“You don’t approve of Fine’s judging?”
She shrugged. “The women all love him. We all wish we had a husband who could bake like he does.”
“If he picks your pie, be assured you’ll be seeing more of us.”
“You may keep the pictures for your story if you wish.”
Nick hesitated. “Let me just keep one and you take the rest.”
“Will you be at the judging in the morning?”
“I certainly will,” he assured her. “Good luck.”
The next morning they finished breakfast, picked up a New York paper, and drove out to the fairgrounds, arriving before ten so they could witness the delivery of the pies. Beth Buckley had positioned herself at the entrance to the Fine Arts Building, accepting apple pies in their plastic containers. “Hello there,” she greeted them. “I hear you’ve been getting around our town, talking to our baker and some of the ladies.”
“They’re talented people,” Nick assured her. “Gloria bought one of Fine’s angel food cakes and we had some last night.”
Already there were three apple pies in front of Beth Buckley and as they chatted Maggie Oates arrived with hers. Beth used a marking pen to write a number on the nametag and the same number on the plastic container. Then she removed Maggie’s tag and placed it with the others in a cigar box. “All set,” she told the young woman. “Good luck!”
“How many entries are there?” Maggie asked.
“Yours is number four, and I know we’ll be getting one from Rita Wadsworth.”
“Here she comes now,” Gloria observed, seeing her approach from the parking lot.
“That makes five,” Beth said as she accepted Rita’s pie. “Good luck to you both.”
“Come on, Maggie,” Rita urged. “We might as well sit together and show everyone we’re friends.”
Maggie followed her inside with some reluctance and Beth commented, “They’re not really friends at all, not during the fair. Last time they had a big argument about the merits of single-crust pie versus double-crust.”
Nick and Gloria strolled around a bit, watching children on the Ferris wheel and teenagers caring for their animals. One girl was leading a llama toward the Livestock Building and Gloria commented, “In my day we had pigs and goats.”
“Times change even on the farm.”
“Some things don’t change. They still have milking contests.”
They were back in time for the judging, just as Beth Buckley was up on stage slicing a slender piece from each pie and placing it on a paper plate. The pies themselves were in their original containers, opened so the judge could study their design. The spectators and contestants themselves were at the foot of the low stage, straining for a look at the entries and trying to guess who’d submitted each pie. There were still only five in the line, and when Nick asked Beth about it she shrugged. “I guess Rita and Maggie are strong contenders. They frightened most of the others away. But we’ve still got some great-looking pies.”
“Good enough to eat,” Gloria agreed.
They found seats in the third row as Leonard Fine entered and mounted the platform. He carried a black ledger in one hand, perhaps to record the results of his judging, and he’d exchanged his red shirt for a more dressy black one with gold braid on the sleeves. “Good morning, folks,” he greeted them. “It’s nice to see so much interest in the apple-pie judging, and I hope you’ll keep up that interest at auction time. Those of you who’ve attended my previous judging know that I give high marks for both taste and appearance. I understand we have two prior blue-ribbon winners among this year’s entrants, so my taste buds are really looking forward to this.”
The baker sat down behind the table and pulled all five slices of pie a bit closer. Starting at his left he cut a small piece with his fork and tasted it. The process was repeated with the next four. He seemed to enjoy every bite, but tried to keep his face impassive. Twice he went back for a second helping and the contestants in the front row seemed to hold their collective breaths.
Then, without warning, Len Fine’s expression changed. It was as if he’d suddenly bitten into a hive of bees. He opened his mouth and reached for a glass of water Beth had left on the table. Gulping it down, he seemed to recover for an instant. “The blue ribbon goes to pie number four,” he said clearly, then was seized by a fit of coughing. He slipped out of his chair and hit the floor.
Beth and a couple of others ran to the stage while the rest of the audience rose uncertainly to its feet. “Did you do that, Nicky?” Gloria whispered.
“Of course not! I think he’s been poisoned.”
Len Fine was dead by the time the ambulance crew arrived. Two women had fainted and the Fine Arts Building was in an uproar. Beth Buckley was on the platform trying to calm everyone down but it was a losing battle. Nick hurried to her side, speaking in a loud voice, and asked everyone to file out quietly. It seemed clear to him that Fine had been poisoned by one of the apple pies and he had a motive for lending Beth a hand with the crowd. It gave him an opportunity to slip the baker’s journal into the folds of the newspaper he carried. At that moment he didn’t know himself why he wanted it.
Once outside, Gloria asked, “Where does that leave us?”
“He lived long enough to name pie number four as the winner. That was Maggie Oates’s number.”
“Yes, but surely the police will take all five pies as evidence. You’ll never get your hands on any of them.”
They remained on the scene while the body was removed and the county sheriff questioned Mrs. Buckley and the spectators who’d been closest to the stage. All agreed that Fine seemed in perfect health when he entered the building and spoke to them. It wasn’t until he tasted the pies that he seemed to become ill.
The sheriff, a man named Pike with a bushy red moustache, asked Beth if Fine had eaten anything else. “Not a thing,” she replied, but was immediately corrected by Ruth Wadsworth.
“He drank some of the water,” she reminded them.
Sheriff Pike glanced at the half-empty glass and motioned to a deputy. “We’d better take that, too.”
When the building was finally cleared, Nick and Gloria headed back to their car. He produced Fine’s journal from the folds of his newspaper. “What’s that?” Gloria asked.
“He had this with him. I thought it might have information about the pie judging, but it appears to be mostly an appointment book with the fair dates and his personal schedule.”
“That won’t tell us anything.”
“No...” He hesitated and flipped through several of the pages. “I wonder what this is. Every week or ten days there’s a notation Moo.”
“Maybe he has a thing about cows.”
“Or dairy farms,” Nick suggested, remembering Rita Wadsworth’s farm.
They drove back to the motel while Nick tried to decide his next move. Gloria was certainly correct that Maggie’s prize-winning pie was beyond his reach, and by the time the police finished their tests it wouldn’t look like anything Milo Marx would want to preserve in plastic. Somehow he had to convince Maggie to bake a duplicate pie without mentioning Marx’s name.
Later that afternoon they returned to the Oates home. Maggie had called Wayne at work with the news of Fine’s death and he’d come home early to comfort her. “She’s pretty broken up,” he told them at the door. “I don’t think she wants visitors.”
Maggie heard them talking and put in an appearance. “It’s a terrible tragedy, what happened to Len. He was such a fine man. I gave a statement to the police about my pie, but there’s no way it could have been poisoned.”