The Pumpkin Thief

by

Melanie Jackson

Version 1.2 – March, 2011

Published by Brian Jackson at KDP

Copyright © 2010 by Melanie Jackson

Discover other titles by Melanie Jackson at www.melaniejackson.com

This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Chapter 1

Officer Bill had risen from the dead. I noticed him standing by a hay bale as I drove my cart by the closed gates of the 4-H haunted House on Harris Street, doling out a few chalk lines as I raced through the town at a blistering 4 mph. Of course, no one called it the 4-H house. Everyone in town knew it as the old Burns Mansion and that it was truly haunted. Who it is haunted by is unclear. Some said it was the previous owners, Elijah and Theresa Burns, though they had only died in a motor-home fire in 2007 and the place had a reputation long before that. Personally, I think it is haunted by bad taste and worse memories of the unpleasant people who lived there. A gothic revival building has no place in Hope Falls and you’re just begging for spooks if you build one.

Blue whined, but she never had liked Officer Bill. Seeing the police mascot resurrected did not cause me a qualm because he wasn’t my problem any more.  Besides he was looking quite at home with the helium balloon and cheesecloth ghosts, the witch on the broomstick that had splattered herself against the wall and the vampire peeking coyly out of the attic window. It was mid afternoon; vampires should be coy. This haunted house was PG-13 which is about how scary poor Bill was looking. He had once been an aid in public service safety lectures, but someone (okay me) had had a couple accidents with his giant papiermache head last spring that caused him to develop leprosy and to lose a couple of ears when he got his giant head jammed in a door and then fell in a fountain. The new chief of police had been upset about this but it led to me solving the Skate Park murder, so all has been forgiven.

My name is Chloe Boston and I am a parking enforcement officer in the town of Hope Falls. I work Monday through Friday and every other Saturday from nine until five. Even on Halloween if it happens to fall on any of those days, which this year it did.

Blue, my female Rottweiler, rides with me everywhere. She is quite elderly and I am determined that we will enjoy every moment we have together. Blue loves riding in the electric cart while I’m on duty, and is also delighted with my trike—a bike with a sidecar that my dad built for me because Blue tends to get carsick in a regular automobile. That day we were both wearing costumes. I was in the grim reaper cape with plastic scythe and Blue was in a witch’s hat. We had a plastic pumpkin filled with mini Abazabas which we handed out to the children we passed on the street. School was out and kids were beginning to trick-or-treat the merchants downtown. We live in a hilly town and going house to house is too grueling for the youngest children, so the custom of trick-or-treating downtown had been initiated.

At six o’clock there would be a costume contest in the park with a pumpkin walk and some games like bobbing for apples and donut on a string. At seven they would have the pumpkin lighting ceremony where someone would be awarded the best jack-o-lantern prize. Then The Good Time Ghouls, a fifties all-girl tribute band, would be performing. Those willing to brave a twisted ankle could dance in Court House Park on the root-encumbered lawn. I couldn’t wait!

The haunted house and corn maze were on the other side of the courthouse. The maze had been open for the last two weekends and was doing a brisk business after sundown. There was no charge as long as you picked ten ears of corn which would be given to the food bank. Normally being located near a cemetery would be considered a bad thing for a business, but for Halloween it made perfect sense and the corn harvested from the field, planted for the occasion, had been welcome at a time when donations were down. Both attractions could be seen for five dollars on Halloween, the money going to the 4-H club. The Odd Fellows and Kiwanis and Rotary clubs had various booths outside the maze selling cider, candy apples and hotdogs also raising money for their sponsored charities. There were pony rides and a petting zoo. Everyone wore costumes. Hope Falls liked Halloween and killjoys were not welcome.

Halloween is my favorite time of year and I was so excited that I was singing along to Monster Mash. Blue likes music so she doesn’t mind if I keep a boom-box in the cart. We were ignoring our regular route in order to police downtown and make sure that it was safe for the costumed pedestrians. The locals were very considerate of the holiday tradition and detoured down side streets, but recent publicity had attracted a lot of tourists to the event. The out-of-towners were not always so careful with those on foot, or about not parking in front of entertainment venues which were a major fund-raiser for neighborhood charities.

I turned off of Joy Street, so named because there had been a bordello there once, and onto Main. Mrs. Everett was on the corner, dressed as Snow White and handing out candy outside her shop, What Lies Beneath. The window was full of black and orange lingerie. The black bras and panties were probably new, but the orange corsets were less popular and I thought I recognized them from last year. I waved and yelled “Happy Halloween!” Blue woofed until we got a smile and wave back. Mrs. Everett is a member of the Lit Wits, a writing group I belong to, and she is also an amateur sleuth who helps me sometimes. Esprit de corp runs high with us.

Other Lit Wits were about. Mrs. Graves was working in the Krazy’s Kettle Korn booth who always donated money to the animal shelter. She was dressed as a scarecrow and looked nice and warm. The smell was delicious and I promised Blue we’d get some later. I saw Mrs. Smith at the edge of the courthouse green. She was dressed as a gypsy and was reading people’s palms. Her charity was the library’s adult literacy program. She noticed me right away and called: “Come have your palm read!”

“I will,” I called back.

As I mentioned, I get off work at five. The pumpkin lighting wasn’t until seven, so I would have plenty of time to go home and get my jack-o-lantern. I had nursed my pumpkin patch along all summer, Blue and the cats sacrificing our little square of grass in the front of our duplex so that I could grow what I hoped would be an award winning squash. And I did have what I thought would be a winner. I had put my largest pumpkin on the bathroom scale and it weighed in at 119 pounds (it was a Mammoth Gold variety and I got my seeds from Mr. Jackman, another Lit Wit). The pumpkin was a couple inches wider than the yardstick I tried to measure it with, maybe forty inches in diameter though only about eighteen inches high. My dad had already helped me load it into my car since it weighed more than I did. He would meet me at the park a little before seven and help me off load it safely. Probably I could roll it down the blanketed plywood ramp he had rigged up on my own, but if it slipped there could be injuries. Just imagine getting written up in the newspaper for injuring someone with a squash. TOURIST ASSAULTED BY VEGETABLE! I’d never hear the end of it. And an unplanned escape wouldn’t do my pumpkin any good either.

For those who have never grown really large pumpkins, let me warn you that there is a downside to having one get that big. The walls of the squash get so thick that only the largest knife can cut all the way through and it limits you to simple faces. Unless you know someone who has a lot of tools and doesn’t mind you borrowing their coping saw. It wasn’t the preferred use of the saw of course, but Dad has a knife sharpening business— forced on him after he was made to retire from his job as chief of police— and he said that I was less likely to shed blood with a saw than hacking away with the butcher knife I’d borrowed from my mom. Mom and Dad are separated and there is sometimes a bit of rivalry over who spends more time with their only child.

Some years, summer holds on forever, but this year autumn had wrestled for honors and won. There had been one hard frost already and I was glad that I had loaded my other pumpkins onto an old bed sheet and dragged them under cover of the porch last weekend. Perhaps that is why I was spared a visit from the pumpkin thief that had hit several of the pumpkin patches. Jeffrey Little, a fellow parking enforcement officer, thought it was just kids messing about, but since only large pumpkins were taken, I thought it was someone who really wanted to win the pumpkin contest and wasn’t adverse to cheating. There was also some grumblings about an out of town pumpkin thief who was raiding people’s gardens for souvenirs, but I had doubts about it being a tourist. I was certain our pumpkin pilferer was local since he knew where the patches were.

I turned onto Bryant and noted that the sky was still clear, so we were probably good for the night, though the weatherman said rain was on the way and it was getting colder by the hour.

Blue and I returned to the station and I plugged in my cart so the battery could recharge and we took my trike and Abazabas and headed for home. I saw my friend Jeffrey (dressed as a hobo) in the parking lot talking to the new chief (dressed in Armani. He isn’t the kind to wear a costume). I hoped Jeffrey wasn’t in trouble again. He is not fond of our new chief and I fear that the animosity is mutual.

My duplex is done in the bungalow style (small and squat with pretty windows). My side has been renovated extensively so it is really only half authentic bungalow. The owner has never gotten around to fixing the other half so I have no neighbors. This suits me fine.

I prepared dinner for Blue and the cats as I sang along to Sheb Wooley’s Shudders and Screams. I didn’t eat myself. I was holding out for some mulled cider and pumpkin cake downtown. Blue likes pumpkin cake, too, but she has a tricky tummy and shouldn’t have spicy food. I, on the other hand, have an excellent constitution and need not go in fear of cinnamon and clove.

The cats, Apollo and Aphrodite, had no desire to come to the pumpkin lighting and rub shoulders with the hoi polloi, but Blue enjoys all social events, so I loaded her up in the car with all the windows down and then checked one more time on my jack-o-lantern. The face was a bit Picassoish, cut half with a knife and half with a saw, but the size was magnificent. And I had three large candles to make sure the face was good and bright because it would be really dark by seven. Usually I don’t like real candles, but the battery ones weren’t bright enough, so I made do. I tried fitting a seatbelt around the pumpkin but it wouldn’t stretch that far, so I resolved to drive extra slowly and carefully.

The breeze had a bite to it and shifted the fallen leaves around with a delightfully creepy rustle that suggested something sly was hiding in the drifts that built up in the street gutters and ditches. The stray leaves ran recklessly into the street and were flattened by the tires of my car. Blue hung her head out the window and sniffed for all she was worth.

I stayed off the main street where children were still trick-or-treating. That meant driving by the cemetery and Burns Mansion whose thoroughfare was rather steeply pitched and ill-lighted when the haunted house isn’t in use. The mansion wasn’t scheduled to open for another hour and the gates were still closed. I noticed that it was still being kitted out with last minute scares by teens in hideous costumes. The latest edition was a corpse— Officer Bill, in fact— twisting from the oak tree in the front lawn. He was surrounded by a flock of live crows who watched it closely, rather like dignitaries at an execution. I couldn’t understand this because they should have been afraid. The scarecrow body under Bill’s giant head seemed a bit more realistic than the other ‘monsters’ and I hoped it wouldn’t frighten any of the young children who knew Officer Bill from visits to their school. Frankly, I wouldn’t bring very young children to either the haunted house or the corn maze. The hay bale maze was smaller and more on a kid scale, but truthfully I didn’t like it either. Enclosed spaces bother me. This was my Cousin Todd’s fault. He had terrorized me with monster stories when I was young. Since no one told me that Todd was a liar, I believed him about the monster in the closet and alligators under the bed.

I saw Dad was waiting under a street light wearing a glow-in-the-dark skeleton shirt and pulled over at the edge of the park. His face was painted like a skull and I wondered if it was itchy. We would have to carry the pumpkin in a blanket down a short flight of stairs, but it was the only parking space available on the block and Dad and I had already practiced this maneuver in reverse.

“Chloe, Blue— how are my girls?” he asked, giving me a hug. He leaned over and gave Blue a pat since she was a girl too. “Your jack-o-lantern made the trip okay?”

“Yep. I was worried coming down the hill, but I guess it’s too smug and fat to think about moving.”

“It has reason to be smug. That is one fine pumpkin,” Dad said enthusiastically. “Let’s get it out.”

It took a bit of maneuvering around the stage, but we got the pumpkin down to the lawn without mishap. I selected a spot at the base of an old elm tree that was fairly flat. Dad and I were both sweating, but lots of people were stopping by to admire my pumpkin, so it was worth it. There would be some stiff competition since there were probably already a hundred or so pumpkins lining the walkways that criss-crossed the park. I spotted my chief rival right away. Mr. Jackman had made a pumpkin snowman, stacking three graduated sized white pumpkins one on top of the other. My one pumpkin was larger. But his display was taller.

Seven o’clock came, costume awards were handed out and we were told to light our pumpkins. Dad had a lighter and had squatted down beside me to do the honors when I felt a presence looming. I’m not psychic, but I knew who it was even before he spoke.

“Hello, Chloe. Hello, Blue,” the chief said.  He had honored the occasion by wearing a spider tie tack and I gave him credit for acknowledging my dog. Blue had been a source of contention early in our relationship. “That is one fine pumpkin,” he said, unknowingly echoing my dad.

“Thanks.” I took a deep breath and introduced my dad to Chief Wallace. The moment could have been awkward, but Dad carries no grudges about what happened. After a few seconds, those who were close enough to overhear the peaceful exchange went on about their business, maybe relieved, maybe disappointed. Randy Wallace is the new chief, but the town folk mostly reserve the title for my dad who was their choice for three elections. He was terrible at paperwork and hates computers, so probably it is best that he’s moved on to other things, but he had been a good neighbor and loyal friend, and older people tended to value that more than efficiency.

The chief murmured a few more civilities and then moved on.

There was one blot on the festivities. My cousin, Althea Lewis, had written a Halloween poem and bribed someone into letting her read it. Althea’s poems are ghastly and I thought the event planners should be arrested for aid and abetment of a public nuisance, but I include it here for the sake of thoroughness and so that others may bear witness to what I have had to endure.

It’s autumn in HF again

As it is in NY, SF, LA and ZB

But there’s nothing like

Fall in our own hometown

For Fall’s the time

That makes hometowns our own

As I bumble through my hood

Watching for Goblins and gum

I see that the summer heat no longer shimmers off

The cracked and canted slabs of sidewalk over which I stumble

And therefore remove my sunglasses to don

A standard woolen cap

There is a crispness to the sound

Of the tires that I dodge

Speeding across the tarmac at my feet

And the thundering roar of bass and horn blast

That pours from cars stuck in gridlock

In front of the high school and the Dairy Queen

The smog is fresh and heady

As if newly disgorged

From a power plant or V8

All trace of stale smog blown out to sea

Replaced by desert sand, air you can chew,

Riding the mighty Cascades and over our chimneys

The sound of gun shots

Carries for miles

In all directions

Dead deer fall

What little wildlife

That can ever be seen in the streets

Seems to rot a little slower by the side of the road

The riots at Starbucks are calmer

And even the drive by eggings

Are played out with a modicum of decorum

I thank God for another springtime in HF

And humbly pray that I see another winter as well

She finished and everyone clapped because it was over. Actually, I thought that this was one of her better poems.

Chief Wallace, the mayor (Andrew Coty), and the head of the chamber of commerce (Lucy Watts) were the three judges for this year’s pumpkin carving contest and were wandering around with their clipboards making notes. I was biting my nails, wondering if the new chief would feel obliged to vote for someone not in his employ. The judges had conferred for what seemed like hours and were just mounting the steps on the bandstand to make their choice known when there came a series of screams from the haunted house.

Of course, there should be screams from a haunted house, but not that many and not so genuinely filled with terror.

Chapter 2

The chief was on higher ground and able to see more than I was, so he got the first look of the crowd stampeding down the hill. There was a lot of babbling around me, but I saw the chief’s mouth say a very bad word. He looked at once toward my pumpkin— it was a bit of a landmark in the dark— and then at me.

“Boston!” he shouted. “Come with me! Everyone else, stay calm!” And then he started up the hill.

A blizzard would be envious of how cold the chief can sound when he’s upset. It was obvious that something was very wrong and my first thought was that maybe there was a fire. Dad might have thought that too because he was right beside me. Dad is a member of the auxiliary firefighters and has EMT training.  Dad, Blue and I raced after the chief, pushing our way through the crowd. Dad was saying soothing things to everyone we passed, telling people not to panic and they calmed right down though they kept talking excitedly.

Mr. Jackman joined us about half way up the hill. He is also a volunteer fireman as well as a Lit Wit. That night he was dressed as a clown.

“God’s nightgown,” I breathed as we finally made it to the haunted house.

Dad said something worse and I didn’t blame him.

Officer Bill’s papiermache head was no longer on the body hanging from the tree, and I understood why the scarecrow had looked so very authentic when I passed it that afternoon. It wasn’t stuffed with straw; it held a real man. A real dead man.

The chief was on his cell demanding that every officer be called in and for Bryce to get the crime kit and get out to the Burn’s house immediately.

“He didn’t die from strangulation,” my dad said calmly, looking at the pale face. I think he was almost relieved to find a body and not a fire.

“No distortion in the features,” Mr. Jackman agreed. He and Dad looked pretty silly standing there in their costumes staring at a corpse, but then I guess we all did. Except the chief.

“Blue, guard the gate,” I said, signaling her to sit by the ticket-takers abandoned table. No one needed to guard the gate, but it gave her a plausible reason for being there.

I want to state for the record, that I was not happy about there being a dead body at the haunted house. But I couldn’t help but be pleased that the chief had wanted me to come along to help. Most of the other police officers have no use for me and sneer at my wish to become a detective. One with a title. I already am a sleuth, but it would be nice to be official. I quest after the position like Cousin Althea quests after engagement rings and with as little success.

“Boston, do you recognize this man?” the chief asked. I answered though it occurred to me he might be talking to my dad.

“No. Maybe he came for the festival.” I looked at his manicured hands showing under the straw stuffed in his sleeves. There was a bit of blood on the left one. “He has money— not motor court material. Want me to call the Morningside Inn?”

The chief blinked.

“First go see if anyone is in the house. I don’t want anyone else blundering into the crime scene and for sure we don’t need any children seeing this. If you find them, guide them out the back, okay?”

I nodded reluctantly. I didn’t really want to go into the house. It has always scared me. I got away from it as a kid and I have long suspected it wanted a grudge match.

The chief turned to my father and Mr. Jackman. I heard him ask my father to go back down the hill and see if anyone knew who the dead man was and to also collect names of anyone who had been at the haunted house when the body was discovered. Mr. Jackson was sent to the corn maze to make sure it was empty.

Something about the ground under the body made me stop and look around. I swear I wasn’t just eavesdropping.

“Chief,” I said. “Look at Officer Bill.” I meant the head. The shadows were long and the lighting deliberately ghastly, but clearly there was a caramel apple stuck to Bill’s forehead. The apple had a large rotten spot.

“Was it the apple that knocked the head down?” Dad asked. I knew he was talking to me.

“Yes. It was probably a teenager— a boy— who threw the apple. It wouldn’t take much to knock it down. The head never did stay on the way it should. I think we weren’t supposed to find the body for a while.” The chief was giving me more odd looks, but Dad and Mr. Jackman just waited while I thought. “Talk to Randy Meyers.”

“He’s the pitcher for The Prospectors varsity team, right?” Dad asked. “The boy has an arm on him.”

“And he’s disrespectful enough to throw the apple,” Mr. Jackman added. “And pushy enough to be first in line for the haunted house.”

“It probably doesn’t matter,” I said. “But just in case. And the dead guy is left handed.”

I started again for the house but Dad stopped me once more.

“Chloe, there’s no visible head trauma.” Dad asked, “Was it a gunshot?”

“No, stab wound. Probably to the heart. And it didn’t happen right here. There would be at least a little blood. Real blood,” I added, looking at the various gory monsters posed around the hay bales. “Bill was on those bales over there earlier today. We should start looking there.”

Dad said nothing else and neither did the chief, so I continued toward the house, not thrilled about going inside the haunted mansion alone, but grateful I hadn’t been sent into the corn maze. It wouldn’t do for the chief to find out just how big a chicken I really am.

We have a few Federal-style McMansions and one or two questionable Greek Revival abodes in the new section of town. Downtown, everything is period Victorian or else bungalow. That makes the Burns’ mansion unique. Even before the high school drama department had run amok with black and red paint. I thought it looked horrible, but the city had claim to it because of the last owners dying with taxes due and they could do whatever they wanted with it, even make it a bigger eyesore than usual.

Thick ivy covered the west wall. It smelled fusty and I was sure there were spiders in it. The leaves also made an unpleasant whispery noise as the wind tossed through them. The art department couldn’t improve on that so they had left it alone.

I didn’t touch the gargoyle knocker since it was painted foam and just for show. The door was open anyway. I did pause just inside the threshold, both to listen for voices but also to take in the sights. It was not the way I remembered it. I told myself I was being sensibly cautious because there was a murderer on the loose, but I was pretty certain that our man was long gone. Even if he had lingered on site until the house opened, escaping with the panicked and costumed crowd made wonderful sense. But I was also remembering a morbid poem that my nasty Cousin Todd had read to me as a child: Open lock to the Dead Man's knock! Fly bolt, and bar, and band!—

The lighting was suitably dim but adequate. The exterior was gothic revival but the interior was not. I wondered where they had stored the furniture. The house was full of antiques, though not true gothic furniture— probably too uncomfortable for day to day living. Perhaps everything was upstairs where it was safely away from the students’ red paint and the tourists’ sticky fingers.

The house was suitably ghastly. The foyer’s red-flocked wall paper hung in shreds, obviously clawed off the walls by some giant beast and not drooping due to mundane water damage. Cobwebs dripped off of everything they could possibly hang from except the cracked mirror in the antique frame which I suspected had been made of distorted glass because one of my eyes was bugged out big and one was very small. ‘Blood’ dripped from the chandelier and pooled on the rug in an easily avoided puddle. It was gory, but illogical. How would blood get there? It wasn’t like you could have butchered anything hanging from the chandelier. It was too delicate.

Still, though I knew it was paint and quite dry, I stepped around it. Nor did I touch anything with my hands. It seemed to me that a haunted house would be a fine place to murder someone. There would be zillions of finger prints and who would detect the extra blood? And you could even store the body unnoticed for hours, if you wanted. Just throw a sheet or mask over it and it became another anonymous corpse. Hang it in a tree and no one would get a good look at it. Maybe not for days since the weather was cold.

“Hello,” I called. I kept my voice soft so it would be reassuring to any lost children. And so the monster lurking in the closet wouldn’t hear me. The house was too quiet. There would normally have been costumed drama students around playing monsters, guides and storytellers. There should have been kids gasping and shrieking.

I noticed that the mansion’s gory decorations had been limited to what could be mended with a coat of paint or some new wallpaper. Claw marks would have been great around the door frame, but they had stopped with the wallpaper. Nor did they get paint on the marble floors. Instead there were non-period rugs everywhere. Some were even bathmats.

The haunted house tour was designed to lead guests down an obvious path. The front parlor with its delicate stained glass windows was barricaded with a torn up settee adorned with more red paint. The room looked empty, but I leaned over the barricade to check the space beyond for scared people or even other bodies. There was nothing but a grandfather clock with the hands running rapidly backwards and a creepy portrait of a vampire with glowing red eyes hanging crooked on the wall— and more blood on the wallpaper though none on the portrait and floor. Clearly no one in the art department had ever taken a class in blood-spray patterns. Blood doesn’t avoid paintings and carpet when being sprayed from an artery. The silliness of it was making me feel better about being alone.

A thick silk cord roped off the upstairs. I knew that I would have to check it eventually, but my first sweep was for stragglers, maybe kids frightened by the screaming who were too terrified to come out on their own.

I stepped into the carpeted hall— more shredded wallpaper, more blood— and felt something shift beneath my foot. Toccata and Fugue in D minor underscored by snarling and screaming thundered at me from speakers shrouded by more cobwebs, and I realized I had stepped on a pressure plate and triggered the din. Bach would not have been amused, and so much for being quiet and not scaring anyone left in the house.

The dining room was supposed to be elegant, I guess, and certainly there were goblets and candelabras on the table. But someone had gone a bit nuts with the fake dust and cobwebs. One could barely see the blood and eyeballs in the wine goblets. There was a serving platter with withered greens around an entrée of plastic skull. The potential for serving something really gory had been resisted. Someone had liberated the skeleton from the science room and set him up at the head of the table. He was wearing a noose like a tie. Under the present circumstances, it seemed in bad taste.

The fake fire in the fireplace was a nice touch, if again nonsensical. Any place abandoned long enough for things to get that filthy would not still have a fire burning in the grate. I decided that next year I would screw up my courage and volunteer to help with the haunted house so it would be more logical.

My amusement ended as I entered the master bedroom. The wall sconces held maybe twenty watt bulbs and were shrouded with dust and cobwebs, but there was enough light to still see clearly. There was plenty of fake blood and torn wallpaper, but there were some realistic splotches of rather rusty blood on the chaise lounge near the fireplace and one of the curtains had been ripped from the window and left in an inartistic pile. There was a hunting knife on the floor and a convenient wardrobe that could hold a body. Also there was a certain smell in the air— nothing too strong but quite unpleasant in the nostrils and in the imagination when you weren’t expecting it. It was important to let the tech people process the scene but I wanted very much to open the wardrobe door and look for blood stains inside. It took effort but I resisted temptation and the door remained properly closed.

Until the wardrobe burst open and a figure in a black cloak and a goblin mask ran past me bellowing unintelligibly. After one gasp and a stumble against the wall— and I think I was entitled to a moment of fear— I gave chase. More pressure plates, more screaming and then we were out a side door.

There was no garden out back, just a paved courtyard and a low fountain filled with dry leaves instead of water waiting to trip me. As I righted myself, the dark figure ran for a hedge at the edge of the patio, pushed through with suspicious ease, and took off into the corn maze.

I said some really bad words in a really loud voice.

“Boston?” It was the chief. He was pushing through some bushes and probably ruining his suit. That would make him cranky.

“Out back! Murder happened in the first floor bedroom—a suspect has entered the maze!” And then I surprised myself. Though terrified and a lot smaller than the person I was chasing, I nevertheless ran for the place in the hedge where I had seen him— or her— disappear.

“Boston!” The chief’s voice was closer. But Blue’s howling said she was closer still. I was going into the corn maze, but I wasn’t going alone. I thanked God for my dog beside me.

Chapter 3

There are worse places to pursue someone than a corn maze— through an alligator-infested swamp or quicksand, for instance— but I couldn’t think of them that night. That field of towering corn stalks was the scariest thing on the planet and I was in it.

The desire to get out of the maze leant wings to my feet and following the suspect who seemed to know the way seemed only sensible. I was supposed to be chasing him anyway. But wings don’t help much in narrow, choking rows and I didn’t want Blue to hurt herself by running too fast.

Ever been in a cornfield? At night? Outside sounds are deadened while all around you the dry crunch and whispers of the corn stalks grates against the ears. Things seem to snap and snarl all about you and it is impossible to believe that you are alone. The stalks will cut you just like paper and bare skin begins to itch and sting.

The light was also bad. The exterior edges of the field were lit up brightly enough, but the klieg lamps did not penetrate beyond a few rows of corn. The maze paths would have been marked, but I hadn’t found one. I was running through virgin territory and wondering what flaw of mind and twist of spirit led to anyone inventing such a horrid entertainment.

I was terrified of the corn. Of spiders. Of monsters with scythes. Of being lost in the field until I was nothing but bleaching bones that would be disked under by a tractor come spring. Of a possible murderer deciding to turn around and attack me in the increasing dark. Though the last one was a more reasonable possibility, it was actually the least of the terrors that stalked me.

Blue, on the other hand, was having a grand time. Usually she is silent when we go for walks, but something about the dark and comparative wildness of the setting had her sending up joyous ululations and bouncing like a puppy. This made it easier for the chief to follow me. And it was his presence behind us and the thought of Mr. Jackman before us that kept me from utter panic.

My craven heart was beating uncomfortably hard and the pounding was louder than the suspect’s wild thrashings. I faltered. I tripped. But the sight of what was doubtless a very frightened corn snake only inches from my nose had me on my feet and running in moments.

It was another minute of terrified tramping before I realized that I couldn’t hear the suspect at all any more. I stopped cold and listened. Blue obligingly ended her lope and sank down on the ground. We were both breathing heavily, but I soon realized that I was hearing another person drawing in terrible sobbing breaths, and their obvious terror knocked the blind fear out of me.

“Hello,” I called softly, using the voice I would with a stray dog or wary cat. I turned back over my shoulder and called softly: “Hold up, chief! I think it’s a kid and he’s scared to death.”

The sounds of crashing stopped.

“Blue— go slow,” I said. There was always the chance that Blue would frighten a child. She is a Rottweiler. But I was having a hard time judging direction in that horrible, oppressive place and knew that her nose was better than my ears. And since Blue loves people, she would probably take me directly to whoever was crying so piteously. Or to Mr. Jackman who would help me find whoever was crying.

Blue got to her feet and began pushing crosswise through the corn rows. We were making a mess on the dried stalks and I was positive that I was getting spiders on me as I shoved them over, but I followed Blue unquestioningly. A minute later I found my cloaked goblin. The hood of the costume had fallen back and I saw spikes of familiar golden hair. The goblin was crouched low, weeping. His mask had fallen off.

“Jack. Jacky MacKay,” I said softly. “It’s okay. It’s me, Chloe, and my dog Blue.”

The sobbing was swallowed in one or two gulps and a terrified face looked up at me. It was red and rather embryonic. One hand covered his scratched cheek, the other was carried awkwardly because the arm was broken and in a sling. Jacky MacKay is ‘challenged’. He came into the world just shy of the six months where babies are typically saved these days and was a living testimonial to the wonders of modern medicine. He was also what many people call ‘simple’.

Blue went over and started laving the boy’s face. I say ‘boy’ because though Jacky is physically seventeen, his demeanor is more that of a backward five year old. Jacky hugged Blue for a moment with his good arm and then said: “Hi, Chloe.”

“Did I scare you in the house?” I asked, squatting down. I tasted salt on my lip before I felt the sting and realized I was bleeding. I must have bitten myself when I fell. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You were like a black ghost. You chased me,” Jacky said. And I realized that though ninety-nine point nine percent of the world would never be afraid of me under any circumstances that, to Jacky, I might very well have looked frightening in the dim light with a billowing black cloak that made me look rather larger than I am.

“I’m sorry. You sure scared me too. I guess we looked pretty silly running around like that.” This got a watery chuckle.

“Silly,” he agreed. “I don’t want to play hide and seek anymore.”

“Is that what you were doing? Playing hide and seek with someone?”

He shook his head slowly. “There was screaming and people ran and Mom got lost. I decided to hide. I stayed there a long time.”

I heard the chief come up behind me.

“Have you met our new chief yet?” I asked the boy without turning around. “His name is Randy.”

Jacky studied the chief from behind Blue’s body. The chief, grasping the situation, squatted down on his heels beside me. I noticed that his suit was looking battered.

“Hi, Jacky.” He didn’t reach for the boy or ask any questions.

“Hi.” Jacky is not very expressive. Most of his facial muscles go unused and I wondered if they would ever sharpen into their intended adult form. This is what the real Peter Pan looks like and I was grateful that God had only made me small.

“Well, I am thinking that I have had enough of haunted houses and corn patches. You maybe want to come with Blue and me and go see the jack-o-lanterns in the park? I have a real big one that I grew myself.”

“I saw your pumpkin. It’s real big,” Jacky said. He stood up suddenly. He is almost six feet tall and towered over me. “I’ll go with Blue. I need to find my mom.”

“We definitely need to find your mom,” I agreed. Standing slowly, I offered the chief my hand and pretended to work at pulling him up. He didn’t need the help, but the clowning was to show the still slightly wary Jacky that the chief was harmless.

“Chloe, why don’t you go with Blue and Jacky,” the chief said, “and I’ll make sure the crime scene is being processed. You said the bedroom?”

“Yeah. The settee and the wardrobe. Um, Jacky was in the wardrobe so….” So there would be confusing prints and other trace evidence to confuse things. That was unfortunate but the chief didn’t look annoyed. If anything our new chief was flooded with silent compassion. I wondered if he had never met anyone like Jacky before, or if maybe someone in his family had similar problems.

“I’ll meet you in the park in a few minutes and you can fill me in,” the chief said and then turned and melted back into the cornfield.

“Do you know the best way out?” I asked Jacky. “Because I really want to leave here.”

“I think so,” he said and started off. Blue and I stuck close. I was no longer afraid of a murderer turning on me or being lost until my bones bleached, but there were still possible monsters and spiders lurking in the horrid field. Enough was enough.

We found Jacky’s mom on the courthouse steps and she was very relieved to see her son with Blue and me. I explained in as indirect and un-alarming language as I could about where Jacky had been and that probably someone would be by in the morning to take Jacky’s fingerprints. I was pretty sure that this wouldn’t frighten Jacky because he knows all the officers, excepting the chief, but told Lydia MacKay that I— and Blue— would be happy to come out and be with Jacky if he wanted while he made his statement. She said she would call me if Blue was needed.

Feeling exhausted once the adrenaline wore off, I waved Lydia and Jacky goodbye and then turned to look at the deserted park. Most of the jack-o-lanterns had gone home with their owners or been trampled in the excitement, but mine was still there along with Mr. Jackman’s snowman. It would have to stay there until tomorrow. There was no sign of Dad, and Blue and I couldn’t move it on our own. I started down the steps to wait for the chief, my dad or Mr. Jackman. Someone would show up eventually and tell me what was going on. I was too tired to sleuth any more.

Chapter 4

The crime scene was being processed by the official detectives and I had been politely booted out. Again. But so had the chief, I noticed once I glanced back up the hill, so I didn’t feel so bad. Anyway, chasing monsters through a cornfield can really take it out of a girl.

I made my way to my jack-o-lantern and sat on a bench that was far from clean, having had hordes of cider-swilling kids dribbling on it for hours. But I was far from clean myself after rolling around the corn field so a little more dirt on my shroud didn’t matter.

I was looking sadly at my jack-o-lantern whose candles were guttering and wondered if I would have won had the discovery of the body not interrupted proceedings. The air smelled of baking pumpkin and I realized with a pang that I never got my pumpkin cake. Blue looked kind of depressed too. Maybe it was the cold light from the nearly full moon overpowering the sodium vapor streetlamps. I know the lamps are efficient but I’ve never cared for their eerie, dim light. Of course, maybe she was just tired after playing wolf in the cornfield. She hadn’t done that in a couple of years. I hoped her joints weren’t hurting.

The chief joined me and my limpet—I mean my cousin, Althea, who had clearly been lingering in the park in hope of gathering gossip. She popped out from behind a tree when the chief appeared and plopped down beside me on the bench and made her usual insincere facial grimace in my direction. It was petty, but I hoped she got her princess dress covered in apple goo.

Even when I am busy detecting, I try not to stick my nose out beyond reasonable limits. Althea, the gossip hound, doesn’t know the meaning of ‘reasonable’. Or ‘limits’, come to think of it.

“Oh thank goodness you’re here. I’ve been so frightened out here all alone!” I shouldn’t have to tell you that that was Althea being breathless and clingy, not me. Nor was she addressing her comment to me, a mere female.

Even if I had been mindless with terror, I never would have admitted it to the boss. Or anyone. Women who want to be taken seriously as detectives don’t do breathless and clingy. However, sometimes we roll our eyes to show disgust.

When I remained silent, the chief took a stab at being reassuring while Althea fluttered her lashes. The chief is single. Althea can’t help herself. She wants to marry—preferably someone with money— and is trying to take that first step. Because I don’t like her, I am inclined to think that it isn’t a man she wants so much as that symbolic piece of crystallized carbon set in a fashionable platinum band that a man usually gives a woman when they are plighted. The chief was too tired for games though (and flirting around a corpse is just tacky) and I was just tired of Althea.

“Go home and lock your door before someone cuts your head off,” I advised when the chief paused to draw breath. “Then you won’t have to be afraid anymore and I won’t worry so much about you, dear.” The ‘dear’ was gratuitous. She is always calling people ‘dear’ and ‘sweetie’ so they would excuse her impolite comments and nosy wheedling. Why do people let Althea get away with being bitchy when she adds an endearment? It seemed so stupid to me.

Really, I needed to introduce her to Lardhead Gordon. It had occurred to me more than once that they would be perfect together. Dale Gordon was one of the officers who had hated my father and really hates me.

Althea might have argued against my sound advice, but Dad and Mr. Jackman joined us at last and my fellow Lit Wit, after taking a quick read of the situation, did the honorable thing and offered to escort Althea home. I considered sticking my foot out as she walked by me, but I refrained. The present situation was calamitous enough and there is a statute of limitations on getting even for past Halloween pranks played on younger cousins.

“If you assault her, I’ll have to run you in,” the chief said softly, but he was amused.

“My attacks are strictly verbal,” I assured him. There had been only one exception, and that was when my former fiancé had kidnapped me. That time my better nature failed to triumph over baser instincts and I had bloodied his nose.

“I wonder if the gates were locked all day. It would help narrow down the time frame for the murder,” Dad said when Mr. Jackman’s car pulled away. Dad was no fan of Althea’s either.

The coroner would figure out time of death eventually, but everyone knows that time is of the essence in a homicide. Dad and the chief both looked at me, one with expectation and one with curiosity.

I thought back to my several trips past the house during the day.

“No. Shut but not padlocked.” They usually were locked because the city didn’t want vagrants in the house, but I was willing to bet that they hadn’t been consistently locked up for weeks. “It would have been inconvenient for the 4-H kids going in and out with decorations. And anyway, there is a way into the grounds through the hedge from the corn maze. The grounds aren’t secure.”

“I called the inn after they found his wallet and got a name for the deceased—Hector Sayers,” the chief said. “You were right. The deceased was registered at the inn. He arrived four days ago. Nothing suspicious about him but he did go out a lot at night. I’ll send someone to Harley’s tomorrow and see if he was hanging with anyone in particular. No one in the crowd came forward to say they knew him or had seen him anywhere, but pretty much everyone here was….”

“Wholesome and law abiding,” I supplied. Our limited criminal element was not drawn to events where no liquor was served.

The town didn’t have a lot of places that stayed open late. Harley’s Bar and Grill was one of them. I used to work there and knew the owner would be less than thrilled to have the police around, but it had to be done.

My dad’s brow creased and smeared his skull paint. It was already looking a little droopy. He’d been perspiring.

“I know that name.”

“Deborah Burns ran off with a Sayer, didn’t she?” I asked. Living in a small town, we know more than our immediate family’s genealogy.

“That’s right,” Dad said. “Alonzo Sayer.”

I looked up at the chief and explained: “Elijah and Theresa Burns used to own the haunted house. Deborah was their daughter. There was a son too, I think, but he was younger.”

“What happened?” the chief asked, knowing there was a story and that gossip can sometimes be relevant.

“The Burnses died in a motor home fire back in 2007 while they were camping in Oregon. The propane tank on the stove exploded. The circumstances were kind of suspicious but the investigation never got pursued. Hope Falls got the house because there were no heirs and the Burnses owed taxes to the city. I think it’s called escheat.” I was hazy on the last point. I had been interested in the Burns case because of the potential for it to be homicide, not for arcane tax law. We didn’t get many killings in Hope Falls and I sometimes looked beyond the town limits for cases to investigate— only in my mind of course. To do anything else would be to trample on someone else’s jurisdiction.

“But what about their kids? Why wouldn’t they inherit?” The chief asked.

Dad took up the story. “There were none left. Elijah and Theresa had two children, Carl and Deborah. Carl got killed in a motorcycle accident in ‘88. I thought at the time it might have been a suicide. Kid went right off a cliff without ever slowing down.”

“Drunk?”

“No. No alcohol, no drugs. Elijah took it especially hard. It was a pride thing— losing their son. Deborah wasn’t that important to them.”

“So she got fed up and ran off?” the chief guessed.

“Yeah, eventually. She got sent off to some girls school some place right after the accident and then about a month after she came home she ran off with Alonzo.” A dark thought stirred at these words, like an alligator poking its nose out of a swamp and then re-submerging. Dad went on: “The kids had been tight in high school and no one was surprised when she left. Except Elijah. He disowned Deborah— stood up in church and renounced her.” Dad shook his head. “It was a big scandal at the time. Deborah and her husband opened some kind of custom leather place in San Francisco. They were both killed in a robbery in 2006. I was the one who broke the news to Elijah and Theresa. Theresa was sad but Elijah didn’t seem to care. Deborah had a kid, I think, but he went to live with one of the Sayers in Oregon. I get the feeling that neither Deborah nor Alonzo wanted the kid to have anything to do with her parents.”

“Any other Sayers left here in Hope Falls?” The chief asked my dad.

“Nope. Alonzo’s parents moved to Arizona two years ago. There were no other children to keep them here and old man Sayer’s daddy finally passed away leaving them some money. They were looking for some place warmer in the winter. Ginny Sayer had the bronchitis.”

“I wonder if Alonzo and Deborah had a son named Hector.”

I nodded at the chief, thinking the same thing. It would be fairly easy to check. They would also be looking for a wife or next of kin anyway.

“Her father renounced Deborah in church,” I said. “But I wonder if he actually wrote her out of the will. If there was a will.” I tracked down the next thought. “And I wonder if there is money to go with the house. Would the bank be holding it in trust?”

The chief nodded back.

“Good point. I wonder who handled the estate.”

“David Cooper,” I said immediately. David, the pustule, was my former fiancé and the only attorney in town that did estate planning. We had had a parting of the ways when he was caught sleeping with my underage cousin. By my parents. On Thanksgiving. “It might be best if someone else asked him about this though. We don’t speak.”

The chief raised a brow but I didn’t volunteer anything.

“Why would Hector be in Hope Falls?” Dad muttered. “Surely not for auld lang syne. Especially not with one set of grandparents dead and the other gone. Unless it was about the property? Maybe someone finally tracked him down and he’d come to see it.”

“The haunted house was in the newspaper,” the chief said. “But that’s strictly local.”

Uh oh. Someone was going to have to talk to David for sure. I hoped it wouldn’t be me. I’d rather interview Harley.

“What I can’t figure is who would gain from his being dead.” This was the chief again. He was being very tolerant about our speculating. One might even think that he wasn’t going to tell us to butt out and leave things to the real police.

“You’re thinking gain since he is a stranger here,” I said and it made sense.

The city would gain, but I didn’t say it because it seemed very improbable that the city council had gotten up to murder in order to save an eyesore that required costly maintenance and brought in no property tax. Though, come to think of it, they did rent out the estate sometimes for weddings and other events. I would never have a party there, but some people like creepy things.

“Why hasn’t the town sold off the house?” I asked.

“They can’t,” Dad said. “There is some kind of statute about due diligence in searching for an heir.” The chief grunted. He and Dad were probably of the shared opinion that no one had been very diligent about anything. The town had few resources and this wasn’t an urgent case. “One thing is for sure. Someone hated this guy.”

Dad was right. For most killers, stabbing would have been sufficient. Hanging wasn’t added on unless A) you were being killed in a medieval execution or B) someone really didn’t like you. Or maybe C) someone sick really wanted attention. The last one made me nervous. Of the three, I would prefer to avoid option C. A psycho would be hard to catch and would probably kill more people while we were trying to find him.

“Guess this one isn’t an accident,” the chief said, alluding to my last big case which had turned out not to be a homicide.

I shook my head and noticed my last candle had gone out. Storm clouds were covering the moon. Halloween was in every way over.

“I wonder how strong you have to be to string someone up,” I muttered. Dad and the chief looked at me. They weren’t disapproving of my question, merely startled. “Just wondering if a woman or a kid could have done it.”

“Do you think it’s a woman who did this?” the chief asked, perhaps beginning to wonder about a really angry wife with a really big insurance policy.

“No. I don’t think anything. But I might have to experiment just in case.” Like with a bag of sand. The requirement for getting onto the Hope Falls police force was being able to lift a hundred pound bag of sand. I didn’t think there was any specification on the books about how one lifted it, so if tackle worked…. “Was there tackle?”

“Yes. Old and used. No fingerprints and I’m betting stolen. We’re asking people to check their garages. Maybe we’ll get a lead that way.”

A lot of people in Hope Falls have boats, and garage rafters were a favorite place to store kayaks and canoes. Every third house could have tackle in it, and doors were rarely locked.

Dad and I both yawned suddenly. We tended to rise and set with the sun and it was past our bed time.

“Get some rest,” the chief said. “Boston— Chloe— you did great work tonight. And you, too, Henry. I appreciate everything you’ve done. We could have had a real panic on our hands if you hadn’t calmed everyone down, and I doubt we would have gotten so many names of people at the haunted house if you hadn’t been here.”

The chief offered his hand and Dad took it. If I had been less exhausted I might have gotten teary eyed, but I was too tired and hungry for sentiment.

Chapter 5

Once home, I made cinnamon toast in the erroneous belief that my tongue would be fooled into thinking that it had had pumpkin cake. Apparently I am not real good at lying to myself.

Alex called around eleven to wish me a happy Halloween. I figured he would since he had called every hour since eight o’clock and left messages on my machine. Alex Lincoln is my sometimes boyfriend. We had met last spring when he was hired to investigate a cyber crime on a case I was also investigating— in an unofficial capacity, of course. He lived in California and only made it up to Washington on key holidays or for major outbreaks of criminality. Since I am great with animals but not up on the proper care and feeding of a full time relationship, it was probably good that he was away more than not.

He also came with some local baggage, an aunt who sold door to door cosmetics and was considered a domestic terrorist by many stay at home moms in her neighborhood. Mary Elizabeth had popped round after she knew Alex and I were seeing each other and given me a makeover. The results were horrifying. I’d looked like I’d been done up by the undertaker. To keep the peace I’d bought some bath salts from her, but I knew she would be back soon. I wondered if there was some polite way to ask Alex to get his aunt off my back. Probably not. And even if he asked, it wouldn’t do any good. Mary Elizabeth’s knee transplant had been entirely too successful and she was feeling feisty as well as mobile.

“Chloe, want to tell me about your hot date?” he said first thing. Alex knows I don’t like being out late but will make an exception if I have a date.

“Well, you know how it is. The streets are strewn with the bodies of my victims. I can hardly count them all.”

“Really. Are you seeing someone? Cause it would be okay. I just want to know.” Alex sounded a bit jealous. We had never discussed exclusivity, so the argument could be made that such feelings were out of line, but when were feelings ever that tidy? I tend toward the virtuous, but find my moral fiber unraveling when he is near. Perhaps he thought I was that way with everyone.

I sighed to myself. “My charms, though enormous, have their limits. I haven’t managed to seduce anyone since we talked on Wednesday. I can get to work on that though if it’s what you expect.”

There was a brief silence and then a sigh, this one out loud.

“Okay, I’m an idiot,” Alex said. “I hate this long distance love thing.”

He might hate it, but he wasn’t doing anything to change it.

Then he told me all about trick-or-treating with his six year old nephew and I told him all about our murder, wishing he were here so he could hold me and make me warm. I am a feminist, but I have to admit that it is sometimes nice to cuddle up with a man and let him be protective. And it is doubly a pleasure to find my head pressed against his heart rather than his belt buckle. A lot of men are too tall. Alex was perfect that way. Also, he would distract me from the hamster wheel my brain was stuck in. Though exhausted, my mind chafed at the lack of information about the murdered man. I was getting a blister on my brain and knew I might not sleep well.

I went to bed after we hung up. It probably isn’t surprising that when I finally fell asleep that I dreamed that night of the scariest thing that happened to me when I was a child.

No snow on the ground but winter was early and the earth was frozen solid and would cut right through your mittens and bruise your knees if you fell on it. On days like that my mother would sometimes let me wear pants instead of a skirt and tights.

Unlike my cousins, I always tried to follow Dad's instructions about being home-or at least past the old cemetery by the Burns House-by sunset. This was because it was sensible advice and not because I was a particularly obedient child. After all, everyone knew that something bad lived in the cemetery by the old apple orchard. Not a ghost, everyone agreed. But something. And it was terrible and ate children.

Of course, no one could actually recall when a child had last been eaten. It was long ago and always at night, they all agreed. Like when their grandparents were young and sometimes had to be out late rounding up sheep, or whatever it was farm kids did way back then before they had streetlights and proper roads. Thanks to Cousin Todd, the thing we all knew about monsters who live in cemeteries and eat children is that they probably didn't grow old and die like they should. Monsters that live in cemeteries and eat children live forever. Probably.

All us kids scoffed aloud at these spooky tales during the day when it was easy to be brave. Sometimes kids even went into the cemetery, pushing their way through the honeysuckle hedge and cedars at the place where the old iron fence had rusted and fallen down. Some snuck in to see the Burns House too. But they never went alone and never at night, or even at sunset. Never. We didn't even walk past the graveyard once the sun was down. Just in case.

But as can sometimes happen, one day there came an exception to the rule and faced with two evils, I chose what I thought was the lesser one. My parents had a law, a rule of the house. If you weren't there when it was time to sit down to supper, then you got no supper. This wasn't bad on Tuesdays which were always fish-sticks night, but Monday was meatloaf with mashed potatoes and apple pie for dessert. I loved meatloaf. Though I had an excellent excuse for being late- Mrs. Irvington, my third grade teacher, had asked me to stay after and help put up the Halloween bulletin board- I knew that I wouldn't get an exception. So, faced with a long walk through the far side of town and over Hobbs Creek and around Briar Farmstead, I chose to take Cemetery Lane and run all the way home.

Dark came on fast that afternoon, the sky getting darker as I watched, looking up from the broken sidewalk as often as I dared (which wasn't too often because I was galloping. Galloping is good. You go almost as fast as a run but you don't look like a fraidy cat if anyone sees you). I had almost reached the safety of Twilight Street when I heard the sound of a whimpering puppy.

The noise brought me up short and I broke the strap on my maryjanes which was held on by a small button and a bit of elastic. That was bad, you couldn't get up to a proper gallop with your right shoe flopping. I didn't want to stop at the cemetery. Just wanted to trot on as best I could with my ruined shoe until I got on a proper street with lights and cars and houses, but the noise came again, a sound so pathetic, so cold and so miserable that I had to at least pause long enough to call out to the lost puppy. So many animals had disappeared in our neighborhood that many families had given up having pets, or else kept their animals inside all the time.

"Here puppy-puppy." My voice was tentative and frightened, barely louder than the wind that shook the dead honeysuckle that went up twice as high as my head. The Burnses liked their privacy and rarely trimmed their shrubs. They were so unfriendly that it never occurred to me to walk up to the door and ask permission to look for the puppy.

I listened intently. There was no more whimpering, but I could hear a rustling in the shrubbery on the other side of the hedge, it was low down, like something was trying to burrow through it.

Past experience- as a witness to my cousin's foolishness when playing with his friends— told me where the break in the iron fence was located. All I had to do was go on a few more feet to the statue of the lion and then push aside the honeysuckle and crawl through the short tunnel of vines. That was all. Mr. Burns would never know I had been there.

But I couldn't do it. There were spiders in the honeysuckle. Big ones. And I would get my dress very dirty, which would be double trouble because I already broke my shoe and would probably be late for dinner.

And there was the monster.

I scolded myself for being stupid. Monsters weren't real. And if they were it wasn't dark yet- not quite. And I wouldn't get that dirty crawling through dried vines and leaves. And didn't spiders hibernate in the winter? So there was no excuse for leaving a puppy out there in the cold. Especially if it was hurt and maybe even hungrier than I was.

Rustle, rustle went the vines.

Using some of the words my dad said that time he slammed his hand in the car door, I forced myself a few more steps up the uneven sidewalk and squatted down at the fence.

"Puppy-puppy," I called again, my voice still barely above a whisper. "Come here, puppy."

There was more movement, like something dragging through the shrubs. Unable to stand the vision of an injured dog I did what I had never done, or even thought of doing before. I pushed into the brittle bushes and crawled into the yard. Nasty sticks poked through my mittens but I didn't stop to inspect the damage. My shoe tried its best to come off my foot when it caught a vine, but I curled my toes hard and wiggled until it came loose. I think that I would have managed to get it through, but I scraped my ankle against the broken iron and a pike caught my shoe. I jerked when the tines scraped my leg and the shoe flipped back out onto the sidewalk.

"Crud." I wanted my shoe, but there was no way that I was wasting any more of what little light remained hunting for an already broken shoe. My feet would be protected by my heavy woolen socks as long as I walked carefully. And I would be walking carefully.

"Here, puppy-puppy." My voice, which appeared before me in a white cloud of condensation, was softer than ever. Fear had constricted my throat and would let only the smallest of noises escape. I felt like I was playing Marco Polo, only not with my friends.

I got to my feet but remained in a timid half-crouch as I shuffled forward. The air was so cold that it hurt to breathe but fear-sweat was running down my back. Usually I like crunching through dead leaves, but the sounds of those rotting twigs and branches snapping underfoot made me very nervous. Also there were some broken bottles mixed with the twigs and leaves and being brown, the fragments were hard to see. I was shocked. Someone had been brave enough to come here and drink beer and then had thoughtlessly smashed the bottles on the fountain in the courtyard. Who would do that? I was too scared to swallow my own spit, let alone drink. It never occurred to me that it might have been Mr. Burns himself who did it.

Nor did I care for the smell that filled the freezing air. It was like skunk and cat poop. For the first time I began to wonder if the puppy might be very hurt- too hurt for me to move. If I went home to get my dad would he come back with me once it was dark? Surely he would, even if he would be angry about me trespassing and making him do it too.

I'm not too sure what happened then. The shadows were very deep and I was amazed that my breath was fogging the air before me. And then I realized that it wasn't just my breath; there really was an ice fog moving into the yard.

"Puppy-puppy!" Frantic, I forced my voice to be louder as I began picking my way between huddled shrubs.

The puppy didn't answer but I heard another rustle off to my right where there was another clump of dead shrubbery. I turned toward it and took a single step when the bushes snapped loudly, like several branches had been broken off. And the noise came from high up. Squeaking with fear, I turned toward where the gap in the hedge was supposed to be and ran toward it.

I got lost in the fog. Instead of finding the hedgerow I ran into the side of a building. I barely had time to get an arm up before I hit it. The arm saved my teeth, but I still hit my head and then bounced backward where I tripped on a rock and then fell on something hard that dug into my back.

A thing loomed over me then. It wasn't looking down, so maybe it hadn't seen me. I don't know what it was. Not an animal. Not a person- at least I don't think it could have been a person. People don't have long pointy teeth and clawed hands. Nor did normal people make sly, whimpering noises that sound like an injured dog.

The creature's hairy foot nudged me. It wore work boots. Screeching again, I rolled onto my knees and scuttled around the corner of the shed that had flattened me. I knew that a game of hide-and-seek wouldn't last long, but I absolutely could not stay still.

I jack-knifed my body around the corner but my shoeless foot got caught in some old roots and the creature was able to grab my leg. Its nails were sharp and it felt like they punched right through my socks and into my skin. I rolled onto my back, trying to kick free, but it was no use. All I did was hurt myself worse.

I believed- with all my child’s heart- that I would have died then if my father hadn't started shouting my name.

The monster considered me. Then it turned its rubbery head toward the voice. It sniffed and then snarled something that was muffled and unintelligible. And then it was gone. It just jumped into the bushes and disappeared.

I found my voice then and managed a small scream. My dad was there in an instant, helping me up, and a moment later my Cousin Todd was there too. He was holding the shoe I had lost out on the sidewalk. Todd looked as scared as I was.

It turned out that my teacher had realized how late it was and called my parents so they wouldn't be worried. Knowing that the most direct route home was by the cemetery and that I was probably nervous, my dad had rounded up my cousin (who was always the one who led me into trouble and who happened to be staying to dinner) and had gone out to find me.

Before, when I recalled this event, the monster had always looked like a monster. In my dream, for a moment, he looked like Mr. Burns.

I had Saturday and Sunday off that week, but Blue and I climbed on my bike— well, me on the bike and Blue in the sidecar— and set off for headquarters just after eight. I wanted to know what had been discovered over night and a little rain wasn’t going to deter me. I did have my hair bundled under a knit hat. Without some sort of confinement in windy weather, I ended up rocking a Bride of Frankenstein hairdo which makes me look taller but more ridiculous.

There were bound to be tons of people at the station giving useless statements, but though pressed for personnel I knew that no one would ask me to help. I’d be lucky if anyone even read the statement I was about to prepare regarding my own actions last night. I had won the chief over, but a lot of the cops were aligned with my nemesis, Dale Gordon, and they had closed ranks against me.

My friend, Jeffrey Little, was on duty that day and getting ready to start his rounds. He asked me what I knew about last night and I told him everything in a voice that no one would have to strain to overhear. I don’t believe in false modesty. Not at work. Around my mom is another thing, but at work I can’t afford to hide my light under a bushel because someone else always takes credit if I don’t do it right away.

Of course, I can’t indulge in too much of what Tara Lee calls braggadocio either. In Hope Falls, police work is still considered part of the man’s world and will likely remain so until I can figure out how to lift that hundred pound sandbag. As one of three women in the department, I had to walk softly.

In exchange for my account of the night, I learned from Jeffrey that our dead man was the son of Deborah and Alonzo Sayer, that Jacky had had no trouble talking to Officer Bryce about the night before (Lawrence Bryce looks a lot like Santa Claus) and that Bryce was now out questioning people at Harley’s. I was glad of this. Bryce would ask intelligent questions without pissing people off. Unlike Lardhead Gordon, who was safely barricaded behind a desk taking statements from people who were more interested in scratching the itch of curiosity than in providing information (which they didn’t have). Gordon had been riding a desk since the Skate Park murder and would as long as the chief was in charge. He blamed me for this.

I invited Jeffrey over for pie— pumpkin of course. I had a lot in my freezer— after work and he accepted. He left soon after to start bringing vehicular law and order to the weekend tourists and I sat down and typed up my statement. It was short and frill-free. The chief already knew the things I was speculating about and chances were no one else would read it. But if they did, I wanted it to look professional.

That alligator hiding in the swamp of memory stuck his nose out again and I got a better look at him in the light of day. After that I knew what I needed to do, but was feeling unenthusiastic. I have reasons for not calling my mom— maybe not good reasons— but they seem adequate most days to get me off the hook. I meet her for lunch on Mondays and this quite frankly is penance enough. But this wasn’t just any day. Though my gut was reluctant to phone my mom now that gossip had had a chance to make the rounds, I screwed up my courage and made the call.

Mom isn’t thrilled with my job. Nor was she thrilled at how much time my dad and I had spent together over the last few days moving pumpkins and such. But Mom does love to show off and she was pleased that she could tell me all about Deborah Burns, though she had been a couple years behind Mom in high school. Her elephantine memory for things personal and genealogical provided me not only the name of Deborah’s closest friend from school but also where she lived.

I had my first clue and subject to interview— Amelia Adler, formerly Amy Brewer (yearbook staff, glee club and tennis— I come by memory for detail honestly).

The rain and wind had worsened, but Blue didn’t mind since she had a rain poncho. Bicycling keeps me warm and I had on a slicker as well, so I made a short detour by the Burns Mansion for another look, in case I had missed anything in the dark. The gates were closed, locked and wrapped with yellow crime scene tape, but through the dead vines roping the iron fence I could see the side of the house and the fountain I had nearly fallen into last night. And also when I was a kid. The windblown nymph at the center of the fountain was so plastered with wet leaves that her nudity was no longer obvious. I was actually a little surprised that she had survived all these years. Elijah Burns hadn’t been the kind of man to enjoy whimsy. The fountain must have been built by a more free-thinking ancestor.

We passed by the courthouse park and I saw that the pumpkin thief had struck again. My jack-o-lantern was missing. That was okay since I had planned on disposing of it now that Halloween was over. That should have been the end of the pumpkin thefts. Apparently it was not. If something wasn’t done by Thanksgiving week, gardeners might turn vigilante and begin organizing themselves into neighborhood watch groups. I didn’t like the idea of citizens defending their holiday squash with pitchforks and shotguns. It was an accident waiting to happen.

I was lucky to catch Amelia Adler at home. She had been on the verge of going out when Blue and I arrived on her doorstep, but she was easily persuaded to give us some time.

At first glance she was a bit overwhelming; tall, smelling of smoke, chemically and violently redheaded, and wearing a plunging purple satin shirt that would have been obscene except her cleavage was braless and also plunging and therefore reasonably hidden. For a moment I thought of telling her about the amazing selection of foundation garments they have at What Lies Beneath, but decided that she might not be the kind of person to readily accept the depths to which the ravages of time had plummeted. She struck me as the kind of woman who has always believed that quantity is more important than quality or even proper placement of those secondary female sexual characteristics we are blessed with to one degree or another. And who was I to pull off her rose colored glasses and point out that she wasn’t eighteen anymore?

Repellant she might be, but this was Deborah Burn’s best friend from high school, so I made myself smile and be friendly.

It turns out that she was also a dog-loving gossip and heaven help me, the gossip was great. I got a real ripsnorter over coffee and what I think were oatmeal cookies. I tried slipping one to Blue but she wouldn’t take it. I’m an excellent baker and my dog has standards.

Remember Dad mentioned that girls’ school where Deborah was supposedly sent to after her brother’s accident? It wasn’t a school at all but instead a home for unwed mothers; Fulbright Home for Wayward Girls, run by Elijah’s church. Deborah had given birth there and been forced to give the kid up for adoption. Boy or girl, Amelia didn’t know and neither did Deborah. They had knocked her out for the delivery and when she woke up, the baby was gone.

“That must have upset Alonzo,” I said, trying not to cough. I couldn’t very well ask Amelia not to smoke in her own home, though I wanted to. It was making Blue sneeze.

“Sure— but the kid wasn’t his. And what could they do with it anyway?”

My jaw dropped and I left it there.

“Not Alonzo’s? Then who…?”

“Her old man,” Amelia said with the satisfaction of someone who had the world’s best punch-line. “He was a filthy lecher. It’s why she ran away.”

I was so stunned that I couldn’t even think. Could this be true? I am pretty good— I believe— at reading people and Amelia seemed sincere, if rather more smug than saddened at the vile story she told with such relish. And it isn’t like this kind of thing never happened.

“Was it ever reported?” I asked. But of course it hadn’t been. My dad would have stomped the ever loving hell out of Elijah Burns before arresting him (which is another reason that it is better that my father is not involved in police work).

“Nope. She told her mom and Alonzo— and later me. Her mom didn’t do anything except cry and pray. And Alonzo quit school and ran off with her. I guess I could have said something, but she was in San Francisco by then and what was the point?”

“Why are you telling me now?” I asked.

Amelia thought about this.

“Well, they’re saying it was Deborah and Alonzo’s kid that died last night.” Technically he had probably died yesterday afternoon and been discovered last night, but I didn’t quibble. “He’s the last person who might have cared about this. I don’t see why I should keep quiet anymore.”

I nodded, but Amelia wasn’t completely correct. This sad story might be very important to the child Deborah had had taken away, though it wasn’t the kind of genealogical news that anyone would want to hear. Certainly I was not anxious to deliver it if the child was ever found.

And maybe the kid wouldn’t care. After all, he had never known his birth mother. I tried to tell myself that this made things better.

Back on my bike and peddling into the wind, I decided that I would tell Dad and the chief what I had learned, but this wasn’t going in any written report. After all, Amelia could be wrong. Or lying. Either was bad but maybe way better than the story she had related. Incest. I knew it happened all the time. I just didn’t know it had ever happened in Hope Falls.

True or false, I couldn’t chance this rumor getting out. After all, what if the adoption was local? Just because I didn’t know about the home for unwed mothers didn’t mean that other people— like the adoptive parents—didn’t. No one needed to hear news like this in the newspaper or the donut shop.

“Hey, Blue. Want to go see Dad?”

Blue woofed approvingly. She really has an enormous vocabulary.

The farmer’s market closes the first of October, but the Kiwanis Club has an open air flea market out at the fair grounds that runs until first snow. On rainy days, they move it into the stables. It isn’t my kind of thing, but I knew Dad would be there with the van and sharpening knives and scissors for drop-ins. I wanted his take on Amelia’s story before I went to the chief.

But I would talk to the chief eventually, I promised myself. If I was lucky he would still be too shocked by events to remember that he was— technically— supposed to order me off the case.

Chapter 6

Rummage sales are not my thing, unless I am looking for something very particular, but I don’t mind the open air market on a rainy day because of the stables. The warm wood and low ceilings always make me feel safe.

Leaves lay heavily on the ground, too wet now to crunch as I walked through them. I had parked under the overhang of one of the outbuildings to keep the bike dry and we had a way to walk. Blue was happy in spite of the drizzle. The market offers fresh donuts and cider and sometimes roasted corn on the cob and she was sniffing heavily, no doubt selecting what she would like from the wind-borne menu.

Crowds were thin so there were only a few takers for Dad’s services. I wandered about while I waited for him to be free, examining the things people no longer wanted in their lives. Like Blue, my nose was also scenting things. The stables were empty. The rodeo was gone, the county fair a dim memory and it was months before the Celtic Faire and joust would come to town, but there lingered on the friendly ghosts of animals who had stayed in the barns. I like the smell of fresh hay and most farm animals, excepting only some pigs and a few particularly smelly goats. People don’t think of goats as smelling evil, but I had pet one at the fair last year and ended up with a stink on my hands that wouldn’t wash away for days. The cats shunned me. Blue whimpered. My leather jacket had to be sent for cleaning, and after three attempts to remove the smell I gave it away. Those malevolent yellow eyes and the beast’s relative isolation should have warned me to keep my hands to myself, though in all other respects he was a lovely animal.

When Dad well-wished his last customer, Blue and I joined him on the hay bale he’d pulled from the back of the van. Well, I was on the hay, Blue was on the floor.

“You found something out this morning?” Dad asked. “Bad?”

I nodded.

“If it’s true, very bad.”  And I told him the story.

Dad said nothing, but I watched his hands carefully as I whispered the tale. Dad has learned to keep his face still, but his hands give him away. He was very angry and I knew a part of him was blaming himself for not guessing what was happening to Deborah.

“But it may not be true,” I ended. “He was a horrible man but maybe not that horrible.”

“The only way to prove it would be to test DNA,” he said at last.

“But… would anyone want to prove this? I know that one should tell the truth and everything but— well, is there any kindness in making people aware of this story? If you were in this adopted kid’s shoes, would you want to know?”

Dad grunted. I didn’t have an answer either. I am a curious person, but I could not say for certain that this is something I would ever want to be aware of.

“This would be a perfect motive for someone killing Elijah Burns. Or for Burns killing someone else who was blackmailing him. I just don’t see what it could have to do with Hector Sayers being murdered. At least not yet.”

“You going to tell your boss?” Dad asked.

“I think I have to. For sure he needs to know about the other child. Or, the city does. If the kid inherits—damn. I don’t know how all this works.”

“Bet you five to one that the chief sends you to interview David Cooper.” Dad’s smile was twisted. I had confessed a couple weeks after the event to what had happened when David kidnapped me. Dad had thoroughly approved of my out of character violence.

“I can’t take that bet. It’s Murphy’s Law. He’s going to make me talk to the pustule.” Blue heard me sigh and quickly stuffed her head under my hand. I pet her silky ears and felt some of the tension die off.

“Blue and I are going to share a corn on the cob. You want something?”

“Some cider would be nice,” Dad said as another customer approached. This was a teenage boy carrying a reproduction sword.

“You sharpen those things?” I asked, alarmed.

“With parental permission only,” Dad said. “And not if I don’t like the kid.”

Blue and I got Dad’s cider and an ear of roasted corn. I had to let it cool a bit, but then I snapped it in half and gave an end to Blue. She is a very tidy eater and Mr. Vaughn always gets a kick out of seeing her clean the cob.

Unable to put it off any longer, Blue and I loaded up in the bike and set off for the station. I could have called and asked for the chief, but with Gordon on the desk, there was every chance that he would hang up on me.

The chief was in his office and the door was open, so I let myself in. Blue was sitting under my desk being discrete. The chief looked at my face and said: “Close the door.”

I took a seat uninvited. Though I had no wish to, I repeated Amelia Adler’s allegations once again. The chief looked as grim as my father when I was done.

“You know what I want you to do?” the chief asked when I was through.

“You want me to talk to the pustu— I mean, David Cooper.”

“You really are almost psychic,” the chief said admiringly.

“Not really, just very logical. But, chief, really it would be better to send someone else. David and I used to be engaged and we did not part amicably. He’ll stonewall me just for fun.”

“I understand, but I have no one. Bryce has his hands full and I don’t much trust the others to be discrete with a story like this. You’ve been itching to involve yourself in real police work. Well, here’s your chance.”

I glowered, but couldn’t think how to complain since what he said was true.

“I’ll call Mr. Cooper and ask him to meet you at his office. I will make it clear that you are collecting vital information about a homicide and that I expect his cooperation. Even on a Saturday.”

“Fine.” I got to my feet. “But he’s already at his office. Call him there.” I rattled off the number.

The chief blinked and again looked impressed. I didn’t explain that I knew David was at his office because he worked most Saturdays and I had seen his car in the parking lot on my way to the station. Let the chief think I was psychic.

*  *  *

David was as thrilled to see me as I was to see him, but since his secretary was watching we faked it. Though I would have liked the emotional support, I left Blue in the lobby while I followed the pustule to his office. David doesn’t care for dogs.

“The chief called?” I asked.

“Yes. This death complicates things. For the estate.” David leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. He thought this made him look wise.

“You had already tracked down Hector Sayers?”

“Yes. We were going to meet Monday. I didn’t know that he was already here.” This last bit sounded defensive.

“And now what?”

“And now I have more work to do. The city— and your boss— will simply have to be patient.”

How he loved saying that. I wanted to smack that stupid smirk off his face, but my justifiable opportunity for inflicting physical damage was past. Anyway, I had another idea. David didn’t know it, but his secretary was a snitch of mine. She actively disliked him and would share information with me whenever she could as long as it didn’t betray a client— which it never previously had. Her confidences were mainly about David’s ploys to get back in my good graces. There hadn’t been any of those since June though. I had wondered what it would take to get David to stop stalking me and now I knew; threat of arrest for kidnap and a bloody nose.

I thanked David for his consideration, decided not to mention Deborah’s other child, and cut short his smirk and gloat time. I left the office without shaking hands. Mary Grady, who is also the librarian’s daughter and a new member of the Lit Wits, anticipated my needs and David’s refusal to share any information. There was a file open on the edge of her desk right above Blue’s head.

I couldn’t read everything while I was pretending to fumble with Blue’s leash, but I got the particulars on what interested me most. Deborah Burn’s illegitimate child had been adopted in 1981 by a family named Endicott who lived in the nearby town of Roosevelt.

So, David already knew about the kid. That took care of any guilt I might have eventually developed for withholding information.

Blue and I said a warm goodbye, promised to get donuts next time we met and left without a backward glance. I was so glad that that part of my life was over. I couldn’t recall what good I had ever seen in David Cooper.

Chapter 7

I ended up with both Jeffrey and Mr. Jackman coming for dessert. That was okay, because I had a lot of frozen pumpkin pie filling that needed eating. As we listened to the rain beating on the windows, I gave an edited account of my day, glossing over how I discovered that Deborah Burns had an illegitimate child and not mentioning the incest angle at all. Both men know that I am friends with David’s secretary and didn’t need me to draw a map for them.

We ended up discussing the more minor mystery of who the pumpkin thief might be. Mr. Jackman had a green house so he could leave his pumpkins on the vine and not worry about them being hit with frost. The pumpkin thief seemed to be making weekly visits and helping himself to one of each kind of specimen squash.

“I’d put a lock on the door but the house is just two by fours and plastic sheeting.”

“The thief would just cut through it,” Jeffrey agreed.

“Exactly. And it isn’t that I mind missing a pumpkin here or there. In the garden the deer and squirrels would take their toll. It is just… well.” He paused. “I feel kind of trespassed against, having someone coming into my yard and taking my things. So far he’s left my sugar pumpkins alone— by the way, Chloe do you need any more pumpkins for pie?”

I shook my head.

“I’m good through Thanksgiving at least.”

Thanksgiving…. Thanksgiving, being a holiday about food and family, wasn’t as much fun as Halloween. Unfortunately, it wasn’t something like Arbor Day which one could mostly ignore. Aside from my bad memories of David the pustule betraying me, Thanksgiving had meant all kinds of awkward moments since Mom and Dad had separated. In fact, I think the last thing they had agreed wholeheartedly on was that David the pustule was in fact a pustule. When my family gave thanks, it wasn’t for the peace we enjoyed.

Here is the problem with this holiday— aside from getting parents together— if Dad cooks then we have barbecue. If Mom cooks then it means we have Aunt Dorothy and Althea hanging about like albatrosses and reminding me of how David had committed his infidelity on my aunt’s fur coat. If I have it then it means surrendering my house to Mom from five in the morning to who knows when at night, because if I cook and we have lumpy gravy and potential salmonella poisoning…. It’s hard to decide what to do. But in that moment the slot machine in my brain came up all cherries.

“Would you like to come for Thanksgiving?” I asked Mr. Jackman. “You too Jeffrey.”

“Not me, Chloe. Gillian is going all out this year because of the baby,” Jeffrey said. He tried to sound regretful and failed. He’s had my cooking before.

“Well I’d… I would love to, Chloe.” Mr. Jackman looked pleased.

“My folks will be here,” I warned him. “Unless God intervenes.”

Mr. Jackman chuckled.

“If you are seriously looking for a holiday buffer, I believe Agartha is at loose ends.” Agartha Graves is another Lit Wit, a retired accountant who writes mysteries that actually get published in magazines sometimes. Tara Lee, who hasn’t sold a book in years, is very jealous.

“I’ll call her.”

“And would you perhaps like some help with the cooking?” Mr. Jackman asked. He is a good cook. He does a twice baked potato casserole that makes people moan.

“I’d love it. If Mom helps she’ll rearrange my kitchen and I won’t be able to find anything for weeks.” As a reward for his heroism I added: “I was going to stop by the turkey ranch and reserve a bird. What size should I get?”

“You’ll want leftovers—so say at least fifteen pounds.”

“Okay. I really can’t thank you enough.”

Mr. Jackman waved a hand and reached for his coffee.

“I find your family highly entertaining.” He added: “That is because they are not my own family.”

*  *  *

Some poet— not Althea— once described the town of Roosevelt as having shaggy feet and a craggy brow. This was certainly true in fall when the wild grasses at the mountains foot have dried and become tangled in the wind. And the peaks are always bare and craggy because the soil eroded away years ago.

Roosevelt— formerly Miner’s Gulch— is a dead end, physically and I think in terms of evolution, built on the east side of a deep gully (the west being sheer cliff) that somehow cleft a small part of the Cascades. Its main street runs along the side of a white water stream that periodically floods. The town has a post office, a diner, a bakery, a one-room schoolhouse and three churches. It’s very pretty when decked out for the holidays, but four-wheel drive country especially in winter. The gentlest slope in town is twenty five degrees and some are closer to thirty-five. If I needed to go anywhere off the main drag, it would be on foot. There are only about three hundred homes there, but an almost constant fog which rises up from the river and obscures them in the fall and winter.

In some ways, Sunday is not the ideal time to visit Roosevelt. People tend to be in church or with their families. But there are always a few misfits who don’t care for their hearth and home and I figured these would be the kind of people who would be most likely to talk to me.

I did not go in blind. I looked up the name Endicott in the phone book but found no listing. That was annoying, but in a small town like Roosevelt someone would have a forwarding address for the family.

Bad weather had followed me. Clouds sagged so low with their load of rain that they snagged on the top most houses and began leaking in places. The light was gray and dingy and my enthusiasm for investigation was waning. However, a detective wouldn’t last long if they only detected things in good weather, so I took a deep breath and got out of the car. I put Blue on a leash though it was hardly necessary. There was no traffic.

The bakery was open. They also had a sort of screened deck with a gas heater where Blue could wait while I ordered. Normally I would have eaten outside with her, but that morning there were no fresh air nuts for me to question. Everyone was huddled by the potbelly stove.

I ordered a cinnamon roll with coffee and then struck up a conversation with the man at the nearest table. This is still very hard for me. I have practiced a lot the last couple of years since my departmental evaluation said my interpersonal skills needed work, but I still find talking to strangers to be hard going.

Since I had nothing to hide I just asked straightforwardly if anyone knew where the Endicotts were. The immediate silence that followed told me that either I was about to hear a torrent of town gossip or else I had made a grave misstep and every one would clam up. I was expecting it to be the last thing— the misstep— but I was wrong. The people in the bakery had a lot to say about the Endicotts and little of it nice.

Ryan was adopted by Ruth and Samuel Endicott, the late proprietors of Endicott Grocer and Sundries. Ruth and Samuel, God fearing Christians though standoffish with the Methodists in town, had become ‘late’ when there was a tragic (and to me suspicious) gas leak in their kitchen two Thanksgivings ago.

Ryan, miraculously away from home that night, had waited around only long enough to collect the insurance money— a small policy intended only to cover burial expenses— and then skipped town, still owing the undertaker for the couples’ funeral.

The story was hazily familiar. I hadn’t paid that much attention at the time because that was the same Thanksgiving that I had discovered David having sex with my underage cousin and was distracted with crying and breaking up and other personal things.

A kinder jury of peers would have said that Ryan had a troubled youth. Unhappy and unable to conform to his parent’s strict moral standards, he was always in trouble—at school, at church and with the law. As the man at the next table put it: “That one is demon seed. If he ain’t sold his soul to the Devil it’s only ‘cause the Devil ain’t met his asking price.”

This was probably overstatement but it made the point. Ryan Endicott had not been a model child.

Unfortunately for me, no one had heard from him since he skipped town and no one, in the bakery at least, wanted to.

I finished my roll and coffee though I hadn’t much appetite left after the locals’ brisk walk down a vandalized memory lane. I was thinking hard. Even someone not given to seeing patterns would have to admit that there were a lot of suspicious deaths around the Burns and the Sayers families— Elijah and Theresa in a motor home fire (caused by a gas leak), Deborah and Alonzo in a burglary, Ruth and Samuel in a kitchen fire (again caused by a gas leak) and poor Hector, whose death was way beyond suspicious even without any gas being involved. Could any two— well, three, counting the Endicotts— entwined families have that much bad luck in such a short space of time? I didn’t think so, not unless it was manufactured misfortune.

Could Ryan Endicott have known the facts of any of these deaths? Was that why he had run?

After the stuffy, overheated bakery, the fog and drizzle were actually refreshing. I collected Blue and we walked back to the car. I shut her inside first and then came around to the driver’s side door.

I had seen a lot of Halloween masks the last few days so I knew the creature who lurched at me was not a real zombie. That did not mean that he was not a monster. My first craven reaction was normal, I think. I spun away from the reaching arms and ran into the fog.

A voice screeched after me, “Ryan’s gonna getcha if you don’t watch out!”

My sense of self-preservation is as developed as anyone’s and I had no urge to demonstrate conspicuous bravery if it meant getting killed by a crazy man in a mask, so I hid in the nearest oleander bush. Great things those oleander bushes. Poisonous, of course, but dense enough to hide in without being too thick to penetrate when one is in a hurry.

I actually hated to leave that oleander. It was so nice and shadowy and I hadn’t seen any spiders. But Blue was barking her head off and I had belatedly recalled that I was no longer eight and that I had self-defense training and a shriek alarm to summon help. Crouching in shrubbery was undignified. Out of the bush I came, finally ready to kick zombie butt, but the foggy street was empty.

No one was hiding in the car— even a zombie would have better sense than to get in the car with a barking Rottweiler— and I left town without incident, though I drove slowly because I was half-expecting the stupid zombie to come lurching out of the mist again.

Once the first rush of adrenaline had passed, I was able to think calmly about what had happened and found it interesting.

Someone had warned me off of searching for Ryan Endicott. It might just have been some bored teen thinking it would be fun to terrorize a woman with a warning about the local boogieman. But then again, it might be something much more interesting.

Chapter 8

Caesar’s Turkey Ranch was a wonderful place, if you didn’t think too much about how all those beautiful white and old fashioned black turkeys roaming the hills were going to end up on the holiday dinner table.

Most turkeys are surprisingly affectionate. They are also terribly stupid which is why they would approach me even with Blue in tow, not that Blue doesn’t know her manners. I met a few of the birds at the fence and obliging scratched their chests and under their wings while they gobbled at me. Around us the wind shrilled and I noticed that most of the trees were bare. It would be an early winter.

I was the only visitor that morning, though the Sunday quiet would be broken after church let out. A Caesar turkey costs more than anything you’ll get at the market, but it is worlds better tasting and therefore very popular. The birds are raised on a strict vegetarian diet, certified organic and after the first few weeks living in a barn until they are too big for hawks to pick off (actually it’s a high-tech brooding facility that looks like a barn) they are allowed to roam free for the next six months while they develop their flavor. Caesar’s doesn’t have a website and won’t take phone orders, so if you want a turkey then you have to come in and select one. Not that they make you go out and hunt down your own turkey, but you fill out a form stating weight and whether you want a tom or a hen, black or white and then make a down payment. You come back the week before Thanksgiving and pick up your plucked and boxed bird which is tied up with a big red ribbon.

I was waited on by Caesar Moreno’s eldest son, Diego. He seemed promising— in a professional sense. Aesthetically, he was unappealing. Protuberant muscles are not my thing. Perhaps because I am jealous of people who can clearly lift a number of hundred pound sand bags without even trying.

We discussed the benefits of the bronze and black heirloom turkeys. They run about seven dollars a pound and that made me gulp when I did the math. I wanted Mr. Jackman to have fun while cooking, but I decided the less expensive standard white turkey would be fine for us and chose a hen.

Forty dollars poorer, but feeling happier about the approaching holiday, Blue and I returned to the car.

Across from the gravel lot I noticed a soggy hay maze. Though not as scary as corn mazes, and infested with fewer spiders, I nevertheless find hay mazes to be unnerving. Again, this is because of my cousin, Todd. I stared at the wall of hay, frowning. This silly fear of monsters and mazes was proving a hindrance. True, I had lately been confronted with real threats of a human variety, but I knew that I was over-reacting to the maze because of an old fear.

Deciding that now was as good a time as any to face my demons, I closed the car door and started slowly for the maze. Blue was with me— I’m not crazy— but I still felt nervous and foolish.

A good memory is invaluable in detective work, but I sometimes wish that my mind would not recall the things that it does.

The day that Todd and I set out to choose our pumpkins it rained like the dickens in the morning but settled down to a light drizzle by the time we piled into Mom’s old station wagon and pulled out of the leafy driveway.  The brakes squeaked in the old Blue Lizard, Mom’s affectionate name for the rusty pile of bolts she was forced to drive.  Mom had been on Dad’s case for several months about getting those brakes fixed, but he was pulling double shifts at work and there seemed to be no time he could fix them.  In the meantime we got plenty of angry stares from wincing drivers who were unlucky enough to be next to us when we came to a stop. Todd and I didn’t complain but we put our fingers in our ears every time we saw a light turn red.

Todd was telling me stories, this time the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He kept it tame because Mom was listening. When we were alone, he was a lot more graphic.

I was pretty excited by the trip, not because we were going to just any pumpkin patch, but because we were going to Halloween Town. Halloween Town was the king of all pumpkin patches. It used to be located outside of the town limits so it wasn’t small like a regular town lot. To a six year old, it seemed huge.

Piling out of the back of the station wagon, Todd and I raced each other to the petting zoo. Since we lived in town we didn’t get to see farm animals very often, just the regular cats and dogs. Both Todd and I liked to feed the goats even though it can tickle and every once in a while you got butted. The chickens weren’t as fun to feed because they were kind of stupid and pecked at you, but Todd liked to chase them and tell them he was going to eat them for dinner.

One of the first goats I fed pooped while he ate from my hand. This made me laugh. I lingered longer than Todd wanted at the zoo because I didn’t want to go into the hay maze.

There were hundreds of pumpkins to choose from all lined up in neat rows and I looked at them all while delaying. There were also colorful decorations including spooky looking scarecrows that I didn’t like very much, at least not the big ones that were large enough to be real bodies. I walked around trying to see everything at once until I came upon a dark, rectangular opening set into a wall of hay. This caught my attention instantly and kept hold of it the way a spider on the ceiling does.

“Go ahead, sweetie,” my mother prodded as Todd smiled in a nasty way. “It’s a hay bale maze. Go on inside and see if you can find your way back out.”

I wanted to argue, to tell her that Todd would do something mean to me if I went inside. But I knew Mom wouldn’t believe me. She knew that I could figure out things after they happened, but she didn’t believe that sometimes I knew what people would do even before they did them.

“Come on, Chloe. Don’t be a fraidy cat.” Mom frowned at Todd’s taunt but didn’t say anything. She never seemed to know how to deal with boys and she wanted me to act ‘normal’.

I had never been in a maze, but already didn’t like the look of that thing. Todd daring me didn’t help.  I had gotten lost once in the park and didn’t enjoy it and couldn’t see why I would want to get lost on purpose. But I was determined to experience all that the pumpkin patch had to offer so that I would have a good story to tell the next time I saw Althea, my older and snottier cousin. So, I went inside even though it was dark and smelly and Todd was there and planning to scare me in some way.

I walked slowly through the darkness of the maze.  The labyrinth was a series of tunnels created by stacking hay bales at various angles and then topping the whole thing off with a canvas tarp. Naturally, it smelled heavily of hay which made me sneeze. I like hay, but it also smelled like the dry dirt being kicked up off the floor and the oily tarp that covered the maze, neither very pleasant. But worst of all was the smell of rot where the wet hay was going bad.

Every once in a while a bigger kid would come shooting around a corner screaming as they ran past me and came close to knocking me over. Todd should have been holding my hand but he had disappeared. The worst were the kids who were wearing scary masks. Let me tell you, I was plenty scared the whole time, but I kept on moving forward. No way was anyone ever going to call me a fraidy cat.

Whoever had constructed the maze had poked holes between the bales of hay so that some light would be let in, but it was still darker than I would have liked. As I walked past each of these holes, I was careful to make sure that no one— like Todd— was there on the outside to try and grab me as I shuffled by.

Eventually I made it to the center of the maze. I could tell that I had made it to the halfway point because I entered a large rectangular room that had another of those big scarecrows. Walking toward the middle of the room I tried to get my bearings and locate the way out. That’s when it struck.

Apparently the trap was rigged ahead of time and left there so that parents on the outside could get in on the fun of terrifying the kids inside. The trap was simple, a huge rubber spider on a string leading into the room through a hole in the ceiling. All that was required to operate it was to pull the string, watch through a hole in the side of the room for some pour shmuck to stand under the spider, and then to let the string go. This time I got to be the poor shmuck.

As soon as the rubbery legs of the spider touched my neck I let out a scream. I think the scream had been in there all along waiting for an excuse to come out. It was loud, but not as loud as Todd laughing. The next thing I did was bolt out the passage I had used to enter the maze.  I ran fast and I didn’t stop until I was brought up short by the next terror the maze had to offer.

Not watching where I was going as I ran, I naturally missed the hand that was reaching blindly through one of the holes in the wall waiting for an innocent victim to come within its grasp. Lucky me, I got to be that innocent victim. The moment that arm grabbed me I nearly fainted.  But I didn’t faint. Instead, I latched onto the arm with my teeth and bit down as hard as I could. The hand released me immediately at the same time that I heard Todd howl in pain outside the maze. I knew it was Todd and that I should let go, but he no longer seemed like my bratty cousin I was supposed to be nice to. He had turned into a devil and I bit longer and harder than I should have.

On the run again, this time I didn’t stop until I was outside and in my mother’s arms.

“Sweetie, what happened to you?” my mother asked using her overly-concerned voice that meant she was as frightened as I was. Dabbing at my mouth she wiped away several spots of blood. Horrified, she asked: “Did something hit you while you were in there?”

I was too scared to answer. Instead, I buried my face back in my mother’s arms. After some time I allowed her to examine me further. That’s when we discovered that in my shear terror I had peed my pants. Fortunately, I was still too scared to be embarrassed or ashamed. The embarrassment and shame came later.

I noticed that Todd didn’t take his coat off even in the car. He didn’t want my mom to see his arm. After all, it hadn’t been my blood that Mom wiped off my face.

I stopped just outside the entrance to the maze. It smelled the same. It looked almost the same though I was a little taller now. It seemed unfair that I was still short enough to enter without stooping.

My breath was audible and leaving puffs of white in the air. Blue whined, asking why I would go in that place when I didn’t like it. That was a good question. I had to be brave in the line of duty— and I had been the night we found Hector Sayer’s body. But there was no reason to go into a dripping hay maze at a turkey farm when I was all alone.

“Come on, Blue,” I said, turning away. “It’s time for something hot to drink.”

Chapter 9

I was a little heavy eyed when I arrived at the station the next morning and I wasn’t looking forward to lunch with Mom. I’m on the sunny side of thirty but Mom is beginning to worry about me reaching some unstated sell-by date and failing to give her grandchildren. Which, to be honest, I am not sure that I want anyway. Mom does not understand this. Heredity plays games sometimes and I am nothing like my parents who are pretty normal, I think. Instead I’m a short bit of doggerel wedged between lengthy sonnets. Or maybe I mean proverbs. Anyhow, the other difference between us is my uncertainty about how good a parent I would be.

At least the rain had stopped and we were having one of the crisp days when the sky is so bright that it hurts to look at it and the comforting smell of wood fires floats on the air.

Jeffrey was waiting for me with a cup of coffee and questions about the investigation and I told him about my trip to Roosevelt. I considered going by the chief’s office to tell him about my adventures too, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be happy about my unauthorized trip up the hill. He knew that David was trying to find the Burns heir and he had a name— and presumably some records if the kid was in trouble with the law as often as the locals claimed. I decided that keeping a low profile would be best.

But just as I was leaving the building I heard the chief calling for me. For one moment I thought about pretending to be deaf, but then decided that this was probably one case where retreat would not be the better part of valor.

“Come in for a second,” the chief said. “Close the door.”

Lardhead Gordon and Bryce were both staring at me, one with jealousy and one with speculation.

“What’s up, Chief?” I remained standing but Blue sat. She recalled that the chief had shouted that particular instruction last time we were in his office. He had been yelling at me, but Blue had a good memory and was taking no chances.

“Boston,” the chief said casually. “Do you know who’s going to win the game on Sunday?”

“The game?” My mind was momentarily blank. “You mean the football game?”

“Yes.” His eyes were bright.

I exhaled slowly.

“Chief, I’m not really psychic. I deduce things based on evidence and statistics, and I can’t see the future.” My voice was even.

“Yes, of course. But will Seattle win?”

Was this a test of some kind? If it was, I didn’t appreciate it.

“Who are they playing?” I finally asked.

“The Rams.”

“Where?”

“Seattle.”

I gave it a slow five count so he would get the impression that I was actually thinking.

“Seattle will win.” What the hell. If they won he would be impressed. If they lost then he would get over this stupid psychic kick and leave me alone.  I decided to leave before he asked me about the point spread. “Is that all, Chief?”

“Sure. Thanks, Boston.”

Blue and I left the office.

The Halloween tourists were gone, but we would start getting the Thanksgiving crowd soon. The Morningside Inn offered some very attractive holiday packages and we have some fun musical reviews at the Opera Hall (a grandiose name for what used to be a dancehall where ladies of ill-repute showed off their charms to drunken miners). We had an interfaith gospel night— I had sung in that last year with my friends Marcie and Andrew— a classic folk music night, an evening of light symphony where the school bands played with the informal adult orchestra, and this year the grammar school was doing a play, written and directed by a high school senior, about the first Thanksgiving in Hope Falls. I was pretty sure that it would be ghastly and had already marked my calendar so I would know what night to make excuses for.

Thanks to the murder, there were still a couple news vans about, but there wasn’t much to see and there wouldn’t be any new developments (that the chief would share) until after the coroner released his report. I figured they would be gone by the end of the day and decided that in the interest of good will I would not give the one van a ticket, though his bumper was overhanging the crosswalk by a couple of inches.

I have to change my chalk rather often when the weather is wet and this entails stopping and digging out replacement chalk from the too narrow console and then to fit the clip on my stick. I didn’t mind though because I was feeling sleepy and this gave me a chance to stretch.

Blue and I were both yawning and considering a nap under the horse chestnuts on Bryant when I heard a gate creek. Looking down the street, I saw a figure in a dark cape coming out of Mrs. Adam’s yard. Now, I don’t know where absolutely everyone lives, but Mrs. Adams was my former fifth grade teacher and very hard of hearing, so I kind of watch out for her when I’m out that way. That’s why I knew that the cloaked person didn’t belong in her yard. Mrs. Adams eats lunch at the senior center on Monday and goes early for the bingo. No one was home.

I saw a flash of bright orange in the figure’s right fist and dropped my marking stick. I started the cart and began following the person in the shiny black cape. My electric vehicle is nearly silent, but the street was full of crunchy leaves that gave us away. The figure looked back. At first I was startled by the blank face and then realized that he was wearing a tan ski-mask.

The pumpkin thief! He waved impudently, a jack-be-nimble pumpkin in each hand, one high in the air and one clutched to his chest in what looked like an uncomfortable position, and then he ran between the Adams’ and Riley’s houses and disappeared down the bank that lead to the stream that bisected the town. Blue was whining and wagging her tail, because she has a need for speed that the cart can’t give her, but I had to say no to following. The bank was steep and the water cold. She would make her joints ache if I let her out to chase the thief and she might not be able to climb back up again.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s time for lunch anyway. Let’s go see Mom.”

I have lunch with my mom on Mondays. I figure that it’s Monday anyway, so why not get my pain all over with and then get on with the week. Mom would want to talk (complain) about my involvement in the murder, but I had a surefire distraction. We would talk about Thanksgiving instead.

Knowing that it was best to be proactive, I opened the conversation with: “I ordered a Caesar turkey yesterday.”

I brought Blue inside and signaled her to lay on the rug by the door. Aunt Dorothy claims to be allergic to dogs, but Mom knows I won’t leave Blue out in the cold and rain, and since she doesn’t want to give up her chance to grill me weekly, she lets Blue inside and then vacuums after.

“Isn’t it a bit soon to be worrying about the holiday?” Mom meant that I had reacted too decisively and wanted me to reconsider my plans while she wrested control away from me. But that wasn’t happening. I was NOT spending Thanksgiving with my Aunt Dorothy and Cousin Althea. Ever since her fur coat had gotten torn (while the pustule and my other cousin were having sex on it in the mudroom at Dad’s house) she has done nothing but complain about me and my boyfriends. I had no idea if Alex would be around for Thanksgiving this year, but I had no intention of letting my aunt rehash that horrible incident with the new man in my life.

“Well, Mom,  I could see that Mr. Jackman was feeling kind of low— he’s all alone you know— and I knew that Mrs. Graves was on her own, too, so I just decided to invite them both.”

“Well—” But Mom couldn’t argue against an act of kindness, not after having drilled these values into my head.

“And Alex may be able to come up.” I really was going to have to ask him about this. “And that might mean his aunt would come to. And you know that Mary Elizabeth and Aunt Dorothy don’t get on.” Aunt Dorothy sold Avon. Mary Elizabeth was hardcore Mary Kay, and nary the twain shall meet, at least not peacefully. I knew from Alex that Mary Elizabeth usually inflicted herself on her brother for the holiday, but Mom probably didn’t know that. After all, she was loyal to Aunt Dorothy and used Avon products. Mom wouldn’t fraternize with the enemy enough to know her holiday plans.

“Well, dear, then I suppose you having dinner is best. I’ll come early—”

“It’s okay, Mom. This year I have a real treat for you!” I pumped enthusiasm into my voice. “Mr. Jackman really wanted to cook, so I said yes. This way you can just sit back and enjoy the day.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire. Except it was almost the truth and putting it this way was so much kinder than saying I didn’t want Mom in my kitchen. And it wouldn’t kill Mom to watch the parade and then a little football while someone else slaved over the hot stove.

“I’ll bring the green bean casserole. And the cauliflower Florentine—and creamed onions,” Mom said adamantly.

Creamed onions— bleh!

“It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without them,” I said aloud. And that was true. We had these things every year whether we wanted them or not. “So, what’s for lunch?”

“Minestrone soup. I thought with this cold weather…”

“Sounds great. I smell corn bread too. Yum!”

Mom’s face relaxed. She enjoys feeding me.

“I got some dog biscuits for Blue,” Mom admitted. “I keep them in my cookie jar.” Mom and Aunt Dorothy can’t agree on snacks, so they each have their own stash of pastry goods.

“Thanks. Oh, by the way, your lead to Amelia Adler was very helpful. The chief is new in town and doesn’t know everyone yet.”

“I’m glad I could help.” Mom meant that she would be a responsible citizen and assist the police even if she didn’t like me being anywhere near the investigation. “The sooner this sad affair is wrapped up, the better.”

“I couldn’t agree more. I don’t want to see David Cooper again.”

Mom turned from the stove where she was ladling up soup.

“Why would you have to see David Cooper?” Mom can sound almost as cold at the chief.

“He is handling the Burns estate.” I grimaced. “But I think the chief has all the info he needs now, so I shouldn’t have to talk to the pustule again.”

Mom set a bowl in front of me.

“Chloe— language! I know he is unscrupulous, but ‘pustule’ is such an ugly word.”

David was an ugly person, but I didn’t pursue this argument. It wasn’t one I could win.

“Soup looks great, Mom. Now sit down and let’s talk about dessert. I think we have to do pumpkin and apple pie, but what about a cranberry cobbler?”

Happily distracted from less pleasant subjects, Mom again relaxed and started planning our Thanksgiving dessert menu. I would end up with a couple classic clunkers like orange gelatin salad with shredded carrot and raisins, but it was worth it to keep the peace.

Chapter 10

The phone rang just before six a.m.. I picked up the handset and snapped without thinking: “This had better be good.”

“Chloe?” A voice asked tentatively. After a second I realized that it was Alex’s voice and tried to wake up my civility.

“Alex. Hi.”

“Are you always this grumpy in the morning?”

“Only when I’m sleeping.”

Alex laughed. I get up fairly early but I am not one of those chipper morning people. I could hear a lot of background noise and knew he wasn’t at home.

“I have some good news. I’ve got a break in my schedule and some frequent flyer miles saved up, so I’m catching a flight up in about twenty minutes.” He was waiting for a reaction and I tried to find one.

“Great,” I said, almost meaning it. “I’ll see you after work, I guess.”

“Um…. Okay. You go back to sleep and get happy. Bye now.”

“Bye.”

After I hung up I wondered if what he had been waiting for was not an expression of enthusiasm, but rather an invitation to stay at my place.

“Should I have asked him?” Apollo just glared out of one open eye. Blue wagged her tail but had no advice. “I should have, shouldn’t I?”

Sighing, I dialed Alex’s cell number.

“Chloe? Is everything okay?”

“Do you want to stay here?”

It was his turn to pause. Frankly I was a little insulted that he needed to think about this. If he didn’t stay with me then he was stuck with his aunt. Or at the inn which was kind of expensive.

“Sure. That would be great if you don’t mind,” he said at last.

“Find me on my route,” I said. “I’ll give you a key.”

“Okay— see you in a few hours.” He sounded cheerful again.

“Bye now.” I was feeling more cheerful, too, but maybe not in the way Alex wanted. Mr. Jackman is good at research, but Alex tracked criminals on the computer for a living. I had been wondering how I would find Ryan Endicott without using the work computers that keep track of who goes into the databases. The chief might have allowed me to assist on the case by playing messenger to David and collecting gossip, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to let me on the frontlines of the investigation. That would mean admitting to everyone that I was actively involved in the case and possible grievances and complaints from the union about someone in parking enforcement doing detective work.

And anyway, solving the murder might not have anything to do with finding this Ryan Endicott. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to track him down. Not for David’s sake. And it sure wasn’t because I wanted to tell him that he might be the product of incest, or that the brother he had never met had been murdered.

But I have learned to listen to that little voice that people call intuition. It was telling me to find Ryan Endicott and to do it pronto.

Blue whined and pawed at me.

“It’s too early for a walk.”

But she whined again and ran for the front door where she began woofing and dancing around. Curious, I got up, wincing as my bare feet hit the floor. It was time to drag out the footsie-pajamas. Well, it would be after Alex was gone. He didn’t much like them.

As I groped for my slippers, I heard the front gate slam. Abandoning the futile effort to find footwear, I ran to the door and threw it open. At first, nothing seemed wrong, but Blue ran past me to the gate, her backside wagging furiously as she woo-wooed. Looking around I noticed that one of my pumpkins was missing. I had grown some white ones this year. My results were poor and I had had only three to arrange on the stoop in front of my cornstalks. One of them was gone.

“Well damn.” I had been visited by the pumpkin thief, and Blue’s joyous woo-wooing and wagging backside was very interesting.

I made three tuna sandwiches for lunch. During the summer, Dad would have spent Tuesday in the van paying house calls in Roosevelt and Potters Mill, but things were slower in the fall and I figured I would find him at home. I didn’t really need to see him about the case, but I think he was enjoying our working together, so I decided to take my lunch hour with him and tell him about the pumpkin thief and the zombie.

At work, the chief again stopped to talk to me, which was flattering but also making the rest of the force increasingly uneasy.

“Boston.” At least he wasn’t calling me Chloe. If he seemed even the tiniest bit affectionate, the lardhead would start telling people we were having an affair.

“Yes, Chief?”

“Are you familiar with the basic devious, criminal mind?”

“I was engaged to David Cooper,” I answered.

“Good point.” The chief frowned.

“Why do you ask?”

“I am going to have to do something about this pumpkin thief. I’ve just had an old woman shrieking at me about her Jack Mumbles being missing.”

“Jack-Be-Nimble. They are miniature pumpkins and Mrs. Adams is missing two of them.”

The chief stared.

“I thought she was talking about a child. Or maybe a dog. Surely no one gets that upset over a missing vegetable.”

“She called you personally?”

“Yes. It seems she used to call your father when she had troubles and has decided to now honor me.”

I nodded sympathetically.

“Dad was usually available for people with problems.”

“Hmph. For chasing down missing pumpkins?”

“Or cats. He thought it good policy.”

“I think I could rebuke that hypothesis.”

“Probably not to Mrs. Adams. She is quite hard of hearing.”

The chief shook his head and walked away. I’d seen the chief angry and he wasn’t that morning. I had the feeling that he had deliberately chosen to have this conversation out in the open where everyone could hear. It was as far from lover-like as any chat could be, and a supposed annoyance with my father’s business practices offered cover for future conversations we might have. It might also gain me some sympathy if the men thought the chief was always riding me for my dad’s failings. The chief was being subtle and clever, two things I never expected him to be.

I almost gave it away by grinning.

Having a few minutes before the morning briefing, I dropped Blue at my desk and then stopped by the break-room for coffee. Dale Gordon was there, looking blank until I came in and then he snapped into action, grabbing both chips and cookies from the vending machine and adding them to the two sodas on the table. He seemed very business like for sixty seconds or so, but then his actions exhausted him and he slumped down at the table and leaned into the chair, an amazing feat because the chairs have straight backs and are about as comfy as a church pew. I guess deciding between chips and cookies is exhausting for some people.

He glared at me as he stuffed his face. His eyes kind of bulged in and out with each clenching of the jaw.

The devil on my shoulder whispered in my ear and I succumbed.

“Gordon,” I said pleasantly. “I know someone who wants to meet you. She’s a little shy, so I said I would talk to you first and make sure you were interested.”

He paused in his chewing.

“Who?”

“Her name is Althea. She’s Doc Marley’s receptionist.” I always figured Althea worked for a dentist so she could get her fangs polished for free.

“Is she built?” That would be Gordon’s main consideration.

“Like a brick shithouse,” I said, using one of Dad’s forbidden phrases. It didn’t pay to take the high road with Gordon. A girl’s personality would be completely irrelevant. “Let me give you her number.”

Movement in the doorway behind Gordon drew my eye. It was the chief and he was trying not to laugh. I guess he remembered Cousin Althea and not fondly. I narrowed my eyes at him and he disappeared.

I scribbled Althea’s number on a napkin and slid it across the table.

“She’s off work at five. Now you be nice and don’t scare her.” Like Althea would be scared of anyone in pants. If anything, it was Gordon who was in danger.

Gordon didn’t say thank you, but he grunted which I took to be his version of expressing gratitude.

Grabbing some coffee, I headed for the briefing. Again I managed to keep a straight face though it was getting harder.

Rounds were light since Tuesday isn’t a big shopping or lunching day downtown. I figured things would be slow until the weekend. This time of year, tourists came looking for fall color. Unfortunately, a lot of our trees had been stripped bare by the Halloween storm, so the only color was in the gutter and that would be gone Thursday when the street sweeper came around. There were still plenty of other fun things to do though, like visit the cider mill, shop the boutiques and also admire all the neighborhood decorations. People went for holidays in a big way in Hope Falls. Many neighborhoods ran decorating contests and we usually got written up in a travel magazine or two.

Of course, this year we were getting attention for having a real corpse at our haunted house.

Blue and I turned up at Dad’s house just before noon. Dad was outside, standing near a fire he had going in an old oil drum. It was filled with scraps of wood and he had laid an old oven rack over the top and put a battered tin coffee pot on top. His plaid jacket was covered in burns from years of flying sparks singing the old wool.

A quick look told me that the dilapidated barn at the edge of the property was down and that Old Luke had himself a new, one-horse home that might even last the winter. Since the wood was recycled it looked convincingly old, but I was sure Dad had shored it up inside with new lumber. I was relieved that old place was gone. I had worried that Dad or Luke would end up wearing the old barn roof as a hat some day.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, freeing Blue from durance vile and grabbing the three sandwiches and an apple juice.

“Hi, sweetie. What brings you out this way?” The smile took some effort to produce, fighting its way slowly out of the growing jowls and wrinkles. I felt funny knowing that my dad was getting old. Mom had only been twenty-three when she had me and still seemed young, but maybe because Dad worked outdoors a lot, he just seemed a lot more aged.

“Lunch.” I pulled up a chair, one from the breakfast nook that had somehow had the back broken. It was that or perch on the half sheet of plywood resting on two battered sawhorses.

Dad chuckled as he poured some coffee. Experience told me it would be old and tarry, so I declined a cup.

“It occurs to me that we are two pretty shabby specimens to be the upholders of law and order we imagine ourselves to be.”

I reached up and felt my hair. I had forgotten to wear a hat and knew it was looking a little wild. I would have to do something about that before I saw Alex.

As we ate, one sandwich for each of us, I filled Dad in on events— both the murder and the pumpkin thefts. I didn’t miss the clenching hands as I described the zombie’s warning, but unlike Mom, he didn’t tell me to be careful or to give up the case. Dad knew that I always calculated things carefully and didn’t insult me by urging me to do the obvious, intelligent thing.

“The path seems fairly clear,” he said at last.

I nodded.

“Alex is here. I’m going to ask him to help with a computer search. I want to find this Ryan Endicott as soon as possible.” I finished my sandwich. “He could be in danger,” I added fair-mindedly. “If he’s still alive.”

“And he could be dangerous.”

I nodded again.

“Your Internet connection working okay?” I had given in and hooked up to the information highway. You can’t date a computer nerd and remain a flat-earther. Dad was expressing concern because my small appliances tended to give up the ghost at regular intervals. Fortunately, they were almost always still under warranty when they died. My answering machine had been replaced three times. I have often wondered if it is because of the malevolence I feel towards it. I read somewhere that certain people have strong electro-magnetic fields around them and I thought maybe I was electrocuting the machines when I got annoyed. This theory seemed at least possible since the other appliance that died regularly was my alarm clock.

“Blue and I need to get going. Alex is meeting me downtown and I’m giving him a key to my place.”

I felt a little funny saying this to my father, but he just nodded. He probably figured that Mom would give me plenty of grief for both of them. Or maybe he was thinking I just wanted Alex to work out of my apartment while investigating the whereabouts of Ryan Endicott.

Or maybe he had accepted that I was all grown up and would do as I pleased.

“Say hello for me. If you have time, why don’t you both come to dinner on Wednesday— if you’re free.”

“Okay.” I recalled my Thanksgiving plans. “Dad, I’m having Thanksgiving this year. Mr. Jackman is cooking and Mrs. Graves is coming too. And maybe Alex. Mom is bringing green beans and creamed onions.” That pretty well covered it. “We’ll be having a Caesar turkey, too, since Mr. Jackman is cooking.”

“Sounds good, sweetie. See you Wednesday.”

“Bye, Dad.”

Chapter 11

Alex found me on Washington Street. I gave him a spare key and he gave me a big kiss. Which was nice because my hair was looking kind of crazy and most men would have been frightened. Blue was torn between remaining with me and going off with Alex, but in the end I won.

After work I stopped off for a pizza at Cyrano’s and then hurried home. I wanted to have some time with Alex before going to my writers group. I considered ditching the meeting but I hated to stand up the Lit Wits when Mrs. Smith was reading. People tended to fall asleep during her presentations and forgot to ask relevant questions during Q and A.

We turned on the news while we gathered up plates and napkins. The lead story was again about Hector’s murder. The reporter was standing outside the Burns mansion and I have to admit it looked creepy.

“She’s all but masturbating that microphone in her excitement to deliver bad news,” Alex muttered under his breath and this startled a laugh out of me, even though I didn’t consider the subject humorous. I had to agree that the reporter seemed more excited than horrified or saddened. She wasn’t local. A neighbor would have shown more tact.

“We don’t get much murder here. Maybe she can’t help herself.”

Alex grunted and switched off the television.

We had both put away a couple slices of ham and pineapple with extra cheese when Alex took a long breath and relaxed against the sofa. I’ve seen this before when he’s been traveling, a delay in unwinding. The tenseness was understandable, I also hate flying and all the security at airports.

I got up to get the cookie tin and some more ice tea.

“So tell me about Roosevelt. It sounds odd and there isn’t much information online beyond the incorporation date.” He didn’t mean the zombie. I had already told him about that prank. And also about Thanksgiving, which he hadn’t committed to definitely but seemed inclined to favor. I knew it was a hard decision when he had family in Silicon Valley that would blackmail him.

I rejoined Alex on the sofa and thought about how to describe my visit.

“Roosevelt is as much a state of mind as an actual location, though for tax purposes they do have boundaries. The county administrates just about everything— police, fire, visiting nurses, that kind of thing. It’s too small to have these services on its own.”

“Go on. What state of mind do Rooseveltians have?” he asked. “What made Ryan Endicott such a rebel?”

“It’s xenophobic. Insular.” I liked that word and had been looking for a place to use it. “It’s always foggy there— something about the river meeting up with the hot springs. It’s very steep. Isolated. Small. No one passes through because it’s at the end of the road. It makes me feel claustrophobic. Blue doesn’t like it either. Anyone with any initiative leaves the moment they turn eighteen. Another twenty years and it will be a ghost town.”

“Sounds like a great place to be from.” Alex reached behind his head and scratched Aphrodite under the chin. He didn’t seem to mind the cats breathing down the back of his neck as they stalked his pizza crusts. “I’ll start looking for Endicott while you’re out. The county may have his juvenile records online.”

“But those are sealed, aren’t they?” I asked.

“Only theoretically. We aren’t trying to make a court case, just find out something about the guy. That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Really? Well, thanks for doing it. I appreciate this so much.”

“No problem. I’ve gotten curious about this case.”

“Is that why you came?” I asked.

“In part. But mostly I wanted to see you.”

I smiled happily. I mostly take Alex at his word when he says stuff like that. It’s easier that way.

“You’ll be okay while I’m at my writers group?”

“I have pizza. I have company,” he said, giving Blue’s head a rub. “We’ll all be fine.”

“Then I had best be off. I wouldn’t put it past Tara Lee to lock me out if I’m late.”

“Hurry back,” he said, but his eyes had already shifted to the portable computer he’d brought with him.

*  *  *

The Lit Wits meet at the public library in the New and Notable section which is conveniently located near the restroom and outlets for the coffee maker.

I waved at Mrs. Grady, the librarian, and then went to the refreshment table to help Mrs. Everett and Mrs. Graves set up. Usually Mrs. Smith would help too, but she was reading that night and there is an unwritten rule that you don’t do hostess chores on nights when you read. Mrs. Smith is Hope Falls foremost expert of Elvis trivia. Tonight she was covering the Hollywood years. She was clearly excited. My own inspirational fires were banked down for the time being. Real life was more compelling than fiction.

“Our pumpkin thief has struck again,” Mrs. Graves said in a low voice as she handed me some napkins. We never leave them in a pile. Napkins have to be fanned out in eye-catching half circles. The cookies are also attractively arranged into pyramids.

What Mrs. Graves and everyone else really wanted to know about was progress on the murder case, but they wouldn’t ask outright because they know I am in a tricky situation at work. Agartha Graves, Mrs. Everett and Mrs. Smith might suspect my involvement in the investigation, but outside of Mr. Jackman, no one knew for sure that I was doing anything these days besides writing parking tickets.

“I got hit this morning— one Baby Boo lost,” I shared. “And Mrs. Adams got it on Monday. He took two Jack-Be-Nimbles from her. I actually saw him, tried to follow but he ran down into the creek.”

“Is it a boy?” Mrs. Everett asked.

“No. At least not a young one. He’s tall. Old enough to know better.”

“I’m missing a Lumina,” Mrs. Graves said. “It was purloined on Monday night right off of my porch. I was saving it for a harvest table.”

“And my largest Autumn Gold went missing Sunday while I was at church. The thief just came into my backyard and got it out of the shed.” Mrs. Everett sighed. “It would have made a half dozen pies.”

“The thief has eclectic taste,” I said. “I thought at first he was stealing big pumpkins so he could win the pumpkin carving contest, but now I wonder if he is trying to get seed from all the different varieties.” But before I could expand on this idea to a very interested audience, Tara Lee was calling us to order.

Tara Lee says I’ll never be a great writer and that may be true, but as I would far rather be popular than great, this is okay. Her criticism that I lack imagination may also be correct but fortunately I have a job and friends that make thinking up wild plots unnecessary. I just wait a couple of weeks and something fantastical comes across my desk. I thought the whole pumpkin thief thing had great potential for a cozy mystery.

I left the meeting as soon as I decently could, stopping only to ask Mr. Jackman if he could give Mrs. Smith a ride home and to tell Althea that Dale Gordon, dashing police officer, had asked for her number and might be calling her. Althea was too stunned to even grunt, so this time Gordon had the better manners.

Fog was building in, the kind called pea soup, and a bit of it followed me through the front door before I shut it. In spite of the porch light, I hadn’t noticed the pumpkins were missing from the stoop until I saw them there in the hall. Alex had thoughtfully moved them in to save them from the pumpkin thief.

I enjoyed coming home to my peaceful house that night. Alex had turned down the lights while he worked and the animals had obligingly opted to slumber. Of course, it doesn’t take much to get them to nap, but I took as a good sign that no one was up in arms.

“Hi,” I said, joining him on the sofa. I rubbed my face against Alex’s slightly stubbly cheek, taking pleasure in his warmth.

“Hi yourself,” he said and gave me a kiss. Then we cuddled up and enjoyed the rest of the night.

*  *  *

I awoke with a familiar head sharing my pillow. There was also one on the pillow beside me. Blue had joined us sometime in the night. Alex was still sleeping, but Blue’s eyes were open so I got up quietly and took her outside.

Alex was awake when we came back in and he told me what he had found so far.

Ryan Endicott had mainly gotten in trouble for being a fire bug. He didn’t favor matches though. He liked exploding things; fire-crackers, M-80’s, quarter sticks (dynamite for taking out tree stumps, which you need a license to buy, but farmers and ranchers always seem to have some around in unlocked sheds and barns).

And motor homes? Did he like to blow those up too? I didn’t get a chance to pose this question before the phone rang. I am not fond of early morning phone calls, especially when I have company, but given the situation I decided to take it. Besides, my answering machine was on strike again.

“Chloe!” It took a moment to place the voice. Mary Grady was upset and wanted to see me. Since she had been fine the night before, I knew that something had happened that morning. We agreed on where and when and she hung up without saying goodbye.

Alex had one other bit of news he shared as I dressed. The Fulbright Home For Wayward Girls had had a break-in several years ago and a computer was smashed. The next night there was a fire in the business offices. Arson was the cause, but no one was ever arrested, though it was postulated that the vandal might also be the arsonist.

*  *  *

I met Mary Grady at Daddy’s Donuts just after eleven. We had both taken an early lunch so we could meet ahead of the crowds. Daddy’s isn’t the best lunching place. All they have are pastry and things get pretty picked over by late morning. But it was unlikely that we would run into David there so we often used it for meetings.

Mary’s very guarded phone call to me early that morning had told me she was nervous, so I wasn’t surprised when she played things kind of cloak and dagger.

“David has another file in his office. I found it when I came in early,” she said out of the side of her mouth as she pretended to examine the wilting bear-claws. I didn’t think she could see anything with sunglasses on. “I think he doesn’t trust me.” This obviously offended her even though David has cause. She slipped me a folded paper. “I think the police need to know about this but I can’t…”

“It’s okay. I have a private eye on the case. I can imply it came from him if I need to show it to anyone.” Neither of us said which case. There was only one.

“Is Alex in town?” She looked me in the face for the first time. There were two of me reflected in her sunglasses and both looked grumpy.

“Yep. He got in yesterday.”

“Oh good. I’ve been afraid that you might find something bad while poking around.”

“Afraid why?” Wasn’t I supposed to find out things? That was usually the point of poking around.

“Afraid that it would be something dangerous.” I began to wonder what in the bloody blue blazes she had found in David’s other file that could make her so nervous. “I’ll have a cinnamon roll,” she said to Daddy in a normal voice. “And an orange juice.”

“Raised glazed for me,” I added. “Mary, this is my treat.”

“Thanks. Well, I best be going,” she said as she accepted the white bag and plastic bottle from Daddy. “Talk to you soon. Be careful now.”

“You know it.”

I paid Daddy, took my bag back to the cart, and then—unable to resist any longer—I opened the paper Mary had given me. It was a listing of assets in the Burns estate.

I whistled and this made Blue whine.

“Sorry,” I said. No wonder the town and David were in no hurry to find the heir. Even at the lousy interest rates banks were paying, the interest on almost two million dollars would be nice. And you could bet that both the town and David were charging the estate hefty fees for maintaining the accounts as well.

“Come on, Blue. We’re going home for lunch.” Blue sniffed at the bag and then wagged her tail.

*  *  *

“I have a bona-fide suspect,” I started to say as I came bursting in the door. But Alex got there first: “I’ve found Ryan Endicott. He’s a radio personality in San Francisco. Goes by the name of Ryan E. He’s kind of a shock jock.”

“I’ve found the motive too,” I finally said. “There were assets besides the property—”

“A million-six in assets.”

“A million-eight,” I corrected. “Plus the house.”

“There’s a problem with the scenario though,” Alex cautioned and my brain slipped into what I call Analytico. It’s a kind of logic tree that my brain draws when it wants to hunt down several possibilities at once. Mr. Jackman says in that way my mind is very like a computer. I arrived at a correct question without my usual muttering and then had to reengage the speaking part of my brain since I forget how to talk to people when I’m thinking hard. “He was on the air Halloween night?”

“Seems so. And his program can be downloaded from the internet.”

“But that could be faked— pre-recorded?”

“Yes, but not without effort. There was at least one viewer phone-in on the part I listened to. That would mean collusion, or editing in something from a previous show.”

“But he could know how to do that. He works in radio.”

“He could know.”

“We need to talk to the chief,” I said. “I think it’s time to go to San Francisco.”

“What about lunch first?”

“Here, I brought you a donut.” I handed him the bag with a smile. I didn’t want a stale donut anyway. I know Alex, when he’s missed a meal he is inclined to take a dim view of the world. Sugar and salt rock his world. “I’ll bake for you tonight. My espresso chip cookies.”

Alex sighed.

“Okay, let’s go get our asses kicked by the chief.”

“No, he’ll be happy about this,” I said, though I was beginning to have some doubts. “Actually, maybe you better stay here. There will be less talk if I go see the chief alone. If you’re there it’ll make for gossip.”

“Okay,” Alex agreed readily. The chief had been a little scary last time Alex met him.

“Want me to keep Blue?” he offered. I think Alex covets my dog.

“No, best if things look normal. Even if it annoys the chief.”

“Okay. It’s your funeral.” I frowned at this unfortunate turn of phrase.

*  *  *

I found the chief having lunch at his desk. He looked unenthused about his sandwich so I didn’t feel bad for interrupting. The station was bustling and I doubted that we could be overheard, but I was careful to lower my voice since I didn’t want to close the door. A closed door would cause more speculation than anything I might say.

“Boston, the town council has asked that the police field a choir for the annual singing in the park event. I guess the fire department and nurses and all the service people have choirs?” The chief’s voice wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t discreet either.

I nodded, sensing someone had come up behind me and was hovering near the door.

“Do you perhaps sing?” he asked hopefully.

“I do. It’s okay, chief. Just post a sign-up sheet in the break room. We have lots of good voices in the department and we do this every year. Officer Bryce is usually our choral director. We know what to do. You may also want to put up a sheet so people can get signed up for building the float.”

“Float?”

“We always make a float for the Christmas parade. Usually we just decorate a hay wagon with some garlands or something. The choir rides on it and sings. The parade is only five blocks. No big deal. After singing, we have a bean feed.”

“It sounds like a real Bacchanalia.”

“Not really. At least no one has ever gotten arrested. You don’t have to worry about us being off duty all day either. It takes only a couple of hours at most.”

“Thank God. I have to tell you that we never did this kind of thing in Chicago— except Saint Patrick’s Day.”

“No? Well, it’s pretty fun. You’ll get used to judging contests and doing community stuff. If you decide to stay.” The chief looked doubtful. “The town folks like it and it pays to keep them happy and on your side. My dad always says that you have to take people as they really are and not as you want them to be. You get tolerant or you get bitter.”

“I wouldn’t want that,” the chief said solemnly.

“Me either. I’m just glad you aren’t trying to get me involved with the Thanksgiving pageant.”

“Well….”

“No— not for anything on earth. Last time I volunteered I got attacked by a hysterical turkey.” The chief looked helpless but I stuck to my guns. “No. Never again. I will bring you a pumpkin for your desk, if you like. The office is kind of bare.”

“Thank you for the thought. And I’ll send Dale Gordon to work on the pageant. He should be good with turkeys,” the chief said and scribbled himself a note. “You wanted to see me about something else?” His voice was lower and I sensed the eavesdropper had moved on.

“Yes. I’ve located Ryan Endicott, the deceased’s half-brother. He has one hell of a motive for murder— if we can prove he had advance knowledge of his brother’s existence and their shared inheritance— and I think we can. David Cooper can help with dates when he notified people and stuff.” Even if we had to tie him up and beat him with rubber hoses to get that help. “But Ryan also has an alibi for that night.” The chief’s gaze was sharp and I was glad when he looked away to examine the paper I handed him.

“One hell of an alibi?” he asked. “Or just an alibi—because this looks like a damn fine motive to me.”

“That remains to be seen,” I said and then started explaining about the radio show. I met the chief’s eyes as I ended with: “I feel a cold coming on. I might need some time off.”

“Does Alex have a cold too?” He asked after a long moment. This was another turning point for the chief. My ‘help’ was going from fairly passive information gathering to active investigation in another city. He would have a hard time defending this if it ever got out. But the fact was that though Lawrence Bryce was competent enough at routine investigation, he hadn’t found the things I had. He also could not go off detecting in another city without getting permission from the San Francisco authorities— which could take forever. The chief wanted Hope Falls’ only homicide in a decade solved and quickly. The elections were only a week away. His job was on the line.

To confirm my thoughts, the chief said: “The autopsy results are back. Knife to the heart. From the back. Hector was taller than his killer. You called it.”

I nodded, waiting.

“We’ve contacted the police in San Francisco about the Sayers murders but there is no enthusiasm there. Ditto the Oregon police in reopening the Burns case. A couple tourists died in a fire. They are okay with that.” The chief was frustrated.

“Would it help you say yes to my leave if I told you that Alex was definitely feeling sick too?”

“If he is then you take a couple days off. And Chloe?” He said gently: “Be careful. I know you’re competent and strong and scary bright, but a stranger might not—”

“Might not find me formidable even if I carried a shotgun and a badge that said I worked for the IRS?”

The chief smiled briefly.

“Exactly.”

“That’s what Alex is for. I don’t plan on being brave. I’m just the private eye’s girlfriend,” I assured him blithely. “There won’t be any danger.”

“Give me your cell phone. I’m going to plug in my number anyway. If there’s trouble, you call.”

Chapter 12

Alex booked our flights online. He got some good last minute deals, but it was still far from cheap and I doubted the department would reimburse me.

While he arranged to pay for our torture at the hands of the airlines, I called Dad to ask him to watch Blue while I was gone. He got an update on the case as well. Then I called Mom to ask if she’d watch the cats (parity for the parents— can’t ask for help from one and not the other). Mom didn’t get an update on the case, which left her to assume that I was going down to meet Alex’s family. An amusing idea I shared with him after I had hung up.

“We could do that, you know.”

“Do what?” I asked, an idiot echo, but the idea was so foreign I couldn’t process it.

“See my folks. They’re curious about you. Mary Elizabeth has been singing your praises.”

That was a shocker. I didn’t think Mary Elizabeth praised anything but sunblock and moisturizer.

“Well…” I turned off the oven and pulled out the last sheet of cookies. The gas sputtered and flared then finally accepted death. When I can afford it, I am getting an electric oven. The open flames of the stove scare me (ditto candles) and electric ovens are better for baking anyway.

“These cookies are excellent— addictive even,” Alex said, grabbing three more off the cooling rack and going to the refrigerator for more milk.

“Well, I guess there are some people who should never have that first smoke, that first drink, that—”

“—first espresso chip cookie? But it’s too late now. I’ve had them and I want more.”

Alex being goofy made me smile.

“Okay. Let’s meet your parents. But just a short visit? We’ve got work to do.”

“Yes, ma’am.” It would have sounded more respectful if he hadn’t had a mouth full of cookie.

*  *  *

We had to leave early Friday morning to drive to Seattle. We had to depart from Seattle and not Spokane— the trouble with last minute tickets. That meant dropping off pets before the sun was up. Blue didn’t whimper when I left, and I appreciated her being brave. I was suddenly having doubts about the trip. Blue could end up having an emotional gastritis or something and I wouldn’t be there.

“Call me when you get in,” Dad said.

“I will.” And I meant it. It was silly, but suddenly I felt like I was an immigrant setting off for the new world, possibly never to see my family again.

There was no sign of Halloween or Thanksgiving at the airport. Probably there was some federal regulation about not having any pumpkins that could hold bombs inside the airport. The seasonless nature of our surroundings was disorienting after the beauty of Hope Falls and I felt like I was going some place that was farther away from home than could be expressed with mere miles.

Alex closed his laptop just before they called us to board. “The janitor who was working Halloween night is working tomorrow night as well. His name is Esteban Nunez. I think he’s our best bet for finding out if Ryan E was actually at the station.”

“Good,” I said and meant it, though I was getting increasingly nervous about getting on the plane.

Alex waited until we were strapped in to tell me that we would be having dinner with his parents that very night and that it would be at his sister’s house. We would be going there straight from the airport.

I looked at my casual travel clothes and wanted to protest. We had agreed on his parents, not his whole freaking family and not right off the plane, but I bit my tongue. Maybe it would be best to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible. I was in town solely for the purpose of finding Ryan Endicott. But, relationships are not just about rearranging your interior life. It sometimes involves the exterior one as well. As happens eventually with all relationships, sometimes you have to do things you don’t want. Dinner with the family was one of them.

*  *  *

San Francisco’s airport was a lot like Seattle’s. Busy, characterless and dark. We had had a long layover in Portland when a landing gear light went on and we were late getting in. Alex had to call his sister and move dinner back an hour.

“I told her five was too early, but a prophet is never loved in his own land,” he muttered. “I said we might be delayed by weather, but does she ever listen?”

We got his car out of long-term parking and were finally on our way. Street lamps made streams of light, so close, so bright that there were no pools of darkness between them, and cars moved in them constantly. Day, night. It didn’t matter. The not so subtle background din pressed on my ears and I remembered why I hate visiting big cities. It is funny, given how much I love Blue, that I am really a lot more like a cat than a dog when it comes to facing new situations. I don’t like change. It makes me nervous.

The weather in San Francisco was lovely; the visit with Alex’s family was— predictably— not.

I had not been enthused about meeting the parents, Rosemary and Bob, and was even less so about doing it at the home of Alex’s sister. I knew Alex adored her and her kid, but Gwen sounded like the world’s most spoiled brat and lived down to my expectation by demanding another round of apologies for being late the moment we stepped in the door. I let Alex handle it. I wasn’t about to apologize for something that couldn’t be helped.

I had an image of Alex’s parents culled from various reminiscences he had shared, but the reality was so distorted from Alex’s description that I might as well have been looking in a funhouse mirror. Alex’s parents seemed nice enough, though Rosemary was the driving force and the husband just a suit of clothes that did her bidding, but Alex’s sister Gwen and the hand puppet she had married were another matter. We had barely taken our seats at the table—and by we, I don’t mean Zack, Alex’s cherished nephew who ran around the dining room for the entire meal throwing Legos at everything and everyone— when Gwen began describing her Thanksgiving plans, without ever once suggesting that I might like to join them for the holiday. Alex’s mom had the grace to look uncomfortable and finally leaned forward and interrupted her daughter’s monologue.

“What are you plans for the holiday, Chloe?”

My first response— obviously not having it with you— couldn’t be uttered. I considered various answers carefully, which worried Alex, and then I said: “I’m having Thanksgiving at my place this year. It will be my folks and a few orphans who have no one else.” If this story was good enough for my mom, it was good enough for Alex’s rude family. “If Alex is up my way then I’d love to have him too, of course.”

“But he can’t! He always has Thanksgiving with us. Zack would be just crushed if Alex wasn’t here.” The furrows that suddenly bracketed Gwen’s mouth and dented her brow looked as deep as scars and I wondered what emotional wound had left them. Certainly she had worn this expression a lot over the years to make it so strong. Gwen struggled to produce a few crocodile tears but failed to so much as dampen her eye makeup.

Secretly I was relieved. If she had cried I would have had to offer some gesture of comfort. As it was, I could go on thinking nasty things about her without being outwardly rude.

“Alex is supposedly an adult.” I felt Alex flinch as I spoke, but believed it was time that someone scrape the scales off his eyes. “I’m sure he can figure out plans for himself.”

Rosemary let out a gasp and then quickly changed the subject.

I ate as quickly as I could and said next to nothing for the rest of the meal. It was easy; Gwen talked almost nonstop. About how precious and precocious Zack was. The men never said a word. I couldn’t get a read on how Alex was taking this, except to know that he was increasingly uncomfortable. He was smart enough not to suggest in any way that Gwen’s increasingly bad mood was my fault and therefore my responsibility, but he didn’t seem to be at the point of suggesting that it might actually be her responsibility either. I guess everyone has their role in the family. Gwen was the terrorist.

Though I hate to cop to it, I have inherited many of my mom’s traditional social values. Good manners while breaking bread and the pretext of enjoying it— and the company of those who prepared it— was one of them. That part was a struggle on many levels. Gwen aside, there were more croutons than salad on our plates— because Zack would eat them but not lettuce and the meal was designed to cater to his tastes. I hate the toasted abominations. It’s cruel thing to do to perfectly good bread. The pork chops were tough and over-salted— deliberately over-cooked, I bet, to inspire guilt at our late arrival— and I think the green stuff used to be spinach. Picking at my food, I decided that I had been unnecessarily self-critical about my own cooking.

I wasn’t the only one suffering, but we masticated manfully. The only one to tell the truth was Zack who shouted ‘yuck!’ when his mom suggested that he might want to eat some dinner.

“You must try my strawberry rhubarb pie. Everyone loves it,” Gwen insisted as her husband cleared the dinner dishes away. I heard a Lego break as he trod on it and bobbled the dishes in his arms, but he never said a word to his son about picking up his toys.

“Just a sliver then,” I said because though I am polite, I am not at all fond of rhubarb, no matter how much strawberry you mix into it. Making nice was okay because we were almost out of there.

But either over-developed good manners or a certain clairvoyance mixed with a desire to make me ill prompted Alex’s sister to hand me a ‘sliver’ that was roughly one quarter of the pie. Her smile was a lot like Althea’s when she was ten and double-dog-daring me to do something stupid. I was really beginning to hate Gwen.

“Here,” I said to Alex. “This piece is for you. Don’t cut any for me, Gwen. I’ll just nibble off Alex’s plate.”

I knew Alex didn’t like rhubarb either, but too bad for him.

“Don’t be silly—” she began. Her voice was getting shrill and her husband and parents froze in their seats. I checked to make sure she still had hair instead of snakes. Apparently it isn’t the Medusa’s locks but rather her voice that turns people to stone.

“I don’t want any. I hate rhubarb,” I said flatly, the last of my manners giving out.

Alex stood up hurriedly.

“Daryl, have my piece,” Alex said, shoving the plate at his brother-in-law. From Daryl’s expression, I gathered he didn’t like rhubarb either. “We really have to be going. As I told you, we have business meetings in the morning and we haven’t even unpacked yet.”

I didn’t make any polite protests. I did refrain from sticking my foot out and tripping the little ape, Zack, as he careened by hurling another Lego at me. Usually there is some milling in the doorway, some hugs and goodbyes. Alex and I made it out in record time. We didn’t even begin pulling on coats until we were on the sidewalk and headed for the car parked a block and a half up the street. The silence was what Tara Lee would call fraught.

The trip back to Alex’s place was quiet. I was hoping he wouldn’t ask me anything about what was on my mind, because if he did I would be honest and it was too early in our relationship to have a full frontal family discussion. Heck it was too early to sneak one in the back door. Because this wasn’t a family I wanted to acquire or even see again and there was no good way to say that. My mom could be trying. She thrived on minor emergencies and having occasions which she could arise to, but Gwen was on a whole other level. It probably wasn’t reasonable to hope that Alex would be willing to give them up for adoption, so the less said the better. But in the end, he couldn’t let it go.

“I guess that could have gone better. Gwen is sometimes a little…” He trailed off. What was there to say? His baby sister was a rude brat who needed her mouth duct-taped closed?

“Well, I did learn two things,” I said, looking out the window and seeing nothing but headlights. “I’m glad I have no kids. Or sisters.”

That should have sounded humorous, but it didn’t. Probably because I meant every word. I had actually learned a third thing, but this I didn’t share.

The first time I had encountered Alex he had made me cry, and the instant I had showed tears he had backed off and become conciliatory. Now I knew where he’d gotten his training. This could be useful information if the day came that I decided to be manipulative. Of course, I hoped that if that day ever came that I would just walk away.

Maybe we should have apologized for something or other just to make nice, but anything that was said that night would have been spoken under duress and meant nothing except that we were cowards about facing the truth.

Alex’s apartment was very clean and very plain, resembling most a business office. There was no sign of a woman’s touch and that was reassuring. There was some point at which he said no to his sister. Perhaps there was hope after all.

I called Dad at once, letting him know I was safe. I left the room while we talked and asked in a hushed voice to speak to Blue, but Dad said no. She had just settled down and he didn’t want her all riled up again.

Instant guilt. My dog was riled. I wanted to talk to her but let it go since I am not completely selfish, but I missed Blue very much. I was pretty sure that Alex wasn’t going to be good company that night and I wanted my dog to comfort me.

Okay, forget honesty. Straightening my shoulder, I went back into the living room determined to make nice for the rest of the evening.

Chapter 13

Esteban Nunez didn’t come on duty until six o’clock in the evening, so we had the day free to do some sight-seeing. Deciding to put yesterday behind us, we set out to see the coast and to have lunch at Alex’s favorite restaurant, Scopozzi’s, located in the mountain town of Boulder Creek. He assured me that the sand-dabs were to die for and they had a spaghetti Bolognese that was like no other.

I liked the Santa Cruz Mountains and found myself relaxing once we were among the trees. Even Alex’s referring to the stretch of road we were on as ‘blood alley’ failed to ruin the view or my mood. Once or twice I thought of Blue, about how she would have had her breakfast and then gone out to the garage to help Dad repair something and maybe visit Old Luke. Blue loves horses, even mean ones like Luke. But mostly I stayed in the moment and just enjoyed the ride.

It was fairly easy to put the city and the previous night behind me and to forget that I was going to an even larger metropolis that afternoon. Cities are like monsters with very sharp teeth. Percentage wise, we probably have as many bad apples in Hope Falls as they do in any large city—Ryan Endicott perhaps being a good example— but it seemed that the city had enough bad people and situations that they could reach critical mass at any hour of the day and one had to be constantly wary. We might have a bar fight at Harley’s but we didn’t have riots. These smaller towns in the mountains like Boulder Creek, Felton and Ben Lomond felt different to me. Eccentric and quirky, but without mass lurking menace. I said this to Alex but he just snorted. I guess menace did lurk and I just didn’t see it because of the trees.

Scopozzi’s is an old boarding house for loggers; wood floors, low ceilings with open rafters and big fireplaces. I was in love from the moment I crossed the threshold. No, even before that. The parking lot was vibrant gold. The leaves were damp with recent rain and merely whispered and sighed as we walked on them.

The menu was extensive and old-fashioned. I like food without pretension because I feel stupid getting intimidated by an entrée I don’t recognize. Of course I had the Spaghetti Bolognese and it was the best I’ve tasted.

We headed next for Half Moon Bay. It was a bit out of the way and we had missed the pumpkin festival, but several of the nurseries there were still displaying their winning giants. They give a twenty thousand dollar prize for the biggest pumpkin! The record is one-thousand-five-hundred-twenty-four pounds. It was an Atlantic Giant. I couldn’t imagine how large that was until we actually saw the winner on display. It was big enough that if it were scooped out, children could use it as a play house. I could barely peek over the top. Alex took a picture with his phone and got me a packet of Atlantic Giant seeds.

“I can grow one of those,” I whispered as we got back in the car and Alex laughed, but in a good way. Dazzled at the possibilities, I began making plans for next year. Growing pumpkins in mulch is supposed to make them larger and there were special fertilizers. And who needed a yard anyway….

We stopped at the winery and Alex picked up a bottle of Coastal Fog chardonnay— because I liked that label best. I saw pictures of the festival on the wall there and got some ideas for Hope Falls next fall festival— like the build-a-scarecrow contest. They used Indian corn, gourds and all kinds of fall plants, not just cornstalks and clothing. And the small ones were cute, not scary.

I fell asleep in the car and had a last dream of Halloween.

Proceeding down the sidewalk, we were now four and had to walk two by two. Alex was with me, Todd and Althea, though in reality, he of course couldn’t have been there trick-or–treating with us.

“Wait a second, guys,” Alex said pulling his sheet over his head and draping it down his shoulders. He was a ghost. “We can’t go trick-or-treating without a plan. That’s for amateurs.”

“Come on, Alex,” I said.  “Stop kidding around.  We’ve always gone trick-or-treating without a plan.”

“That was last year. This is now.”  With a dramatic pause which seemed to be anticipating a drum roll, Alex pulled his sheet off completely, reached into the back pocket of his jeans, and retrieved a neatly folded sheet of brown butcher block paper. Unfolding it, the sheet of paper proved to be a good three feet square. Once unfolded, Alex held the paper up before our eyes to display what could only be described as a treasure map. Though it wasn’t full dark yet, we moved under a street lamp where the light was better.

“Wow, what is it?” Todd asked in utter fascination.

“It’s a candy map of the neighborhood,” Alex explained with a smile.

Coming closer I was able to get a better look at the large sheet of paper. Sure enough, it was a map of the neighborhood. Only this map, I saw uneasily, extended into other nearby neighborhoods as well. In fact, it went all the way to San Francisco. Written in fine print on the map were the last names of the people who lived in the houses along with the candy that was available at each house.  Where the candy was unknown, mostly in the more distant neighborhoods, the house was marked with a large red question mark. The houses with the best candy were all circled in blue. And highlighted with a gold star was the Anderson’s, also known as the apple cider house.

One house, the Burns Mansion, was circled in black. It didn’t list any candy.

“Gosh Alex, that’s amazing,” I said, my eyes wide.  “How long did it take you to do all this?”

“It took me two weeks in my art class. I would have been faster if I had a computer,” Alex explained proudly.  “And as a result of the research, I’m late with my history homework, so I’ll need to copy this week.”

“You got it.”

“Wow, nice job, Alex,” Althea commented. I felt some annoyance that she was being nice to my boyfriend. I thought about shoving her away.

Alex held the map up for a few more seconds as he basked in the admiration. Then he laid it down on the sidewalk and the four of us got down on all fours to study the map in more detail. As we examined the chart, we made our plans of conquest in order to rake in the most of the best candy available.

“I’ve done some analysis,” Alex explained. His dad was a banker and did a lot of analysis. “Baker Street is the best street overall when it comes to candy.  I made this determination by considering the percentage of houses that were circled in blue. Next comes Adams, so you can see how the route should continue. Of course, if we want to find the murderer, we will have to go another way. What do you think, Chloe?”

“Well…” I wanted to solve the murder, but I also wanted the candy.

“I want candy,” Todd said. “Who cares about a murderer?”

“Okay.” Pointing with his finger, Alex continued to outline the optimal route through the various neighborhoods in order to bring in the best candy in the shortest amount of time and with the least amount of effort.  When he was done drawing the route, his finger was pointing to his own doorstep just a few houses down from my own. “That’s the best route if we want candy.”

“That’s brilliant, Alex,” Althea admired again.

“Yeah, well. I was always good at science and stuff,” Alex explained, blushing a little at Althea’s compliment.

I was too busy studying the map to add my own voice to the compliments. After a detailed examination, I had a few questions to ask.

“Alex, you circled this house in black.  However, that’s all the way back in the orchard. Is it really worth going all that way just to hit one house?”

“Oh yeah.Because we have to talk to the ghosts. The ghosts are very important if we want to find Ryan.”

“Why would I want Ryan?” Althea asked.

“Because Ryan is the grand prize and Chloe wants him more than candy— don’t you, Chloe?”

I woke up before I answered.

We wended our way northward visiting beaches and tide pools, but as the sun began to lower, he headed directly into the city. San Francisco seemed very tall to me, very vertical, and filled with insane drivers who managed to be stupid while crawling along at two miles per hour. It was pretty in a grand way, but I was just as happy to park the car in a parking structure and strike out on foot.

Alex told me about the building we were headed to. The Keller Building went up in 1904 and withstood the San Francisco earthquake. The site had been the home of a musical hall that burned down in 1899 and there were rumored to be ghosts. That didn’t matter though. Land was scarce in San Francisco. Ghosts were not a deterrent. In fact, they had dug up all the cemeteries and moved the graves out of town. Steel-framed, built of sandstone and brick, The Keller was solid. One would expect a lot of echoes with those vast marble floors, but the acoustics were oddly muted. The dark marble swallowed not only light but sound.

The radio station did not take up the whole building. They had a suite on the third floor. We weren’t going there though. Not right away. Step one was to talk to the janitor. If he confirmed that Ryan Endicott was working Halloween night then we would walk away. Alex and I had agreed that if Endicott was cleared then we would let David do everything through official channels. I had no wish to explain his parentage to him.

Though the roads outside were choked with cars and people, the building was oddly empty. We listened carefully but didn’t hear any tell-tale squeaking from a cart and no one whistled while they worked. There were no footsteps, no dinging elevators, no sounds of any kind. I found it easy to believe that the building was haunted.

Two broad staircases swept up on either side of the lobby. One went to a mezzanine level and one up to the second floor. There was also an elevator with gleaming brass doors that made me nervous.

“Let’s take the stairs,” I said.

“Left or right?” Alex asked.

“You go left,” I said.

“Okay. You have your phone? I’ll call if I find Nunez. You do the same.”

“Okay. See you soon.”

We were there on serious business, but I couldn’t help having a moment of pretend while I pictured myself as Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady”, going off to the embassy ball. I was swishing an imaginary gown as I stepped off on to the second floor and almost fell over a janitor’s cart.

“Oh!” I gasped. “Hello. Mr. Nunez?”

“Yes?” Esteban Nunez looked up politely. He was a middle aged man. Small. His smile was pleasant.

I thought about calling Alex on the phone, but it seemed so silly and would puzzle the nice man, so I just asked my question. When he hesitated I reached in my pocket and held out a twenty. He was probably thinking I was a girlfriend checking up on my guy, or maybe a groupie wanting Ryan’s schedule. I did my best to look dumb and harmless— which is very effective with most guys and not especially difficult to pull off when you are small.

Esteban Nunez took the twenty I offered and said: “Ryan E wasn’t in the studio that night. The show was canned. I started on the third floor at seven and—”

The hammer flew out of nowhere and hit him in the side of the head. The janitor crumpled and hit the floor hard.

“Mr. Nunez?” I asked stupidly and then turned to face the thing running at me out of a dark room.

I had seen pictures of Ryan Endicott, but I didn’t recognize him that evening. His face was so distorted that I barely saw him as human. This was a true monster, the thing I had feared would attack me in the corn maze and I reacted as I would have if the boogieman had come at me.

I wish I could tell you that we had a giant superhero fight and I used all my self-defense training to save myself, but it wasn’t like that at all. Ryan flew at me clawed hands outstretched. Instinctively I spun sideways, bumping up against the cart. He went past me and I gave him a shove, helping momentum along. That was it, my sole contribution to the fight. But the shove sent him toward the stairs. He missed the railing and went cart-wheeling down them. The noise was terrible. I heard every breaking bone.

Fortunately for me, there were security cameras that recorded everything. You can see it on Youtube if you missed the news that week.

The Keller Building is a historical landmark, a beautiful old building with beautiful old marble stairs with beautiful sharp edges. By the time Ryan Endicott reached the bottom, he was dead. Better karma for me if he had lived, of course, but more convenient for the police (I discovered while eavesdropping) that he died. And at least the janitor is alive to tell his story, though he may not regain sight in his left eye. If Endicott had killed me, I am sure that the unconscious Esteban Nunez would have died too because of what he knew.

The next few hours were a blur. Alex found me only moments after Ryan’s fall and he called the police and asked for an ambulance because I was busy trying to stop the bleeding in Nunez’s head. I had expected some outcry from the offices on the second floor, but it was after hours and the building was deserted. It was just us, the bleeding janitor and Ryan’s broken body.

Alex and I went to the police station. I made my statement to the police and I signed an electronic copy (we don’t have this in Hope Falls).

I talked frankly to the detective in charge, Ramon Alverez, a friend of Alex’s as it happened, and I ended by telling him firmly that unless I was arrested that I was going home the next day. My ticket was non-refundable and that they knew where to reach me if needed. I knew there was always a chance the D.A. would decide to try and prosecute me for something, but it seemed unlikely since it was so clearly self-defense after Endicott had hit the janitor with a hammer and run screaming at me— a woman half his size and weight. And, oh yeah, he was probably a mass murderer.

Alverez was about to argue, but I pointed out that I was fifty percent of parking enforcement for Hope Falls and asked what would happen to his city’s revenues if fifty percent of their parking enforcement people had a sick-out. I also told him to call the chief if they needed someone to assure him that I wasn’t a flight risk. In fact, I offered to do it for him. I think he was shocked that I had the chief’s number in my cell phone.

“So you miss work that much?” The detective obviously found this hard to believe.

Really, I missed Blue, but I said: “My dad is the former chief of police. I’ve known most of the guys my entire life. It’s my job.”

And Detective Alverez’s face finally relaxed. He was at last seeing me as someone on the same team. I was a parking cop, but also the daughter of a cop, and dating a cyber cop. I came from a law enforcement family and that made me okay, and I guess also good enough for Alex.

I wondered if Alex still felt the same.

They let me go in the wee hours of the morning and Alex drove us to his apartment. It was a quiet ride and Alex’s grip on the steering wheel was very firm.

“Why are you…?” But I couldn’t ask, in case he was mad at me for getting him involved.

“Angry? Because I failed to display even minimal levels of competence and caution. Because I almost got my girlfriend killed, showing off by going to see this guy in person when I could have asked someone down there to check it for me.”

At least I was still his girlfriend.

“Gosh and here I was thinking we did well to survive an encounter with a monster who has killed at least seven people.”

Alex glared, but I saw his mouth twitch.

We shared a mattress that night and a bit more conversation the next morning, but mostly Alex worked on the computer and I read. He took me to the airport that afternoon. He wasn’t coming home with me. I wished very much that he would, but didn’t ask him to. He had work to do and it had been a trying weekend. We needed to go to our respective corners and have a breather before the next round. If there was a next round.

“You’re kind of quiet,” Alex said once we were on the freeway.

“I miss Blue. And I’m tired,” I admitted. Missed her terribly though I knew she was happy with Dad. The cats were also fine with Mom since she spoiled them. But I found I was also missing Jeffrey and the Lit Wits and even the chief. I was generally homesick.

“And I’m not enough?”

No, I realized, Alex alone wasn’t enough. Especially not if I had to deal with his family regularly. Then I thought, stupidly, how much I would probably like Blue’s family.

By then I had been silent too long.

“Sorry. Thinking.”

“I know.” He sounded sad.

“Look, rough night. Probably rough day tomorrow. I hope the chief isn’t mad about all this.” I reached out and took his hand.

He gave me a small smile and it was my turn to be sad. I wanted to say: I’m never leaving Hope Falls to live in this place. But you could leave here so easily. Your job is portable. Your aunt is nice enough (comparatively) if you need family and you could have me.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, though I was sure I never spoke out load.

“And think about Thanksgiving,” I said as we pulled up at the curb at SFO and got a small smile for my efforts. I knew he was still depressed by what had happened and added: “Look, this was catastrophic for Ryan Endicott. It doesn’t have to be for us. Everyone gets some hard knocks. The question is whether you get yourself back up and on track again when the bad things happen.”

Alex looked suddenly thoughtful as he got my duffle from the trunk. Just to help him be clear about my own position, I kissed him hard before walking away. I didn’t look back. There would be no last lingering glances in case this really was the end.

I saw a man reading a late edition paper in the terminal while waiting to board. It said that the Seahawks had won the Sunday morning game. The chief would probably want to ask me about football from then on out. As long as he asked me at home, I was willing.

Chapter 14

“Boston, are you going to be taking the police exam again this November?” The chief asked me Monday afternoon. “Because it might be that this time you would pass.”

They had a cake waiting for me when I came into work that morning and everyone had been congratulatory and also sympathetic. Except Gordon, but he wasn’t nasty. I hadn’t shot anyone, but I guess the guys still considered this as being a death in the line of duty thing. The chief even offered me more time off, if I needed it, but I told him that Blue and I were happy to be back in our routine.

I had borrowed Dad’s block and tackle on my lunch hour and tried it out on the sandbag. I had also checked the rules carefully. It said nothing in the manual about not using outside aids. I would definitely pass that part of the test if I took it again. The sandbag wasn’t the problem any more. Instead, I had a new weighty burden to lift, one in my mind.

Death, regular death, is big and inevitable, sometimes even a kindly release, something we build religions around to make it less scary and hurtful when it comes. It isn’t so personal and wrong when it happens because we all die in time.

But the kind of death, murder, I had seen this last week was very personal. It was a desecration, life taken out of order and an offense against God and nature. It was sickening. Not that I was going to say this out loud. The chief already knew this. All cops— real cops— knew this. This nasty and belated little epiphany was all mine and I felt stupid for not truly understanding this about the job before.

“I don’t know, chief,” I said honestly. “I really like figuring things out. But I don’t like…” I could see that hammer whacking into the janitor’s skull and the left eye bulging in its socket. Then I heard Ryan Endicott breaking bones on the stone stairs as they killed him one tread at a time. When I came back to myself I found my hands fisted in Blue’s fur and I was shaking. “I don’t like the violence. The ugliness. I’m not good with that… stuff.”

“There are sometimes drunks and brawls on the job. And sometimes worse,” the chief agreed. “People are people and some of them are bad. But, Boston, I would hate to lose you now that I know what you can do.”

“You won’t lose me,” I said candidly. “It’s just that I think Blue and I can help in other ways. We see a lot of small but important stuff on our rounds.”

Like the pumpkin thief. I had figured out who it was and finally decided what to do about it. This wasn’t something I was going to share with anyone else though.

“Okay. Think about it for a few days and I’ll hold a slot for you. You don’t need to decide anything now.”

“Okay,” I agreed and then Blue and I left the office.

*  *  *

I put the coffee pot on the table next to the pecan blondies and the bottle of Coastal Fog chardonnay. As I looked at my guests I realized that socially I tend to hang out with a slightly geriatric crowd. That was okay. They were good people and cared about me.

“As near as we can figure, Ryan went to find his birth mom after he broke into the Fulbright Home For Wayward Girls and got his birth records,” I went on. Dad, Jeffrey and Mr. Jackman gave me their undivided attention. They had even stopped eating cookies. “With more forensic testing they may be able to prove he killed Deborah and Alonzo. I think Detective Alverez will reopen the case now.”

“So he killed both his adoptive parents and his birth mom and her husband?” Mr. Jackman asked.

“Yes. I’m sure even if we never prove it. Even if we never know why.”

“And the Burnses? He killed them because of the incest?”

“I don’t think so. I think by then he just wanted the money.”

Mr. Jackman made a face. I thought it was vile too. Revenge for the rape of his mother was something I could better accept than killing for money.

“There was a lot of money,” Dad added, seeing Mr. Jackman’s grimace. “A lot. Old man Burns toiled not nor did he spin,” Dad said, both misquoting and using bad grammar. He turned to me. “You know, David and the city council might not have done anything technically illegal by sitting on these funds for so many years but—”

“But they didn’t rise up in wrath and insist on justice when David pointed out that they had a long time in which to look for heirs and in the meantime they could use the money as a sort of interest-free loan.” This was Mr. Jackman. He writes westerns and has a very clear sense of what is right and what is wrong.

“And David finally taking action— and letting the heirs know about the money— is why Ryan murdered Hector. David told the brothers about one another and arranged a meeting for the Monday after Halloween. Ryan said he couldn’t come, but of course he was here. He faked up a radio program in advance and paid one of his buddies to put it on air. It was Halloween. Who would blame him for wanting to be out and having some fun? It’s too bad for him that the janitor stopped in to clean the office and figured out he was gone.”

“He flew up Saturday morning?” Dad asked.

“Yes, using a fake ID they found at his apartment later. He also used it at the motor court where he had a room.” I took a deep breath. Everyone wanted the details but I found the whole thing difficult to talk about. “He probably lured Hector to the house by saying he wanted to see the family home and they should do it together. It’s what I would have done. If I were Ryan.”

“Poor Hector,” Jeffrey said softly. I think he was more appalled than Dad or Mr. Jackman.

“Yeah, imagine finding out you have a brother and then having him kill you.” Mr. Jackman shook his head. “It’s Cain and Abel.”

“Hector came because— I’m guessing that he was excited when he found out about Ryan and decided to just seize the moment—”

“Thinking he could drop things like a hot potato if he didn’t like his brother. Or uncle. The genealogists would have a time with this one,” Mr. Jackman muttered.

“Half brother,” I said, choosing the least horrible relationship. “And I hope with all my heart that Hector didn’t know about Ryan’s situation because that would mean that his mom told him about the incest and the baby when he was very young and I would like to think Hector had some period of innocent happiness before his parents were killed. I also choose to believe that he never saw the attack coming. Endicott is very fast and he attacked from behind. There would be no advantage in giving Hector any warning, so at least he died not knowing anything was wrong.” I stopped for a moment. “I’ve been trying to look at things the way Ryan did so I can understand. That’s what detectives do. It isn’t easy though.”

“I should hope not,” Dad said. His voice was gruff but kind. “Why the knife and then the hanging? Didn’t he like blowing his victims up? Was it to change his M.O. and throw off the police?”

“It was a crime of opportunity. And why blow up the Burns mansion if he was going to inherit it?” I smiled but there was no humor in it.

“Ryan would probably have been happy to wait for due process, however slow, as long as he thought he was the only heir, and none of this recent stuff would have happened if David hadn’t tried to bring the two brothers together. If Ryan hadn’t known about Hector beforehand— not that I am blaming David for this— then it would have been a fait accompli. Hector had a will leaving his money elsewhere and there would have been no point to killing him once he inherited. Ryan might have let it go.”

“David! It figures he’d be involved in this mess.” Dad’s revulsion was clear.

“Letting the siblings know of each other’s existence is something any of us might have done,” I insisted, though I have no liking for my ex and am willing to lay all kinds of other blame at his door.

“Maybe, but he did tell them, and Ryan didn’t want to share with his brother.”

“Yes, and once he knew…. Well, Ryan had already killed so many people. What was one more?” I thought of Gwen, another nasty sibling out to wreck her brother’s life, and said to my dad: “I’m real glad you only had one child.”

For some reason that made him laugh.

“Me too. I couldn’t have raised two of you.”

We didn’t talk about what happened in San Francisco. The security tape had been on the news. I hadn’t watched it and I was pretty certain I never would. Mom had been overcome with horror when she saw it, and only revived when I told her about the indignities I had suffered at Alex’s sister’s hands. Mom has her priorities— like getting me married. They aren’t my goals, most of the time, but they served in this case to distract her from worse things.

“What about that zombie you saw in Roosevelt. Was that Ryan?”

“I don’t think so. Ryan seemed taller. Probably just a local having some fun scaring me.”

Or it might— just perhaps— have been my imagination.

“So, what does this mean for you, Chloe?” Jeffrey asked. “The chief must be happy to have the case solved. Will you get a reward or anything besides a cake?”

“I doubt it. I don’t think I’ll even get reimbursed for my ticket— and that cost as much as a new stove!”

“But maybe the chief will finally let you on the force. If you pass the physical.” He winked.

“Maybe.” I shrugged. As I had explained to the chief, I liked solving mysteries and discovering the truth behind the secrets. But the biggest secrets were also the ugliest and most dangerous. I would have been happier not knowing Ryan Endicott’s past and to have just thought of him as some generic killer. But because I had found out the truth it made me just a little bit sorry for the villain. There was a lot of ugliness in real police work. I was no longer certain I wanted it as part of my daily life.

“One thing,” I said, peeping at Dad. “It was novel being picked on for being me— a suspect— and not for being the daughter of the former chief of police.”

They all laughed, but ruefully.

Chapter 15

I was waiting for Jacky when school let out. He was happy to see Blue and agreeable about taking a walk with us even though the wind was blowing fairly hard.

“Jacky, I know how much you like pumpkins,” I said.

“I like them better than anything. Except dogs.”

“Me too. In fact, while I was on vacation, I went to a place called Half Moon Bay and I saw a pumpkin that was bigger than my cart. It was almost as big as a car.” I fished the packet of seeds out of my fanny pack and showed him the enormous pumpkin on the front.

“Wow!” There was as much reverence in that ‘wow’ as in any Amen! from the church choir.

“So, I was thinking that maybe next summer you would like to help me make a really good pumpkin patch.”

Jacky’s slack face managed to droop. It was subtle but I was getting good at reading him.

“Mom says I can’t. Pumpkins are too messy and ugly and bring pests to her roses.”

“We would do it at my place. I have a whole yard we can grow pumpkins in.”

“Really?” Again happiness shown forth.

“Yep. It might be some work because I have been reading about what we would need to do to grow really big pumpkins. You have to shovel in a lot of mulch and make the dirt easy for their roots to grow in.”

“I can dig. I know how! Mom says I’m a great digger.”

“Good. I think Blue would enjoy having you visit too.”

Jacky beamed at Blue who wagged her tail back. It had been Blue’s consistent reaction to the thief that tipped me off.

“I’ve saved some seeds, too, so we can grow a few different kinds of pumpkin. For variety.” He stumbled over this word. “I like to have some that are good for making pies, and the white pumpkins are pretty.”

“I have some seeds too. At least I think I have.” We were getting to the heart of the matter. I decided not to confront him about the thefts.

“You can cut open a pumpkin, take out a few seeds, rinse them in cool water and then let them dry on a coffee filter. Does your mom have some?”

“Those things that go in the machine? Yes.”

“Are the filters brown or white?”

“Brown.”

“That’s good. Some white paper has a kind of chemical in it that can be bad for seeds. But the brown ones are good. You can keep your seeds in them until next summer. And the rest your mom can roast for eating. Or, bring them to me and I’ll roast them,” I added, when I could see he was uncomfortable with asking his mom to do it. I wondered where he was hiding all his pilfered pumpkins— surely not under his bed or in his closet.

“Okay… When is summer?”

“Um… well, first we have to have Christmas and Easter.”

“Thanksgiving too?”

“Yes, that too.”

“Okay. It will be hard to wait though.”

“I know. But sometimes we just have to be patient and let things happen in their own time.”

*  *  *

I took my own advice about patience and didn’t call Alex, though I did drop him an email and asked if he could send me the pumpkin picture he took with his phone.

A week went by without any response and I was beginning to lose hope. But the phone rang early Sunday morning and for once I was happy to answer.

“Hello,” I said warmly, sure I knew who was on the other end.

“Hello yourself.” Alex sounded like himself again. “Is that invitation to Thanksgiving still open?”

I sighed happily and snuggled deeper into the covers.

“Absolutely.”

“Then I’ll make a reservation today. How about if I come the Tuesday before? I’ve never had your pumpkin pie, you know.”

“Really? It’s good. I put a little maple syrup in the whipped cream.”

“I can’t wait… Um, Aunt Mary Elizabeth has decided against going down to see my folks this year. Do you suppose…?”

“I’ll call her today.” Mom would have a fit, but I would explain that she was helping with a relationship that could end in marriage. Mom would be polite to the Devil if it meant getting me married.

“Thanks. You’re the best.”

I giggled— mostly because I was happy, but also because Blue licked me. Her tail was wagging because she recognized Alex’s voice.

“Blue says hello.”

“Tell her hello back.”

“I solved the mystery of the pumpkin thief,” I said.

“Really? Who was it?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re here. It has to stay a secret. I think I’ve set the crook on the path of the straight and narrow, so there is no need for his mom to know he strayed.”

“You’re a good person, Chloe Boston.”

“So are you, Alex Lincoln.”

About the Author

Melanie Jackson is the author of 23 novels.  If you enjoyed this story, please visit Melanie’s author web site at www.melaniejackson.com.

eBooks by Melanie Jackson:

The Chloe Boston Mystery Series:

Moving Violation

The Pumpkin Thief

Death in a Turkey Town

Murder on Parade

Cupid’s Revenge

Viva Lost Vegas

Death of a Dumb Bunny

Red, White and a Dog Named Blue (Summer of 2011)

The Book of Dreams Series:

The First Book of Dreams: Metropolis

The Second Book of Dreams: Meridian

The Third Book of Dreams: Destiny

Club Valhalla

Devil of Bodmin Moor

Devil in a Red Coat

Halloween

Knave of Hearts

The Curiosity Shoppe (Sequel to A Curious Affair)

Nevermore: The Last Divine Book

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

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