Harbor Days arrives on Saturday morning like a party crashing a funeral.
The boardwalk is transformed. Bunting in blue and white — the town colors — hangs from every lamppost and storefront. The fish market has a banner that reads FRESH CATCH — FESTIVAL SPECIAL. Harbor Roasters has set up an outdoor cart selling lavender lemonade and blackberry scones — my recipe, I notice, though Dina has had the decency to put a small sign that says INSPIRED BY HAWTHORN HOUSE. The Crab Pot has a chowder stand on the boardwalk, with Hank behind the counter looking like a man who is determined to smile through the weight on his shoulders.
And the pie contest.
The pie contest is in the bandstand at the center of the boardwalk — a raised wooden platform with a white canopy, three long tables covered in checkered cloths, and a collection of pies that represents the best (and most competitive) baking in Saltbreeze Harbor. There are blueberry pies and apple pies and marionberry pies and a coconut cream that looks like it belongs in a magazine. There’s a rhubarb crumble that makes my mouth water and a lemon meringue so tall it seems to be defying gravity.
Agnes’s entry is on the second table: a perfect blackberry-lavender pie, golden on top, with a lattice crust that looks like it was woven by someone with the patience of a saint and the hands of a surgeon. She made it this morning while I made my own entry — an orange chess pie that I’ve been perfecting since I was twenty-two, my mother’s recipe with my own twist of orange zest and sea salt.
“You’re not nervous,” Agnes says, watching me arrange my pie on the table.
“I’m terrified.”
“Good. Terror produces better pies.” She adjusts her lattice crust by a millimeter. “The judges are Reverend Collins, Mrs. Patterson from the post office, and Hank — he won’t judge the chowder contest because he’s in it, so they moved him to pies.”
“Hank is judging the pie contest?”
“He has a very refined palate for a man who runs a bar. Don’t let the chowder fool you.”
The boardwalk is filling up. Families with strollers. Tourists with cameras. Fishermen in their festival best — clean flannel and pressed jeans. Kids running with cotton candy. The air smells like sugar and salt and the cedar that’s the baseline scent of every surface in this town.
I’m arranging my pie when Lily appears at the bandstand. She’s wearing a blue sundress and her auburn hair is down, and she looks better than she did at the coffee shop yesterday — rested, or at least functional. She’s carrying a pie of her own — a mixed berry tart with a shortbread crust and a dusting of powdered sugar.
“Figured I’d enter,” she says. “Haven’t won since I was sixteen, but the experience is good for the soul.”
“Your tart looks beautiful.”
“Your pie looks intimidating.” She grins, but the grin doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Have you seen Dale?”
“Not yet.”
“He’s at the fishing tournament booth.” She lowers her voice. “I know being here isn’t a crime. I just don’t understand how he can shake hands and smile with all this hanging over him.”
“Lily.”
“I know. I know. Keep my voice down.” She takes a breath. “I just… seeing him here. Smiling. Shaking hands. Being Dale. It makes me crazy.”
I understand. It makes me crazy too. But I promised Davenport I wouldn’t tip Dale off, and I’m going to keep that promise, even if every fiber of my being wants to walk up to the fishing tournament booth and ask Dale Musgrove what he said to Victor Crane at 8:52 PM on a Thursday night.
Before the judging, a woman in a yellow raincoat stops at our table. She has a booking confirmation open on her phone.
“We’re supposed to come next weekend,” she says. “My husband booked it.”
Agnes waits. I can see the woman looking at my pie, then my apron, trying to connect a plate of food with the story she has read.
“Is the kitchen still operating?”
“Yes,” Agnes says.
“Has somebody certified it safe?”
“The detective can speak to the investigation. I can explain our food preparation.”
The woman turns her phone toward me. A local discussion page has copied a headline about Victor’s allergy. Under it, somebody has written that the new cook arrived three days before the death.
I know before I read the next comment that Ryan would have called this a marketing problem. He would have typed a bright reply and told me to stop taking it personally.
“I prepared the meal,” I say. “I’ve given the police my account. I won’t discuss their findings, but I will answer your questions about ingredients.”
“So you can’t guarantee anything.”
“I can tell you what I do. I can’t make you comfortable by promising more than I know.”
She asks to cancel. Agnes writes the booking number on the back of a contest leaflet and tells her when to expect the refund. No argument. No appeal to the woman’s kindness.
After she leaves, I turn my pie so its best side faces the judges. The gesture makes me feel ridiculous.
“We could have kept the deposit,” I say.
“We could.”
“You need it.”
“Yes.”
The admission hurts more than a reassuring lie would have. Before I can answer, Marina appears carrying a stack of festival programs.
“I saw that,” she says. “People are awful.”
“People are frightened,” Agnes says.
“I can post something. Explain that the suspicion is elsewhere.”
“No,” I say, too quickly.
Marina looks at me.
“The police haven’t announced that. And it wouldn’t be right to give someone else my place under that headline.”
She lowers the programs against her hip. “I meant the facts about the land.”
“Those facts won’t tell people whether my pie is safe.”
For a moment we stand without speaking. Then she takes a program from the pile and puts it beneath my pie plate, where the cloth has wrinkled.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I hate seeing them do this to you.”
I believe her. It is a relief to be defended, even when I have to refuse the defense.
The pie contest begins at noon. Reverend Collins — a tall, thin man with wire-rimmed glasses and the solemnity of a Supreme Court justice — leads the judging with Mrs. Patterson and Hank. They move from pie to pie, tasting, taking notes, conferring in whispers. The crowd watches with the focused attention of people who take their pie very seriously.
I’m standing by my entry, trying not to fidget, when I notice Agnes talking to Dale.
They’re at the edge of the bandstand, near the Rotary Club booth. Agnes is in her blue dress — the one she wears to church, pressed and perfect — and Dale is in his Rotary Club polo, khaki shorts, and boat shoes. They look like a mother and son at a family gathering, comfortable and familiar and easy.
But something is wrong. Agnes’s posture is rigid. Her arms are crossed. And Dale — Dale is leaning toward her, his voice low, his face close to hers, and whatever he’s saying is making Agnes’s jaw tighten and her eyes narrow.
I can’t hear the words. But I can see the shape of the conversation: Dale is pressing Agnes about something, and Agnes is pushing back. Their body language shifts — Agnes takes a step back, Dale takes a step forward. Agnes’s hand comes up — not a gesture, a barrier. Stay back.
Then Lily is moving.
She’s crossing the bandstand with the direct, purposeful stride of a woman who has been holding herself back for too long and has just decided to stop. She walks straight up to Dale and Agnes and inserts herself between them.
“Leave her alone,” Lily says. Her voice is sharp enough to cut glass.
Dale blinks. “Lily, I was just—”
“I heard you. Back off.”
“Lily, this is between Agnes and me—”
“Nothing is between you and Agnes right now, Dale. Nothing.” Lily’s voice has risen. People are looking. The couple at the next booth. The fishermen by the chowder stand. The tourists with their cotton candy and their cameras. “You don’t get to corner her at a public event and whisper things that make her flinch. Not today. Not ever.”
“Lily.” Agnes’s voice is quiet and steel-hard. “I can handle this.”
“I know you can. But you shouldn’t have to.” Lily turns back to Dale. Her eyes are blazing. “What were you saying to her?”
Dale’s face does something complicated. Surprise, then hurt, then something that might be anger — or might be fear, quickly suppressed. He takes a step back. He raises both hands.
“I was just asking about the B&B,” he says. “About whether she needed help with the festival prep. That’s all.”
“That’s not what it looked like.”
“It’s what it was.” His voice is controlled, but I can see the effort it takes. “Lily, I’ve known Agnes for thirty years. I’ve had Thursday dinner at her house for twenty-one years. I was her husband’s law partner. I am not the enemy here.”
“You’re not the enemy?” Lily’s voice carries across the bandstand. “You’re standing here at a pie contest acting like everything is normal, and a man is dead. A man died in Agnes’s house, Dale. In the conservatory. And you’re acting like it’s just another Saturday.”
The bandstand has gone very quiet. The judges have paused mid-taste. Reverend Collins is holding a forkful of blueberry pie and staring. Mrs. Patterson has her notebook pressed to her chest. Hank, behind the judging table, is watching Dale with an expression I’ve never seen on his face before — something between grief and accusation and the terrible weight of a decades-old lie.
“Lily,” Agnes says. “Enough.”
Lily turns to Agnes. The anger is still blazing in her eyes, but underneath it — underneath the fury and the grief and the righteous indignation — there’s something else. Fear. Lily is afraid. Not of Dale, exactly, but of what Dale represents: the possibility that the person who killed Victor is someone she’s known her whole life, someone she’s trusted, someone who sat at Agnes’s table every Thursday and smiled and brought walnuts and kissed cheeks and carried murder behind his friendly eyes.
“Let’s go,” Agnes says quietly. She takes Lily’s arm. They walk away from the bandstand together, Agnes straight-backed and dignified and Lily trembling with a fury that hasn’t found its target yet.
I watch them go. Then I look at Dale.
He’s standing by the Rotary Club booth, his hands in his pockets, his face a careful mask of mild confusion and good-natured patience. The kind of face a man wears when he wants the world to think he’s harmless.
Dale looks from Lily to the people watching. Then he sees me. His expression closes before he gives a small wave.
I can make that expression mean anything I like. Embarrassment. Anger. Calculation. What I cannot make it do is explain a biscuit.
I look for Marina, but she has gone back to distributing programs. Her place beside my table is empty.
The judges announce the winners at two o’clock. Agnes wins first place — her thirteenth consecutive victory, met with applause and the good-natured groans of women who have been competing against her for a decade. I win third place, which feels like a miracle and a gift and the first good thing that’s happened since I found a dead man in a conservatory with walnut crumbs on the floor.
Agnes accepts her ribbon with a crisp nod and a murmured “Thank you,” and then she takes my arm and walks me away from the bandstand, toward the hill, toward home.
“Don’t look back,” she says.
I don’t.
But I feel Dale’s eyes on me the whole way up the hill, and they feel like the weight of something I can’t yet see.