A Hopeless Discovery

by Daniel Carson

The train snaked its way through the park, and it really was incredible to see how large Bubba’s had grown. I thought back to my conversation with Mary; it was really hard to imagine that this place had ever struggled. But I remembered enough about it to know that the smaller and gentler pumpkin patch I knew in my youth probably had struggled. Most businesses failed, after all. And Bubba’s was a weird kind of business.

  Among other amusements, we passed by a zombie-themed go-cart raceway, what might be the world’s largest bouncy house, a “slime house” that I was thankful Dominic never found, and a gigantic brown-and-yellow barn that, fascinatingly enough, sold nothing but cake. Katie almost launched herself out of the train when she saw a triple fudge cake through a window. We passed Wanda’s World and saw not only her old dragon but the other fantastic beasts she had created. We passed Johnny’s World and witnessed a fairly impressive laser light show while a robot danced to the beat of Michael Jackson’s “Beat it.”

  And then we approached a second train station, the one that marked the halfway point of our ride, I noticed what stood right next to it.

  My old nemesis.

  The corn maze.

  Katie saw it too. Her eyes lit up, and she punched me in the shoulder. “Hope! It’s the haunted corn maze! We should totally do it.”

  I stepped off the train and looked at it warily.

  “Not a chance.”

  Katie came up alongside me. “You’re still not afraid of it, are you? We were little kids back then. We are full-grown adults now.”

  “Exactly. I’m an adult, which means I don’t have to prove myself to anybody.”

  “You don’t really think that’s what it means to be an adult, do you?”

  “You got a better definition?”

  “I’ve got ten better definitions.”

  “Name one.”

  “Being an adult means doing crap you hate every day and acting like you enjoy it.”

  “We’re talking about your kids again, aren’t we?”

  “Hope, you were a little kid when you got lost in there. You can’t avoid stuff like this forever. When you do, it doesn’t make you happy.”

  “And now we’re talking about me being gone from Hopeless so long.”

  Katie spread her arms. “Of course we are. All I’m saying is, you are a brave, intelligent, and strong woman. If you’ve got any cobwebs left in that thick skull of yours, you need to face them—clear them out.”

  I looked at the haunted corn maze. If possible, it was even bigger and more terrifying than it was when I was a child. Then I saw a green tractor coming our way, with Kip Granger behind the wheel. He was returning with a group of hayrack riders.

  Katie smiled. “So, you gonna do the corn maze?”

  “Someday, I promise.”

  “But?”

  I started toward Farmer Granger. “But first, I need to solve a murder.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Kip handed the tractor over to a young farmhand, then unscrewed the cap from an old thermos and took a swig of whatever was in there.

  “Mr. Granger?”

  He looked at me sideways. “Mr. Granger was my dad. The name’s Kip.”

  “Hi, Kip, my name is Hope Walker, and this is my friend Katie.”

  Kip looked at us like he could not possibly care less. “You need something?”

  “I want to talk to you about the death of Wanda Wegman.”

  His face soured. “Not interested.” He screwed the lid back onto his thermos and began to walk away.

  I caught up to him immediately. “I’m working with Sheriff Kramer. I think he told you I might be stopping by.”

  “He did. Still not interested.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s dead, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.”

  “But she was murdered!”

  “Which is tragic. Still nothing I can do about it.”

  “Kip! Don’t you know what people are saying?”

  He stopped and narrowed his eyes at me. “What are people saying?”

  “They’re saying you did it.”

  He seemed to consider what I’d said. The gravity of it. Then he spit something thick and brown onto the dirt between his feet. “I didn’t hurt Wanda.”

  “People are saying that since her body was found in your pumpkin patch, you’re probably the one who put her there.”

  He pulled out a pocket knife and started digging dirt from under his fingernails. “That’s just stupid.”

  “Stupid or not, it’s what people are saying. You know what else they’re saying? They’re saying, how could that body be in his patch for three years and he never once finds it?”

  “I didn’t hurt Wanda.”

  “I believe you. But other people don’t. They think you’re an old crusty farmer who had a motive to kill her.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “People know, Kip.”

  He folded up his pocket knife. “Know what?”

  “That you loved Wanda… and once upon a time, she broke your heart.”

  That got his attention. He walked over to a picnic table, sat down, took off his green cap, and squeezed it between his strong, calloused hands. “People know about me and Wanda?”

  I sat down with him, Katie beside me. “Yep.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know if it was love. I don’t know if I’ve ever really loved anyone. But… it was probably the closest a guy like me will ever come.”

  “And she broke it off?”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “The usual reason, I guess. She didn’t like me as much as I liked her.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  He laughed as if he was remembering something. “She actually did. Wanda was like that. Honest. To a fault.”

  “Plenty of people have told me she was hard to get along with.”

  “For sure. Partly because of her honesty. She believed your yes should mean yes and your no should mean no. That got her into lots of trouble with people. It’s also what I loved about her.”

  “So… after she broke it off?”

  “Nothing. We still interacted at work, just like always. It was probably weirder for me than it was for her. She didn’t get all tied up in knots with her emotions.”

  “But she did get angry about stuff. I’ve heard about her arguments.”

  “Oh, she got into plenty of arguments all right. She was a smart woman, and she thought she was always right. She usually was, which only bothered people even more.”

  “So, Kip… the story that’s forming around here is that you dated, she broke it off, you got mad at her, and you killed her.”

  “That’s a funny way of showing you like someone, ain’t it?”

  “It is. It’s also the kind of thing that people believe.”

  “Why are you even here, Miss Walker? You’re a reporter. If that’s the story you’re fixin’ to write, I can’t stop you.”

  “The only story I intend to write is the truth.”

  “Then what is it that you want, exactly?”

  “Information. Do you have any insight—anything, big or small—that might help explain who did this and why?”

  He stood up and ran his hands through his hair. Then he put his hat back on his head. “I have an idea… but it doesn’t make any sense to me. Wanda got into a big, big argument right before she went missing. And now that she’s dead, I can’t help but wonder if it’s connected.”

  “A big argument?” That sounded like just the lead we needed. “Did you tell Sheriff Kramer about it?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t think anybody around here was capable of hurting her. I still don’t think that.”

  “Then what’s changed? Why are you telling me now?”

  “Because now I’ve apparently become a suspect.”

  “Who was Wanda arguing with, Kip?”

  He looked around
like he wanted to make sure nobody was watching us. Then he leaned in and lowered his voice. “She was arguing with Mary. I don’t know what it was about, but whatever it was, Wanda was mad. She was really, really mad.”

  I wanted to talk to Bubba about this argument his wife had with the deceased. Kip said we’d find Bubba down at the pumpkin catapult—and Katie saw that as a sign we should get snow cones.

  I didn’t understand the logic in that—I doubted there was any logic in that—but I was all in. So we each got a mongo-sized snow cone at the Spooky Shaved Ice Shop, and that instantly made me feel like a ten-year-old girl again.

  “Hard to imagine Mary Riley killing someone isn’t it?” I said. “She seems so nice.”

  “You should know by now that appearances can be deceiving,” said Katie. Her tongue was already turning blue from the dye.

  “Of course, it’s possible that Kip is just making this up in order to deflect attention from himself.”

  “I’d say that’s a very strong possibility.”

  There was a long pause while I dealt with a big chunk of ice that wanted to fall off the side of my cone. Katie apparently took this as some kind of opening.

  “So… where do you and Alex go from here?”

  “There is no ‘me and Alex.’”

  “Okay, maybe not at this precise moment… but it doesn’t have to stay that way.”

  I looked at her sideways. “Yes, I think it does.”

  Katie rubbed her fingers into her temples like she was having a migraine. “You really can be very irritating sometimes.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you would be a very bad married person.”

  “I agree. Still offended though,” I said.

  “Good. Hope, I love you. You know I do.”

  “Can we leave it at that before you say ‘but’?”

  “No, honey, we can’t. Because this is a big but. And as someone with a very big butt, I’m an authority on that subject. So listen up.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Katie pointed a finger at me. “Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me, young lady. Now here’s the deal. You would be a bad married person because marriage is hard. Married people get stressed and impatient and mad at each other all the time. And then they forgive each other and try to get a little better… and then they move on.”

  “Your point?”

  “My point is you like him, Hope. I can see it. Everyone can see it.”

  “Everyone?”

  She nodded. “Everyone.”

  “That’s… embarrassing.”

  “Why?”

  I froze.

  Katie nodded. “Ah. I see. Everyone knows you like him, and that’s embarrassing to you because, when something bad happens—and you always assume it will—then it will be that much harder for you to brush it off like it wasn’t real. Because everybody knows.”

  That punch landed squarely.

  “Listen up, buttercup. You like him. And trust me, he likes you.”

  “You really think so?”

  “He likes you, Hope. And the two of you were on a date. You weren’t comparing notes on an investigation. It was a date. And it was going great, until Lady Horrible showed up. And then she did a bad thing and you reacted badly, and Alex reacted badly to you reacting badly. Do you know how much crap like that there is in marriage?”

  “How much?”

  “Hope, that is marriage!”

  “Does it get better?”

  “Of course it does. If you try.”

  “Do you and Chris try?”

  “Not every day. But on the whole, yes. I know I make a lot of jokes… but I am a better person today than I was five years ago.”

  I laughed. “You must have really sucked five years ago.”

  “You’re a butthead, Hope.”

  “But I’m your butthead, Katie.”

  “The truth is, I react badly less often than I used to. And he reacts badly to my reacting badly less often, too. It still happens, and it will always happen. But each of us is less selfish than we used to be. And we’re more patient than we used to be.”

  “And you’re much hotter than you used to be.”

  Katie posed like she was a model. “It’s the mommy boobs and the hair that won’t curl anymore and the bags under my eyes. It’s the perfect combination!”

  “So what are you saying, oh wise one?”

  Katie wrapped her free arm around my shoulder and squeezed. “Get over your stupid prideful self and take a chance. And in the process… give Alex another chance.”

  We had arrived at the catapult, where a large pumpkin was just landing on the front hood of the old pickup truck two hundred feet away. The kids went nuts.

  “Remember,” Bubba roared as the crowd dispersed, “the next launching of the catapult is in exactly thirty minutes!”

  Katie and I caught up to Bubba before he could move on to whatever he had to do next. He smiled when he saw me and shook my hand firmly—looking me straight in the eye and patting my shoulder. Bubba Riley was an expert hand-shaker.

  “Mr. Riley, you remember me? Hope Walker. And this is my friend Katie.”

  “Of course I remember you. Call me Bubba.” He gave Katie the same warm greeting, then turned back to me. “I take it you want to talk?”

  “If you could spare a minute.”

  He shrugged. “I really can’t. Busy night at the patch. But if you can keep up with me, I’d be glad to chat.” He took off walking without waiting for a reply.

  Katie lagged behind, but I managed to match his pace.

  “So,” he said. “Any headway on the investigation?”

  “Nothing firm. Just talking to people. Getting a picture of Wanda. Who she was, what made her tick, relationships. That kind of thing.”

  “No leads then?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, how can I help?”

  “You told the sheriff that Wanda was hard to get along with. Seems like everyone else agrees. She liked to be right, wasn’t shy about telling people they were wrong, and that led to a lot of arguments. Is all that fair?”

  “Yeah, that’s spot on. She told it like it was.”

  “Did anything else about Wanda lead to arguments?”

  Bubba gave me a blank look.

  “Was she mean?”

  Bubba considered that. “She was stubborn and prideful… and some thought that was rude. But she wasn’t mean, so to speak.”

  “Was she petty or vindictive?” I asked.

  “Nope and nope. Like I said, she was honest.” He made a face. “Let me put it like this. Me and my buddies Earl and Buddy Ray have a regular golfing date. I can’t make it during the season, but otherwise, every Monday evening, nine holes of golf. You know what a mulligan is?”

  “It’s when you get an extra shot.”

  “Yeah, you mess up, you hit the shot again. It’s a mulligan. The boys and I give each other one mulligan a round. And you can buy an extra one if you give each guy two bucks.”

  “What’s this have to do with Wanda?”

  “Wanda Wegman wouldn’t take a mulligan in a million years. And if she knew that’s how the boys and me played, she’d give me the business about it. Like I said—she was honest.” We arrived in front of Wanda’s World, and he looked impatient. “Sorry, I’m in a bit of a time crunch—I have to go inside and run the dragon.”

  “Time to smash a pumpkin?”

  “After all these years, it’s still a highlight. Was there anything else you needed?”

  “One thing. On Saturday, you mentioned that you and Wanda got into arguments from time to time—that you didn’t always see eye to eye about how to run things around here. You and Mary both said that Wanda’s run off before, so you assumed she got angry about something this time and ran off again.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “The thing is, that doesn’t sound like the whole story. I mean, it doesn’t really make sense that
you thought Wanda ran off because she was just mad in general. It makes more sense that you believed she ran off because you already knew she was mad about something in particular. That you knew of something specific that had set her off.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “What I’m trying to say is, I heard that just before she disappeared, Wanda got into a particular argument with someone here. A big argument. One that made Wanda very, very angry.”

  “With who?”

  “With your wife. With Mary.”

  Bubba stepped back, and his eyes widened. “That’s not true.”

  “I heard it from a very reliable source.”

  “It didn’t happen.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Because… because Mary’s not the one who got into an argument with Wanda. It was me.”

  Now I was the one to look surprised. “Wanda was mad at you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the fight about?”

  He rubbed his hand across his face. “It was stupid. Wanda thought the next big exhibit at the patch should be a barn where kids could go and shoot plastic balls at each other. I disagreed. I wanted a big indoor food cafeteria for when it rained. I told her my decision was final, and she was madder than a hornet. But Hope, I didn’t kill her. I couldn’t. Wanda was like family to me.”

  “That might be true, Bubba, but if you really got into a big fight with her… right before she was murdered… then that makes you the prime suspect.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “That’s how it’s going to look.” I wanted to give Bubba a chance to change his story. “You sure it was you who had the fight with Wanda?”

  Bubba hesitated. His forehead bunched up. I couldn’t tell what was going on inside his head, but I could tell something was going on. Was he trying to think up a lie? Kip had no reason to lie about Wanda’s fight with Mary, but it was possible he was mistaken. It was also possible that Bubba was simply covering for his wife.

  His face shifted. The forehead wrinkles disappeared as he relaxed into his normal easygoing smile. “Afraid I’m out of time for tonight. Wanda may not be here any longer, but her dragon is—and the show must go on. Pardon me, Hope Walker, I’ve got a pumpkin to smash.”

  Katie caught up to me as Bubba walked away.