Continued From Day 17…

It was decided several years before that Christine’s pumpkin pie was so perfect, that there was no use competing against her.  Following the competition, the pies were auctioned off to the highest bidder.  Since before Jeff could remember, the pie that always sold for the highest bid was Mrs. Ekstrand’s coconut creme pie.

And oh, what a pie it was!  Mrs. Ekstrand took great pains with her Grand Champion pie, especially the meringue and coconut on the top.  The meringue had perfectly-stiff peaks, was a beautiful golden brown, and the coconut was toasted to a perfect color.  Not only did it look beautiful, it tasted oh so wonderful, and everyone knew it.  Nobody could beat Mrs. Ekstrand’s pie.  Nobody.  Well, Christine’s “Perfect Pumpkin Pie” was certainly close, but the two pies are nothing alike, of course, so there was no comparison between the two.

Since Christine’s pie was not allowed in the competition, every year she spent a few days before the competition baking hundreds of pies to be auctioned off as a “write-in,” and the proceeds were donated to different community causes, such as the library fund or the volunteer fire department.

But this year was going to be different.  Even when Christine was perfectly healthy, baking so many pies ‘round the clock before the auction took a lot of energy, and her disease had progressed so far that she could barely get out of bed anymore, much less bake hundreds of pies.  But that, too, was planned for, just like the accounting duties with Mrs. Hansen.

Early in the summer, Christine started training a “mystery chef.”  Nobody knew who the mystery chef was, and there was some speculation that Mrs. Ekstrand was the likely candidate, since she was the pie champion for many years running.  The neighbors in the surrounding farmsteads had a sort of “spying” system going.  They kept their eyes out for visitors at Big Sky, and Mrs. Ekstrand was most certainly a frequent visitor there.

To Be Continued…

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