A/N: Three readers, y u no review! It's fine if you don't feel like it :) This is the first story in a long time that I've enjoyed writing, just for the sake of writing. But if you don't enjoy reading it then please do tell me why and how I can improve. Thankee sai...
Chapter 6: Uninvited Guests
Charlotte Charles was not in the mood for a pie party. Or a cake party, for that matter. On any other day, it would have been an ideal way to say goodbye. On any other day, she might have had cause to celebrate. But not today. For at that very moment, the ramifications of their actions last night were coming to light...
"Did Ned do this?"
"Dwight," Chuck corrected, glancing at her aunt before rereading the newspaper print.
DOZEN FOUND DEAD AT THE HANDS OF CONMAN CULTLEADER!
The words blurred as she stared at them, willing them to disappear, to not be true...
"Something doesn't add up," said her mother, taking the Evening Vulture. "Marlowe never planned to poison himself. His Kool-Aid cup was clear of cyanide. But he died anyway. So Ned must have offed him by proxy."
"Dwight," Chuck repeated. "He cheated death, not Ned."
"All right," Lily snapped. "I'm not judging. I'm just glad it was someone bad. Maybe the whole 'random proximity' thing isn't so random."
Chuck frowned, caught at a crossroads of sadness, guilt, fear, relief...
And whichever path she chose to go down, it would not end in a pie party. But Olive had sounded so sincere when she called, so desperate to cheer up their band before it disbanded. She must have missed the news somehow...
The doorbell rang just then and as she rose to answer it, Lily and Vivian grabbed each of her arms.
"Oh, no you don't."
"You don't answer the door anymore."
Chuck scoffed but stayed seated while her mother took up the shotgun and her aunt grabbed a kitchen knife. Dwight was not going to attempt an assassination in broad daylight. And yet...she tensed as they flanked the door, demanding to know who was on the other side...
"Yo friendly neighbourhood PI."
The women heaved a collective sigh, Vivian reaching over to let him in. Emerson tipped his hat to them as he entered.
"Ladies. I take it you already know about the 'Deadly Dozen'."
"Yessir," Lily drawled. "What we don't know is how deep Ned's finger is in this particular pie."
"Terry Marlowe died of supernatural causes," Chuck asserted. "Coroner confirmed it, right?"
The PI frowned, glancing around as if the answer were written on their walls. "Yeah. Yeah, he confirmed it..."
"See?" said the bubbly brunette. "Mystery solved, case closed!"
Emerson nodded, eyes focused on the floor. He seemed...unsatisfied, unsure of himself and her stomach shrivelled at the sight.
Vehemently, Chuck dismissed it as the road he had chosen to travel: guilt. She would have gone with him, but her heart was too far up Relief Street to turn back now...
XXX
Olive Snook raced to the top of the stairs, as if being pursued by a ghost. She skidded to a stop outside her door, inhaling and exhaling until her nerves had settled and her smile had set. Today was going to be a good day, she told herself. Today was going to be a great day...
"Honey-crust cup pies are in the oven!" she announced, bursting into the apartment. "And the party is on like Cheech and Ch...Ned?"
The Pie Maker looked at her mournfully and the waitress faltered, her nuclear reactor of cheer fizzling out. He pointed to her pink TV set, which buzzed with the evening news...
"Families have been informed and the coroner can now confirm the identities of the Deadly Dozen..."
"Wha...?"
Olive sat down next to him, her heart sinking further and further as the information unfurled.
"Oy," she murmured, when they finally cut to commercial.
"Oy indeed," he muttered.
"This is because Dwight got away?"
"The eleven, no. The one, yeah." He turned to her, eyes empty and glassy. "How close could he have been? How far...?"
"Ned," she said, trying to redirect his train of thought. "Terry Marlowe sounded like a terrible person."
"And?" he pressed desperately. "What does it matter? Why should I get to choose who lives or dies?"
"You don't have a choice. Random proximity, remember?"
He shook his head, turning back to the TV. She watched him for a moment before standing up and switching it off.
"What are y-?"
"We have a party to get to."
"Olive, this is import-"
"Life is important, Ned! Death will always be there, waiting for us. And we can only delay it for so long. In the meantime, we live. We make merry. We eat pie! Now are you going to spend time with your alive again girlfriend or sit here obsessing over a dead man?"
It was a rhetorical question, asked with no desire for an answer. But as the Pie Maker stood decisively, Olive found that she too had made a choice. She would no longer obsess over undead Dwight, living in fear of his homicidal tendencies. She would simply live...
Casa de Charles seemed quiet when they arrived and it was not Lily or Vivian that opened the door for them, but Maurice and Ralston.
"Howdy, partners!" Olive exclaimed, embracing the boys.
"Bonjour, mademoiselle!" they chimed, grinning from ear to ear. "Frère Pie Maker."
Ned attempted to shake their hands but was mercilessly hugged instead. "Hi," he said over their heads. "Where is Chuck?"
"In the kitchen with everybody else, talking travel arrangements."
"You can put your pies down next to the cheese plates."
"That...is a lot of cheese," said Ned, nearly tripping over a stack of suitcases as he passed the living room. "Are there anymore guests?"
"Nope," said Maurice. "But Lily and Vivian need to clear their refrigerator. They said we can take some home as party favors."
"Dibs on the Gruyère!" said Ralston.
"Drat!" Olive grumbled. She placed the pies down and rejoined Ned. "Well, you can put some music on while we go say hi. Be right back..."
The mood in the kitchen was sober, solemn, like that of a wake. Chuck, Emerson, Lily and Vivian sat around the table, eyeing each other with the air of poker players.
"Woah..." the waitress murmured. "Who died?" She chuckled darkly at the looks on their faces. "Kidding, kidding, I know. But seriously, folks, this is our last supper. Can we put Terry and the Poppy Temple People aside, for one night?"
"We most definitely can," said Chuck, rising to hug her. She blew a kiss to the Pie Maker, who grinned and caught it.
Olive stared studiously at the wall and stretched her face into a smile. "All righty then! Let's get this party started..."
XXX
For the first time in his life, Emerson Cod did not want pie. After being taxied around Papen County - from Café Cliché to the coroner to the Boutique Travel Travel Boutique in Coeur d'Coeurs - all he wanted was his beloved Lincoln Continental back, and several hours of sleep.
But on their last night together, with Olive practically force feeding him cheer - as well as pastry - he had no choice but to comply.
"You okay, Cod?" the waitress asked, watching Ned and Chuck canoodle contact-free in a corner, while the twins danced to the radio.
"Fine."
"Really?" she persisted, smoothing down the sweeping pattern of her dress. "Coz you have quite a trout pout going on there."
The PI sighed and glanced at the aunts, who were talking intently. "New developments have come to light in the case of the Deadly Dozen."
She rolled her eyes. "I thought we agreed not to-"
"You asked. And if you wanna be part of the team, Itty Bitty, you better start helpin' me find some answers."
Olive exhaled wearily. "Okay. Whazzup?"
Cod cast a cautious look around the room, before leaning in to inform her of his findings. The facts were these:
Upon quizzing the coroner, Emerson learned that while the eleven cups had tested positive for cyanide, the eleven bodies came out clean. The PI pored over these results, his mind refusing to compute the conclusion at hand. For if these things were true, neither he nor the Pie Maker had understood the powers that they made use of. If these things were true, 'random proximity' had a longer reach than they thought. If these things were true, the Deadly Dozen - like Terry Marlowe - did not kill themselves...
"But how do we know for sure th-?"
"12 dead, within seconds of each other, starting the moment Dwight Dixon cheated death."
Itty Bitty grimaced and glanced at Ned, who was laughing as Chuck wielded a box of saran wrap.
"...so we killed them? We killed all those people."
"Well, if we're gonna play the blame game," he said grimly. "I lose. It was my dumb idea to dig up Dixon in the first place."
"No. You - we all let - we tried to stop him. And we didn't know. Emerson, we didn't know they were going to - they wanted to - they wouldn't have changed their minds...right? They wouldn't have tried to leave?" To his alarm, the pintsized blonde began to tear up. "Oh god..."
"Hey," the PI uttered tersely. "Calm down. They can't know. Especially not Dough Boy..."
Olive inhaled shakily, her tears retreating. "Okay. I just - I need air..."
"You got plenty in here."
"No, I feel like I'm gonna be sick. I have to...stick my head out a window or something..."
As she got up, excusing herself to everyone else, Emerson bit back the urge to tell her not to jump. For all his nonchalance, he could not escape the fact that had been carrying a loaded gun with the safety off, for years. And if Ned ever misfired his magic finger in the wrong place at the wrong time-
"NO!"
The shrill, almost musical scream erupted from upstairs, followed by a frantic scuffling sound, and silence. The party sat shell-shocked for a second, before Emerson leapt to his feet, bounding upstairs with the others close behind...
They stumbled to a stop on the landing, freezing at the sight of Dwight Dixon.
"Good evening, gentleman," he panted, as Olive struggled in his grasp. "Ladies." Lily cocked her gun wordlessly and he smirked, producing his own. The waitress whimpered as he pressed it to her temple. "I assume my invitation got lost in the mail."
The twins uttered terrified squeaks, before Ned pushed them back.
"How did you get in here?"
"Ah...a magician never reveals his secrets, am I right?"
The Pie Maker stood silent, his fists clenching spasmodically.
"What the hell do you want, Dwight?" Lily snapped.
"What do you think?"
She hesitated, exhaling heavily before lowering her weapon. "You can have your watch. But Charles' belongs to this family."
"Like hell it does. I want both of them."
The PI's hand twitched over his holster as he wondered how quickly he could plant a bullet, without hitting the wrong target. Before he could take decisive action Lily nodded, handing her gun to Vivian and disappearing down the hallway. Silence swelled then, permeated by the sounds of labored breathing and quiet crying.
Abruptly, conversationally, Dwight spoke up: "Hey, that was a neat trick, Ned! Did you learn it from your Dad?" When no response was forthcoming he continued: "Who gave it to you then? Can you return it? Some gifts come with a receipt..." The silence seemed to aggravate him now as he growled, "Could you bring back your friend?"
"Dwight, if you hurt her, I swear to whatever power may be, I will-"
"What? Poke me? Please, Ned. You might be able to kill with one touch, but so can I." His finger tapped the gun trigger and Olive flinched. "Unlike you, I don't need to be up close and personal to do it..."
Lily reappeared just then, holding out a blue velvet watch case.
"Toss it to me," he instructed. She obliged and a small sob bubbled up from the girl named Chuck. "Thank you. Now...if you would all be so kind as to go downstairs."
"Not without Ol-"
"She will be with you shortly. Don't worry, I won't harm her. But I'm not going to release my little human shield when you're around."
Emerson snarled, knowing that they were on the losing end of this standoff. He ushered the others towards the staircase, eyes never leaving Dixon as he committed him to memory: the color of his coat, the make of his gun, the glint in his eye...
"Enjoy your party, folks."
They waited with bated breath in the foyer, until Olive emerged, taking steps so shaky they could have been her first. Ned reached out and lifted her bodily into a hug, as the silence was fractured by shouting and cursing and the panicked pleas of Maurice and Ralston to explain exactly what just happened.
But Emerson tuned out the chaos, listening only to the distant revving of his car and the screech of tires, as Dwight Dixon drove away.
A/N: Cheese and rice, that took forever to write :p Kudos if you read it all the way through...
Wikipedia informs me that the Kool-Aid suicides were a real thing O_o Bryan Fuller based the Poppy People Temple sect off of an actual cult that was murder-suicided (The Jonestown Massacre). Which is...pretty grim! But he did say that the comic would be darker than the show so I am going to run with it...
I have no idea how or why 'random proximity' could kill all those people, but it will be fun trying to find out :)