A Secret in the Pumpkin Patch

by Elizabeth Ashby

  I slid into the seat, and Gia dropped the stuffed animal into my lap before taking my chin in one hand to turn my face from side to side. "I know you don't like to sit still for long, and you probably don't have time for a full sugar skull job before you have to get back to work, so I could do just the eyes. It would look super awesome to ring them with black and add a row of teal flower petals on the outer edge. That wouldn't take too long. And it would bring some much-needed color to your outfit."

  "It doesn't seem consistent with my costume, though." Or with my own more reserved personality. "I'm pretty sure my great-great-great-grandmother didn't wear any makeup at all. Alive or dead."

  "A life and death without makeup? That's the stuff of horror stories." Gia punctuated the statement with a shiver. "Anyway, what did you have in mind?"

  I waved my fingernails at her. "A little pumpkin to match these. On my cheek perhaps."

  Gia wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, I'll have to skip that lecture. That's not very sexy."

  I shrugged. "It depends on the man."

  "Oh, yeah. I heard you'd resolved your doubts about seeing Merle Curtis. He's kinda dull, isn't he? Like a professor, I mean. At least in public."

  "I wouldn't call him dull," I said. "You should hear him talking about the future of small-scale agriculture or watch him introduce the goats to a new section of the orchard that needs weeding. He can be pretty passionate about the things he cares about."

  Gia wrinkled her nose. "I hope he's more passionate about you than about his goats."

  "Most of the time he is," I said. "But I understand when he isn't, because sometimes I get totally wrapped up in my own interests too."

  Gia dabbed something on my cheek with her index finger. She must have caught me glancing longingly at the hand mirror just out of my reach on the cart with her supplies, because she said, "Don't freak out. I'm just cleaning your skin so I can apply the pumpkin."

  The substance had now been rubbed over my entire right cheek, and Gia was starting to dab it on the left side of my face as well. "A small pumpkin," I reminded her.

  "Right-sized pumpkins. Plural. One on each cheek." Gia opened one of the drawers in her storage cabinet and withdrew what looked like a sheet of paper. "They're temporary tattoos." She squinted at me. "Hey, I could paint your lips the exact same orange as the pumpkins. Maybe a little brighter, just in case Merle needs a hint about the best place to aim his kisses."

  "He's got perfectly good aim."

  "I suppose that's something to be grateful for," Gia said. "Now close your eyes and don't talk while I work. I need your face to stay totally still."

  While Gia applied the tattoos, I closed my eyes and considered what was going to happen between Merle and me after this weekend. I was living in the caretaker's cabin at his orchard, and we were seeing each other on a casual basis. Others might consider our relationship as dull as Gia obviously did, but as far as I could tell, Merle was as content with keeping it low-key as I was. For the last couple of months, I'd been busy moving into the cabin and then planning this final weekend of the market season, and Merle had been working around the clock for the peak of harvest season.

  Even if we'd had time to consider a committed personal relationship, neither of us was in a rush to leap into anything. Merle was a widower who'd spent the last few years fending off matchmakers, and I had always been cautious about commitment. So far we'd limited our physical involvement to a bit of kissing and cuddling on his farmhouse's porch swing. Which frequently left me wishing I were a more spontaneous person, but then I would remember the chaos that my mother's spontaneity had brought to my childhood.

  I needed a bit more time to make up my mind about a possible future with Merle. We'd have all winter without the immediate distractions of the market and the orchard to really get to know each other. Assuming he too was willing to wait. Merle generally had a great deal more patience than I did, but I sometimes worried that his interest in me was primarily a matter of timing. I'd shown up right when he'd completed transforming himself from Washington lawyer to Danger Cove farmer. The work involved in starting over had also been his way of coping with the death of his wife, so with the career transition complete, he'd been ready to move on in more personal ways.

  The tip of Gia's paintbrush tickled my cheek, bringing me back to the present. I quashed the instinct to reach up and brush away the irritation, but I couldn't stop my eyes from opening and rolling downward to see what I looked like. I couldn't focus on my cheeks, of course, but there was glittery orange makeup on the tip of the brush Gia was setting on the top of her storage cabinet.

  "Chill, will ya'?" Gia said. "I just added some finishing touches by hand, so no one will be able to tell it's not drawn completely from scratch. Now open your mouth so I can paint your lips."

  I leaned back in the oversized chair and raised the white plush cat to ward her off. "Not neon orange."

  "No one ever appreciates my artistry." She held up a tube of pumpkin orange liquid lipstick. "Trust me, Merle will love this. And so will you. It's pumpkin-spice flavored."

  I could always wipe it off it was too garish, so I relaxed, closed my eyes, and opened my mouth for her to proceed.

  Gia finished painting my lips and was handing me a sample size of the orange lipstick to use on Sunday when a siren blared nearby. I froze for a moment with my eyes still squeezed shut, trying to identify where the sound came from. It was the fire engine near the entrance to the parking lot, and it wasn't heading out on an emergency call. It was coming in my direction, toward the market.

  * * *

  My eyes flew open. I stuffed the white plush cat into Gia's startled arms and slid out of the Bond-villain chair. It only took a moment to figure out where the fire engine was headed: the rented grill. There were no visible flames, but an open grill shouldn't be generating that much black smoke.

  By the time I arrived, the fire truck was parked at the closest edge of the parking lot, and its crew had surrounded the grill, holding a hose at the ready. If there had been any flames, they were already out, leaving behind only a haze of smoke and a scattering of black ashes clinging to the cooking surface near one of the burners.

  Earlier in the day, I'd seen the fire chief explaining to the children about the truck's various pieces of equipment, and apparently he'd still been on the premises when the fire started, so he'd responded to the incident with his crew. He gestured for the others to put the hose away, and the firefighters started to wander back to their truck.

  I needed to talk to the chief to see just how much trouble the market was in from this incident, but the greens farmer, standing to one side of the grill, was pale and his hands were shaking. He had to be my first priority.

  "Do you need medical assistance?" I asked him.

  He didn't seem to hear me. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

  "I know." After a quick glance to confirm that the burners had all been turned off so nothing was likely to catch fire again, I escorted the farmer a few feet away from the grill and gestured for him to sit on the grass before he collapsed.

  "See?" he said from his cross-legged seat on the ground, with what I thought was false bravado. "A raw diet is better. No chance of a fire."

  "Some of us are willing to take the risk," I said mildly as I crouched down beside him. "How did this particular fire happen?"

  "I'm sorry," he said again. "I was packing up, and I dropped a cotton towel on the grill and didn't realize it until the flames caught my attention, and by then the fire truck was already on its way."

  I patted him on the hand. "It could have happened to anyone, and no one was hurt. Don't worry about it." I was doing enough worrying for both of us.

  One of the Baxter twins came running up to us with his medical bag, and I let him take over. Not that I could have stopped him if I'd wanted to. He and his brother were very good EMTs. That was something to be grateful for.

  That and the continued absence of Lewis Sturgeon. My patience with him was largel
y used up, and I wasn't sure what I'd do if he had the nerve to gloat over having warned me about the dangers of the massive grill.

  Of course, as soon as I thought of the annoying bureaucrat, he came racing down the Memorial Walkway and past the first aid tent, heading in my direction, one hand clutching at the pocket that held his tablet. He skidded to a stop, bent over to place his hands on his knees, and sucked in several deep breaths as if he'd run all the way down from the lighthouse. When he straightened, he was still winded, but he still felt the need to waste his breath by saying, "I told you someone would get hurt."

  My patience was long gone, so I didn't even bother to try to placate the inspector this time. "No one was hurt." I waved my arm in the direction of the grill and all the perfectly safe and happy people around it. "In fact, the incident proves just how safe the set-up is, considering how quickly the fire fighters and EMTs arrived."

  "It would have been better if they hadn't had to show up." Sturgeon's tablet was out again, although he hadn't started typing anything into it. Yet.

  "Perhaps," I said, "but there's risk in everything we do, from the minute we get out of bed in the morning until we go to bed again at night. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to hide under the covers my whole life, just because something bad might happen. I'll take reasonable precautions—like having the fire department and EMTs nearby—but I'm not going to shut down valuable activities like the cooking demonstrations, just because they're not one hundred percent free of risk."

  "You may not be willing to shut it down, but I am."

  I heard reluctant footsteps approaching me and then a muffled thump. I glanced to my right to see Cary collapsed on the ground beside me, cross-legged and rocking back and forth.

  I knelt beside him. "It's okay, Cary. The inspector and I are just having a bit of a disagreement. It's got nothing to do with you."

  Cary briefly looked me directly in the eye, something he seldom did, before his gaze skittered away. "It does have something to do with me. It's my fault. I should have seen the towel and moved it before the fire started."

  "It's not your fault," I said. "Your job was to make sure people followed the schedule. Nothing more than that."

  Cary jumped to his feet and shoved his clipboard into my hands. "The schedule is broken now. Does that mean you don't need me anymore?"

  "I do need you." I stood too. "But you've been working hard all morning, and you deserve a break. Why don't you take fifteen minutes to relax and maybe get something to drink while I get the schedule back in order?"

  He shook his head and took in a shuddering breath. "You don't have to pretend. I know you don't need me anymore."

  "That's not true. I couldn't do my job without you."

  "What if…?" He gave me another brief, direct look, his eyes brimming with unshed tears, and then raced off. I quickly lost track of him in the crowds frequenting the main market area.

  Sturgeon cleared his throat. "I can't believe you let a kid like him supervise the grill."

  I rounded on him. If I lost my job over this, then so be it. I was done with the inspector's abusive allegations. "The fire wasn't Cary's fault. If anyone's to blame here, it's me."

  "I know. That's what I'm putting in my report." Sturgeon pounded the enter key on his tablet. "You made a series of bad decisions that led to a fire and one person being overcome by smoke."

  "No one was overcome by anything. The farmer was just in a bit of shock, and he's fine now." I gestured to where the EMT had just released the supposed smoke-inhalation victim to return to his stall. "In any event, what's that got to do with the Department of Agriculture? It's not like the greens that were being cooked had anything wrong with them."

  "This report isn't going to my boss," Sturgeon said smugly. "It's going to the chief of your fire department. Next time he won't be so quick to let you endanger the public."

  "Why not just go talk to him in person?" I glanced in the direction of the fire truck still a few yards away at the edge of the parking lot. The chief was chatting with a couple of children who were pointing at the telescoping ladder, presumably begging for either a demonstration or, even better, a ride. The chief might just have been putting on a good face for the kids, but he didn't seem terribly upset by the grill fire. "He's right over there, and I wanted to talk to him anyway. Let's go."

  Sturgeon shook his head and refused to move. "He's a busy man, and so am I. It's not like I'm issuing an order to shut down the market. At least not this time. One more thing goes wrong, though, and I will."

  I was reasonably certain he didn't have the authority to do that, but if I antagonized him now, he might retaliate by being nitpicky in his review of the vendors' produce. That could have negative consequences for them far beyond just this weekend's market. I didn't much care what he did to my reputation, but I couldn't let him hurt the vendors.

  "Look," I said. "I think we've gotten off on the wrong foot. Is it something I've said or done?"

  "Nothing I hadn't expected when they told me I had to cover Danger Cove this weekend," he said. "I'll never understand why anyone would want to visit here, let alone live here. I mean, the town's name alone ought to be enough to convince everyone to stay away."

  "The town isn't dangerous." I'd had this conversation too many times in the past with my own mother. "It's just the waters around the cove that are dangerous. Or they were before the lighthouse was built and then better navigation tools were invented. The town itself is very nice, and the people are remarkably kind. From what I've seen, it lives up to its reputation as the friendliest town in the Pacific Northwest."

  Sturgeon snorted. "Either you've been brainwashed by living here all your life, or you haven't been here long enough to know just what a disaster this place is."

  My mother had thought pretty much the same thing—unlike the rest of her family, she'd always craved the excitement of a big city and had run away from Danger Cove at her first chance. Knowing why she'd hated the town made it easier for me to deal with her ongoing rants about where I'd chosen to live. Usually I just ignored her complaints and worked on diverting her attention to something else. If I could get Sturgeon to actually do his job, looking at the truly outstanding agricultural products in the market, perhaps that would keep him distracted from his hatred of the town.

  "I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what the vendors are offering in the main part of the market," I said. "We have some really amazing farmers and artisans. Tommy Fordham's heirloom tomatoes are extremely popular."

  Sturgeon snorted. "Anyone can slap the heirloom label on anything these days. Who knows if they're even the real thing?"

  I understood that inspectors needed to be a bit skeptical about food claims, just as I'd been professionally skeptical of get-rich-quick schemes, but Sturgeon seemed to take caution to unreasonable lengths. I had the sinking feeling he wasn't just being conscientiously careful; he was actively hoping to find safety violations. Since distraction wasn't an option, perhaps it would help to figure out what was making him so miserable. Then I might have a better idea of what could push his buttons and find a way to steer him away from those triggers.

  "What made you hate Danger Cove so much?" I asked.

  Sturgeon didn't get the chance to answer before Cary came running toward us, shouting, "Maria Dolores! Maria Dolores! You're dead. At the bottom of the cliff."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "I'm not dead," I told Cary calmly, despite the shock he'd given me. "I'm right here."

  "But Maria Dolores is dead at the bottom of the cliff." His voice quavered, suggesting he was on the verge of frustrated tears. "The other one."

  The other Maria Dolores. I'd only seen one other person dressed like my great-great-great-grandmother. Angela Henderson.

  I shoved the clipboard with the unfixed schedule for the grill at Cary and then raced over to the Baxter twin lingering over the repacking of his medical bag. "You're needed. Base of the lighthouse's cliff. Cary says someone fell. I'm textin
g Fred Fields right now."

  The EMT took off, alerting his brother as he ran. I'd just finished keying in the message to Fields when Sturgeon appeared at my side to say, "I told you something bad was going to happen. This is all your fault."

  I took a deep breath and reminded myself not to let a minor irritant like him get to me when there was a true emergency to deal with. I'd always been able to tune out my mother's dramatics whenever my much-younger siblings had had a crisis and needed someone to remain calm and help them through the situation. I could do the same thing now. Still, I couldn't help wishing Sturgeon hadn't chosen this weekend to show up. Why couldn't he have been here on any of the past seven Saturdays when the worst that had happened was a quickly-found lost kid?

  "I don't know the details yet," I told him. "Until the investigation is complete, we won't know how the woman ended up at the base of the cliff."

  "It doesn't take a genius to figure out she fell from somewhere near the lighthouse," Sturgeon said. "I bet there aren't any safety rails on the edge of the cliff. Not here in Danger Cove."

  My limited stock of patience ran out. I was feeling the initial pounding of a migraine, and I no longer cared what childhood trauma had made Sturgeon such a miserable human being. I wanted him gone from my market and, ideally, removed from the state's inspection staff. Unfortunately, neither one was likely to happen in the near future. About all I could hope for now was that he wouldn't scare off my last realistic hope for having a beekeeper at next year's market. Fortunately, Buzz was with Merle, not here listening to Sturgeon's negativity.