The Pumpkin Thief: A Chloe Boston Mystery

by Melanie Jackson

  Instant guilt. My dog was riled. I wanted to talk to her but let it go since I am not completely selfish, but I missed Blue very much. I was pretty sure that Alex wasn’t going to be good company that night and I wanted my dog to comfort me.

  Okay, forget honesty. Straightening my shoulder, I went back into the living room determined to make nice for the rest of the evening.

  Chapter 13

  Esteban Nunez didn’t come on duty until six o’clock in the evening, so we had the day free to do some sight-seeing. Deciding to put yesterday behind us, we set out to see the coast and to have lunch at Alex’s favorite restaurant, Scopozzi’s, located in the mountain town of Boulder Creek. He assured me that the sand-dabs were to die for and they had a spaghetti Bolognese that was like no other.

  I liked the Santa Cruz Mountains and found myself relaxing once we were among the trees. Even Alex’s referring to the stretch of road we were on as ‘blood alley’ failed to ruin the view or my mood. Once or twice I thought of Blue, about how she would have had her breakfast and then gone out to the garage to help Dad repair something and maybe visit Old Luke. Blue loves horses, even mean ones like Luke. But mostly I stayed in the moment and just enjoyed the ride.

  It was fairly easy to put the city and the previous night behind me and to forget that I was going to an even larger metropolis that afternoon. Cities are like monsters with very sharp teeth. Percentage wise, we probably have as many bad apples in Hope Falls as they do in any large city—Ryan Endicott perhaps being a good example— but it seemed that the city had enough bad people and situations that they could reach critical mass at any hour of the day and one had to be constantly wary. We might have a bar fight at Harley’s but we didn’t have riots. These smaller towns in the mountains like Boulder Creek, Felton and Ben Lomond felt different to me. Eccentric and quirky, but without mass lurking menace. I said this to Alex but he just snorted. I guess menace did lurk and I just didn’t see it because of the trees.

  Scopozzi’s is an old boarding house for loggers; wood floors, low ceilings with open rafters and big fireplaces. I was in love from the moment I crossed the threshold. No, even before that. The parking lot was vibrant gold. The leaves were damp with recent rain and merely whispered and sighed as we walked on them.

  The menu was extensive and old-fashioned. I like food without pretension because I feel stupid getting intimidated by an entrée I don’t recognize. Of course I had the Spaghetti Bolognese and it was the best I’ve tasted.

  We headed next for Half Moon Bay. It was a bit out of the way and we had missed the pumpkin festival, but several of the nurseries there were still displaying their winning giants. They give a twenty thousand dollar prize for the biggest pumpkin! The record is one-thousand-five-hundred-twenty-four pounds. It was an Atlantic Giant. I couldn’t imagine how large that was until we actually saw the winner on display. It was big enough that if it were scooped out, children could use it as a play house. I could barely peek over the top. Alex took a picture with his phone and got me a packet of Atlantic Giant seeds.

  “I can grow one of those,” I whispered as we got back in the car and Alex laughed, but in a good way. Dazzled at the possibilities, I began making plans for next year. Growing pumpkins in mulch is supposed to make them larger and there were special fertilizers. And who needed a yard anyway….

  We stopped at the winery and Alex picked up a bottle of Coastal Fog chardonnay— because I liked that label best. I saw pictures of the festival on the wall there and got some ideas for Hope Falls next fall festival— like the build-a-scarecrow contest. They used Indian corn, gourds and all kinds of fall plants, not just cornstalks and clothing. And the small ones were cute, not scary.

  I fell asleep in the car and had a last dream of Halloween.

  Proceeding down the sidewalk, we were now four and had to walk two by two. Alex was with me, Todd and Althea, though in reality, he of course couldn’t have been there trick-or–treating with us.

  “Wait a second, guys,” Alex said pulling his sheet over his head and draping it down his shoulders. He was a ghost. “We can’t go trick-or-treating without a plan. That’s for amateurs.”

  “Come on, Alex,” I said. “Stop kidding around. We’ve always gone trick-or-treating without a plan.”

  “That was last year. This is now.” With a dramatic pause which seemed to be anticipating a drum roll, Alex pulled his sheet off completely, reached into the back pocket of his jeans, and retrieved a neatly folded sheet of brown butcher block paper. Unfolding it, the sheet of paper proved to be a good three feet square. Once unfolded, Alex held the paper up before our eyes to display what could only be described as a treasure map. Though it wasn’t full dark yet, we moved under a street lamp where the light was better.

  “Wow, what is it?” Todd asked in utter fascination.

  “It’s a candy map of the neighborhood,” Alex explained with a smile.

  Coming closer I was able to get a better look at the large sheet of paper. Sure enough, it was a map of the neighborhood. Only this map, I saw uneasily, extended into other nearby neighborhoods as well. In fact, it went all the way to San Francisco. Written in fine print on the map were the last names of the people who lived in the houses along with the candy that was available at each house. Where the candy was unknown, mostly in the more distant neighborhoods, the house was marked with a large red question mark. The houses with the best candy were all circled in blue. And highlighted with a gold star was the Anderson’s, also known as the apple cider house.

  One house, the Burns Mansion, was circled in black. It didn’t list any candy.

  “Gosh Alex, that’s amazing,” I said, my eyes wide. “How long did it take you to do all this?”

  “It took me two weeks in my art class. I would have been faster if I had a computer,” Alex explained proudly. “And as a result of the research, I’m late with my history homework, so I’ll need to copy this week.”

  “You got it.”

  “Wow, nice job, Alex,” Althea commented. I felt some annoyance that she was being nice to my boyfriend. I thought about shoving her away.

  Alex held the map up for a few more seconds as he basked in the admiration. Then he laid it down on the sidewalk and the four of us got down on all fours to study the map in more detail. As we examined the chart, we made our plans of conquest in order to rake in the most of the best candy available.

  “I’ve done some analysis,” Alex explained. His dad was a banker and did a lot of analysis. “Baker Street is the best street overall when it comes to candy. I made this determination by considering the percentage of houses that were circled in blue. Next comes Adams, so you can see how the route should continue. Of course, if we want to find the murderer, we will have to go another way. What do you think, Chloe?”

  “Well…” I wanted to solve the murder, but I also wanted the candy.

  “I want candy,” Todd said. “Who cares about a murderer?”

  “Okay.” Pointing with his finger, Alex continued to outline the optimal route through the various neighborhoods in order to bring in the best candy in the shortest amount of time and with the least amount of effort. When he was done drawing the route, his finger was pointing to his own doorstep just a few houses down from my own. “That’s the best route if we want candy.”

  “That’s brilliant, Alex,” Althea admired again.

  “Yeah, well. I was always good at science and stuff,” Alex explained, blushing a little at Althea’s compliment.

  I was too busy studying the map to add my own voice to the compliments. After a detailed examination, I had a few questions to ask.

  “Alex, you circled this house in black. However, that’s all the way back in the orchard. Is it really worth going all that way just to hit one house?”

  “Oh yeah.Because we have to talk to the ghosts. The ghosts are very important if we want to find Ryan.”

  “Why would I want Ryan?” Althea asked.

  “Because Ryan is the grand prize and Ch
loe wants him more than candy— don’t you, Chloe?”

  I woke up before I answered.

  We wended our way northward visiting beaches and tide pools, but as the sun began to lower, he headed directly into the city. San Francisco seemed very tall to me, very vertical, and filled with insane drivers who managed to be stupid while crawling along at two miles per hour. It was pretty in a grand way, but I was just as happy to park the car in a parking structure and strike out on foot.

  Alex told me about the building we were headed to. The Keller Building went up in 1904 and withstood the San Francisco earthquake. The site had been the home of a musical hall that burned down in 1899 and there were rumored to be ghosts. That didn’t matter though. Land was scarce in San Francisco. Ghosts were not a deterrent. In fact, they had dug up all the cemeteries and moved the graves out of town. Steel-framed, built of sandstone and brick, The Keller was solid. One would expect a lot of echoes with those vast marble floors, but the acoustics were oddly muted. The dark marble swallowed not only light but sound.

  The radio station did not take up the whole building. They had a suite on the third floor. We weren’t going there though. Not right away. Step one was to talk to the janitor. If he confirmed that Ryan Endicott was working Halloween night then we would walk away. Alex and I had agreed that if Endicott was cleared then we would let David do everything through official channels. I had no wish to explain his parentage to him.

  Though the roads outside were choked with cars and people, the building was oddly empty. We listened carefully but didn’t hear any tell-tale squeaking from a cart and no one whistled while they worked. There were no footsteps, no dinging elevators, no sounds of any kind. I found it easy to believe that the building was haunted.

  Two broad staircases swept up on either side of the lobby. One went to a mezzanine level and one up to the second floor. There was also an elevator with gleaming brass doors that made me nervous.

  “Let’s take the stairs,” I said.

  “Left or right?” Alex asked.

  “You go left,” I said.

  “Okay. You have your phone? I’ll call if I find Nunez. You do the same.”

  “Okay. See you soon.”

  We were there on serious business, but I couldn’t help having a moment of pretend while I pictured myself as Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady”, going off to the embassy ball. I was swishing an imaginary gown as I stepped off on to the second floor and almost fell over a janitor’s cart.

  “Oh!” I gasped. “Hello. Mr. Nunez?”

  “Yes?” Esteban Nunez looked up politely. He was a middle aged man. Small. His smile was pleasant.

  I thought about calling Alex on the phone, but it seemed so silly and would puzzle the nice man, so I just asked my question. When he hesitated I reached in my pocket and held out a twenty. He was probably thinking I was a girlfriend checking up on my guy, or maybe a groupie wanting Ryan’s schedule. I did my best to look dumb and harmless— which is very effective with most guys and not especially difficult to pull off when you are small.

  Esteban Nunez took the twenty I offered and said: “Ryan E wasn’t in the studio that night. The show was canned. I started on the third floor at seven and—”

  The hammer flew out of nowhere and hit him in the side of the head. The janitor crumpled and hit the floor hard.

  “Mr. Nunez?” I asked stupidly and then turned to face the thing running at me out of a dark room.

  I had seen pictures of Ryan Endicott, but I didn’t recognize him that evening. His face was so distorted that I barely saw him as human. This was a true monster, the thing I had feared would attack me in the corn maze and I reacted as I would have if the boogieman had come at me.

  I wish I could tell you that we had a giant superhero fight and I used all my self-defense training to save myself, but it wasn’t like that at all. Ryan flew at me clawed hands outstretched. Instinctively I spun sideways, bumping up against the cart. He went past me and I gave him a shove, helping momentum along. That was it, my sole contribution to the fight. But the shove sent him toward the stairs. He missed the railing and went cart-wheeling down them. The noise was terrible. I heard every breaking bone.

  Fortunately for me, there were security cameras that recorded everything. You can see it on Youtube if you missed the news that week.

  The Keller Building is a historical landmark, a beautiful old building with beautiful old marble stairs with beautiful sharp edges. By the time Ryan Endicott reached the bottom, he was dead. Better karma for me if he had lived, of course, but more convenient for the police (I discovered while eavesdropping) that he died. And at least the janitor is alive to tell his story, though he may not regain sight in his left eye. If Endicott had killed me, I am sure that the unconscious Esteban Nunez would have died too because of what he knew.

  The next few hours were a blur. Alex found me only moments after Ryan’s fall and he called the police and asked for an ambulance because I was busy trying to stop the bleeding in Nunez’s head. I had expected some outcry from the offices on the second floor, but it was after hours and the building was deserted. It was just us, the bleeding janitor and Ryan’s broken body.

  Alex and I went to the police station. I made my statement to the police and I signed an electronic copy (we don’t have this in Hope Falls).

  I talked frankly to the detective in charge, Ramon Alverez, a friend of Alex’s as it happened, and I ended by telling him firmly that unless I was arrested that I was going home the next day. My ticket was non-refundable and that they knew where to reach me if needed. I knew there was always a chance the D.A. would decide to try and prosecute me for something, but it seemed unlikely since it was so clearly self-defense after Endicott had hit the janitor with a hammer and run screaming at me— a woman half his size and weight. And, oh yeah, he was probably a mass murderer.

  Alverez was about to argue, but I pointed out that I was fifty percent of parking enforcement for Hope Falls and asked what would happen to his city’s revenues if fifty percent of their parking enforcement people had a sick-out. I also told him to call the chief if they needed someone to assure him that I wasn’t a flight risk. In fact, I offered to do it for him. I think he was shocked that I had the chief’s number in my cell phone.

  “So you miss work that much?” The detective obviously found this hard to believe.

  Really, I missed Blue, but I said: “My dad is the former chief of police. I’ve known most of the guys my entire life. It’s my job.”

  And Detective Alverez’s face finally relaxed. He was at last seeing me as someone on the same team. I was a parking cop, but also the daughter of a cop, and dating a cyber cop. I came from a law enforcement family and that made me okay, and I guess also good enough for Alex.

  I wondered if Alex still felt the same.

  They let me go in the wee hours of the morning and Alex drove us to his apartment. It was a quiet ride and Alex’s grip on the steering wheel was very firm.

  “Why are you…?” But I couldn’t ask, in case he was mad at me for getting him involved.

  “Angry? Because I failed to display even minimal levels of competence and caution. Because I almost got my girlfriend killed, showing off by going to see this guy in person when I could have asked someone down there to check it for me.”

  At least I was still his girlfriend.

  “Gosh and here I was thinking we did well to survive an encounter with a monster who has killed at least seven people.”

  Alex glared, but I saw his mouth twitch.

  We shared a mattress that night and a bit more conversation the next morning, but mostly Alex worked on the computer and I read. He took me to the airport that afternoon. He wasn’t coming home with me. I wished very much that he would, but didn’t ask him to. He had work to do and it had been a trying weekend. We needed to go to our respective corners and have a breather before the next round. If there was a next round.

  “You’re kind of quiet,” Alex said once we were on th
e freeway.

  “I miss Blue. And I’m tired,” I admitted. Missed her terribly though I knew she was happy with Dad. The cats were also fine with Mom since she spoiled them. But I found I was also missing Jeffrey and the Lit Wits and even the chief. I was generally homesick.

  “And I’m not enough?”

  No, I realized, Alex alone wasn’t enough. Especially not if I had to deal with his family regularly. Then I thought, stupidly, how much I would probably like Blue’s family.

  By then I had been silent too long.

  “Sorry. Thinking.”

  “I know.” He sounded sad.

  “Look, rough night. Probably rough day tomorrow. I hope the chief isn’t mad about all this.” I reached out and took his hand.

  He gave me a small smile and it was my turn to be sad. I wanted to say: I’m never leaving Hope Falls to live in this place. But you could leave here so easily. Your job is portable. Your aunt is nice enough (comparatively) if you need family and you could have me.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said, though I was sure I never spoke out load.

  “And think about Thanksgiving,” I said as we pulled up at the curb at SFO and got a small smile for my efforts. I knew he was still depressed by what had happened and added: “Look, this was catastrophic for Ryan Endicott. It doesn’t have to be for us. Everyone gets some hard knocks. The question is whether you get yourself back up and on track again when the bad things happen.”

  Alex looked suddenly thoughtful as he got my duffle from the trunk. Just to help him be clear about my own position, I kissed him hard before walking away. I didn’t look back. There would be no last lingering glances in case this really was the end.

  I saw a man reading a late edition paper in the terminal while waiting to board. It said that the Seahawks had won the Sunday morning game. The chief would probably want to ask me about football from then on out. As long as he asked me at home, I was willing.