by Maia Chance
“You’ve read the rulebook. Cute.”
I unclamped my teeth. “What I’m trying to say, Hugh, is that we shouldn’t be talking.”
“It’s okay. No one will know.”
“Literally anyone could see!” I swept an arm around the ballroom. Not that anyone seemed to be paying any attention to Hugh and me.
Except for Karen Brown, that is.
She was standing at the hors d’oeuvres table in a farmer’s costume of denim overalls, a plaid shirt, and a straw hat. She was watching Hugh with wide eyes.
Wait. Did Karen even know Hugh? And did she have a crush on him or something? Because she looked riveted.
“Listen,” Hugh said in a lower tone. “You’re not really … my type. But I’m flattered that you’re interested—”
My mouth fell open like a trapdoor. If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s being pitied. Especially by some arrogant hipster dude I barely even knew.
“—and like I said, you’re fairly witty. In New York City, the dating scene is big league. I date models.”
“Hand or foot?”
“What? Oh. Runway models. Obviously.”
“Do you have to carry a stepstool when you go out?”
“I like that you’re trying to make me laugh, Agnes. It’s fun. So what I’m going to do is tell you that as soon as this contest is over, we can go out for a drink.”
“Um, I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding…” My voice trailed off, because I’d just caught a fleeting glimpse of a pumpkinhead in the churn of the dance floor. My heart kicked into high gear. “Sorry, Hugh, gotta go.”
“But—”
I wasn’t going to waste time explaining myself to Hugh. A pumpkinhead had dunked me. A pumpkinhead was likely Mikey Brown’s killer. So if there was even the slightest possibility this was the same pumpkinhead, I was going to unmask them or sprain something trying.
“Excuse me,” I mumbled, elbowing through the crowd. “Oops! Sorry about your—excuse me—whoa, watch that sword, dude—excuse me—”
I burst out of the ballroom into the lobby.
Empty, except for the valet flirting with the coat-check girl. Two hallways stretched out from the lobby, one to the left, one to the right. Pumpkinhead was speed-walking down the right-hand hallway in a navy-blue suit.
A navy-blue suit. So it was a guy.
“Hey!” I called, heading after him. “Hey, Pumpkinhead, wait!”
He sped up.
I broke into a jog.
“Hey!” I called, breathless. “We have some stuff to talk about, don’t you think?”
We passed the men’s room, the ladies’ room, the kitchen, and then Pumpkinhead shoved open a door leading outside. Cold air gusted in.
I did not want to follow this creep out into the night. But I did it anyway. I had to know who he was.
Outside, wind spun off the lake and the stars were out in shimmering splashes. Across the lake, the dark hills looked like slumbering dinosaurs.
And there was Pumpkinhead, disappearing into the boathouse. The boathouse that looked like a big black tunnel to the underworld.
On the plus side, if I went after him, he’d be trapped, right?
I ran down the path, slowing to a walk as I drew near the boathouse entrance. I stopped.
“Pumpkinhead,” I called. My voice echoed inside the wooden structure. Down below, lake water slopped. “Don’t be a coward. Show your face.”
No answer.
What the heck was he doing in there?
I stepped into the boathouse. My eyes were adjusting, and I could distinguish between charcoal and black. I saw the bulbous shape of the pumpkinhead mask over in the far corner. He wasn’t moving.
RUN! Every last nerve in my body shrieked. Are you INSANE?
But this was my adrenaline talking, so along with the urge to flee was an irrational, pumped-up feeling. I would find out who he was, dangit.
I stalked closer.
He didn’t move.
Closer.
I heard him breathing inside the mask, sounding for all the world like Darth Vader.
“Why did you do it?” I asked, whispering now. “Why did you dunk me? Was it because I was getting too close to the truth?”
He was still just standing there, arms dangling.
“Are you … are you scared, Pumpkinhead?” I whispered. “Scared of a girl?”
A fresh burst of adrenaline shot through my system.
I reached out, grabbed the sides of the pumpkinhead mask, and yanked. Pumpkinhead doubled over from the force—the mask was on pretty tight.
I wrenched harder, the mask popped off, and I staggered backward with the mask in my hands.
I looked up to see … Clifford Prentiss.
“Clifford?” I said, wheezing from exertion. “It was you? You dunked me? Did you—did you kill Mikey Brown? Is that what you meant when you told your wife that things have changed for you in a huge way?”
“Get away from me, you crazed dork,” Clifford snarled. He lurched to go past me.
I stepped in his path. “I want answers.”
“Well, too flipping bad!” Clifford yelled, and he was reaching out, shoving me hard— I spiraled my arms to keep my balance. I was falling backward. Down, down. I hit the icy water, and it rushed to cover me. I burst to the surface, choking and gasping and thrashing my arms.
Pounding footsteps retreated.
I had lost my glasses. Everything was black and wet. Coughing on stale water, I dog-paddled until I crashed into the dock. I gripped the edge and tried to hoist myself. No go. Low center of gravity. I tried again and finally heaved myself up, crashing face first onto the wooden dock, where I lay for a second, soaking, chilled, and panting.
I got up. I felt as if I’d gone twice through the Turbo-Kleen cycle at the automatic car wash. I went back into the clubhouse through that same side door, dripping water as I went. I needed to find someone—Effie, Detective Albright, heck, even Dad—and tell them that Clifford was Pumpkinhead, and that Pumpkinhead was probably the murderer.
“Agnes!” This was Chester’s voice. A big blur of orange was coming toward me. “What in the—did you fall in the lake?”
“Nope. Dunked again.”
“Who?”
“Clifford Prentiss?”
“Why?”
“Because I tore off his mask.”
“Um, okay, that sounds like a fascinating story, Agnes, but Aunt Effie is freaking out because the bachelorette auction is starting and the Hansen twins didn’t show. She told me to go and get you.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to get on the auction block or there won’t be enough dates for Effie to hit her goal. She was counting on the Hansen twins to tip her over. They’re the closest thing Naneda has to Coors beer spokesmodels.”
“I have so many questions and objections to this, Chester, the foremost one being, I am currently dripping wet and blind, and I have possibly just identified Mikey Brown’s murderer.”
“I hate to break it to you, but the fact that Clifford was wearing a pumpkin mask in no way proves anything.”
My feet suddenly felt like cement blocks. Chester was right. I had no proof of anything, and with the adrenaline leaving my system, I was starting to feel bummed out.
“Why don’t you ask Delilah Fortune to do the auction?” I said. “She’ll love being the center of attention.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Chester scratched his head.
“What?”
“I did ask her, and she said…”
“What?”
“She said she’s not a bachelorette because she’s dating…”
“Otis?” This was a croaky whisper.
“Uh, yeah. Sorry.”
I started shivering. That did it. My mind was made up. I was reapplying to grad school. In Seattle. I couldn’t live in the same town as Otis if he was leaving me behind. It would kill me, one little cut at a time.
“You should change,”
Chester said. “Here. You can wear my costume. I have slacks and a black turtleneck on underneath.”
“I cannot do this.”
“You have to.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You do. Because there’s something else I haven’t told you.”
“I can’t deal with this stuff right now!”
“I kind of told Detective Albright that you’ll be in the auction, and he got all excited about it and said he was going to bid on you since you won’t accept any of his date invitations—”
“What?” I yelled.
“—and Aunt Effie—she was listening in like she does—told me to tell you that you have to go on a date with Albright. She said something about squeezing him for info regarding your quote-unquote case.”
“How does Aunt Effie create these insane situations?”
“No offense, but you seem to be pretty good at creating them, too.”
If I hadn’t been dripping lake water onto the floor, I would have objected.
“And how did so much stuff happen in, like, fifteen minutes?” I said.
“Because it’s the freaking Naneda Lake Club Harvest Masquerade, baby.”
*
Twenty minutes later, I was standing beside the stage in the ballroom in Chester’s puffy orange pumpkin costume. All of the other bachelorettes had been auctioned off, including Aunt Effie, who had been won by Mr. Solomon, and Lauren, who had been won by Skeeter Miller, the balding guy who owns the shooting range. I guess Jake hadn’t showed.
My plastic pumpkin antennae trembled with every move I made. My hair was wet, although I had crouched under the hand dryer in the women’s bathroom for a few minutes. My plunge in the lake had ruined my artistically painted eyebrows, so I had rubbed what was left of them off with paper towels. My butchered eyebrows were exposed to the world, but since I had eaten seven cheesecake bites and drunk one and a half glasses of local Riesling, I was past caring.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Effie said into the microphone, “our next date is the beautiful, brilliant Agnes Blythe!”
A splatter of applause.
I walked up onto the stage, my ballet flats squelching with water. I turned to face the audience.
“Isn’t Agnes’s pumpkin costume just darling?” Effie cooed. “Agnes is just a boatload of fun!”
I tried to smile. Didn’t work. The silver lining was that without my glasses, the audience was just a big blur. Were Otis and Delilah out there? Would her hand be on his arm?
“The bidding starts at two hundred dollars. Two hundred, anyone? Ah, I see you, Detective Albright. Anyone else? Can I get two-fifty for a one-on-one date with Agnes Blythe, Naneda’s most eligible bachelorette? Anyone? No?”
Silence.
I wanted to evaporate. I wanted to run. I needed more cheesecake bites and wine.
“Then two hundred it is to Detective Albright. Going once—going twice—sold!”
Indifferent applause.
Then a man staggered into the ballroom through the double doors. “Someone call the police,” he cried, gasping for breath. “It’s Clifford Prentiss. He’s dead.”
Chapter 18
It was pushing midnight when I was ushered into a room at the Naneda Police Station to give a statement about my encounter with Clifford Prentiss in the boathouse. Effie, Chester, and the gaggle had been questioned already and were on their way home stuffed in Chester’s Datsun. Even though I had lost my glasses in the boathouse dunking and my vision was blurred, I would be driving myself home in the Dustbuster. Slowly.
“Hello, Agnes,” Detective Albright said. In his midthirties, wearing a baggy suit and thick glasses, he had brown skin, a conservative haircut, and goldfish eyes. I happened to know his hobbies included bowling and playing the tuba, and there wasn’t a bigger Star Trek fan in the entire universe. A woman officer with red hair sat beside him.
“Hi,” I said, sitting. My pumpkin antennae boinged. I hadn’t bothered to take them or Chester’s plush pumpkin suit off. It just seemed like too much effort. My heart was broken, my optimism was in the gutter, and I had no clue what I was doing with my life.
The officer switched on a digital recording device.
“Agnes Blythe, I understand that you were one of the last people to speak to Clifford before he was killed,” Albright said.
“So he was killed. Like, murdered. Someone said something about an oar, but I didn’t know what to believe.”
“He was bludgeoned to death with one of the decorative oars that hang on the walls at the Lake Club.”
“Bludgeoned. Just like Mikey Brown.”
“Yes.”
“So do you think it was … the same person?” Too late, I remembered that Albright suspected Otis of having killed Mikey.
“It could be. Walk me through your encounter with Clifford.”
I took a deep breath and launched into the story of how I had chased down Pumpkinhead, determined to unmask him because he was wearing the same mask as the person who had dunked me at the Kick-Off on Monday.
I omitted the part about having been convinced that Clifford was the murderer. Now that theory seemed incredibly stupid. Clifford was dead.
I needed to tell Albright about Clifford’s secret van, though. It could be a break for the police investigation, and there was a double murderer out there. So I described how Aunt Effie and I had followed Clifford to the dry cleaner’s in Lucerne and then to the Volkswagen Vanagon at Hatch Automotive.
When I said Hatch Automotive, Albright leaned forward in his chair. “So Clifford was running away from you because he didn’t want to deal with your snooping, is that it?”
My cheeks went hot. “I think the important part of this is that Clifford was obviously hiding that van at Hatch Automotive—”
“The police will decide what’s important and what’s not, Agnes.”
“There’s something else,” I said. “Something really weird. My aunt and I happened to, uh, overhear Clifford saying to his wife, Belinda, that he was done—”
“Done?”
“With their marriage, I think—and that things had changed for him in a huge way, and that now he was free, and that he planned to go—by himself—to some model railroad museum in San Diego.”
“Noted.” Albright actually looked interested.
Heartened, I said, “I think he was planning on driving to San Diego in that van. My aunt and I figured out some other stuff, too, about other people who—”
Albright put up a hand. “Agnes, please. No more snooping. Just get some rest, okay? This concludes your statement.”
The woman police officer pushed a button on the digital recorder.
I went to the door, and Albright followed me out into the hallway. He lowered his voice. “I’ll call you about—” He cleared his throat. “—you know.”
Ugh. Our date that he’d won at the bachelorette auction.
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Great.”
*
I drove slowly back to the inn through serene, dark streets. Naneda appeared snug, but violence and death were twisting like withered vines around the heart of this community.
I parked the Dustbuster at the back of the inn and went up the kitchen steps—
I slipped on something and thumped to the concrete walkway. Pain zinged up my back and down my legs.
I lifted my hand to see it in the glow of the porch light.
Stringy pumpkin goo.
I looked around. I couldn’t see that well without my glasses, but without a doubt, shattered pumpkin pieces littered the drive and the porch.
I scrambled to my feet, clutched by panic, hurried up the steps, through the screened-in porch, unlocked the kitchen door, and slammed inside. I just stood there for a minute in the dark kitchen, breathing hard.
Slowly, I calmed down. Good golly, it was only a smashed pumpkin. Smashing pumpkins in other people’s yards was a teenage boy rite of passage, at least in Naneda. No biggie.
Even if it w
as, say, Scootch Brown who had done the smashing, that would only be a coincidence, right?
It seemed that Effie and the gaggle were already asleep, but I ran into Tiger Boy on the back stairs, his new rhinestone collar glittering in the dim light.
“Hey,” I whispered to him. “Hunting mice?”
He made a throaty chirrup and kept going. He looked as if he had a full agenda.
Up in my attic room, I didn’t turn on the light right away. First, I found my backup glasses and put them on. Then I crept to the window, pulled the curtain aside, and peered down into the shadowy yard.
I don’t know what I expected to see. Maybe someone in a glow-in-the-dark shirt reading I AM THE KILLER would’ve been helpful.
No one. Just a few silhouetted leaves fluttering from the big trees and the pewter glint of the lake.
When I finally fell asleep, it was to dream about a jumbo jack-o’-lantern with legs, chasing me with an oar.
*
I survived the night and was woken by the buzz of my phone. I pushed on my backup glasses and looked at the screen.
One text.
Otis: WE NEED TO TALK.
My throat constricted and my heart sped up.
No.
I dropped the phone on the floor. No. I could not deal with a formal, face-to-face dumping. Not today. Maybe next week. Better yet, I could move to Seattle ASAP and avoid it altogether.
I rolled over, my hip throbbing dully. I got out of bed and peeled the side of my pajama bottoms down. A saucer-sized bruise bloomed at the back of my hip, where I had fallen on it after slipping on pumpkin goo.
I got dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, a hoodie, and sneakers, brushed my teeth, pulled my hair back into a stubby ponytail, and went downstairs the back way to the kitchen.
I took a deep breath and cracked the back door. Fresh morning air gusted in. The goopy pumpkin carnage on the steps was still there, turning brown and crusty. I would have to clean that up. But first, coffee.
Maybe caffeine would get rid of this gross violated feeling. I mean, someone—possibly a double murderer—had trespassed onto the grounds of the Stagecoach Inn to smash that pumpkin. Jerk!
The territorial feeling that surged up in my chest was unexpected. And weird. This was Effie’s property. Not mine.
I was just pouring myself a cup of coffee when shouting broke out in the entry hall.
