Written for Yuletide 2019, as a gift for innie.
"Achoo!"
Ned looked up from rolling out pastry to look concernedly at Chuck. "You're sneezing still? I've never heard you sneeze this much before. Are you sick?"
"It's probably just an allergy," Chuck sniffled, wiping at her nose with a tissue.
"I didn't think you had any allergies. Except, of course," Ned continued more loudly, glancing over at Olive, "your allergy to me that is the reason we can't touch and is in every way a real allergy that you have."
Olive, well used to these suspicious asides in the months since Chuck had appeared in the little world she and the Piemaker had used to share, rolled her eyes and left the kitchen, carrying a plate of pie out to Emerson Cod and dropping herself into the booth opposite him.
Emerson looked up at her. "Dead Girl still sick?"
"Yeah, she's still sneezing up a storm." Catching the wary glance Emerson directed the slice of pie in front of him, she said, "Don't worry, she's not making any pies. She's just in there, with Ned, to 'keep him company'."
"Good. Because if she's in here with him, you can be out there," he gestured out the window, "with me. We've got a case."
The facts were these.
Mikhael Chekhov, aged thirty three years, six weeks, and two days, had been a prize winning shooting champion before someone had chopped off his head just days before the Papen County Shooting Competition. They had then left with both the head and Chekhov's prize-winning gun, on display in the room. His wife had found the body, and, utterly distraught, had hired Emerson Cod to find her husband's head, and his gun.
"So why do you need me?" Olive asked, eyes sharp.
"Well Pie Boy's not much use to me, not with his girlfriend being sick and him cooing over her enough to make me sick," Emerson said, leaning close across the vinyl booth. "And I need someone who can work undercover. They've all seen me by now, and they know I'm looking for Chekhov's gun. None of them will give me a straight answer. But you, they won't know."
"So you need me to be your spy, to get in there and weasel some information out of them." Olive smiled craftily. "Alright, I'll be your weasel, but this weasel don't work for free."
"Fine," Emerson grumbled. "We'll split the cash. 20/80."
"60/40," Olive countered.
"70/30, and that's my last word."
"It's a deal." Olive stuck out her hand and they shook on it.
Andrea Chekhov's house was a small white cottage with nicely trimmed hedges, and a shooting target displayed prominently in the front window. Walking to the front door, pie box in her hands, Olive realised that the nicely trimmed hedges were planted in concentric circles around the house, with the different rings having alternate red or white flowers, and suddenly felt an odd sensation of being targeted.
She knocked on the door. "Hi, I'm Olive Snook with a delivery from the Pie Hole!" she said with a smile as a woman opened it. "Are you Andrea Chekhov?"
"No, I'm Della d'Mere." She opened the door further and gestured Olive in. "Bring it in here. Andrea's just inside. Not prepared to face the world yet, you know?"
"Oh no, what happened?" Olive turned back to talk with Della, narrowly missing hitting the box against a wooden frame on the wall.
"Don't break that!" Della screamed, eyes wide. "That's seven years bad luck!"
Olive carefully turned back to look at what she'd thought was a wooden frame, but was actually a large ornamental mirror. "Whoops! Don't worry, it's safe."
"Knock on wood." Della rapped her knuckles against the wooden door. "Here, the kitchen is just ahead." She directed Olive through the front hallway into the small kitchen just off the main sitting room, chattering all the way. "Andrea has enough to deal with at the moment, you know? Her husband just died, and the killer stole his lucky gun as well. And the Papen County Shooting Competition is only next week!"
"Mr Chekhov was a shooter?"
"Oh, we all are, you know? That's how we met. We were all friends at the same shooting club, and Andrea and Mikhael fell in love. They even got married right there at the club! Miles was so jealous."
"They got married at the same place they first met? That's so romantic." Olive sighed, dreaming about the Pie Hole all decked out in white, with her walking up between the booths to Ned's side. Except it wouldn't be her, it would be Chuck, because Ned was so in love with Chuck he would let her do anything, including make countless health code violations. Breaking away from that depressing thought, she asked, "So what's the deal with a lucky gun? Does it do anything special?"
Della scowled. "Only hit anything he aims it at. Not very fair, if you ask me, having a lucky gun, but Mikhael always said it was pure talent, so nobody stopped it." Olive opened up the pie box and began to slice the pie as Della brought out plates, still chattering away. "He's won every competition he's entered since he got that gun, and I think we're all getting sick of it! It's not even about who wins, it's just the unfairness of it all, you know? Not that we'd ever wish for something like this to happen. Poor Mikhael! He didn't deserve this."
"Neither did Andrea," a man said, coming into the kitchen. "I'm Miles Mornay, and you are?"
"This is Olive Snook, from the Pie Home–"
"–Pie Hole, actually."
"–and she brought a pie for Andrea." Della held up one of the plates to smell the pie. "Apple, is it?"
"Apple and pear, actually, with a brown sugar crust. One of the house specials."
"It smells good." Miles grabbed a plate and a fork and tasted it. "Hopefully enough to tempt Andrea. She hasn't really eaten since she found him. I'll take some in to her."
He picked up a second plate and off the counter, and left carrying them both.
"Really, I'm glad the gun is gone," Della confided as soon as Miles had left. "The competition can be fair now. Of course, it's terrible what happened to Mikhael, but this is what happens when you deny luck, you know?" She stroked the pendant on her necklace, which Olive was mildly disgusted to realise was a rabbit's foot. "I just hope Andrea's luck doesn't get even worse."
"Yeah, that Della is a weird one," Emerson said when Olive reported back to him at his office the next evening. "Somethin' spooky about how superstitious she is."
"You don't believe in luck?" Olive asked, propping herself up onto a corner of his desk. "Not even crossing your fingers or picking up a penny?"
"You pick up a penny because that's just good sense, not wasting money like that," Emerson told her. "The only luck I need comes in green, with Ben Franklin on the front. Which is exactly what Mrs Chekhov is paying me to solve her husband's murder, so let's go, Itty Bitty. What else you find out?"
"Della might have been creepy, but she also talked a lot about everyone involved." Olive leant closer. "Apparently, Mikhael Chekhov might not have been as loved as he seemed. He's been using that gun to win competitions for years, and someone else might have been getting sick of it. Especially," Olive leant closer still, "Miles Mornay."
"The very ordinary friend?" Emerson raised his brows. "Member of their shooting club, shares a house with his roommate, didn't say a word more than needed except when comforting the lovely and recently widowed Mrs Chekhov? Yeah, I can bet Della had a few things to say about him."
"So she told you too?"
"She told me that Miles was devastated when Andrea and Mikhael started dating, and left their wedding early. Didn't say why. Could be, he finally snapped, killing Mikhael and taking the gun just to throw off suspicion."
A knock came at the door.
Olive and Emerson exchanged a look. "Who's there?"
"It's me," said Miles Mornay. "Miles Mornay. I have something I need to tell you about the case."
Miles Mornay had comes to tell them that he had seen Mikhael Chekhov's missing gun that very night. Upon visiting the home of Andrea Chekhov, to comfort her about her husband's death, he had stepped into her closet and seen upon her shelf the missing gun. Making his excuses to Andrea, he had left the house and come straight to Emerson Cod's office to tell him what he had seen.
Emerson Cod, and his partner Olive Snook, were not inclined to believe his story.
"Why would she hire us if she had the gun all along?" Olive whispered.
Emerson and Olive exchanged a glance of mutual suspicion, before turning in unison back to Miles.
"Mr Mornay," Emerson began, looming impressively over the man. "Now did you happen to mention what you were doing in Mrs Chekhov's closet in the first place?"
Miles' gaze flitted around the room, tugging nervously on his shirt collar. "Well, no, I didn't mention that. But I had a perfectly good reason!"
"Uh huh. And would you like to share that perfectly good reason with us?"
"Um..." Miles' face was by now so pale he bore a passing impression to a dead fish. "I... like the wallpaper?"
"Sure you do." Emerson's tone left no doubt about how good he found this reason to be.
"Alright, I confess!"
"You murdered Mikhael Chekhov!" Olive's eyes lit up in vindication. "You wanted to murder him and steal his gun so you could finally have revenge on him for stealing Andrea, the one true love of your life!"
"No!" Miles sobbed. "Andrea's not the love of my life! I've already got a boyfriend. I only said she had the gun in her closet so you'd arrest her and she'd have to quit the competition! I'm sorry, I never should have said it!"
The facts were these. Miles Mornay, aged thirty one years, six months, and eleven days, had realised that morning, while kissing his boyfriend goodbye as he headed off to work, that with the death of Mikhael Chekhov and the absence of his gun, Miles himself would have a chance at winning the competition. He subsequently realised that if Andrea Chekhov was also absent, his chances would be even better.
Immediately, he had gone to the offices of Emerson Cod, prepared to swear that he had seen Mikhael Chekhov's winning gun, the one stolen from his living room on the night of his murder, in the closet of his wife, Andrea.
"I never would have let her go to jail for it!" he wept. "She's my best friend! But I wanted to marry Tom so much, and this would have been enough to pay for the wedding, at the shooting club just like I've always wanted. She would have understood."
"Understood being accused of murdering her husband so you could get a husband of your own?" Emerson snorted. "Breaking her out of jail might have put a damper on your honeymoon."
Olive whacked him on the arm, then turned to Miles. "Who else knew you had a boyfriend?"
"They all did," Miles hiccuped, wiping at his eyes. "Tom and I have been together since I met him at Mikhael and Andrea's wedding. We even left early so we could talk more privately, and so he could get away from his mother trying to set him up with one of the bridesmaids."
"So why would Della tell us that you were in love with Andrea, if she knew you had a boyfriend?" Emerson looked at Olive. "C'mon, Itty Bitty. We've got a murderer to find."
When they arrived at Della's house, with directions provided by Miles, the house appeared deserted. "She has to be here," Miles said. He pointed out the painter's equipment left in the front yard. "They're repainting her roof today, and she'll never go outside during that in case she steps under a ladder."
"Alright, let's have a look around." Emerson led the way to the back of the house, where they found Della with a shovel in her hands, digging a hole in her backyard with Mikhael Chekhov's gun lying beside her.
She looked up and immediately grabbed the gun, pointing it at them with unerring accuracy. "I've been practicing shooting my whole life, and this lucky gun has never missed a target. Don't test me."
"So you're the one who stole Mikhael's gun!" Miles exclaimed. "Why would you do that to poor Mikhael?"
"I had to!" Della's voice wavered, but her aim stayed true. "This gun was ruining everything!"
The facts were these.
Della d'Mere, convinced that Chekhov's gun was lucky and would hit anything it aimed at, did not think that made for a fair competition. She snuck into the Chekhovs' home to steal the gun, but Mikhael Chekhov interrupted her, and in their struggle over the gun, she hit him over the head and killed him. Fearing that she would then be arrested, and the gun would continue to subvert the fairness of the competitions she devoted her life to, she hacked off his head to remove any evidence of what had killed him, then stole both head and gun.
"I didn't mean to kill him, but he wouldn't give me the gun! Now, once I bury this gun, we'll all have a chance to win, you know? Except you, Miles." She shifted the gun slightly, her aim focusing squarely on Miles. "Sorry, but I don't deserve to go to jail for this. I'm doing what I need to do to get ride of the gun."
She fired.
Olive squeezed her eyes shut.
The shot rang through the air.
"What?" Della sounded absolutely stunned. "How... this can't happen!"
Olive opened her eyes. Miles was still standing beside her, completely unharmed, and looking equally stunned.
Della dropped the gun and sunk to the ground, staring straight ahead. "This can't happen, the gun always hits, it always hits!" Miles crossed to beside her and picked up the gun, training it on her with a resolute expression.
"I think the police can handle this one," Emerson said aside to Olive, and they slipped away just as they heard sirens coming up the drive.