“That’s stupid,” she said.
“It’s the best I’ve got,” I replied. “Take it or leave it. I’ll use orange and black lettering.”
She agreed, but insisted I decorate the inside with fake cobwebs and some of the black gauzy material I’d used in the house. I thought it turned out well. It smelled like apples. If that doesn’t just shout Halloween, I don’t know what does.
~*~
Halloween evening, we all greeted the trick or treaters who came to my door, until the grandmothers decided they wanted to go around the small lakeside neighborhood I lived in and do some trick or treating themselves.
“Trick or treat is for kids, not for adults,” I said.
“Go ahead, girls,” said Aunt Nozzie. “Grandma Papa is small enough to pass as a child and Grandma Mama can pretend she’s the parent.”
“Okay, but be back before it gets dark. And don’t get into trouble.” I reluctantly unleashed my grandmothers on the neighborhood.
“Oh, don’t look so worried, Darcie,” Nozzie said. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“They’re my grandmothers. It’s Halloween, and they’re dressed in costumes. What could possibly be right about that?”
Less than half an hour later, the doorbell rang again. I grabbed the candy bucket and opened it to find a tall, muscular man wearing a gray uniform and holding a broad-brimmed hat in his hand. He was a state trooper.
“Do these belong to you?” he asked. Behind him stood my two grandmothers.
I nodded, wondering if he would cart me off to jail for aiding and abetting whatever crime I was certain they had committed.
“This one,” he pushed Grandma Mama forward, “threatened to shoot the homeowners when they refused her more candy. And she’s got a gun.”
“It’s a fake,” I said in her defense.
“The people she threatened didn’t know that, so they called us. We caught her at the next house pulling the same stunt.”
“Your neighbors are pretty stingy with their candy,” said Grandma Mama.
“And what did you do?” I asked my other grandmother.
“She insisted on booze and when they refused, she ran past them and tried to locate their liquor cabinet,” the trooper said.
“I was thirsty. Running around to people’s houses begging for treats is hard, thirsty work, and I’m sweating like a menopausal woman behind this mouse mask,” Grandma Papa said.
“She’s got a point there, you know,” I said to the trooper.
“But she’s only a child. Do you let her drink? What were you thinking sending a kid out with an armed adult?”
How could I explain in a way he could understand? How could I make anyone understand? I went with the simplest explanation.
“They sneaked by me.”
“The gun is a fake? It sure looks real.”
“We bought it at the thrift place in town,” I assured him. “As for the booze thing, the person behind that Minnie Mouse mask is my other grandmother. She’s at least three times your age.”
He seemed to be buying my explanation until Aunt Nozzie entered the conversation.
“Kind of early for the party, aren’t you? Say that’s a great costume.” She grabbed the trooper by his belt and pulled him into the kitchen. “Come on in. You can help us set up the punch bowl. You’re a big one, aren’t you? Yowza.”
Before I could explain or he could fend off my aunt, she shoved him toward the dining room and pointed at the table we’d set up there. He eyed the whip she wore on her belt and got to work on the punch.
“My name’s Darcie,” I said, joining him at the table. “Your suspects are my grandmothers and you’ve just been volunteered as a party helper by my Aunt Nozzie. I suggest you play along until I can distract her. Then you can make your getaway. Unless you want to arrest someone.”
The guy wore a confused look on his face, a handsome face with a broad full mouth, curly brown hair and blue eyes.
“My troop captain would kill me if he knew I’d let someone drag me in here,” he said.
“Obviously he doesn’t know my Aunt Nozzie.”
“Here,” said Aunt Nozzie. She handed him several bottles of pineapple juice. “Pour these into the bowl. I’ll get the vodka and seltzer water.”
She returned in several minutes with the booze and the sparkling water. “What are you waiting for? The punch won’t make itself. Who is this guy, Darcie? Is he one of your colleagues?” She then leaned close to me and whispered in my ear. “Real slow up here for a college professor.” She pointed her finger at the side of her head and made a circling motion.
“He’s not…, uh, he’s an administrator at the college,” I said.
“That explains it.” She began talking to him again, this time speaking loudly and very slowly. “Take the bottles and….”
The doorbell rang, thank heaven.
This time it was not a ghost, goblin, or witch. It was a pumpkin, orange and so big around that I feared it would not fit in the door.
“Darcie. Hi.” The pumpkin spoke. I recognized the voice. It was President Anderson, his early arrival signaling his eagerness to be with my aunt, the poor clueless boob.
“Aunt Nozzie. It’s for you.”
I left her at the door, towering over President Pumpkin, trying to pull him through the opening. “Maybe it would be better if I joined you outside.” Which she did.
I watched them go around the back of the house to sit on the deck by the apple bobbing pool.
I signaled to the trooper who still stood by the dining table, adding another fifth of vodka to the punchbowl.
“I thought you were supposed to put in two quarts of seltzer, two quarts of pineapple juice and one bottle of vodka.”
“Oops,” he said.
“I’ll fix it. You sneak out and continue protecting the public from…” I began.
“…from grannies armed with toy guns. Right. By the way,” he said, clapping his Smoky the Bear hat on his head, “my name is Cal Perkins, and this looks like a heck of a party. I’ll bet you could use police protection to make sure your guests don’t get carried away. I’m off duty in an hour.”
“I’ll see you then, Trooper Perkins. It’s a costume party. But I guess you already know that.”
He looked startled for a moment.
“You must have realized my Aunt Nozzie isn’t really a dominatrix and that’s not a real pumpkin who just arrived.”
“Right,” he said and his confusion cleared. He winked at me and headed for his car.
As the sun went down, so too did the number of children coming by to trick or treat. Soon our party guests began to arrive in a variety of costumes. It looked as if several of the members of my department had simply pulled sheets off their beds, but the department head wore a tweed suit with vest, sported a beard and held a cigar in his hand. In case we didn’t get it, he also wore a name tag which read, “Sigmund Freud.”
We had cowboys, vampires, a bunny rabbit with a giant carrot (that was the head of food services and his wife), Batman and Robin (two of my research assistants), several Supermen, and the four guys from the chemistry department came as the Beatles. From the amount of costumed revelers who began to pour in, I was certain word had gotten around both the college and the neighborhood that a party was on. The last one to arrive was a tall man dressed as another ghost.
“Hi, Darcie. Don’t you recognize me?”
“Who?”
He sidled up to me and said in a low voice, “It’s me, Trooper Perkins.”
“You could have just worn your uniform. Everyone would have assumed you were in costume.”
“But you seemed adamant that it was a costume party. I wear that uniform every day. I wanted to dress up.”
Maybe Nozzie was right. The guy was kind of dim. The sheet he was wearing was flowered.
He pulled away the material and said, “This? Short lead time. Just think of me as a friendly ghost, happy, fun.”
“Sure. Want a
drink?”
“Do I? You bet. I know what went into that punch. Or did you ‘fix it’ like you said you would?”
“I think we’re out of punch, but Aunt Nozzie has made a big batch of her famous Scarlet O’Hara cocktails. You’ll like them.”
I heard a clanking sound through the kitchen window. “What’s that racket?”
My trooper buddy and I looked through the window and spotted a knight in a full suit of armor crossing the yard between my house and Mr. Smith’s.
I knew it had to be Mr. Smith, in a costume guaranteed to protect him from flying gutters or whatever debris my grandmothers might toss his way. Unfortunately, Grandma Papa recognized him too. She rushed up to him and jumped into his arms, destroying his precarious balance and toppling them both onto the ground.
“Oh, you are such a romantic,” she declared, “but don’t you think we should do this inside, on a bed?”
I heard a muffled cry for help emerge from the face of the knight. My flowered friend and I ran out the door to right the two of them. Grandmother Papa managed to open his face plate and began kissing his cheeks.
“Get her off me,” Mr. Smith cried.
“I think this would work better if the two of you were separated,” I told Grandma Papa.
“I think I need a drink,” said Mr. Smith.
Aunt Nozzie, having heard the noise, came running, one of her cranberry and Southern Comfort concoctions in her hand. “Here, take mine. I’ll make more.”
Grandma Papa tried to pour the drink into his mouth, but most of it hit the armor and dripped down his chin and neck.
“Careful. You might rust and then we’d never get you out of there,” said Grandma Papa.
“Get me another or I won’t want to get out of this thing,” he said.
I handed him the drink in my hand. He had better aim with this one. I heard gulping, a sigh of satisfaction and a chuckle. Hmm. Put some booze into him and Mr. Smith’s attitude improved as did his hearing. No wonder he spiked the lemonade at my July Fourth parties.
“Say, you’re a cute little mouse,” Mr. Smith said to my grandmother.
“Wait till you see me without my mask,” she replied.
I decided I didn’t need to see the unveiling. Instead I handed her Trooper Perkins’ drink. “He may need this before you morph out of Minnie into Grandma.”
“Hey, that’s mine,” said the trooper.
“You can’t drink it anyway. You forgot to cut a mouth hole in your sheet. We need a pair of scissors,” I said.
“I need to get out of this thing. It’s hotter in here than I thought it would be,” Mr. Smith said. He pulled the headpiece off, took the drink, and chugged it. “How about some help?”
I left Grandma Papa and her knight to struggle with costume removal while Trooper Cal and I returned to the house.
Aunt Nozzie finished making up another batch of Scarlet O’Hara cocktails in the kitchen. “Could you take these into the dining room? I need to see if the pumpkin needs anything like another drink, a nibble of food…or me.” Nozzie giggled, a sound incongruous with her dominatrix costume. She headed out the slider to join President Pumpkin on the back deck.
Once we’d cut a mouth hole in his sheet, Trooper Cal got into the swing of the party, helping me in my hostess duties and occasionally touching my arm in a friendly way. Everyone in my family with the exception of Grandma Mama had found a mate, perhaps temporary, but a guy nevertheless, and no one was getting hurt.
I wondered where this was going.
Chapter 6: Errant Apples
Oh good. Grandma Mama was making friends. I spotted her in her private investigator garb standing next to a witch on the other side of the apple bobbing kiddie pool. When I looked again, the witch had moved toward the pool, and Grandma Mama had disappeared. Only the witch, President Pumpkin, and Nozzie remained there.
Cal turned my attention from the threesome.
“I’m wondering,” said Cal, “if you’d like to….”
He never got to finish.
Aunt Nozzie screamed. “Get away from him. I’ll give you the keys.”
The witch stood over Nozzie’s president and was holding his face under the water.
“Somebody’s not playing nice in the pool.” I dashed out the back slider just as the witch straightened, caught the keys Nozzie threw to him, and tore off around the other side of the house.
“What is going on?” I asked.
Nozzie pointed to the pumpkin among the bobbing apples. “I think the witch drowned him.”
Cal rushed to my side. “Who drowned who?”
We pulled the president out of the pool, and Cal performed mouth to mouth. President Anderson soon came around, sputtering water, and vomiting Scarlet O’Hara cocktails onto the deck.
“Thank goodness, he’s all right. Now what’s this all about, Aunt Nozzie?”
“The witch is not a witch,” she said.
“Of course not. No one here is what they seem to be. You’re no dominatrix either,” I pointed out.
She pulled herself up on her heels to her over six feet of height. “I could be if I wanted to.”
“That’s neither here nor there. Who was that witch and why did she try to kill your date?” I asked.
Nozzie’s eyes wouldn’t meet mine.
“Aunt Nozzie. This is serious. Tell.”
“That was no witch,” she began.
“We just went through that. Get to the point.”
“It was the former owner of the motorhome,” she said.
“I thought you said he was in prison.”
“He was. I guess he got out, found out I bought his rig and came here to get it back. He tried to use his usual skills of persuasion, his signature move—murder.”
Just then I heard the motorhome’s engine start.
“Call the cops,” I said to Cal.
“I am the cops,” he replied.
“Arrest someone then,” said Aunt Nozzie, doing her best to clean up a dazed and unhappy President Pumpkin. Nozzie took a handkerchief, wet the corner with her tongue, and started swabbing his face with it.
I jumped off the deck and ran out to the driveway. The witch driver must have shifted into reverse before the engine was warmed up, because it stalled, giving me enough time to grab the passenger door handle and open it.
“No way. A black cat. Get out of here. You’re bad luck.” The witch had shed her hat and horrible green mask revealing a swarthy man with black, greasy hair. At one point the hair must have been combed into a pompadour, but the hat had squished it to one side making it look as if his head was asymmetrically pointed.
“This is my aunt’s motorhome. She bought it fair and square after you went to prison and the authorities put it up for auction. I took a lot of trouble decorating it for the party, and I’m not going anyplace until you surrender it.”
He pulled a pistol out of his pants pocket.
Okay, so maybe we could negotiate my leaving if I could do it without bullet holes in me. I raised my hands. “We can talk.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Darcie, Aunt Nozzie’s niece.”
“Yeah, well, now you’re Darcie, the hostage. Sit down. We’re leaving.” He started the engine again, gave it gas, and we backed out of the drive.
And I thought my Aunt Nozzie was a bad driver. The guy clipped my mailbox backing into the road, then hit the flower bed in my next door neighbor’s yard. He turned onto the highway into the path of a pick-up truck that swerved and ran down an embankment.
“Why did you buy this thing if you don’t know how to drive it?” I asked.
“I know how, but I’m just a little excited. Murder does that to me.”
“What murder?” I asked.
“I just killed a pumpkin back there, didn’t I?’
“No, he’s fine.”
His shoulders slumped in defeat. “Dang. I’m better with a gun. I’ve never done a drowning without putting concrete boots on my targe
t first. I must be losing my touch.”
The rig wandered over the centerline and played chicken with an Adirondack Trailways bus.
This would not end well.
“Watch the road!” Grandma Mama yelled.
Instead of moving back into his lane, our former witch, now hit man, looked back at her. “Where did you come from?”
“Illinois,” she said.
I grabbed the wheel and steered the motorhome back to the right, but overcorrected, and we caught gravel with the wheels.
“Hit the brake,” Grandma Papa yelled.
“Where did you come from?” I asked.
“Illinois. You know that, Darcie,” she said.
He stomped on the brakes and lost the rear end.
“No, no. Steer out of the skid,” I directed.
“Who’s driving this damn thing?” he asked.
“No one competent, that’s for sure,” I answered as the behemoth vehicle whipsawed back and forth from one side of the road to the other, finally coming to rest in the ditch in front of a motel and only feet from a bridge abutment.
Apples rolled forward from the back of the rig, and with them tumbled Mr. Smith, still clad in his armor. As the forward motion stopped, the apples reversed themselves. My two grandmothers grabbed our knight to prevent him from joining the river of apples, flowing back toward the bedroom.
We all stepped out of the motorhome to assess the damage. None of us were hurt, not even, as luck would have it, our hit man whose face was now bright red with anger. He waved his gun around and asked,” Who are you guys, anyway?”
“Don’t you want to know where I came from?” asked Mr. Smith.
“No, no, no. I want all of you out of here. Start walking back the way you came. Except for you.” He pointed the gun at me. “You’re my insurance.”
My grandmothers and Mr. Smith filed past me and began trudging down the road. On her way by, Grandma Mama slipped me her toy pistol and whispered, “Maybe this will help.”
“Thanks, but his is real, you know.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t know this one isn’t. Fake it.”
Happy Homicides 4: Fall Into Crime: Includes Happy Homicides 3: Summertime Crimes Page 12
