“No!” Alice shrieked, falling to her knees and covering her face with both hands.
She held her breath and waited for the end to come. When nothing happened, she inched two fingers apart and peeked out between them. Charlie Erdling was staring down at her, with his mouth hanging open.
“Good gravy, Alice,” he said lowering the baseball bat, “you shouldn’t creep up on a person that way. I almost beaned you.”
Alice’s terror did a fast U-turn and zoomed right past relief to anger.
“Are you nuts?” she shouted, jumping to her feet. “You could have killed me! And how dare you wreck Aunt Polly’s pie shop after she was so good to you?”
“I didn’t do it,” Charlie insisted. “The place was like this when I got here. See, I was on my way to the ball field to fungo some baseballs when I noticed the door was open and stopped to close it. I saw the mess in the pie shop, so I grabbed my bat and snuck upstairs to see if I could catch him in the act.”
“Catch who in the act?” Alice asked.
“The burglar,” said Charlie. “Whoever did this came looking for something. You can tell by the way he tore the place up.”
Alice looked around the room. Every cabinet and drawer had been yanked open and gone through. Even the cushions on the couch had been slit open and the stuffing pulled out. Charlie was right: Whoever had done this was clearly looking for something — but what? Aunt Polly had led a simple life and had very few possessions. The most valuable thing she owned was the piecrust recipe, and by now, everybody knew what had happened to that. The only things she cared about were people and pie and Lardo. And then it occurred to Alice — her aunt’s Blueberry medals were made of gold. That must have been what the burglar was after!
She rushed into the bedroom and, sure enough, there was the cardboard box lying empty on the rug. What was strange, though, was that although the box was empty, the medals were still there, scattered haphazardly across the floor. Alice gathered them up and did a quick count. Thirteen. Not a single one was missing.
“I don’t get it,” she said, looking at the pile of shiny medals, each with its cluster of blueberries embossed on the front. “If the burglar wasn’t after these, what could he have been looking for?”
“Maybe he was looking for a pie,” said Charlie. “Your auntie sure did make some good ones. Did you ever taste her key lime? One bite of that pie and you’d swear you’d gone straight up to heaven. I sure am gonna miss it. Did you have a favorite, too?”
It seemed that everyone in Ipswitch had a pie they were going to miss more than any other, and Alice was no exception.
“Peach,” she told Charlie.
Since Aunt Polly wouldn’t have thought of using canned fruit, she had only made that pie for a few weeks during the summer when Pennsylvania peaches were at the height of ripeness. If you bit into one, the juice ran down your arm all the way to your elbow. Just thinking about the way that pie tasted made Alice want to cry.
“So what do you think? Was it pies he was after?” Charlie asked.
Alice shook her head. “Who would go looking for a pie under a bed?”
“Must have been some stranger from out of town,” said Charlie. “Everyone around here knows that the only thing your auntie kept under her bed besides those medals was Lardo, and nobody in their right mind would want to tangle with him.”
In the excitement of discovering the break-in and almost getting her head bashed in with a baseball bat, Alice had forgotten all about looking for Lardo.
“Have you seen him?” she asked Charlie. “He jumped out the window last night and ran away.”
“I never saw Lardo jump,” said Charlie. “Mostly he waddles.”
Lardo was getting on in years, and his big belly tended to slow him down a bit.
“Okay, so maybe he waddled out the window,” Alice said. “The point is, he’s gone and I’m trying to find him.”
“Did you examine the scene of the crime?” asked Charlie.
“What crime?”
“Oh, that’s just something they say on Sky King. You ever watch that show? ‘Out of the blue of the western sky comes Sky King!’” Charlie said, imitating the deep voice of the announcer. Then he stuck his arms straight out from his sides and used his tongue to make a sound like the buzzing of an airplane motor.
Sky King happened to be one of Alice’s all-time favorite television programs. The main character was a cattle rancher from Arizona who solved crimes on the side. He and his young niece, Penny, flew around chasing bad guys together in a little airplane called Songbird. Alice had actually been considering trying to grow out her hair that summer so that she’d be able to wear it in the same kind of ponytail Penny had. Alice was fine with the way she looked, but she wondered sometimes what it would feel like to be as pretty as a girl like Penny.
“Did you find any clues?” asked Charlie, letting his arms drop back down by his sides. “Or did he vanish without a trace?”
Clearly, Alice wasn’t the only one with a flair for the dramatic.
“I found a paw print on the windowsill in my room,” she reported.
“Anything else?” Charlie asked.
Alice thought for a minute.
“I heard a noise,” she said. “In the middle of the night. I thought maybe I dreamed it.”
“What kind of a noise?”
Alice closed her eyes and tried to remember what she had heard.
“I think there were some thumps and I’m pretty sure there was a hiss,” she said.
“Anything else?” asked Charlie.
“A clink,” said Alice. “There was definitely a clink.”
Charlie took off his cap and started scratching his head.
“A glass kind of clink, or a metal kind of clink?” he asked.
“Metal, I think.”
“Interesting. Does Lardo wear a collar or a bell around his neck?”
“Nope.”
“Do you have venetian blinds on your window, or a window shade with a metal pull on it?”
“Nope.”
Charlie’s eyes got very wide.
“Maybe it was aliens,” he said. “Maybe they landed their tiny little metal spaceship on your windowsill, then they zapped Lardo with a shrinking ray gun and took him off to their planet to do scientific experiments on him.”
“Are you serious?” asked Alice.
“Not really. But I did see a UFO once. Or at least I think I did. It might have been a cloud,” said Charlie.
“What do you think Sky King would do if his cat ran away and the only clues he had to go on were some thumps, a hiss, and a clink?” Alice asked Charlie.
“I don’t think Sky King has a cat,” he said.
“That’s not the point,” Alice told him. “What I mean is, if Sky King was here right now, what do you think he would do?”
“I think he’d offer to come over to your house and try to help you figure out what made those sounds,” said Charlie. Then he grinned and patted his stomach. “I also think he might wonder if you were going to offer him something for lunch when he got there.”
“Do you like cream cheese and olive sandwiches?” Alice asked.
Charlie wrinkled his nose. “Got anything else?”
“Peanut butter and jelly.”
“Now you’re talking.”
Alice had never invited a boy over to her house for lunch before, but if Charlie Erdling was willing to help her look for Lardo, the least she could do was give him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“Let’s go,” she said, heading for the stairs.
Charlie hesitated.
“Shouldn’t we call the police first?” he asked. “You know, to report the break-in?”
There was no phone in the pie shop anymore. Polly had decided to have it disconnected.
“Anyone who wants to talk to me is welcome to stop by the shop for a slice of pie and some chitchat,” she always said.
“We can call the police from my house,” Alice said.
Charlie hesitated again.
“Maybe we should bring your auntie’s medals with us,” he suggested. “In case the burglar changes his mind and decides to come back for them. They must be pretty valuable, being gold and all.”
He had a point, so Alice gathered up the medals, put them back in the cardboard box, and carried it downstairs. They locked the door from the inside and pulled it closed. Then Charlie retrieved his bike from behind the pie shop, and the two of them headed off together toward Alice’s house.
As it turned out, there was no need to call the police, because as Alice and Charlie rode past the parsonage, they saw Chief Decker sitting on the sunporch with Reverend Flowers, drinking iced tea and shooting the breeze. Before the kids could even finish telling what had happened at the pie shop, the chief had jumped into his cruiser and raced off with the siren wailing.
Alice took the same route home, which meant that she and Charlie had to ride past the Needlemans’ house.
“Hey, look,” said Charlie, pointing. “There’s Nora.”
Nora had put away her jump rope and was lying on a blanket in the front yard, sunbathing in her bathing suit.
“So what?” said Alice.
“So nothing,” Charlie responded.
Had Alice been paying attention, she would have seen that the tips of Charlie Erdling’s ears had turned bright pink, but she was too busy thinking about Lardo to notice Charlie’s ears, or the big green Chevrolet that was parked across the street from the Andersons’ house when Charlie and Alice arrived.
HUCKLEBERRY PIE
4 cups fresh huckleberries (blueberries will do in a pinch)
3 TBS quick-cooking tapioca
⅔ cup sugar
¼ cup apple juice
1 TBS lemon juice
2 TBS sweet butter
Rinse berries and let drain.
Add lemon juice.
Mix tapioca, apple juice, and sugar together. Add sugar mixture to berries, toss with two forks, and let stand for 15 minutes.
Pour as many berries as will fit into unbaked pricked pie shell, dot with butter, and cover with top crust, making sure to cut vents in top. Place a cookie sheet or a piece of tin foil under the pie. Nothing’s harder to clean off an oven than burnt huckleberry pie. Doesn’t smell great, either! Bake at 450 for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake another 40-45 minutes more.
Reminder: Elsie and Herb Decker both love this pie. (Wedding anniversary: June 15)
Chapter Six
“Anybody home?” Alice called as she and Charlie walked in the door.
There was no answer. Charlie tipped his head back and sniffed.
“What is that?” he asked. “Smells like something burning.”
It didn’t take long to find the source of the unpleasant odor.
“Good gravy,” said Charlie.
Sitting on the kitchen counter was the ugliest pie Alice had ever seen in her life. The whole thing was lopsided, the edges of the crust burnt to a crisp, and in the middle was a pool of pale brown liquid with several lumps of what appeared to be butter floating in it like pale yellow icebergs.
“What is that supposed to be?” Charlie asked.
“I think it’s a chocolate cream pie,” said Alice.
“It doesn’t look like any chocolate cream pie I ever saw.”
“That’s because my mom’s never made a pie before,” Alice explained. “She’s decided she’s going to try to win the Blueberry Award this year.”
“You better tell her to get in line,” said Charlie.
“What do you mean?”
“I deliver groceries to practically every house in town, and I can tell you that ever since your auntie passed, there’s been an awful lot of pie baking going on around here.”
Charlie wasn’t exaggerating. At that very moment, there were forty-seven pies baking in various ovens around Ipswitch.
“Do you think they’re all trying to win the Blueberry?” asked Alice.
“Maybe. I heard Mrs. Ogden say something about it, and Pete Gillespie, too.”
“Pete Gillespie from the gas station?”
Charlie nodded.
“He had me deliver a ten-pound bag of yams and a gallon of corn syrup yesterday. If his sweet potato pie brings home the Blueberry, he says he’s going to move to Florida so he can go fishing all day and never have to fix another flat tire for as long as he lives.”
Alice wondered if her mother was aware that she wasn’t the only one in town who’d come down with a bad case of Blueberry Fever.
“Besides Mrs. Ogden and Pete Gillespie, who else do you know who’s planning to enter a pie in the contest?”
“My mom was planning to take a shot at it,” said Charlie. “But she changed her mind. Yesterday she tried to make a gooseberry pie and it came out so bad, even the dog wouldn’t touch it. And he drinks out of the john!”
“Maybe this year it won’t be someone from Ipswitch who wins,” said Alice. “People from all over the country send in their pies.”
“Judging from what I’ve seen so far, the only one in this town who’s got a chance of winning is Lardo.”
“Lardo?”
“I’m just kidding,” said Charlie. “You know, because your auntie left him the piecrust recipe. Why did she do that, anyway?”
“That’s what everybody keeps asking, but it’s a mystery,” Alice told him. “The Mystery of the Secret Piecrust Recipe sounds like a Nancy Drew book, doesn’t it?”
“How would I know? Those are for girls,” Charlie scoffed.
“What about the Hardy Boys? You must have read one of those.”
Charlie blushed and looked down at his feet.
“To be honest,” he said, “I’m kind of bad at reading. Spelling, too. I get things all mixed up.”
Alice looked at the pie sitting on the counter. The Blueberry committee would be making the announcement in only a few short weeks. Her mother had her heart set on winning, but unless some kind of miracle occurred there was no way that was ever going to happen.
“You ready to eat?” she asked Charlie.
“Always,” he answered.
Alice got out the peanut butter and jelly, and she and Charlie made sandwiches for themselves. As they ate their lunches sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, Alice found herself thinking about how much she was going to miss having lunch with Aunt Polly at the pie shop. At twelve o’clock on the dot, Polly would turn off the oven and hang the PLEASE COME BACK LATER sign on the door. Upstairs, they’d eat cream cheese and olive sandwiches, and afterward Polly would cut them each a big slice of pie. Alice wasn’t allowed to have dessert after lunch at home, but Aunt Polly had her own rules, one of which was that a little pie never hurt anybody.
“Your auntie sure was a nice lady,” said Charlie. “You must really miss her.”
It was almost as if he could tell what Alice was thinking.
“It’s going to get even worse when August comes,” she told Charlie.
“How come?”
“Peaches,” Alice said, biting her lip.
“Oh, right,” said Charlie. “Your favorite pie.”
Alice nodded and wondered if there would ever come a time when she wouldn’t miss her aunt Polly so much it hurt.
• • •
When they had finished eating, Alice asked Charlie if he wanted something for dessert. Just because she wasn’t allowed to have any didn’t mean he couldn’t. Charlie glanced nervously at the chocolate cream pie on the counter.
“Don’t worry,” Alice told him, opening the cupboard and taking out a bag of Chiparoons. “We’ve got cookies, too.”
“Reach for Nabisco,” Charlie started to sing. “Reach for Nabisco.”
Nabisco was one of the commercial sponsors on Sky King. Alice knew the jingle by heart, too, so she sang the rest of it along with him.
“The bright red seal on the package end means mighty good cookies inside, my friend.”
Charlie grinn
ed at her and pulled a cookie out of the bag.
“Did you ever notice that package end and my friend is a perfect rhyme?” Alice asked.
“Nope,” said Charlie. “But I’ve noticed that Chiparoons taste good.” He shoved the whole cookie in his mouth and reached for another.
After they had finished cleaning up from lunch, Alice led Charlie upstairs.
“I just thought of something funny,” Charlie said. “Instead of visiting the scene of the crime, we’re about to visit the scene of the clink.”
Alice didn’t think it was that funny, but she laughed anyway so Charlie wouldn’t feel bad. As a rule, she didn’t like boys very much, but she had to admit, Charlie was actually pretty nice. As they headed down the hall on the way to her room, Charlie tilted his head back and started sniffing the air again.
“Did your mom by any chance make another pie?” he asked.
This time the offending odor was not the result of a pie gone wrong. Alice had forgotten to throw away the clam chowder she’d put down for Lardo that morning.
“Be right back,” she told Charlie.
When Alice returned after disposing of the chowder, Charlie was in her room, examining the windowsill.
“The thumps you heard were probably made by Lardo trying to get up on the windowsill. The hiss, well, that’s a no-brainer, since Lardo hisses at pretty much anything that moves,” Charlie said. “But that clink has me stumped. You’re sure he wasn’t wearing a collar?”
“Positive,” said Alice.
She bent down to scratch a mosquito bite on her ankle, and when she did, something caught her eye. She began crawling on her hands and knees toward the window.
“What are you doing?” asked Charlie.
“I see something shiny,” Alice said. “Under the radiator.”
Charlie crouched down beside Alice as she reached under the radiator and ran her hand along the floorboards until her fingers found what they were looking for. She had thought maybe it was a broken shoe buckle or a bottle cap that had rolled under the radiator somehow, but when she pulled it out, she was surprised to discover that the shiny metal object that had caught her eye was an earring.