Apparently, there are still some silly people reading, so we'd better continue the silliness. It's time to mention pie...
Chapter 3
"You did that, too, after the dog half-transformation in Colorado," commented Sam, eyeing his older brother, "But at least you had the excuse of being a dog at the time."
Dean sat in shotgun, the window partly rolled down, his nose pressed to the opening, flaring his nostrils, a happy smile on his face. Jimi sat in his lap, in pretty much the same posture. "I smell baking, Sammy," he reported happily, "We're homing in on baking!"
"Either of you starts drooling, and you will be travelling in the trunk," Sam added, slowing as he peered at house numbers. "Ah, here it is." Neither Dean nor Jimi moved, apparently hypnotised by the smell of pastry on the air. "Dean? Earth to Dean, Earth to Dean, shut down Pie Detector and initiate Upstairs Brain ignition sequence, do you copy?"
"Buzzkill," grumped Dean, snapping Jimi's leash onto his collar and opening the door.
Sam knocked on the front door of the tidy house, and it was answered by a pleasant middle-aged lady wearing an apron. "Mrs Stewart?" he asked.
"You must be Bobby's nephews," she smiled, "And it's Maisie, please. He warned me I'd hear the car before I saw you." She looked down. "And who's this?"
"This is Jimi," replied Dean, as Jimi duly turned on the I-Will-Make-You-Go-Awwww big brown eyes. "He's learning to, er, work with us."
"He's adorable!" cooed Maisie, bending to pat the pup. "You boys come on in."
She showed them inside. "So, Maisie," began Sam, as Jimi sniffed and growled suspiciously at a particularly threatening-looking pot plant, "Bobby tells us you have a problem in your house. Can you tell us about it?"
She sighed sadly. "It's probably easiest if I just show you." They followed her into the kitchen where she made coffee, and, with a despondent expression, put down a plate of small cherry pastries. Sam sat looking expectantly at Maisie.
"So, Maisie," he prompted again. She pushed the plate of pastries towards them. Sam politely picked one up and bit into it, while Dean shoved his into his mouth with inarticulate noises of delight.
"Very nice," commented Sam politely, privately wondering how Dean stayed on speaking terms with his major arteries as his older brother chomped into a second pastry. He became aware that Maisie was watching him. "Er, yes, that tasted… very nice," he repeated, not sure what was expected. "Um… perhaps you can tell us more about your problem…"
"That is the problem!" she burst out, indicating the plate. Sam stared at it, wondering what he was missing.
"Er," he responded, mind racing. He'd never heard of a poltergeist that undertook violent acts of terrifying bakery after dark, but in their line of work, anything was possible. "Could you be a little more… specific?"
Maisie eyed him dubiously, with an expression that put him in mind of a special school teacher who has just discovered that the latest idiot savant sent to her was lacking the savant bit. He turned a desperate smile to Dean, the older brother who had rescued him from all manner of human and supernatural peril. Help help help baby brother in distress! he thought furiously, but Dean continued to chew slowly, staring thoughtfully at the pastry he was holding.
"Um..." he managed, trying very hard not to squirm under Maisie's disappointed glare – he had spent his years of education being beamed at with approval for his intellect, damn it! – when Dean finally came to his rescue.
"This..." he said slowly, "Is not actually a tart, is it?"
Maisie sighed in relief and smiled at Dean (Oh great, thought Sam, her brightest student recites pi to the one hundredth decimal place, special class teacher's pet...) as he continued, "This is... was supposed to be... a turnover, wasn't it?"
Maisie beamed at Dean (... and now he's told her what day of the week it will be on February 15th, 2318. Brown-noser...) "One thing I do well, it's puff pastry," she explained. "I've won prizes at the Minnesota State Fair every year for my pastries for the last, oh, dozen years or so. And now, this..." she gazed despondently at the plate. "When I can't get pastry to work, something is going very, weirdly, wrong," she stated firmly. "It's like... like all those years ago, when Bobby came and dealt with Old Man Phillips – there's something wrong."
"Okay, so, when did you notice that your pastries weren't behaving themselves?" asked Dean seriously, frowning at the baked-item-of-indeterminate-nomenclature and prodding at a piece of the pastry before taking another thoughtful bite. Sam shot him a pained expression – You cannot possibly be taking this seriously...
"Two weeks ago, when I made up a batch for a Fuckers meeting..."
Dean choked on his mouthful, and Sam pounded him between the shoulder blades until the errant piece of crust was dislodged. The Winchesters stared open-mouthed at Maisie.
"Er, funny acoustics in here," remarked Sam, battling to regain his composure, "I thought you said something, er, quite, er..."
Maisie seemed to realize what she'd said, and slapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh, I'm sorry boys," she apologised, "I should've explained that. The Fergus Falls Unaffiliated Cookery & Craft Collective. The F-F-U-C-C-C. We call ourselves the, well..."
"Fuckers?" supplied Dean helpfully.
"Yes," Maisie grinned. "It's a joke. We're a group of ladies who meet up every fortnight or so, to compare notes on recipes, and craft matters – lots of us fine-tune our State Fair recipes by getting critiques at our gatherings. It's an excellent excuse for a get-together to chat, have the odd tipple, and complain bitterly about our husbands, or about how there aren't any decent men in the right age demographic available. Some members complain about both." Her expression was positively mischievous. "We didn't actually realise what the acronym looked like until we wrote it down – we laughed so hard! We decided to keep it, and now we use it as much as possible to freak out our husbands, children and most of all our grand-children. You should see them wince when Grandma says "I'm meeting the other Fuckers tonight." Their little eyes nearly pop out of their heads." She turned back to Sam. "Frankly, I didn't think anyone related to Bobby would be too precious about a wee bit of language. That old fox can swear a blue streak and not repeat himself in five minutes."
"Aint that the truth..." muttered Sam.
"So, you made up a batch, for the Fuckers," said Dean, apparently enjoying having an excuse to use the word in general conversation, "And it all went south. What exactly happened with that batch?"
Sam listened in growing disbelief as Maisie and Dean talked about possible causes for the failure of a reliable pastry recipe, Dean sounding as if he was in FBI impersonation mode. "Did anything change? Was the butter cold enough? Same brand of flour? Have you had any problems with your central heating? Do you render your own lard? What about your rolling pin, have you changed that? Washed your kitchen bench down with something?" Maisie gave a negative answer to each possible problem he raised. "Something strange is going on," she repeated. "Something is... interfering with my baking."
Suddenly, there was a growling noise from floor level. The brothers peered under the table: Jimi had flopped at Dean's feet and dozed off when they entered the kitchen. He was now awake, and glaring suspiciously at the piece of pastry crust that Dean had coughed up. He growled again, then barked sharply at the errant morsel.
"Okay, now that is strange," conceded Sam. Jimi had proven to be the only being he had ever seen convince Dean to share pie – the pup shared his older brother's taste for desserts, and Dean couldn't say no to Sam's puppy-dog eyes, let alone a pair on an actual puppy-dog – and now said puppy-dog was not just turning his nose up at a piece of pastry, he was acting as if it was threatening.
"Maybe we should take a look around your kitchen, and the rest of the house," Dean said to Maisie, clearly following Sam's train of thought. "If there is something, it might be safer if you aren't in here with us, in case we provoke it." He looked around. "It's probably best that you go outside, just in case."
"I can wait on the porch, I guess," she said, "I'll just get my knitting."
"We'll call you when we're done," Sam assured her. "If you hear any strange noises, don't come in looking for us, okay?"
Maisie left them to it. They started in the kitchen, then moved on to the rest of the house, looking for anything that might give some information about what was happening. Dean encouraged Jimi to sniff around.
Sam remained less than convinced that there was a paranormal problem. "I mean, pastry?" he asked Dean incredulously, "She has a problem with a pastry recipe, and she calls Bobby for help? And he actually sends us? Maybe he is developing Alzheimers. I'm going to kill him. Wouldn't Martha Stewart be of more help?"
"Baked goods is serious business, Sam," replied Dean, "If there's the slightest chance that something is messing with baked goods, then I will fight to the death to defend the pastries of the world from malevolent paranormal attack. We owe it to humanity, Sam..."
He stopped short as Jimi suddenly halted by a cupboard under the stairs, and stood, hackles raised, glaring at it, growling a growl that seemed too deep and menacing to be coming out of such a small puppy. Coal-red glowing highlights arced across his brown eyes as his mouth drew into a snarl.
The Winchesters drew their guns, and silently took up positions on either side of the cupboard. Pulling Jimi out of the way, Dean reached carefully for the handle, and yanked it open...
Inside the cupboard sat the biggest, ugliest, most bored-looking cat either of them had ever seen. It looked disdainfully at them, and yawned.
Jimi took one look, cried "YAIPE!" and turned, ducking between Dean's feet and heading at top speed back through the kitchen, pulling the leash out of Dean's hand.
"Jimi!" called Dean, as they scrambled after the pup, who headed for the back door at full tilt. "Jimi, stop! You'll hurt yourself..."
The terrified pup hit the door, and... kept going...
The Winchesters stood in the kitchen, blinking.
"Oh," said Sam, as Dean checked the door.
"There isn't actually any, um, cat flap here," he noted, running his hand over solid wood.
"Bobby never mentioned him doing that," remarked Sam.
"Maybe it's another thing he's inherited from his daddy, but he only does when he's frightened," theorized Dean.
"Ah," said Sam. "Like the alien blood pee thing."
"Yeah, like the alien blood pee thing."
"And being scared of thunderstorms."
"Yeah, we know he's scared of thunderstorms."
"And setting things on fire when he pees during a thunderstorm..."
"Don't make me kill you, Samantha," Dean muttered, opening the back door. Jimi sat huddled on the back step, giving Dean a high-beam shot of big brown eyes. "You silly boy," he sighed, gathering up the pup, "You're half-hellhound, how the hell can you be scared of cats?"
"It's an extremely ugly cat," Sam pointed out, "And there is a theory that cats are practically demonic."
They went back inside and finished their search, turning up nothing. Sam went to tell Maisie about their lack of immediate progress.
"We need to do some more work on this," he told her, "Bobby thought it might be a low-powered poltergeist, but we don't want to go knocking holes in your walls if we don't have to."
"Well, it's not life-threatening," she sighed, "But it will be disappointing not to have my pastries up to scratch for the next Fucker meeting." They promised to do some digging, and made their goodbyes, Maisie pressing a bag of too-flat-to-be-turnovers onto Dean.
Back in the Impala, Sam asked "Since when are you a member of the Pastry Police, anyway? Render her own lard? Changed her rolling pin? Whatever brain disease Bobby clearly has, I'm starting to wonder if it's contagious."
"I like to think of myself as a student of pie," Dean said thoughtfully, "An informed appreciator of pie. It's not just a dessert, Sammy, it's a mental state, it's a philosophy, it's a way of life."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well so is drinking your own urine. Only you could talk about eating pie as some sort of religious observance..."
"I warn you, unbeliever, the gods of pie are not lightly mocked!" threatened Dean. "You're probably going to be crushed to death by a truckload of Brussels sprouts during Holy Pie Week for that little bit of heresy."
"So, what do you think?" asked Sam.
"Well, I think the cherry filling was just fine - it seems to be a problem with the layering in the pastry, which is why I asked about..."
"No!" snapped Sam, "Since you and Maisie are both convinced that it's something supernatural, do you have any ideas about what's causing the problem?"
"None at all," Dean admitted cheerfully, "But look on the bright side, we get to do research! You can hit the library, do your Laptop Dancing, and I can hit the bakeries and diners, to check for any other pie-related problems in the area."
Sam sighed, but brightened up a bit at an excuse to go delving into the area's historical records. "There are some really old buildings here, including Maisie's house," he said hopefully, "Something might turn up there."
"Attaboy," encouraged Dean, "We'll save you from the evil clutches of salad yet. Won't we Jimi?"
"Rumph," went the pup from the back seat.
"Sounds like more fun that Puritanism, at least," muttered Sam. "Oh, hey, can we stop? I gotta get more shower gel. I only noticed today I'm running out."
TBC - because we can't leave it at that. Oh, firemooncat: I don't know why Dean hates the smell of lavender so much. Maybe he was traumatised by a ghastly babysitter at an impressionable age, and elderly lady who doused herself in lavender water. Or there was a haunted lavender bush. If anybody has any theories about Dean's lavender aversion, feel free to leave it in a review - maybe we can work a traumatic flashback into the story... reviews make pastry rise and stop your cookies crumbling!