A Secret in the Pumpkin Patch

by Elizabeth Ashby

  "At least his appearance should make it easy for me to find this new guy," I said. "Thanks for letting me know about him."

  "He headed up the walkway in the direction of the lighthouse when he left here," Tommy said. "It was a while ago, though, and I didn't see where he went after that."

  Perhaps I could head the reporter off before he reached Sweetwater's stall on the other side of the walkway. I really didn't want him or any of his colleagues talking to Sweetwater today. Publishing his gossipy speculation wouldn't reflect well on the reputation of either the market or the Cove Chronicles.

  * * *

  I hurried out into the Memorial Walkway to look for anyone matching the description Tommy had given me. I followed in what I hoped were the reporter's footsteps, starting on the left side of the market and going from vendor to vendor to see if anyone else had talked to him and could point him out to me. I'd gone all the way up the left side of the market and most of the way down the other side before I finally found someone who'd seen him recently.

  The teens at the high school consumer sciences class remembered him. The only girl in the group couldn't hold back her irritation with the reporter. "Mr. Harding had warned us not to talk about Angela's death to anyone except the police, so we told the jerk that we didn't know anything about it. Then he laughed at us, saying he'd known he was wasting his time asking some silly home-ec students about important things."

  One of the boys gave her a hug. "Ignore him. He's an idiot in the throes of an extinction burst. If old folks can't adapt to the way the world is changing, it's no big deal. They'll be dead soon anyway."

  "The man I'm looking for isn't that old," I said. "In his forties, I was told."

  The boy shrugged. "That's old. Especially if he's going to lose his sh—"

  The girl elbowed him, and he continued, "He'll give himself a heart attack if he's going to lose his temper every time someone doesn't fit his preconceived notions."

  It seemed odd that a reporter would be so close-minded and off-putting. It didn't seem like the sort of attitude that would encourage people to talk to him. Matt Viera had certainly been polite and seemingly interested in what I had to say in the past, and as a result, I'd probably told him more than I should have about the previous police investigations. Perhaps this guy was new to the job and hadn't figured out the relative virtues of honey and vinegar. "Did you see where he went from here?"

  The girl pointed at the group of people outside the first aid tent. "He's talking to the Baxter twins now."

  "Thanks." I jogged past Sweetwater's and Merle's stalls—JT was there, but Merle was gone again—to barge my way into the conversation outside the first aid tent.

  It wasn't actually a conversation. The reporter was doing the bulk of the talking, while the Baxter twins politely listened and took turns giving one-word nonanswers. The way the brothers usually flirted with all the women at the market might give the impression that they were frivolous, but when it came to their work, they were deadly serious. And that included their commitment to keeping their patients' information confidential. No reporter was going to get any information out of them.

  The EMTs also knew how to get out of an awkward situation. At their first opportunity to speak without interrupting, one of the brothers said, "You should probably ask the market manager your questions. And lucky for you, she's right here."

  "I'm Maria Dolores." I gestured for the Baxter twins to step away from the tent's front opening so the reporter and I could go inside. "If you've got questions for me, we should go where we can talk more privately."

  He didn't seem pleased, but the brothers' identical expressions made it clear that they weren't going to say anything useful, so the reporter stomped inside the tent in front of me, as if it were his office instead of mine. I definitely agreed with Ginger and the female high school student—the man's undeniable good looks weren't matched by his personality.

  I passed him to go to my desk. The Baxter twins had been working on the wheelchair again, this time leaving their supplies on my table. I tossed them onto the seat of the wheelchair and pushed it back into its usual corner before I settled behind the table. My little office was getting more use than normal this weekend, between the wheelchair and Detective Marshall co-opting the space for interviews. It looked like he'd been in here recently, since there was a pile of empty SweeTarts packets pushed up against the back of the nameplate that Etta had made me.

  The reporter remained on his feet, pacing restlessly. His broad shoulders—Tommy had been right that the guy was solid-looking, and in the confined space, he seemed somewhat menacing—were hunched as if he half-expected that the tent might collapse on him and he was preparing to fight his way out of the canvas.

  "I didn't get your name," I said.

  "Wayne Comstock."

  "Are you new to Danger Cove?"

  "Just got an assignment this morning." He peered at the folding chair across from me but opted not to sit and instead placed his hands on the back and leaned forward. "I'd been thinking of checking out the place for a while now, although it seems a bit dodgy to me. In most towns a simple trip to the market wouldn't land me in the middle of a crime scene."

  "I'm not sure what people have been telling you, but the Lighthouse Farmers' Market is not a crime scene. Not today, not ever." I was splitting hairs, since the deaths had all occurred outside the main market area, but if a reporter was going to start out biased against the place, it was my duty to balance it with a bit of spin in the other direction. Especially with a reporter from out of town who might spread word farther than the Cove Chronicles did. "A young woman fell to her death from the cliff, but that's not part of the market."

  "Close enough." A crafty expression lit Comstock's eyes, and he finally dropped into the lightweight folding chair that threatened to collapse under his solid build.

  He gave me a sudden smile that was so forced, it triggered a tick in his jaw muscles. Unlike Matt Viera, this guy was aware of how good-looking he was, and he seemed willing to use his appearance to get people to confide in him. He just wasn't very good at doing it.

  Comstock kept the broad artificial smile in place while he spoke. "I understand you have to spin things to make the market look good, but you can tell me the truth about what happened to the young lady."

  Did anyone buy into his supposed charm, mesmerized by his admittedly good-looking face? I was growing tense, rather than feeling any camaraderie with him. My facial muscles even tightened in sympathy with the tic in his strained jaw. If I'd had a bottle of water at hand, I might have splashed it on him. It was tempting, given the Halloween season, to make like a ghost and yell boo! Anything to get him to drop the fake smile.

  I settled for offering him a packet of SweeTarts, thinking the chewing would alleviate some of his tension, but he brushed away the offer with a wave of his muscular hand. "All I need is some answers."

  "You should talk to the police, then," I said, opening the candy packet, more for something to do than because I wanted the hit of sweet and sour flavor. "I'm sure they know far more than I do about what happened on the cliff. If you want, I can text the liaison officer and ask him to have the lead detective get in touch with you."

  "No, no." The painful-looking smile disappeared as abruptly as it had erupted on his face. "I've got my own contacts. It's just that I thought you'd want to help get some answers. After all, Ms. Henderson's family is influential here in Danger Cove. You wouldn't want them to think you weren't doing everything you could to bring them some closure."

  "I'm cooperating with the police, and that's all I can do. If you know Angela's family, please let them know that I'm terribly sorry for their loss." I hesitated as I tried to come up with something positive to say about her. "I admired how passionate she was about her interests."

  Comstock pushed back the chair, digging grooves into the grass with its feet, and stood. "I'll tell them. But it would be better if I could tell them what happened to her. The police think i
t was suicide, and I don't believe it."

  "For what it's worth, I don't believe it either." I stuffed one of the SweeTarts into my mouth to remind myself not to volunteer any more information.

  Comstock hesitated, and I couldn't help thinking there was something personal about his interest in the story. A reporter might want to get to the bottom of a story just because of intellectual curiosity, but Comstock didn't seem to be seeking the truth so much as he seemed to be invested in disproving the specific theory that Angela had killed herself. Perhaps it was just because he knew her family. But there could be something more to it. For all I knew, he could have killed Angela himself and now was trying to cover up his involvement by making a show of finding her killer, when what he was really doing was trying to find out if anyone knew anything that would implicate him.

  Finally Comstock came to a decision, apparently realizing he wasn't going to get any more information out of me. He dug in his wallet for a card. "If you think of anything useful, here's my number."

  The card took minimalism to new levels. Just the man's name and a phone number, which I noted didn't have a local area code or exchange. Probably a cell phone, but I couldn't tell where it was based.

  I tucked the card into my sling bag—I had no intention of calling him with information about Angela, but it never hurt to have contact information for the press—while he headed for the door of the first aid tent. I followed him out, silently chewing the last bits of the SweetTart.

  I couldn't ban Comstock from the market or prevent him from talking to the vendors, but I could keep an eye on him. Better yet, I could ask Officer Fields to do the same thing.

  * * *

  When Comstock exited the tent, he turned to his left, away from the main market. I followed, since he was heading in the direction I needed to go anyway, toward where I expected Officer Fields to be mingling with market visitors.

  Comstock turned left again almost immediately and ducked inside the Dangerous Reads tent. I glanced inside as unobtrusively as I could. As a reporter, he should have been particularly at home surrounded by the written word, but I couldn't shake the impression that he just didn't look like he belonged in there. Whenever I went into a bookstore, I was oblivious to everything except the books. Comstock seemed more interested in the people around him.

  I hesitated. It would be a little too obvious that I was following him if I went inside the small tent. The owner, Meri Sinclair, wouldn't let him hassle her customers, and she could handle his questions without saying anything negative about the market.

  Confident that Comstock wasn't a problem for the moment, I turned to see how the rest of the holiday-only vendors were doing. I didn't see any problems. All of the chairs around the quilting frame were filled with industrious stitchers in quilted jackets, Maura at the Cinnamon Sugar Bakery was selling her treats like proverbial hotcakes, and the face-painting stations were churning out a variety of colorfully decorated kids and adults.

  I'd been a little worried about the potential for animals to escape from distracted handlers during the Second Chance Animal Rescue's Howl-oween parades, but so far, the pets had been well-behaved, and so had the humans. The most recent competition had just ended, with Mayor Kallakala handing a bag full of doggie treats to a preteen in a pirate costume standing beside a black lab in a matching outfit, right down to the eyepatch. Based on the dwindling number of occupied cages, it seemed likely that several of the pets that had initially been "borrowed" for the duration of a parade had ended up going home with their new humans afterwards.

  The demonstration grill had a good-sized crowd, and I hadn't checked in with Cary for a while, so I decided to head in that direction while I waited for Comstock to emerge from Dangerous Reads. I was certain Cary was doing a fine job, but he'd been on the job today for a long time, and he deserved a bit of time off for a break.

  Before I could take more than a few steps in his direction, the turkey farmer, Scott Vicente, intercepted me.

  "Could you possibly do something about that state inspector?" He ran a frustrated hand over his stubbly beard. "He's harassing me. He's come up with another bunch of bogus claims about my birds, and it's scaring off potential customers. I don't need this. I'm pretty close to sold out for Thanksgiving already, and I only agreed to bring my birds to this market to see if there were enough buyers to justify increasing my flock for next year. And now it looks like I might lose some existing customers instead of adding new ones. I'll hold him responsible if any of the previous Thanksgiving orders are cancelled."

  "I'm sorry," I said, urging him out of the flow of traffic and into the empty space next to the Dangerous Reads tent so we wouldn't block her customers. More important, we would be less likely to be overheard there by casual passersby, and I could keep an eye out to see where Comstock went when he emerged. "It's not just you he's been harassing. He seems to be angry with everyone in Danger Cove, but I haven't figured out why yet."

  "If anyone would know, it's Jim Sweetwater," Scott said. "I think the inspector lived here at one point in his career, but I can't remember why he left. Some big scandal he uncovered. Or maybe he was the scandal himself. I didn't pay attention when it was happening, so I don't remember the details. I try to concentrate on what will affect my birds, and as long as there's food, water, and shelter, they don't care much about what people do. I don't either. Keeping the turkeys healthy and growing fat keeps me too busy to worry about what other people are doing. Until it affects me or my birds. Like this inspector is doing by saying they're not fit for human consumption."

  "I'll have another talk with him," I promised. "And if there's anything else I can do to make up for the hassle, I will."

  "Just get rid of the inspector before he does any more damage to my reputation, and I'll be satisfied."

  "I can't guarantee he'll leave."

  "Then what good are you?" It was mostly frustration fueling him, but I also thought Scott sounded genuinely confused, rather than angry. "There's no room for sentimentality in your job, any more than there is in mine. Any bird that can't meet standards goes on the chopping block before I waste more time and feed on it. Same should be true for humans who can't do their jobs."

  "Metaphorically speaking," I said.

  "Yeah," he agreed in a less than convincing tone. "Except, see, most farmers don't have time for metaphors. We're too busy with real life-or-death situations."

  "There's nothing that serious at the market, though," I said, glossing over my own brushes with death in the past. "The only literal beheadings allowed on the lighthouse grounds are the fake ones over at the haunted house."

  "Don't worry," Scott said. "I'm not a violent person. Although I am being pushed to my limits. Some woman in a costume just like yours hassled me first thing this morning. In fact, I thought it was you at first, but then I realized she was too young, and it quickly became obvious that she was nowhere near as professional as you are. She didn't even introduce herself before she started shouting at me about the cruelty involved in large-scale poultry-raising. She hadn't done her homework, so she didn't even know that I'm about as small-scale as it can get, and I don't use any of the practices she was complaining about. She wouldn't give me a chance to explain, just shouted a bit and stomped off dramatically. I wouldn't be surprised if she'd had someone recording it for posting online."

  There could have been others dressed like my great-great-great-grandmother, but the description of the aggressive personality made it sound like Angela Henderson.

  "Was she wearing a brass-trimmed spyglass like a necklace?"

  Scott nodded. "I wouldn't have noticed, except at one point she grabbed it, and I thought she was going to take it off and hit me with it. That thing looked solid."

  Definitely Angela, then.

  I hadn't realized she'd been interested in anything other than her games and cosplay. She couldn't have been acting out something my great-great-great-grandmother might have done, because my ancestors had kept chickens in addition
to growing their own vegetables. Perhaps Angela had just been pretending to be concerned about the turkeys' welfare for some game I didn't know about. I might need to have another word with Leo. We'd agreed that the Dangerous Duelers wouldn't organize any market-day games without first telling me the ground rules, and Leo hadn't mentioned any plans for this weekend. As far as I knew, the gamers had just planned to enjoy the opportunity to dress up, mingle with others in costumes, and possibly recruit some new members for their group. Of course, since Angela had been ejected from the Dangerous Duelers, she might not have known what the plan was for the weekend, or she might have been playing her own game.

  "I can guarantee that Angela won't bother you again. She's the woman who had a fatal accident this morning," I said. "I can't promise anything with the inspector, but I'll do my best to make sure he doesn't hassle you anymore."

  "Not by tossing him off the cliff, I hope."

  "Not literally," I said. "But I wouldn't mind tossing him into a metaphorical deep end."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Before I could go hunt down the inspector, I needed to assure myself that Comstock wasn't causing any trouble. I peeked inside the Dangerous Reads tent where Meri Sinclair was dressed as Nancy Drew in a blue pencil skirt and a pale blue blouse with a Peter Pan collar. Her hair had already been cut in a short bob that was easily converted into a 1960s-style flip, and she'd added some red highlights to her dark brown hair to complete the costume. Hanging around her neck was a magnifying glass pendant so her hands would be free while she helped her customers find the perfect book for the holiday weekend. She was chatting with a woman her own age while several older women browsed. Comstock, however, was nowhere to be seen. He must have slipped out while I was distracted by Scott.