said emphatically. “Say what you want about making sausage, but we only use the best ingredients. Come out and see if you don’t believe me.” Obviously a super salesman as well as a dedicated artisan, Bill immediately reached into his pocket and handed out business cards to everyone in the room, including Sam.
    I wondered if Sam had read that somewhere about nothing to hide and nothing to fear. Nothing to hide? Everyone had