It was six days, two hours, thirty-one minutes and eight seconds since Jaye and Eric had gotten married. Unable to settle on a single place to honeymoon, they had come to the decision that a road trip was a good way to go, and hey, that meant they could save on accommodation (necessary on the measly wages of a souvenir salesperson and a bartender, made less by the fact that Jaye was constantly acquiring littering and stealing-from-fountain fines) by hitching up Jaye's trailer to Sharon's SUV which she'd begrudgingly loaned the pair as a wedding present, and sleeping in there wherever they fancied stopping. Or rather wherever the animals told Jaye they should stop. Despite Jaye's pleading they didn't seem keen to give her and Eric much privacy on their holiday and so far, with various animals' 'advice', they'd helped a lady in Kentucky prove that she was in fact the real Colonel Sanders, located a priceless antique ring for a museum in Michigan, and accidentally been adopted by a circus troop in Indiana. Now Jaye and Eric were on their way down to Texas to find a rodeo that a plastic horse in a truck stop seemed desperate for them to interfere with. But right now they needed to eat, and a road sign not far back had indicated that the next town they would pass through was home to an excellent pie shop.
"The Pie Hole," laughed Jaye, turning the car with her house in tow down the street indicated by the weathered but inviting pie-shaped sign. "As in 'shut your'… Classy. I like it."
"I hope they do lemon meringue," said Eric. "I couldn't eat that for a while 'cause it reminded me too much of Heidi's wedding dress but now, with you – now that I'm the new Eric – I think it'll go right back to being my favourite."
"Look, we're here!" Jaye declared, pulling up lazily across three parking spaces. She didn't care – it wasn't like she'd never been arrested before! Besides, the shop in front of them was shaped like a massive pie and that was simultaneously too stupid and too brilliant to care about a little thing like parking properly. Plus pie meant fruit and pastry and not animals, so it might be a peaceful afternoon.
They walked through the door and immediately a tiny blonde waitress, far too cheery for her own good, or at least for Jaye's cynical sanity, escorted them to a booth. The whole place was colourful and… adorable. If the Mouthbreather saw this place he'd no doubt be ordering everyone to redecorate Wonderfalls just like it to draw in more infuriating customers, and yet somehow, against her better judgment, Jaye felt herself warming to its old-world charm.
"Welcome to the Pie Hole! As in 'shut your'!" chirped the waitress, and Jaye elbowed Eric gently in the ribs to remind him she'd made the joke earlier. "Or in this case 'open your' because it's so good! I'm Olive, and I'm sorry but I've just gotta say that you two look simply delightful together!" she continued, with a smile that must have been wider than Niagara Falls. "You remind me a little bit of Ned and Chuck, actually! They work here too – well, Ned actually runs the place-"
Just then a tall, dark-haired man walked out from the kitchen behind the counter, wiping a rolling pin on his apron and humming quietly to himself.
"Oh that's Ned right there!" pointed Olive, and he smiled a lopsided sort of smile at them.
"No way! He looks exactly like my brother!" remarked Jaye. "Like uncannily similar."
"Aaron's spitting image!" Eric agreed. "You sure you're not missing a sibling?"
"Man! Aaron could get a PhD in every religion ever invented and he'd still never be able to explain the likeness!" Jaye carried on, until Ned walked over to Olive, holding a large container of cream.
"Hello," he greeted the customers politely. "How are you today?" They were staring at him quite intently, with amused looks on their faces, and it was making him nervous so he moved swiftly on. "Hey Olive, I don't suppose you'd be able to tell me where you got this cream from because Emerson called earlier and…"
Jaye didn't hear the rest of what the piemaker said because the picture of the cow on the cream bottle was talking to her.
"Peaches and cream," it bellowed, making the purple ribbon around its neck swish from side to side. "Peaches and cream."
"Peaches and cream?" she hissed back.
"You need peaches and cream."
"But we were gonna get lemon meringue-"
"You need peaches and cream."
"But it's just pie! Why-"
"Peaches and cream."
By now Ned, Olive and Eric (although he had grown accustomed to Jaye's ways) were all staring at her so she quickly tried to cover her outburst.
"I've heard you make fantastic peach pie! 'It's just peachy', they say! Ha! Ya get it? Well, uh, yes, we'd like some peach pie. With cream. Please."
"Oh honey, I'm sorry," apologised Olive, "but I don't think we've got any peach made today."
"That's okay," said Eric, glancing at his wife. "I see lemon meringue's on the board. We'll have that instead, thank you."
The cow, however, would not take this for an answer: "Peaches. And. Cream."
"Come on, don't do this on our honeymoon! Even if it does have the word 'moo' in it!" Jaye reprimanded the animal, but it would not stop chanting the words.
"Alright, alright," she muttered angrily and then, "No! I really think we need peach. We're happy to wait. And I'll pay whatever you want. I just, uh… love me some peaches and cream!"
Ned (not Aaron, Jaye had to keep reminding herself) looked a little scared but he nodded anyway. "It'll take nearly an hour but Olive makes the best coffee this side of Coeur d'Coeurs, if you want to wait here."
At that moment, the bell hanging over the Pie Hole door tinkled, announcing the arrival of a stout African-American man in a suit with a knitted vest under the jacket.
"Boy, did you find out which dairy that cream came from or what? We gotta get ourselves down there right now or we are gonna lose our only lead on this case and you know we ain't been paid for a while and I've run out of wool-"
Olive sprang into action, "Oh yes! Emerson, I bought that cream from Miss Mandy's Mighty Market on Monday and I believe she gets most of her produce from David Donaldson's Delicious Dairy. But I'm afraid checking it out will have to wait 'til the afternoon because these two," she smiled at Jaye and Eric, although Jaye could tell from her retail experience that it was a smile of mild irritation, "have ordered peach pie and that ain't gonna bake itself!"
"Hold up, what did you just say?" Emerson asked.
"Oh yes! Emerson, I bought that cream from Miss M-"
"No, Itty Bitty, the last bit."
"…gonna bake itself?"
"Peaches and cream," started the cow picture again. "You need peaches and cream."
"Peaches and cream," Jaye repeated quickly to the well-dressed man, who, surprisingly, grinned at the interruption. "You need peaches and cream."
"Hell yeah, girl! I don't know who you are but you're right! What goes with cream better than anything? Well, except maybe strawberries? Peaches. Ned, I think the culprit must have been Penny Parker from the peach packing plant!"
"Culprit?" asked Jaye. She couldn't help herself. Normally she was the confusing one but this all seemed a bit weird. 'Culprits' in a pie shop?
The door bell tinkled again and Ned's face lit up immediately as a beautiful woman, not much older than Jaye but dressed far better than she could ever be bothered to, in a bright yellow dress with matching gloves, floppy hat and round sunglasses, stepped through the door.
"Okay, so I've been out interviewing people from the food fair all morning and most of them think that fruit must have been involved because why else would all those little flies have swarmed when…"
She'd noticed Jaye and Eric seated at the table. They didn't usually discuss cases in front of customers. Murder tended to put people off their food. (Except for Emerson, whom it made hungrier.)
"Peaches," Jaye said to the elegant girl.
"Hi, I'm Chuck," she replied.
"Oh, no, that's not my name! It's Jaye, actually, but what I meant is the fruit you mentioned? Peaches."
Eric had no idea what was going on. Although around Jaye he seldom did. (And he actually kinda liked that.)
"Of course!" Chuck said, with a look of utter revelation. "Penny Parker! She and David Donaldson from the dairy were always sweet on each other before he got married. It makes perfect sense!"
Emerson, Olive, Ned and Chuck all turned to the visitors.
"May I ask what just happened?" Eric said reluctantly.
"Your lady here," Emerson responded, "Just solved a murder."
"A murder?" husband and wife asked simultaneously.
"Uh huh. We're detectives. Well, I am. These buffoons sort of just cling to me like limpets," he teased his colleagues. "Although obviously you must've known who we are since you came in here with that tip-off about Penny."
"Actually, no," began Jaye, but the bovine on the container Ned was still holding caught her eye. If that wasn't a tip-off, nothing was! "Okay, yes. Just doing my duty, I guess."
"How about that lemon meringue then, on the house?" Olive suggested. "I don't much feel like supporting the local peach producers right now but I promise you my meringue's lighter than the mist of Niagara Falls and ten times as tasty!"
"That sounds perfect," Jaye smiled, and her husband agreed wholeheartedly.
The cow just mooed.