Page 66 of The Usual Family Mayhem

The only way I knew to block the sound of Harlan’s voice in my head, to blunt his words, was to immerse myself in another project. Last night I stared at the television, not seeing or taking in a word while Gram and Celia explained their favoriteshow to me in painful detail. This morning I jumped on a new task. One that circled back to Abigail Burns and her dead husband.

Gram and Celia had given me the green light to create the impromptu tickler system for the business. That approval provided the necessary excuse to sit in the baking annex office and go through the business’s client and delivery information. No more sneaking around, though I had to admit I missed the adrenaline rush of playing covert operative.

I sat twenty feet from Gram and Celia, watching them through the wall of glass that separated the office from the rest of the room. Gram scurried around, gathering ingredients as she prepared to make muffins and finished off a pie. Celia stood at a table rummaging through labels. She’d decided Mags’ Desserts needed a better logo. She’d been eating lunch at a run while playing with samples and fonts since I arrived in North Carolina.

With them preoccupied, I went to work looking through business docs for dead husband intel while trying to invent a better business notification system. It was a multitasking extravaganza and the perfect way to take my mind off any male with the last name Quaid.

After a few hours of intense focus I needed a cupcake and a neck brace. My back ached from hunching over the desk. The star references appeared to be gone forever. I scanned every file looking for a hint of the deleted information and nothing. Then I tried making a list of female client names and searched online, using my phone, to see if there were any deaths, suspicious or otherwise, linked to each name. A tedious project.

Sometimes I found dessert orders in connection with funeral services but that didn’t help. I needed a delivery close in time to a death. I’d check a name, make some notes, then delete the internet search history because Gram would check. I’d be disappointed if she didn’t.

Trying to build a case and convince Jackson of a possibility based on two names hadn’t been totally successful. I couldn’t blame him. Even I still didn’t know for sure and wasn’t fully convinced Gram and Celia assisted in killing bad men, but the suspicion had grown every time a piece of evidence disappeared or their ties to the now-widows had become clearer. I totally thought the women had offed their spouses. It was only Gram and Celia’s role that remained fuzzy.

I needed more information before I could confront Gram and Celia and point-blank ask them. And, if my suspicions were correct, I needed to act fast. Neither of the ladies would fare well in prison, though their fellow inmates would learn more than they ever wanted to know about pie.

At closer look, every gift order went out with something extra. A tea towel or a homemade card. Candles for birthdays. The customer files included a list of what items were included with each gift to avoid repetitive items going to the same household for different events. I admired the branding and the extra care. Both were reasons for Gram and Celia to keep the business exactly how it was now. Private and curated. Big corporations wouldn’t appreciate the attention to detail. It was too expensive to exploit.

Abigail’s delivery hadn’t been for a special occasion, but the ladies sent along a towel and a recipe. The notation relating to the recipe saidraisin. Sounded like a pie rather than a cupcake,although I’d never tasted a raisin pie. I couldn’t remember Gram and Celia ever making one.

Curious, I did an internet search. I vowed to be quick and get right back on track. I flipped through photos then I saw it. Raisins, sugar, lemons. An old-fashioned raisin pie. Looked tasty but that’s not why I froze in the chair.

Funeral pie.

That was the ominous informal name for this dessert. A coincidence, surely. But... was it?

Reading more information didn’t help to calm my snapping nerves. The recipe originated in the Pennsylvania Dutch community. For years funerals meant big food spreads and special desserts and who had the money for that? The raisin pie, an inexpensive option, became a favorite decades ago. Some people made the pie to signal to the community that a death was imminent; others brought them to memorial get-togethers. Hence the name funeral pie.

A mix of disbelief and dread churned in my stomach. This could mean... but, no... too obvious, right? Well, obvious but totally not because who in this century would associate a notation about raisins to poisoning bad husbands?

I forced my body to relax. Panic knocked but I refused to let it in.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Think, think, think.

Another search in the client information and delivery files, looking for other raisin notations. If all the clients during a certain time period got a copy of the same recipe, that would remove the punch from finding something called a funeral pie in the client file of a lady with an unexpectedly dead husband.If only Abigail got the recipe, maybe it was something she requested and not a big deal.

A few clicks and... yeah, neither of those things was true.

Abigail got the raisin recipe. The other woman from the now-deleted star column, Delilah Rhine, also got one. Over a ten-month period, four ladies got the recipe. Another three women got a recipe for “raisin and custard.” After a second online search, I knew that some people made funeral pie with custard and some without.

Stop or press on? I could back away and never peek at the business’s documents again. Pretend ignorance and hope the ladies covered their tracks. Mind my own business.

Yeah, that last one wasn’t really my thing.

The steady buzz of baking continued just outside the office. Gram and Celia laughed about something. I could see mixing bowls and spatulas with yummy bits left on them. I wanted to go in there and take a lick, but I couldn’t.

Thanks to the wonders of computers and search engines, I had my answer in twenty minutes. None of the three women who received the raisin and custard recipes had a dead husband or other dead family member mentioned in the press. That seemed like a good sign except there were news stories about two of them. One referenced a domestic violence altercation that resulted in a restraining order against the husband. In another case, the woman’s husband was arrested for stealing money from his office. An unnamed informant tipped the company off.

More coincidences.

This is the point where Jackson would caution me against jumping to conclusions. No chance of that. I jumped, leapt,and bounced to a conclusion. Suspicion morphed into something bigger. I didn’t have to squint to see Gram and Celia’s fingerprints all over this. Were they running some sort of informal charity to assist women with shitty husbands? Knowing them, quite possibly.

The coincidences pile-up continued when I figured out that all four ladies who received the raisin pie recipes—no custard—lost their husbands unexpectedly and within a short period of time of getting the recipe from Gram and Celia. The questionable timing included Delilah and Abigail.

So... yeah. Mission accomplished. Sort of. I now had more information. The women who got these “special” recipes, one version or the other, mostly had obviously problematic husbands and a few were now widows. Potentially scary information that may or may not link Gram and Celia to poison and dead men.

I looked up and saw Celia’s face through the glass. She smiled at me. Waved. Pointed to a batter-covered spatula, inviting me to take a taste.

---