The Perplexed Pumpkin (A Nick Williams Mystery Book 5)

by Frank W. Butterfield

Next to him stood Andy, looking cold and miserable. He was dressed as Tarzan, and I was surprised at how well-defined his body was. I wondered if he had been weight lifting with Dawson since they'd been living together.

  Roberta asked, "Are you a ghoul or a ghost?"

  Dawson sputtered. "I'm a vampire?"

  "Then, my dear, you are a ghost!" With that, she handed him an orange wand just like the black one she'd handed the goblin.

  "And, you, too, my dear, are a ghost!" She handed Andy the same thing. She motioned them in.

  As they came around the corner, I put my fingers to my lips and used my eyes to let them know to keep moving. They both nodded and walked inside.

  The next person to come in was a man dressed as a corpse. The get-up was quite elaborate. The make-up made his skin look as though it was decomposing. His clothes dated to the 1920s and had been cut and pulled at so that it looked tattered.

  "Are you a ghost or a ghoul?" asked Roberta.

  "Definitely a ghoul," was the reply.

  She handed him a black wand and said, "Use this to command and your wish will be granted!" He smirked at her and walked in.

  This was getting very interesting.

  . . .

  I caught up with Andy and Dawson in the dining room. Dawson was eating a wiener slathered with brown mustard. Andy just looked miserable.

  "Did you two get drinks?" I asked.

  Dawson said, "Yeah. The bartender is finding me a beer. Andy's getting a hot toddy."

  "Are you cold?" I asked.

  "Yeah." He looked down.

  I said, "You two count to thirty and then come upstairs to the middle bedroom."

  Dawson's eyes widened. "Thirty?"

  I nodded and walked away.

  . . .

  Once we were all in the room together, I closed the door.

  "Look, Andy, I'm sorry about that little thing I did to you yesterday at the office."

  He nodded but didn't look any better.

  "The thing is, I didn't wanna tell you my suspicions until you were here. That way, if the F.B.I. tried to shake you down before the party started, you wouldn't know anything."

  This seemed to get through. "What is it, Nick?"

  I said, "Well, it's like this."

  . . .

  Once we were back downstairs, I found Carter arguing with the bartender.

  "No beer?"

  "No, sir. Those were my instructions. I'm sorry."

  The bartender was dressed in movie western garb, including a red garter on each bicep. The garters were stretched a bit since he seemed to have a well-developed physique under his shirt.

  Carter turned to me. "Did you know about this?" I noticed that he'd taken his fangs out and that the drip of fake blood had flaked off.

  I shook my head. "No. This is all on Joe."

  "Where is that little shit?"

  I was surprised. I pulled Carter over into the corner. "What's up, Chief?"

  "You know how I feel about my beer."

  I nodded. "What else?"

  "Have you tried any of the food? There's nothing I can eat, except Diane's deviled eggs but even those are covered in red pepper."

  I nodded. "I think it's just paprika. It's not hot. And you missed the conversation with the two ghouls about whether her eggs were right for the ensemble or some shit like that."

  He laughed. "What the hell is going on here?"

  "I think the party is being used as a distribution point for something. Probably cocaine."

  "What?"

  "If you watch when people come to the door, Roberta is basically sorting them out. When they give the right answer, they get a black wand. Otherwise, they get an orange wand. And, when they get a black wand, she tells them they can have anything they want. The orange wand people are just rushed along."

  Carter glanced over at the front door. His face was clouding over. I said, "I think you need something to eat. What about a sandwich?"

  Carter nodded. He was still upset. "You know how, after we got back from Georgia, and you told me that you had a bad feeling at the graveside service right before you got arrested and then again when we tried to take off and couldn't?"

  I nodded.

  He continued but in a lower voice, "I think I'm havin' that same kind of feeling. I keep thinking about grabbing my gun."

  I whispered back, "Then why don't you? You can use the side holster. No one will see it under that cape."

  "What about you?"

  "I have Uncle Paul's silver Peacemaker right here." I nonchalantly put my hand on the ivory handle.

  He nodded and said, "Would you still make me a sandwich?"

  I smiled and said, "Of course. And there's at least one beer in the icebox."

  . . .

  I went into the kitchen and, in spite of the ghoulish protests, I quickly made Carter a sandwich. When he came back downstairs, I gave it to him with the opened bottle of beer. He wolfed down the food in a flash, burped, and quickly drank half the beer. The two ghouls were not pleased.

  . . .

  A little after 9, Joe and Robert suddenly appeared. The house was full of people. I had no idea who most of them were.

  The music stopped, and Joe clapped his hands. "Attention, everyone. Attention!"

  Everyone stopped talking and turned in his direction. "It's time for the haunted house!"

  Robert was beaming. They were both dressed as Robin Hood, in the style of Errol Flynn. They looked like twins. Robert seemed to be having the time of his life. I wondered how much he knew about what was happening.

  "Here's how it works." As Joe explained, I felt someone tug on my right arm. I turned and saw Ben White standing next to me. He was dressed as a devil. He even had pointed ears. He whispered in my ear. "Can you meet Carlo and me in your bedroom?" I nodded and watched as he made his way across the crowded room and up the stairs.

  . . .

  I closed the door behind me. Twins was the theme of the evening, apparently, because Carlo was also dressed as a devil. Only his devil costume was much tighter than Ben's. His pants reminded me of Carter's. Everything was visible.

  "What's up?" I asked.

  "Do you have any idea what's gonna happen in that haunted house in the basement?" That was Ben.

  "Nope." I crossed my arms and looked at them both. "Do you?"

  "No!" He was angry. "We've been helping those two lovebirds all this time, and this afternoon they kicked us out. Joe said there was some last thing they had to do and they wanted it to be a surprise."

  Carlo said, "Something ain't right here, Nick."

  "And you're just now figuring that out?"

  They both looked surprised.

  I said, "There is something going on here. Yesterday, I almost shut the whole thing down, but I decided it would be better to let whatever is happening to happen."

  "What is going on, Nick?" asked Ben.

  "For starters, the local F.B.I. agents are gonna have egg on their faces when they figure out what's happened to their little sting operation."

  . . .

  The promised party games hadn't yet materialized. The spooky music was back and, one by one, people with black wands were being escorted down to the haunted house. I stood in the corner of the kitchen for about ten minutes and watched this happen. There were about three different escorts, all dressed as court jesters. Each was tall and, like the bartender, seemed to have well-developed bodies under their costumes.

  As I watched, I saw that they would take their victims downstairs and the wicked witch voice would sound off and then the escort would return alone. Five victims went down the stairs, and none returned.

  I walked back into the sitting room and found Pam. She was dressed, not surprisingly, as a construction worker. I whispered in her ear for a moment. She nodded and slipped through the kitchen and out the back door into the night.

  . . .

  About fifteen minutes later, I noticed that the number of goblins, the one with black wands, was noticeably sm
aller. I looked at my watch. It was 10:30. Looking around, I didn't see who I was hoping to find, so I started to go upstairs when I felt two people grab me from either side.

  I looked and saw it was two of the jesters. "Your time, Mr. Williams."

  I said, "But I don't have a black wand."

  Neither of them spoke. They just walked me through the sitting room. I saw Carter in the dining room talking to Dawson. Neither of them noticed what was happening.

  I called out, "Hey, Chief! When is it your turn?"

  This got a laugh from the crowd. I couldn't see Carter's reaction because the two escorts hustled me through the kitchen quickly.

  I didn't resist because I wanted to find out what, exactly, was going on down there.

  As we came around the corner to the entrance for the basement stair, I noticed that someone must have bought out all the available phosphorescent paint in town.

  The walls on either side of the stairs had been painstakingly covered in eery images of witches and goblins. The painting was very well done, whoever did it. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, one of the escorts left us and walked back up the steps while the other took me by the left arm and led me through a curtain.

  The next room was dark, and there was an unseen voice that was telling me all about how this was a place where the evildoers came to die and could never leave. I heard a crack of thunder.

  Out of the dark, a disembodied face hovered suddenly and began to speak, "For your sins of greed and sodomy, we have a special punishment prepared, Nicholas." Several unseen voices cackled ominously along with a couple of cracks of thunder.

  The grip on my left arm was now tighter. My escort pushed me forward through another curtain.

  The disembodied face appeared out of nowhere and spoke, "You will be shackled and then buried alive in a pile of gold that will be unendingly deep." More thunder.

  The same unseen voices cackled again.

  My escort pushed my hands into a tray that contained coins that were sticky.

  "Feel the blood of the souls you have oppressed in your love of greed."

  The voices repeated in unison, "Your love of greed!" Thunder again.

  My escort pushed my hand around the tray again.

  The face looked at me and said, "This is the blood that your money required for your lust to be satisfied."

  The voices said, "Your lust! Your lust!" And more thunder, again.

  With that, I was pushed through the next curtain. In this room, I could see a stockade painted in phosphorescent red. By my calculation, we were near the back door that led outside.

  The disembodied face appeared again. "Here you shall remain." It paused. "For all eternity!"

  The voices cackled again. Several cracks of thunder came rolling in back to back.

  My escort pushed me towards the stockade. I could see that there were handcuffs on either end. In the darkness, I heard a whirring sound. I suddenly realized what it was and knew what was going to happen next.

  Another person pulled on my right arm while my escort pulled on my left. Instead of putting me in the stockade with my head in the opening, they were trying to pull me spread-eagle in front. And I let them. Because I had to.

  With both hands cuffed, my original escort ran his hands down my shirt, unbuttoning it. The man who'd appeared to take my right hand was whispering things in my ear. He was trying to be suggestive and failing miserably.

  My escort began to unbutton my trousers and did so very badly. Groping and grabbing down there, he was trying to elicit a reaction that was never going to happen. Then, much sooner than I was expecting, the bright flash of a camera went off in my face. Even though I knew it was coming since I'd heard someone in the dark winding the film in the camera, it still took me by surprise.

  All I could see was a big blue spot in my vision. Everything else was dark. Right then, I heard several feet running down the basement stairs. I also heard the outside door open at the same time.

  Simultaneously, I heard one voice say, "Police!" while another voice said, "F.B.I.!"

  Epilogue

  137 Hartford Street

  Sunday, November 1, 1953

  A quarter past 1 in the morning

  The part, in the end, that bothered me the most was that Joe and his little crew of ghouls had stolen our furniture!

  I knew we would get it back, but it still rankled.

  Mike and Bud, Carlo and Ben, Dawson and Andy, Pam and Diane, Henry, Robert, and Evelyn were all sitting on the straight-back chairs or on the dining room floor. After the police and the F.B.I. agents left, we gathered in the dining room to eat. The other thing that rankled is that none of Joe's crew had stayed around to clean up. On the other hand, we had plenty of smoked oysters, which I loved.

  Mike said, "I can't believe Marnie missed all of this. She's going to be so disappointed."

  I smiled. "What I want to know is how they plan to keep her mother confined to bed."

  Carter laughed.

  Diane asked, "What I don't get is how you knew what was happening, Nick."

  I shook my head. "I didn't really know what was going on until I saw Roberta sorting out the guests with the black wands and the orange wands."

  "That was clever." This was Evelyn. She was on the floor with a bottle of champagne in her hand. She was drinking it straight out the bottle. It hadn't been a good night for her.

  I laughed. "This whole thing was clever. That was the problem. Joe was running one scam while Roberta was running another."

  "How did they meet?" asked Dawson.

  Evelyn said, "I introduced them."

  Robert nodded. He was having probably the worst night of all of us. Somehow he'd ended up next to Henry, also on the floor, and Henry had one arm around him. Robert sighed, "Joe and I ran into Evelyn one night at the Fox Theatre. She was with Roberta. We got to chatting and ended up all going to a late-night supper."

  Henry asked, "So, what was Joe up to?"

  Andy answered, "He was setting up a sting for the F.B.I. He was arrested back in May by the San Francisco police for solicitation. I'm not sure how it happened, but I would guess that someone in the office here thought they could use him to entrap Nick."

  Mike said, "Yeah. I bet I know how the F.B.I. found out about Joe, too." He looked over at Ben who nodded.

  Ben said, "That would be Lieutenant Bill Flanagan at Central. He's the asshole liaison to the Bureau."

  Mike took a sip of coffee and said, "Yep. Asshole is the right word."

  Pam asked, "But why did you have me call the police, Nick?"

  "I knew that the big show was about to start. I also knew that the people going downstairs and not coming back were being given their stash and then leaving. We needed to stop that and, hopefully, get the ringleader arrested. Fortunately, Mike already had that taken care of."

  Diane said, "So, you called Mike from our house?"

  I nodded. "I wasn't sure what was happening, yet, but I knew it wasn't good."

  Ben asked, "Where were you, Mike? We never saw you or Bud."

  Mike pulled Bud close. "We were in the car across the street watching people come in and out."

  I asked Bud, "How was your first stake-out?"

  He quietly said, "Boring."

  Dawson, Mike, Andy, and I all laughed. He was right.

  Evelyn sighed heavily. "I can't believe I was in love with a drug kingpin."

  Robert asked, "Or would that be queenpin?" Everyone laughed.

  Mike said, "She may have been a ringleader for this little group. But she's not the kingpin. This won't put much a dent in the local trade. But it'll stop some of it."

  Dawson said, "Others will pop up to take her place."

  Diane asked, "So, when did you first suspect the F.B.I., Nick?"

  "It happened by accident. Evelyn came to Carter and me and asked us to tail Roberta. She thought she was seeing a man on the side. Andy took the job and discovered there was a man but he was sure the guy was queer and, how did y
ou put it?"

  Andy picked up the story. "They looked like reds to me. So, after some prodding by Dawson, I called the local Bureau office to let them know, and they told me they'd been tailing me while I was tailing Roberta."

  "When Andy told me this, I realized there was something fishy going on with the Bureau. So, I rudely told him to go play somewhere else--"

  Dawson laughed. "And, I'm glad you did, Nick. Because Andy is a good man and would have tried to go out and keep tailing Roberta if you hadn't kicked him to the curb."

  Andy rolled his eyes. I looked over at him and smiled. "I'm really sorry about that. You didn't deserve it. I just wanted to make sure the feds couldn't shake you down."

  He nodded and smiled back. "Dawson is right, though. Last night I could barely sleep because I just knew there was something more going on."

  Carter said, "And you were right."

  Ben asked, "What I wanna know is, did we just get really lucky? This could have gone badly."

  I nodded. "You're right. We did get lucky."

  Carter said, "No. Roberta and Joe were too clever. If their plans hadn't been so involved, we probably would have never noticed. It would have been much simpler if Roberta had just handed out little bags to everyone who walked in. The actual party goers would have gotten candy while the rest would have gotten coke."

  Robert sighed and leaned more into Henry, who kissed him on the cheek. "I think that's my fault. At one point Joe wanted to back out, and I thought I was being a good boyfriend by supporting him. He had such a great idea. And, then there was the paint."

  I asked, "Are you the one who did all the paintings on the stairwell?"

  He nodded. "That's why we were here so much. I did one and wanted to do another. And then another. I was the one with the idea to paint the stockade red. I had no idea what Joe was going to do with it. Sorry about that, Nick."

  I shook my head. "It was good that it was painted. If it hadn't been, I wouldn't have seen the handcuffs and known what was coming."

  Carlo asked, "What tipped you off about the last thing they did? You know. With the shirt and pants." He looked a little embarrassed.

  "Well, this is where we did get lucky. Because it was so dark down there, my sense of hearing was stronger. I heard someone rolling film in a camera. That's when I suddenly understood what the sting was. I knew--" I stopped and thought for a moment. "No. I never knew for sure what the Bureau was up to, but I guessed they were up to something. But, when I heard the whirring sound, it all made sense. They needed photographic evidence."