Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie K r i s t i n a C l a es s o n Blackmail in a BlueBerry Pie “you think you buried it. But the dunes remember. So do i.” Kristina Claesson Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie Kristina Claesson Kristina Claesson An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie I ngrid Långström lived on the kind of street where the wind always found its way through the gaps in your coat. Her little white house with its green shutters perched on the southern cliffside like a stubborn sea bird, weathering storms long after the others had moved inland. People in the village of Brantevik called her ordentlig , which meant tidy, dependable, and other things not said aloud. Ingrid preferred it that way. Her niece Freja, on the other hand, was not tidy. At thirty-two, she wore oversized sweaters and wrote ar- ticles for a local website that reviewed antique knives and haunted houses. She had recently moved in with Ingrid after a “pause” in her career and a dramatic breakup with a man named Rasmus who owned five snakes and no towels. Kristina Claesson That Tuesday morning, Freja returned from the corner kiosk waving a letter like it was evidence in a Scandinavian noir. “Auntie, you’ve got mail. And I mean mail. ” It was unmarked, folded with obsessive neatness, slipped between ads for discounted herring and a lost parrot named Bosse. Freja read aloud: “ You think you buried it. But the dunes remember. So do I. ” She snorted. “Okay, who’s writing you poetry? Or are you secretly being stalked by the town librarian?” Ingrid blinked. The words echoed with something old and metallic in her chest. “It’s probably nothing,” she said, too quickly. “Some prank. Children.” “What kind of children write like that?” Freja said, tilting her head. “Sounds like they own a fog machine and wear wool capes.” Ingrid gave a forced chuckle, folded the letter, and slipped it into her apron. But even as she scrubbed Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie potatoes for lunch, her hands trembled slightly un- der the running tap. The kettle began to whistle. She turned it off too soon. * * * * * * There was only one person the note could be about. Anders Lind. He used to smell of salt and petrol, and sometimes he wore a green jumper with a tiny hole near the elbow. Ingrid remembered the night they’d stood behind the tourist kiosk in Helsingør, hands barely brushing, pretending not to be seen. Pretend- ing, too, that they could be something else. But that was forty-three years ago. Anders went back to his wife. Ingrid didn’t protest. She didn’t write. She erased. Until now. * * * * * * Two days later, a second letter appeared. No enve- lope, just folded tightly like a threat. “ He died thinking of you. I know this because I was there. ” This one she didn’t show Freja. Kristina Claesson Instead, Ingrid lit the burner on her old Electrolux stove, dropped the letter into the sink, and held a match to the corner. The paper curled black and soft, like charred lace. She watched the flames until only a grey spiral remained, and turned the tap on with a sigh that came from somewhere lower than her ribs. * * * * * * At church that Sunday, the whispers began. Mrs. Algotsson, who could carry gossip like soup in a spoon, hovered near the cinnamon buns, whis- pering behind a hand that had once won the regional quilting award. Pastor Oskar, who usually grasped Ingrid’s hand warmly, hesitated before touching her palm like it might be contagious. And someone had written on the community no- ticeboard with red chalk: Confess now, or we all pay. “Subtle,” Freja muttered, reading it over her shoul- der. “This town really knows how to weaponize pas- sive aggression.” “It’s probably about taxes,” Ingrid said, with a thin smile. Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie * * * * * * On Monday, she found her mailbox hanging askew. “Just the wind,” she muttered, tightening the screws herself with a small wrench from the drawer next to the toothpicks. But the next day, someone left a dead fish on her porch. A cod. Head still attached. Lying squarely atop her ‘Welcome’ mat like a calling card from Poseidon. Freja held it up with barbecue tongs. “Auntie,” she said, “this is either a message or a very confused cat.” * * * * * * That evening, Ingrid and Freja sat by the kitchen window, sipping weak coffee and watching the fog roll in from the sea. The cliffs below were obscured in mist, and the lighthouse blinked twice, then once, as if undecided. “Did you love him?” Freja asked softly. Ingrid stared into her cup. The spoon clinked as she stirred without need. Kristina Claesson “I don’t know. I think I might’ve. But I was very young. And I thought the best thing I could do was to step aside.” “You never told anyone?” “Not even myself, for a while.” Freja leaned back, letting the silence stretch. “So who’s sending the letters?” Ingrid didn’t answer. Her gaze drifted out toward the sea. * * * * * * Later that night, Ingrid found a third note. Taped inside her garden shed. “ I see you baking. I see you lying. He deserved more. ” She stood there for a long while. The sea murmured in the distance. A moth bounced dumbly against the dusty window pane. Ingrid didn’t cry. She tightened her coat, straight- ened the tape, and folded the letter with surgical pre- cision. Then she returned to the house and began baking. Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie “Pie?” Freja called from the living room. “Yes,” Ingrid said. “Blueberry. With the good crust.” Because there are things you cannot unsay. And there are things you can do, like use real butter, and roll your crusts with the kind of quiet fury that turns grief into art. * * * * * * The letters would keep coming. But Ingrid Långström, seventy-one, of Brantevik, was not afraid. She had secrets, yes. But she also had a rolling pin, a cast-iron skillet, and a niece with a taser. And most of all, she had time. Time to find out who was trying to unravel her. And maybe, just maybe, time to finish a story she thought had ended with the salt wind of 1982. * * * * * * By the third week of the letters, Ingrid had stopped baking. Not because she was afraid, but because she was done feeding ghosts. Kristina Claesson The fourth letter had been tucked into the folds of her laundry. Found as she shook out a clean white pillowcase, the paper floated to the floor like a feath- er. On it, typed in perfect Courier font: “ You will answer to us. We haven’t forgotten the dock, 1982. ” She folded it crisply, placed it in the drawer next to the checkered napkins, and poured herself a dram of brännvin. Not her usual style. But neither was being watched. “Okay,” said Freja, looking at her aunt over the rim of her mug. “This is officially creepy. I’ve made a list of enemies. You’ve got... six.” “Only six?” Ingrid asked. “Four are women who claim you won the Midsum- mer Pie Contest through ‘suspicious crisping.’ One is Pastor Oskar, whom I don’t fully trust, by the way. And one is someone named Gunnel Bergström who apparently believes you seduced her husband in 1984 using cinnamon and a cable-knit cardigan.” “I never seduced him. He had a fondness for spice,” Ingrid said, dryly. “That’s all.” Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie * * * * * * One evening, after a heavy rain that soaked through the coastal pines and brought with it the metallic smell of seaweed and secrets, the power cut out. The house went dark just as Freja had gotten to the twist in her murder podcast. “This is how it starts,” she said flatly. “This is exact- ly how people die in Scandinavian thrillers.” “We are not dying tonight,” Ingrid replied, striking a match with calm precision. “You’re not even wear- ing socks.” She moved through the house with the confidence of someone who had known it intimately for forty years, lighting stubby candles, placing them near corners where shadows lingered too long. The wind was violent. It slapped the windows as if it were owed something. “Do you think it’s someone from the village?” Fre- ja asked. “Or... someone you haven’t seen in a long time?” “Could be both,” Ingrid said. “That’s the thing about villages. No one ever really leaves. They just learn to haunt quieter.” Kristina Claesson * * * * * * The next letter didn’t come by mail. It came by brick. Sometime just after midnight, there was a crash, shattering glass, the shriek of a cat, and the unmis- takable thunk of something solid landing among the half-dead geraniums. They found the brick in the kitchen, sitting smugly in a pile of glass and petals. Wrapped around it was another note: “ Confess to your family before I do. ” Ingrid stood barefoot in the glass. She didn’t even flinch. “Right,” she said. “That’s enough of that.” * * * * * * The next morning, Ingrid did what no one expect- ed: she drove into town. Not to the police, they had been useless, murmuring about “youthful mischief ” and writing everything in a tiny spiral notebook. She went to the harbour. Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie Freja trailed behind her like a reluctant documen- tary filmmaker, carrying her phone and muttering, “I’m recording everything. Just in case this turns into a Dateline episode.” They arrived at the old fish processing warehouse, long shuttered, now mostly a graveyard for rusting equipment and broken crab traps. But someone had been there recently. There were footprints in the mud. Cans of cheap lager. A red thermos that looked heartbreakingly familiar. “Anders,” Ingrid whispered. The air was thick with salt and decay. Birds circled overhead, screaming warnings too late. A figure emerged from the shadows behind the crab cages. Not young. Not old either. Hair in dis- array, beard like an afterthought, coat flapping like wings in the wind. “You came,” he said. Freja nearly dropped her phone. “Holy sh... wait, is this...?” “Hello, Leif,” Ingrid said, her voice steady. Kristina Claesson “You remember my name,” he said, surprised. “I wasn’t sure. I always felt... peripheral.” “You were Anders’ cousin,” she said. “You were at the dock that night.” He stepped forward. His eyes were glassy, blood- shot, but not entirely mad. “He told me everything. What you meant to each other. What he gave up. What he never stopped re- gretting. I was there when he died, Ingrid. He said your name.” “So you decided to punish me?” she said, her voice brittle as sea ice. “Not punish. Reveal,” Leif said. “You’ve been pre- tending for too long. I wanted the truth to wash up, like everything else eventually does.” Freja moved instinctively closer to her aunt. “Okay, Leif, I’m going to say this once: maybe your therapist quit on you for a reason.” “You don’t understand!” he snapped. “I loved him too! I watched him waste away in a fog of regret, and you got to grow tomatoes and win pie contests!” Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie “He made his choice,” Ingrid said quietly. “And I made mine. We all did.” There was a long silence. The waves crashed against the rocks. Gulls wheeled, silent now. Leif ’s shoulders sank. For a moment he looked like a child who had rehearsed a monologue too long, only to forget the ending. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out some- thing shiny. “Is that a...?” Freja started. “A thermos,” Leif said. “It was his. He kept it until the end.” He placed it gently on the ground. “Now you can have it.” And with that, he turned, walked out toward the cliffs, and disappeared into the fog. * * * * * * Later, in the kitchen, Freja poured herself a stiff drink and handed one to Ingrid. Kristina Claesson “I’ll say this,” she muttered. “You really know how to pick your ex-lovers’ cousins.” “I never picked Leif,” Ingrid said. “He was always just... watching.” “Do you think he’s gone now?” “No,” Ingrid said. “But I think he said what he needed to.” She turned the thermos over in her hands. Inside, a single photograph. Faded, water-warped. Her and Anders, behind the tourist kiosk, in 1982. “He kept this all that time?” “Yes,” Ingrid said, smiling faintly. “Even longer than I did.” * * * * * * That night, the wind softened. The fifth letter never came. But Ingrid knew that didn’t mean the story was over. Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie Stories like this never end. They fade, dissolve, re- appear in different form. She tucked the photo into a recipe book between “Cardamom Rolls” and “Regrets.” As for Freja, she began a blog post titled: “My Aunt, a Brick, and the Ghosts of the Baltic: A True Crime Memoir in Five Pies” THE END Kristina Claesson Blackmail in a Blueberry Pie Kristina Claesson ovi eBook Publishing 2025 Ovi magazine Design: thanos