Never Say Pie (A Pie Shop Mystery) by Carol Culver Page A

we coddle our pigs. Fresh air, good food and movable pens, and healthy soil. You ever see how pigs live?” he asked.
    I had to admit I hadn’t. Even more than seeing how the pigs lived in their movable pens, I wanted to hear how his interview with Sam went, but this wasn’t the place to ask him about it. There were too many potential customers milling about, all in search of the best buys in home-grown pig products. I also wanted to see how they raised pigs to sell and how they made their sausage. I knew what they said about sausage making. You may love the final product but you don’t want to watch them make it. But I did. I really did. Since I couldn’t discuss anything about the murder here or what had happened in the police station, I decided then to take Bill up on his offer.
    As for Jacques, the European cheese maker, he was not his usual outgoing self. Maybe he was saving himself for the paying customers. Or worried the police were going to corner him and ask more questions. Or just into his performance as a cheese salesman extraordinaire. He was setting up to make sandwiches out of his white cheddar cheese, torpedo onions, escarole, and sourdough bread. “All the ingredients are from our own Food Fair,” he announced to the crowd that was starting to gather to watch this French chef with his white chef’s hat and large striped apron. No wonder he didn’t have time for me. But I made time for him. He was the epitome of what it takes to make it at the market. He looked great. He talked fast with a to-die-for accent. He was enthusiastic. And had some fantastic food to sell. He had a small hot plate where he was grilling the sliced onion with chopped garlic.
    “Brush the bread with some of the olive oil in the pan,” he said waving his brush in the air with a flourish. No wonder he attracted a crowd and the fair had barely opened. He had a flair for drama. After he assembled the sautéed onions, the cheese, the escarole between two slices of sourdough bread from Lindsey and Tammy’s bread booth, he flipped the sandwiches into the pan and cooked them until the cheese was gooey and oozing out onto the crust. It all looked and smelled heavenly. When he cut up the sandwich into little sample bites my mouth watered, but standing at the edge of the crowd I didn’t get even one bite.
    Frustrated I hadn’t had a chance to grill Jacques as he was too busy grilling the sandwiches, I bought a high moisture Jack cheese studded with rosemary from him. He thanked me, then he leaned forward and said, “How are you doing?”
    “Okay,” I said. “You?”
    He nodded, then waited on some other customers. I sensed he was disturbed—either by Heath’s murder or by Sam’s questioning him. He certainly wasn’t his usual flirtatious self. Or maybe I was the one who wasn’t my usual self. I left to go back to my booth so Manda could go to her SAT class at the high school. Who knows what would have happened if I’d done better on my SATs. I might be chief of police now myself. Sometimes I thought my life would have been more exciting if I’d gone into law enforcement—not police chief, but something like bounty hunter or private investigator where intuition would be an asset. Sam was competent and very smart and good at what he did. He was also authoritative, which is important. I told myself making a profit off of pies is challenging enough and the job has been good to me.
    I wished Sam would hurry up and solve this mystery. Not just to clear my name and my friends’ names and let us get back to normal life, but for his own sake and his reputation in town.
    I hated having him tell me to go back to the kitchen. I knew where I belonged. I was kidding myself thinking I could do both—bake pies and help find clues. On the other hand, I was involved in this murder whether Sam liked it or not. I’d had a run-in with Heath and that put me on the suspect list. How could I not be involved? I sighed.
    There was nothing I could