The Pumpkin Thief: A Chloe Boston Mystery

by Melanie Jackson

  The bakery was open. They also had a sort of screened deck with a gas heater where Blue could wait while I ordered. Normally I would have eaten outside with her, but that morning there were no fresh air nuts for me to question. Everyone was huddled by the potbelly stove.

  I ordered a cinnamon roll with coffee and then struck up a conversation with the man at the nearest table. This is still very hard for me. I have practiced a lot the last couple of years since my departmental evaluation said my interpersonal skills needed work, but I still find talking to strangers to be hard going.

  Since I had nothing to hide I just asked straightforwardly if anyone knew where the Endicotts were. The immediate silence that followed told me that either I was about to hear a torrent of town gossip or else I had made a grave misstep and every one would clam up. I was expecting it to be the last thing— the misstep— but I was wrong. The people in the bakery had a lot to say about the Endicotts and little of it nice.

  Ryan was adopted by Ruth and Samuel Endicott, the late proprietors of Endicott Grocer and Sundries. Ruth and Samuel, God fearing Christians though standoffish with the Methodists in town, had become ‘late’ when there was a tragic (and to me suspicious) gas leak in their kitchen two Thanksgivings ago.

  Ryan, miraculously away from home that night, had waited around only long enough to collect the insurance money— a small policy intended only to cover burial expenses— and then skipped town, still owing the undertaker for the couples’ funeral.

  The story was hazily familiar. I hadn’t paid that much attention at the time because that was the same Thanksgiving that I had discovered David having sex with my underage cousin and was distracted with crying and breaking up and other personal things.

  A kinder jury of peers would have said that Ryan had a troubled youth. Unhappy and unable to conform to his parent’s strict moral standards, he was always in trouble—at school, at church and with the law. As the man at the next table put it: “That one is demon seed. If he ain’t sold his soul to the Devil it’s only ‘cause the Devil ain’t met his asking price.”

  This was probably overstatement but it made the point. Ryan Endicott had not been a model child.

  Unfortunately for me, no one had heard from him since he skipped town and no one, in the bakery at least, wanted to.

  I finished my roll and coffee though I hadn’t much appetite left after the locals’ brisk walk down a vandalized memory lane. I was thinking hard. Even someone not given to seeing patterns would have to admit that there were a lot of suspicious deaths around the Burns and the Sayers families— Elijah and Theresa in a motor home fire (caused by a gas leak), Deborah and Alonzo in a burglary, Ruth and Samuel in a kitchen fire (again caused by a gas leak) and poor Hector, whose death was way beyond suspicious even without any gas being involved. Could any two— well, three, counting the Endicotts— entwined families have that much bad luck in such a short space of time? I didn’t think so, not unless it was manufactured misfortune.

  Could Ryan Endicott have known the facts of any of these deaths? Was that why he had run?

  After the stuffy, overheated bakery, the fog and drizzle were actually refreshing. I collected Blue and we walked back to the car. I shut her inside first and then came around to the driver’s side door.

  I had seen a lot of Halloween masks the last few days so I knew the creature who lurched at me was not a real zombie. That did not mean that he was not a monster. My first craven reaction was normal, I think. I spun away from the reaching arms and ran into the fog.

  A voice screeched after me, “Ryan’s gonna getcha if you don’t watch out!”

  My sense of self-preservation is as developed as anyone’s and I had no urge to demonstrate conspicuous bravery if it meant getting killed by a crazy man in a mask, so I hid in the nearest oleander bush. Great things those oleander bushes. Poisonous, of course, but dense enough to hide in without being too thick to penetrate when one is in a hurry.

  I actually hated to leave that oleander. It was so nice and shadowy and I hadn’t seen any spiders. But Blue was barking her head off and I had belatedly recalled that I was no longer eight and that I had self-defense training and a shriek alarm to summon help. Crouching in shrubbery was undignified. Out of the bush I came, finally ready to kick zombie butt, but the foggy street was empty.

  No one was hiding in the car— even a zombie would have better sense than to get in the car with a barking Rottweiler— and I left town without incident, though I drove slowly because I was half-expecting the stupid zombie to come lurching out of the mist again.

  Once the first rush of adrenaline had passed, I was able to think calmly about what had happened and found it interesting.

  Someone had warned me off of searching for Ryan Endicott. It might just have been some bored teen thinking it would be fun to terrorize a woman with a warning about the local boogieman. But then again, it might be something much more interesting.

  Chapter 8

  Caesar’s Turkey Ranch was a wonderful place, if you didn’t think too much about how all those beautiful white and old fashioned black turkeys roaming the hills were going to end up on the holiday dinner table.

  Most turkeys are surprisingly affectionate. They are also terribly stupid which is why they would approach me even with Blue in tow, not that Blue doesn’t know her manners. I met a few of the birds at the fence and obliging scratched their chests and under their wings while they gobbled at me. Around us the wind shrilled and I noticed that most of the trees were bare. It would be an early winter.

  I was the only visitor that morning, though the Sunday quiet would be broken after church let out. A Caesar turkey costs more than anything you’ll get at the market, but it is worlds better tasting and therefore very popular. The birds are raised on a strict vegetarian diet, certified organic and after the first few weeks living in a barn until they are too big for hawks to pick off (actually it’s a high-tech brooding facility that looks like a barn) they are allowed to roam free for the next six months while they develop their flavor. Caesar’s doesn’t have a website and won’t take phone orders, so if you want a turkey then you have to come in and select one. Not that they make you go out and hunt down your own turkey, but you fill out a form stating weight and whether you want a tom or a hen, black or white and then make a down payment. You come back the week before Thanksgiving and pick up your plucked and boxed bird which is tied up with a big red ribbon.

  I was waited on by Caesar Moreno’s eldest son, Diego. He seemed promising— in a professional sense. Aesthetically, he was unappealing. Protuberant muscles are not my thing. Perhaps because I am jealous of people who can clearly lift a number of hundred pound sand bags without even trying.

  We discussed the benefits of the bronze and black heirloom turkeys. They run about seven dollars a pound and that made me gulp when I did the math. I wanted Mr. Jackman to have fun while cooking, but I decided the less expensive standard white turkey would be fine for us and chose a hen.

  Forty dollars poorer, but feeling happier about the approaching holiday, Blue and I returned to the car.

  Across from the gravel lot I noticed a soggy hay maze. Though not as scary as corn mazes, and infested with fewer spiders, I nevertheless find hay mazes to be unnerving. Again, this is because of my cousin, Todd. I stared at the wall of hay, frowning. This silly fear of monsters and mazes was proving a hindrance. True, I had lately been confronted with real threats of a human variety, but I knew that I was over-reacting to the maze because of an old fear.

  Deciding that now was as good a time as any to face my demons, I closed the car door and started slowly for the maze. Blue was with me— I’m not crazy— but I still felt nervous and foolish.

  A good memory is invaluable in detective work, but I sometimes wish that my mind would not recall the things that it does.

  The day that Todd and I set out to choose our pumpkins it rained like the dickens in the morning but settled down to a light drizzle by the time we piled into Mom’s
old station wagon and pulled out of the leafy driveway. The brakes squeaked in the old Blue Lizard, Mom’s affectionate name for the rusty pile of bolts she was forced to drive. Mom had been on Dad’s case for several months about getting those brakes fixed, but he was pulling double shifts at work and there seemed to be no time he could fix them. In the meantime we got plenty of angry stares from wincing drivers who were unlucky enough to be next to us when we came to a stop. Todd and I didn’t complain but we put our fingers in our ears every time we saw a light turn red.

  Todd was telling me stories, this time the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He kept it tame because Mom was listening. When we were alone, he was a lot more graphic.

  I was pretty excited by the trip, not because we were going to just any pumpkin patch, but because we were going to Halloween Town. Halloween Town was the king of all pumpkin patches. It used to be located outside of the town limits so it wasn’t small like a regular town lot. To a six year old, it seemed huge.

  Piling out of the back of the station wagon, Todd and I raced each other to the petting zoo. Since we lived in town we didn’t get to see farm animals very often, just the regular cats and dogs. Both Todd and I liked to feed the goats even though it can tickle and every once in a while you got butted. The chickens weren’t as fun to feed because they were kind of stupid and pecked at you, but Todd liked to chase them and tell them he was going to eat them for dinner.

  One of the first goats I fed pooped while he ate from my hand. This made me laugh. I lingered longer than Todd wanted at the zoo because I didn’t want to go into the hay maze.

  There were hundreds of pumpkins to choose from all lined up in neat rows and I looked at them all while delaying. There were also colorful decorations including spooky looking scarecrows that I didn’t like very much, at least not the big ones that were large enough to be real bodies. I walked around trying to see everything at once until I came upon a dark, rectangular opening set into a wall of hay. This caught my attention instantly and kept hold of it the way a spider on the ceiling does.

  “Go ahead, sweetie,” my mother prodded as Todd smiled in a nasty way. “It’s a hay bale maze. Go on inside and see if you can find your way back out.”

  I wanted to argue, to tell her that Todd would do something mean to me if I went inside. But I knew Mom wouldn’t believe me. She knew that I could figure out things after they happened, but she didn’t believe that sometimes I knew what people would do even before they did them.

  “Come on, Chloe. Don’t be a fraidy cat.” Mom frowned at Todd’s taunt but didn’t say anything. She never seemed to know how to deal with boys and she wanted me to act ‘normal’.

  I had never been in a maze, but already didn’t like the look of that thing. Todd daring me didn’t help. I had gotten lost once in the park and didn’t enjoy it and couldn’t see why I would want to get lost on purpose. But I was determined to experience all that the pumpkin patch had to offer so that I would have a good story to tell the next time I saw Althea, my older and snottier cousin. So, I went inside even though it was dark and smelly and Todd was there and planning to scare me in some way.

  I walked slowly through the darkness of the maze. The labyrinth was a series of tunnels created by stacking hay bales at various angles and then topping the whole thing off with a canvas tarp. Naturally, it smelled heavily of hay which made me sneeze. I like hay, but it also smelled like the dry dirt being kicked up off the floor and the oily tarp that covered the maze, neither very pleasant. But worst of all was the smell of rot where the wet hay was going bad.

  Every once in a while a bigger kid would come shooting around a corner screaming as they ran past me and came close to knocking me over. Todd should have been holding my hand but he had disappeared. The worst were the kids who were wearing scary masks. Let me tell you, I was plenty scared the whole time, but I kept on moving forward. No way was anyone ever going to call me a fraidy cat.

  Whoever had constructed the maze had poked holes between the bales of hay so that some light would be let in, but it was still darker than I would have liked. As I walked past each of these holes, I was careful to make sure that no one— like Todd— was there on the outside to try and grab me as I shuffled by.

  Eventually I made it to the center of the maze. I could tell that I had made it to the halfway point because I entered a large rectangular room that had another of those big scarecrows. Walking toward the middle of the room I tried to get my bearings and locate the way out. That’s when it struck.

  Apparently the trap was rigged ahead of time and left there so that parents on the outside could get in on the fun of terrifying the kids inside. The trap was simple, a huge rubber spider on a string leading into the room through a hole in the ceiling. All that was required to operate it was to pull the string, watch through a hole in the side of the room for some pour shmuck to stand under the spider, and then to let the string go. This time I got to be the poor shmuck.

  As soon as the rubbery legs of the spider touched my neck I let out a scream. I think the scream had been in there all along waiting for an excuse to come out. It was loud, but not as loud as Todd laughing. The next thing I did was bolt out the passage I had used to enter the maze. I ran fast and I didn’t stop until I was brought up short by the next terror the maze had to offer.

  Not watching where I was going as I ran, I naturally missed the hand that was reaching blindly through one of the holes in the wall waiting for an innocent victim to come within its grasp. Lucky me, I got to be that innocent victim. The moment that arm grabbed me I nearly fainted. But I didn’t faint. Instead, I latched onto the arm with my teeth and bit down as hard as I could. The hand released me immediately at the same time that I heard Todd howl in pain outside the maze. I knew it was Todd and that I should let go, but he no longer seemed like my bratty cousin I was supposed to be nice to. He had turned into a devil and I bit longer and harder than I should have.

  On the run again, this time I didn’t stop until I was outside and in my mother’s arms.

  “Sweetie, what happened to you?” my mother asked using her overly-concerned voice that meant she was as frightened as I was. Dabbing at my mouth she wiped away several spots of blood. Horrified, she asked: “Did something hit you while you were in there?”

  I was too scared to answer. Instead, I buried my face back in my mother’s arms. After some time I allowed her to examine me further. That’s when we discovered that in my shear terror I had peed my pants. Fortunately, I was still too scared to be embarrassed or ashamed. The embarrassment and shame came later.

  I noticed that Todd didn’t take his coat off even in the car. He didn’t want my mom to see his arm. After all, it hadn’t been my blood that Mom wiped off my face.

  I stopped just outside the entrance to the maze. It smelled the same. It looked almost the same though I was a little taller now. It seemed unfair that I was still short enough to enter without stooping.

  My breath was audible and leaving puffs of white in the air. Blue whined, asking why I would go in that place when I didn’t like it. That was a good question. I had to be brave in the line of duty— and I had been the night we found Hector Sayer’s body. But there was no reason to go into a dripping hay maze at a turkey farm when I was all alone.

  “Come on, Blue,” I said, turning away. “It’s time for something hot to drink.”

  Chapter 9

  I was a little heavy eyed when I arrived at the station the next morning and I wasn’t looking forward to lunch with Mom. I’m on the sunny side of thirty but Mom is beginning to worry about me reaching some unstated sell-by date and failing to give her grandchildren. Which, to be honest, I am not sure that I want anyway. Mom does not understand this. Heredity plays games sometimes and I am nothing like my parents who are pretty normal, I think. Instead I’m a short bit of doggerel wedged between lengthy sonnets. Or maybe I mean proverbs. Anyhow, the other difference between us is my uncertainty about how good a parent I would be.

  At least th
e rain had stopped and we were having one of the crisp days when the sky is so bright that it hurts to look at it and the comforting smell of wood fires floats on the air.

  Jeffrey was waiting for me with a cup of coffee and questions about the investigation and I told him about my trip to Roosevelt. I considered going by the chief’s office to tell him about my adventures too, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be happy about my unauthorized trip up the hill. He knew that David was trying to find the Burns heir and he had a name— and presumably some records if the kid was in trouble with the law as often as the locals claimed. I decided that keeping a low profile would be best.

  But just as I was leaving the building I heard the chief calling for me. For one moment I thought about pretending to be deaf, but then decided that this was probably one case where retreat would not be the better part of valor.

  “Come in for a second,” the chief said. “Close the door.”

  Lardhead Gordon and Bryce were both staring at me, one with jealousy and one with speculation.

  “What’s up, Chief?” I remained standing but Blue sat. She recalled that the chief had shouted that particular instruction last time we were in his office. He had been yelling at me, but Blue had a good memory and was taking no chances.

  “Boston,” the chief said casually. “Do you know who’s going to win the game on Sunday?”

  “The game?” My mind was momentarily blank. “You mean the football game?”

  “Yes.” His eyes were bright.

  I exhaled slowly.

  “Chief, I’m not really psychic. I deduce things based on evidence and statistics, and I can’t see the future.” My voice was even.