Pumpkin Roll

by Josi S. Kilpack

“Poor thing,” Sadie said as Delores went back to her digging.

  “I wonder what’s wrong,” Pete said, his own concern evident. “And why digging is so important if she’s not feeling well.”

  Sadie wondered those things as well and winced as Delores lifted a hand to her head again. This time the older woman kept hold of the shovel with her free hand, but stopped what she was doing until whatever was causing her trouble passed. When they’d brought the boys home at five thirty, it had been cold—not quite fifty degrees. It had to be much colder now that the sun had been down for a few hours.

  Sadie watched for another minute while Delores continued to move slowly but determinedly. When she began trying to shovel with one hand while holding her head with the other, Sadie couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m going to see if she’s okay.”

  Pete looked at her, his eyebrows lifted. “You are?”

  “Something isn’t right,” Sadie said, squinting. “She’s obviously hurting.” She moved toward the door then turned back to Pete. “Do you think it’s a bad idea?”

  Pete shrugged. “Not necessarily. I’m just wondering at your motive again.”

  “Okay, I admit it,” Sadie said, holding up her hands as though surrendering. “I’m curious, but I’m also worried. Do you want to come with me?”

  “And leave the boys alone?”

  “Oh, right,” Sadie said. She bit her bottom lip. “Well, why don’t you watch from the window and ring a bell or something if you need to get my attention.”

  “I’ll ring a bell and you’ll come running?” Pete said, wagging his eyebrows. “I could get used to that.”

  Sadie smiled and shook her head as she pulled her jacket out of the living room closet. She shrugged it on and headed to the door. “Wish me luck,” she said as she opened the door. The swinging ghost startled her, and she scowled before stepping past it.

  “Luck,” Pete said just before the door closed.

  The cold air berated her for coming outside, and she hunched her shoulders against the frigid chill. At least it wasn’t windy. She wondered if it was going to snow. Northern Colorado occasionally got snow before Halloween, but Boston was known for its winters, and she felt as though the weather might get an early start.

  She quick-stepped across the street, hoping movement would warm her up. She kept waiting for the other woman to turn around at her approach, but she never did. Sadie stopped as Delores dumped a spadeful of dirt on the sidewalk between them. But even then, Delores didn’t notice her. As she plunged the shovel back into the dirt again, Sadie glimpsed Delores’s grip on the handle of the shovel. No polished fingernails caught the light, rather these nails were short and dirty and most definitely not manicured. Sadie felt a tremor rush through her. Something strange was going on here.

  The gray hat Delores wore—the same one Sadie had noted last night—had a semi-floppy brim that ran around the circumference, but the cap was long and knitted from a coarse yarn, and came to a point midway down her back. Sadie realized that if the cap was stiff and starched, and if the rim was a bit wider, it would look just like a gray-knit witch’s hat.

  “Delores?” she said tentatively. It felt strange calling her by her first name. “Mrs. Wapple?”

  Mrs. Wapple whipped her head to the side so quickly that the point of her hat arched out from her head, cutting through the moonlight. Sadie took a step backward despite herself.

  “What do you want?” she said, her voice low and irritated with a gravelly quality Sadie didn’t remember from this afternoon.

  “I . . . uh . . .” She looked at the shovel in Delores’s hand. “I saw you from the window across the street. Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right,” she said, turning back to her shovel and mumbling something Sadie couldn’t hear exactly but that sounded like “Angry birds,” over and over again. Shawn had sent Sadie a link to a YouTube video about something called Angry Birds, but Mrs. Wapple didn’t seem the type to be up on the latest online videos.

  Sadie wasn’t ready to take Mrs. Wapple at her word either and took a step forward. “Do you need help?”

  Mrs. Wapple scowled over her shoulder, and Sadie noted more differences between the woman she was talking to now and the one she’d spoken to earlier. This woman had a careworn face, and although the lines etching her skin didn’t age her beyond her forties, it was not the skin Sadie had admired that afternoon. This woman also wasn’t wearing glasses, though her squinting—and the deep wrinkles it created—betrayed that she probably needed them. She was thinner than the other woman too, not in a trim and healthy way, but in a tired and worn-out kind of way. Sadie couldn’t think of her as Delores now that she’d noted the differences between the two women. Or were the weak light and cold temperatures playing tricks on Sadie’s memory of the woman from this afternoon?

  “I need potatoes,” Mrs. Wapple said, turning back to the dirt. She lifted the shovel and drove it a couple of inches into the ground.

  Sadie finally understood. “You’re digging for potatoes?”

  “That’s what I said,” Mrs. Wapple said, but she’d already lost some of the edge to her voice, and the next stab she took with the spade didn’t go as far into the soil as before. She was tired. “They’re rich in vitamin C.”

  Sadie reached for the shovel. “Let me try,” she said gently. Once her hand closed around the handle, Mrs. Wapple let go of it, only to immediately raise her hand to her head as her forehead wrinkled in obvious pain.

  “Are you all right?” Sadie asked, reaching out, but Mrs. Wapple turned away and pulled her arm from Sadie’s grasp.

  “I need potatoes,” she said again.

  Sadie cast a disbelieving eye at the flower bed, then lifted the shovel and stabbed the ground. The blade sunk about five inches, and she turned over the dirt and dug again. Next to her, Mrs. Wapple closed her eyes slowly, her hand still on her forehead as she muttered “Angry birds” again—Sadie was sure that was what she was saying. Sadie didn’t want to annoy the woman so she waited until she’d actually dug down a good ten inches—having found no potatoes—before she spoke.

  “You know,” Sadie said casually, “I have potatoes at my house. Why don’t I go grab some for you so you can get out of the cold?”

  “I know there are some in there,” Mrs. Wapple said, pointing at the dirt. She began drawing pictures in the air like she had last night. Her lips moved slightly, and then she turned her head as though talking to someone over her left shoulder. Sadie leaned in, hoping to hear anything she actually said out loud, but Mrs. Wapple suddenly snapped her head back, causing the point of her cap to swing over her shoulder. She dropped her hand and glared at Sadie. “I planted them myself.”

  Sadie knew that many Bostonians took great pride in their home gardens so she had no desire to argue, but it seemed unlikely that there were really potatoes planted here. “It’s just so cold to be digging,” she said. “I could run home and grab some—I’d be back in less than a minute, and then you could go inside and . . . perhaps take something for your headache.”

  “I don’t need medicine,” Mrs. Wapple said, but another wave of pain grabbed hold of her and she lifted her hand to her forehead again.

  Sadie was concerned. Did Mrs. Wapple simply have a low pain tolerance, or was whatever she was feeling as debilitating as it looked? Lorna Labram—the music leader at church—often battled migraine headaches. Sadie had been with Lorna at a workshop once when one of her bouts had set in. When the pain became more than her friend could handle, Sadie had driven her home. The expression she remembered from Lorna’s face on that drive back from Fort Collins was very similar to the compressing pain twisting Mrs. Wapple’s features. Lorna had stayed in bed for two days in a pitch-black room after that workshop.

  Could it be pain alone that had changed Mrs. Wapple from the person Sadie had talked to that afternoon to the one digging for potatoes by the light of a three-quarter moon?

  “I’ll go get those potatoes,” Sadie said
a moment later when Mrs. Wapple didn’t argue. She leaned the shovel against the house and hurried across the frozen grass. “Be right back,” she called over her shoulder.

  Pete was waiting for her and helped her locate the potatoes while she filled him in on the conversation. “You’re not going inside her house, are you?” he asked.

  “Um, I hadn’t thought of that,” Sadie said, lifting the grocery sack filled with six fist-sized potatoes. “It’s probably not a good idea, though if I were in Garrison I wouldn’t even hesitate.”

  “You’re not in Garrison,” Pete said, his tone sympathetic. “I know it’s hard on that big ol’ heart of yours to walk away, but I think giving her the potatoes is help enough for tonight. We can check on her tomorrow.”

  “I’m going to take her the rest of the clam chowder, too,” Sadie announced, heading for the fridge with the grocery sack on one arm. While removing the Tupperware of leftover soup, she spied a can of Mountain Dew in the back—it had been there when Sadie and Pete arrived. She knew caffeine was often helpful for migraines, so she grabbed it as well. If Mrs. Wapple wouldn’t take medication, maybe she would drink the soda and get some relief. Sadie put the soda in the bag with the potatoes and shut the fridge. “I won’t go in,” she said as she passed Pete on her way to the front door. “I promise.” But she knew it would be hard not to help if Mrs. Wapple would just let her.

  Baxter’s Clam Chowder

  2 cups potatoes, peeled and cubed

  1 cup celery, chopped

  ½ cup carrots, chopped

  ½ cup onion, chopped

  Juice from 2 cans chopped clams (reserve clams)

  2–3 cubes chicken bouillon or 2–3 teaspoons granules

  Water

  ½ cup butter

  ½ cup flour

  Pinch of sugar

  Pinch of salt

  ½ teaspoon oregano

  ¼ teaspoon thyme

  ¼ teaspoon curry powder

  4–6 cups milk

  2 cans reserved clams*

  In a two-quart saucepan, combine potatoes, celery, carrots, onion, clam juice, and chicken bouillon. Add water until vegetables are covered. Simmer on medium heat until vegetables are tender. Mash slightly, but don’t drain vegetables. (For a chunkier soup, mash only half of the vegetables.) Set aside.

  In a large soup pan, melt butter over medium-high heat. Add flour and stir until a smooth paste forms. Add remaining ingredients except milk and clams. Simmer for two or three minutes to blend the flavors. Add milk one cup at a time, stirring constantly until mixture becomes a thick cream base. Add vegetables (the reserved liquid will thin the base) and clams. Mix together and heat through. (Be careful about cooking the chowder too long once the clams are added, as heat makes them more rubbery.) Thin to desired consistency with additional milk. Adjust spices, and salt and pepper to taste.

  Serves 8.

  *Shawn tried this once with chicken instead of clams and it turned out great. He also increased the curry by ¼ teaspoon.

  Chapter 6

  Mrs. Wapple didn’t invite her inside. She didn’t speak at all when Sadie returned with the sack of potatoes. Instead, Mrs. Wapple grabbed the bag and the Tupperware of soup and headed for the invisible gate. Sadie watched her push the gate open; it swung easily on well-oiled hinges, and then silently fell back into place, turning into fence again. Sadie returned home, pushing her hands into her jacket pockets and feeling unsettled.

  She and Pete didn’t talk about it much, but simply kissed goodnight in the hallway. Pete went into his bedroom and shut the door while Sadie headed into the bathroom.

  Is there any way that both women I interacted with today were the same person? she wondered as she took off her makeup.

  Maybe the Delores she’d met that afternoon sleepwalked or had episodes of disassociation. But that didn’t sit right. Would she unpolish her nails, cut them and dirty them in her sleep too? Her skin couldn’t have flawed so quickly either—Sadie had seen both faces up close and while the features were very similar, they were not exact. That meant there had to be two women.

  Sadie washed her face and applied her night moisturizer, thinking hard. She shook her head. There couldn’t be two women—at least not two real Delores Wapples. But there were two women who looked an awful lot alike. One had said she was Delores Wapple, the other had answered to the name.

  Sadie brushed out her hair and put toothpaste on her toothbrush as she reviewed the conversation she’d had with the sane-looking Delores. Every moment she’d spent with either woman moved through her mind as she flossed, smoothed lotion on her hands up to her elbows, and tweezed a few eyebrow hairs that couldn’t wait until her next waxing.

  She let herself out of the bathroom and turned off the light. She could hear Pete’s soft snores from the other room, and she hurried to her room to avoid the temptation to peek in on him . . . just because she could.

  After setting out what she would wear tomorrow, she put lotion on her feet and pulled on her cashmere-and-shea-infused sleeping-socks. Sadie then laid in Jared and Heather’s bed and stared at the ceiling. Today marked the end of the second day of her six-day stint as a babysitter. She was one-third of the way through and beginning to really worry about Mrs. Wapple. On the one hand, she knew it wasn’t any of her business, but on the other hand, wasn’t it her business in the big, broad spectrum of being a fellow human being who had identified a concern? Or was she justifying her thoughts to give herself permission to get involved? She sighed and rolled onto her side, clenching her eyes closed and willing her brain to stop. Hadn’t she gotten herself into enough trouble by poking her nose into the wrong places?

  That was a question she couldn’t answer as easily as she would have liked. Yes, she’d gotten too involved in things she could have left alone . . . and yet that over-involvement had led to bad guys getting what they deserved, cold cases being solved, lost loves reunited, and justice obtained. In hindsight it was hard to see her mistakes as actual mistakes. But she’d nearly been killed a few times, she’d been hurt every time, she’d put people she loved at risk, and she’d kicked sleeping dogs that some people might say would be better left to lie. Everything she’d done hadn’t turned out roses—the truth wasn’t necessarily painless—and she was worried that one day she would be the cause of something horrible, rather than the solution. Part of her reason for opening up the investigation company was to satisfy her urge to solve a mystery here and there without so much personal risk to herself. Looking up skip traces and serving court orders was fun and seemed to be enough . . . for the most part. But she did miss the bigger mysteries—the kind that she’d found herself in by accident so many times over the last year. It made her feel guilty to even think that, but it was true. While she enjoyed the investigation work she’d been bringing in, it was different; satisfying, but not nearly as encompassing.

  She pulled the pillow over her face and began reciting nursery rhymes in her head, trying to drown out her thoughts. These thoughts were dangerous, and she knew it. She was only going to wear herself out for what was sure to be a busy day tomorrow. These little boys were relentless, and she needed to be at the top of her game if she was going to hope to keep up for day three.

  Eventually, Sadie fell asleep to a rambling combination of “Jack Sprat” and “Ladybug, Ladybug” and didn’t wake up until the room began to lighten the next morning. She got out of bed, did her morning stretches, and then headed into the kitchen to make whole wheat pancakes for her boys—a good hearty breakfast to start the day.

  As soon as she exited her bedroom, she saw something on the floor of the hallway, near the kitchen entrance. It looked like an article of clothing in the early dawn light. Even with all the adventures of the previous night, Sadie had still straightened the house and would bet a quart of her homemade syrup that the hallway had been clear when she’d gone to bed last night.

  After turning on the hall light, she approached the item, wondering if one of the boys had gotten up in the n
ight and dropped something. Had someone been sick and gone looking for his mother? She’d feel horrible if she’d slept through something like that!

  The item looked like a bunched-up scarf or something, but it didn’t seem familiar until she reached down to pick it up. With her fingers inches from making contact, her memory flashed to the coarsely knitted gray hat Mrs. Wapple had been wearing last night. She pulled her hand back and inhaled sharply.

  Her mind was playing tricks on her.

  She crouched down, inspecting the article up close. She told herself it wasn’t Mrs. Wapple’s hat—it couldn’t be—but as she took in the details, she felt her pulse rate increasing.