Fast forward to now, and it's the anniversary of the day the Pie Maker brought the girl he calls Chuck back to life. Private Investigator Emerson Cod has entered the Pie Hole after knitting himself a new wallet.
- Hey Ned. Psst. I got us a new case.
The facts were these: Mary Longfill was thirty-seven years, two months, seven hours and one minute old when she was the victim of her own murder. Nobody knew her to have a private life of any sorts, only to go to work and then return to her home every day, where she was found dead, holding an empty kettle. The police suspected her brother to have hit her on the head, fatally so, as she was making herself a cup of tea. Emerson Cod didn't necessarily suspect any differently, there was just a twenty thousand dollar reward at risk.
Upon learning that his childhood friend was being held as a suspect of a murder, the Pie Maker rushed to the kitchen to warn Chuck that he would be leaving to the morgue.
- Oh come on. You promised you'd stay today. It's my deathversary!
- I know, I know. But I know this guy and feel like I should do something.
- Can you promise you'll be back tonight in time to make a celebratory pie?
- Yes I promise.
- Yay! Now say it in three different ways.
- Why?
- Because when people can say something in three different ways it's a sign they really mean it.
- Okay... I... I will be here to bake you a pie. I will be home by six pm. I promise I'll be back home tonight.
The Pie Maker could not make any promises. After all, it wouldn't be the first time he was held captive when investigating a case. But he wanted to be home by six pm, and that was what counted.
At the morgue, Emerson Cod shed his usual pack of bills, with the usual sadness smudged on his face of course, and they walked over to the body, also as they usually did. However, the Pie Maker took an unusual amount of time to lay his magic finger on the corpse before him.
- What's the matter, Ned? Is your finger broken? Don't tell me it's something to do with dead girl back at the Pie Hole.
- No, no. I just- I just never knew Charles had a sister.
- You know, not everyone is like you and that dead girl of yours, spreading your personal business in public places like jam on a toast. Some people prefer to not talk about their lives. Like I wish you two would whenever we're on a case.
The Pie Maker wasn't listening to Emerson's complaints. His mind had drifted back to that day. The day he made a friend. Charles never talked much indeed, but Ned felt like they could share anything.
He touched the dead woman's hand, only to hear her faintly whisper, after a brief silence:
- Am I dead?
- Yes you are Miss. Any last wishes you'd like to have fulfilled?
- Well I-
- Lady do you know who killed you? - Emerson Cod was especially devoid of patience that day, having had to throw one of his homemade pop-up books in the trash due to rain damage. He had forgotten it on the window sill.
- He was behind me. I couldn't see him. But I think I knew him.
- Things are getting bleak for your guy. - Emerson mumbled in the Pie Maker's direction.
- Miss, can you tell us anything else? Like a smell you sensed, a noise you heard?
- Well yes, actually. I was putting the water on the kettle and I thought I smelled grass. Freshly cut grass.
The clock was ticking and signaling fifty-one seconds had passed, so the dead woman was laid to rest a second time before she could even say "blueberry jam pie".
Coincidentally, a blueberry jam pie was precisely what was occupying Olive Snook at that exact time. Having told Olive the homeopathic mood enhancers were vanilla, Chuck felt free to let Olive help her bake a homeopathicly charged pie for her aunts. As they closed the oven door, Charles Longfill opened his to see a long lost friend.
- Hey Charles. It's me, Ned.
- Ned? Little Ned? From that baseball game? Geez man, I always wondered what had happened to you. How are you?
- Fine. You on the other hand, are being charged with murder, which is why we're here.
The Pie Maker explained his presence. Well, the part he was at liberty to say, without crossing the border into the supernatural. At the moment of hiring Private Investigator Emerson Cod, Charles hadn't been told he would be reuniting with the now adult young Ned.
The Pie Maker and the Investigator walked around the house and saw no evidence of Charles' possible gardening tendencies.
- See? No grass. - Emerson Cod was still not convinced.
- So... Charles... where were you when your sister... you know.
- Oh please call me Chuck.
- I'd rather not. - But Charles insisted. The Pie Maker, however, complied only to be kind. He'd much rather save the name "Chuck" for the girl he called so and make that word in his vocabulary hers forever, lock it in seven keys and give them all to her. She would then keep those seven keys in a key chain and say something about how there was one for each day of the week, and in each of those days of the week, the Pie Maker would call her Chuck and only her. But, sadly, he could not do that. So he asked the second Chuck about his alibi again, only to find out he did not have one. He was sleeping alone at the time of the crime.
There was no more to do but to go to Mary Longfill's workplace and ask around.
Mary Longfill was a lonely person with a lonely job. She worked as an archivist at the public library and no one there even knew she had a brother. With the smell of freshly cut grass as their only lead, there was not much they could do in the library. Except perhaps read a book like everyone else, but seen as there were no pop-up books there, the Investigator was not interested. Until they had more leads, the only other thing to do was to ask Mary's neighbours a few questions.
They would have gone there,if not for the fact that it was geting dark, and the Pie Maker had made a promise. When he arrived at the Pie Hole, the girl named Chuck was indeed there, waiting for him. Both of them realized that the moment deserved a kiss, but instead they merely pretended to hold each other's hand.
It was after the Pie Maker had unrottened the rotten fruits that he asked the girl he loved, but had not told he loved, a question:
- Do you ever feel... not you?
- What do you mean?
- Reuniting with my only childhood friend has gotten me thinking that our personalities are supposed to be shaped by said childhood friends, and mine was not due to the absence of such so the only thing in my life that has truly shaped me is my love of pies but I don't want to have a pie-shaped life, I want to have a life shaped by so many things that all people can say is that I live a life-shaped life.
Chuck had spent her first life reading other people's lives without living her own, so she turned to that for advice.
- I think it's perfect to have a pie-shaped life. They say you are what you love and if what you love is pies then that means pie-shaped you has more youness than any other you could ever have. Besides, pies can be very different and still be pie-shaped, and everyone still loves them.
And in that moment, the Pie Maker loved the girl celebrating her deathversary more than he'd ever had.
The next morning, feeling at his utmost self, he joined Emersn Cod on a visit to Mary Longfill's neighbours. They were, from top to bottom of the building, a school teacher, a professional gardener, a sales associate, an amateur juggler and a college student. The gardener of course, arose suspicions in Emerson Cod when he remembered how Mary felt the scent of grass. But the interrogation would have to wait, for before they got to his apartment, they heard a sentence that shattered the Pie Maker and intrigued the Investigator:
- Didn't you hear? Mary's brother is dead.
The investigating pair rushed to the morgue to interrogate the deceased one.
- He can't be dead, I just restarted talking to the guy, I liked him, how can he be dead, he was alive yesterday.
- Boy, the man was wacked. Obviously whoever killed little Miss Kettle had a grudge against the whole family, and we need to figure out who that was. Let's go.
Already in front of the body but before touching him, the Pie Maker turned to Emerson Cod:
- Do you ever wonder about the justice in all of this? I mean, I know that murder isn't the justice part of the picture, that part is what we do, but still. We live in a world that blinds painters and gives writers amnesia, you'd think that people would get tired of all the bad, not do worse.
- Is this about dead girl again?
- No.
- Look, I know the guy was your friend when you was a kid but get this: the world is unfair. Ain't nobody here thinking the world is one big goddamn sea of roses and chicken soup. And that, boy, is why we're here. We lock up the suckers who eat all the chicken soup and leave the rest of us swimming in an empty bowl. Now if you don't mind, poke the poor bastard.
The Pie Maker poked his deceased connection to the only happy days he had at boarding school.
- Hey Charl-... Chuck. - Having recently died, the least the man deserved was to be called by his preferred name. - Do you know who killed you by any chance?
- Whoa wait... I'm dead? Wow. Well the only thing I can say is that I smelled grass before someone hit me from behind.
- Do you know why anyone would wanna kill you?
- No, I don't really have enemies. I was just gonna get the papers for Mary's apartment and bam!
- The papers to what? What'd you say?
- Mary's apartment. I'm her only living relative so it goes to me. Well, not anymore I guess, they're probably gonna sell it now. Hey Ned, if you're here, does that mean I'm in one of those childhood memory Heaven things or-
Charles Longfill said no more, or otherwise someone else would have died for his words. Emerson Cod's, however, were clear and succint:
- We definetely need to talk to that gardener.
The detective duo sneaked in as sneakily as they could, being almost sure the gardener had committed the murder, but the only thing they found was an empty house and an open window.
The facts were these: Hildegard Pemberley, a fourth generation gardener and degenerately ambitious, was fourty-three years, seven months, two weeks, eight hours and eleven minutes old when he decided he wanted to do more with his life besides picking weeds, brooming bushes and snipping leaves. He wanted to start his own business, doing what he truly loved: competitive cat breeding. But for that, he needed a bigger apartment. Having no money to buy it, he decided to obtain the one next to his at all costs and make it his own. He thought he would only have to kill Mary, as she refused to sell it, but when he discovered she had a brother she never discussed, Charles had to be eliminated as well.
These were the things Private Investigator Emerson Cod was saying while running after Hildegard, who hadn't gone very far in his escape due to impediments of the cardiological variety.
After catching him, there was no one to pay Emerson Cod his reward, but they left knowing justice had been served and young Charles' murderer (and his sister's too of course) had been imprisoned. Well the Pie Maker did, at least.
- If the case is solved, how about we celebrate this day-after-my-deathversary, this time properly?
- Do you want to bake another pie?
- ...No. I can think of something much better.
And off went the Pie Maker and the girl he called Chuck up the stairs to the roof, plastic wrap in hand, where they talked and laughed all night, between the peacefull buzzings of the bees.
