Dandelion Dead

by Chrystle Fiedler

  “So they were involved.” Jackson read the e-mail.

  “Not only that, those initials, MP, are the same ones that were on the inscription on that ring in Ramsey’s office drawer.”

  “Looks like Amy was seeing Ramsey, then became involved with Gerald.”

  “Right, and here.” I pointed to the screen. “Gerald is asking Amy if she broke it off with Ramsey yet, using the MP moniker, and after that he added a smiley face. Maybe as an inside kind of joke.” I began to scroll through the other e-mail messages as fast as I could.

  “It’s obvious she ended it because the engagement ring is still there, in Ramsey’s desk.”

  I nodded. “First, Ivy takes away Amy’s love, David, and marries him.”

  “But that’s not enough for Ivy. After Amy breaks up with Ramsey, Ivy wants him, too. I just thought of something. Is it possible that Amy dumped David—not the other way around? That would make her less of a victim since she was making the choices first with David, and then Ramsey. Basically Ivy was taking her leftovers.”

  “Not from what Grandmother Emily Lord said. She seemed to think that Ivy had manipulated the situation so that she got what she wanted. It’s possible she did the same thing with Ramsey. I really think Ivy’s the bad guy here.”

  “She’s certainly not very likable.”

  “No, she isn’t.” I scrolled down and scanned another e-mail. “The rest of the e-mails seem to be just back and forth about their daily lives and how much Amy and Gerald care for each other. But obviously she didn’t want Ivy to know what was going on because she told him to switch to texting on their phones.” I logged out of the e-mail account and made sure the desktop was as I’d found it.

  “There might be a clause whereby employees can’t get involved, so maybe Gerald needed to keep it secret, too.”

  “Maybe, but Amy was Ivy’s sister, one of the owners. I’m thinking she could break the rules if she really wanted to. Now, as for the recent chain of events . . .”

  “If Gerald did try to kill David, out of jealousy or whatever, and killed Amy by mistake, it would have been devastating.”

  “He seemed wrecked, but he’s still able to look for new employment,” I said. “So it’s hard to tell if he’s just mourning her death or feeling guilty about it.”

  “People do handle grief in different ways, you know.”

  “True, but I tried to talk to him at Salt after the funeral and he wasn’t forthcoming. So I don’t know how to find out what’s going on.”

  “We could ask Ivy,” Jackson said. “Or Ramsey.”

  “I don’t know if we’d get answers from them either.”

  Jackson pointed at the computer. “By the way, how did you get into the e-mails in the first place? We didn’t do that last time we were here.”

  “I decided to try something simple for the password. A-M-Y.”

  His eyes opened wide. “Now, that’s good thinking, McQuade.”

  “I thought so.” It felt pretty good.

  But any self-congratulations stopped when Simon ran into Gerald’s office, panting and out of breath. He stopped in front of the desk and doubled over. “He, he’s gone!”

  “What do you mean? Who?” Jackson said. “David?”

  Simon stood up and nodded as he sucked in breaths. “He’s missing, and we have to find him!”

  chapter sixteen

  “Simon, slow down a bit—what are you talking about?” I said. “We just saw David outside with Scott a few minutes ago.”

  “Yeah, I just saw him. He was in front of Pure,” Jackson said, looking around. “We’d better get out of here.” He herded us out of Gerald’s office and closed the door. “Okay, tell us what happened.”

  “David told Scott he was just going around the corner to make a call and he’d be right back,” Simon said, bending over again, hyperventilating.

  “Probably calling Lily,” Jackson said.

  “Yes, but when Scott went to look for him a few minutes later, he was gone.”

  I put my hand on his back. “Simon, breathe, slow down and breathe.”

  “We’ve got to find him,” Simon said. “He got that message on his phone, and now this.”

  “Did you look in the main room, the tasting room, the bathrooms, and all the offices, even the B and B?” Jackson said.

  Simon stood up and put his hand on his chest. “Checked, or being checked. So far, no David.”

  “What about the Halloween maze?” I said. “That would be a good place for him to hide.”

  “Or for someone to stash him,” Jackson said. “We’d better have a look.”

  • • •

  Jackson, Simon, and I headed across the field to the corn maze. Although the temperature had cooled off considerably—it was now 9:43 on Friday night—and a chilly nip was in the air, the moans of zombies, the cackle of witches, and the screams and excited chatter of visitors affirmed that people were still here and, hopefully, enjoying the event. Now, hopefully, it was where we would find David, before it was too late.

  At the entrance to the maze, Dracula greeted us. “Hello, Mr. Lewis, doing a walk-through again?”

  “Yes, we’re looking for David Farmer. Have you seen him anywhere?”

  “I haven’t, but I just switched places with Marcy. She’s at Creepy Goop Corner in the kids’ section if you want to ask her. Do you need a map?”

  “No, we’ll be fine,” Simon said, and led us inside.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” I said.

  “Not sure. I came through in the daytime, when it opened at three o’clock. It was pretty scary even then. I’m not big on these things, but David and Ivy thought it could bring in revenue and raise our profile. So far, so good. The company I hired, East End Events and Escapes, has a good track record with these things. They set it up and did all the hiring, so it was pretty turnkey.”

  “I think we need a map, Simon,” I said.

  “No need.” He pointed to the red arrows on the ground. “We just need to follow this.”

  “What’s the difference between the kids’ section and the rest?” I said.

  “One is for kids, the other is pretty hard-core. But don’t worry, we’ll protect you, right, Jackson?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  As we turned the first corner, friendly mummies in clean white bandages greeted us, saying, “Welcome to the haunted Halloween maze, boys and girls! Have a ghoulishly good time!”

  We moved along quickly, but one mummy kept pace and stayed right behind us until we came to Creepy Goop Corner, a booth painted in colorful Halloween colors, where a pretty witch with a pointy hat and a broom glued to her black shroud cackled and said, “Eat it up, my pretties!” She waved to Simon. “Hi, Mr. Lewis.”

  Kids who were dressed up as Harry Potter, Ariel, and the Hulk, with blindfolds on, stepped up and put their hands in the first bowl, which was full of cold spaghetti. “Put your hands in and feel gross guts!” The kids did so and screamed in delight.

  “Marcy?”

  “Just a minute, Mr. Lewis.”

  “This is cool!” Harry said.

  “Ewww!” said Ariel.

  “Okay, take your hands out.” They did so, and she pulled the bowls out of the way and replaced them with bowls of grapes with oil. “Put your hands in! These are eyeballs from naughty children!”

  “Gross!” the Hulk said.

  “That feels sick,” Harry said.

  She pulled the bowls away and put new ones down. “And these are witches’ boogers! Eat up!”

  Ariel picked up what was a green Jelly Belly and put it down again. “No way!”

  But the other two gamely popped the “boogers” into their mouths. “Hey, tastes good!” the Hulk declared.

  “Marcy?”

  “Finally, you are going to get a kiss from a wolf.” In turn, she stroked their cheeks with a sliced dill pickle.

  “Yucky!” Ariel said.

  Harry Potter said, “Wolf germs!”

  T
he Hulk just wiped his cheek off.

  “Marcy, we’re kind of in a hurry. Have you seen Mr. Famer anywhere?”

  “Yeah, he came through here about fifteen minutes ago. He didn’t say much, just walked in.”

  “Was he alone?”

  She nodded. “Okay, kids, take your blindfolds off! Did you have fun?”

  “Yesssssssssssssssssssssssss!” they all yelled.

  “Do you want to feel a brain?”

  “Yessssssssssssssssssssssss!”

  Marcy pulled out a strawberry-colored brain under a glass bell jar and lifted the top. “Touch it if you dare!”

  They all did and all exclaimed, “Gross!”

  Simon turned to us. “At least we’re on the right path. David’s here, and he’s alone. Although, where is Peters?”

  “David could have given him the slip,” Jackson said. “Although I’m surprised Scott let it happen.”

  We kept walking through the maze, maneuvering past kids, teenagers, and adults dressed in costume, as various friendly monsters, including zombies, mummies, vampires, ghosts, and witches, jumped out and tried to scare us. We moved past an old man who told silly ghost stories, pumpkins with pink wigs on stands, a neon butterfly bush, a face-painting station, blue-and-pink cotton-candy and popcorn stands, and a Gypsy fortune-teller. All along the route, kids and their families stopped to take family fun photos.

  That all changed when we entered the area marked SUPER SCARY: TOO INTENSE FOR KIDS, and everything became more menacing, even though I took out a small flashlight from my purse. We knew we were in different territory when it became much darker, smoke started blowing, the red arrows on the ground turned to bloodstains, and a guy in a Friday the 13th mask pulled out a chain saw and chased us.

  But that was tame compared to the army of bloody scarecrows with pitchforks that were straight out of “the Family of Blood” episodes of Doctor Who—Jackson was a fan—and the mad scientist who was operating on a monster’s skull, not to mention the disgusting rotting corpses on the ground, with worms crawling all over them, and an elaborate abandoned cemetery with super-creepy zombies in rotting clothes, rising out of their graves to eat their favorite food, brains, or more brain-shaped Jell-O—this time lime flavored. Yuck.

  “I’d stop and ask them about David, but they can’t hear us,” Simon yelled.

  “Just keep going. If he’s here, we’ll find him,” Jackson said, taking my hand as we walked across a bridge, low over a black pool of water.

  “Jackson, are you scared?” I smiled at him.

  “No, not a bit, McQuade. It’s just a little loud is all. Are you?”

  “Oh, yes, absolutely.” My whole life was geared to natural, healthy green living, not noisy death and destruction. “I can’t wait to get out of here!”

  Simon had already crossed the bridge and yelled back to us, “Hey, move it, you guys. I think I spotted someone who looks like David, and Lily.”

  “Lily? Oh, no. Where?” I pointed the flashlight in Simon’s direction.

  “Over here,” Simon said. “Throw me the flashlight!”

  “No, you’ll drop it,” I said. “We’re coming!” We were a few feet from the end of the bridge when a monster—actually a guy in a wet suit, a lizard mask, and a snorkel—jumped out of the water at us.

  Despite knowing that it was fake and meant for entertainment, it startled me. Without thinking I jumped, fell against Jackson, and the two of us tumbled down into the shallow water with a big splash! The flashlight skittered to the bottom of the pond.

  • • •

  We dragged ourselves out of the pond and back onto the ground as Simon rushed over. “Are you guys okay?”

  Jackson stood first, and the two of them helped me up. Thankfully, nothing felt as if it was broken. Although tomorrow morning I’d probably be in an Epsom salts bath again. “I’m okay, but the flashlight is a goner. Jackson?”

  “Finest kind. Now where did David and Lily go?”

  “I can’t be sure it was her or him, but I think they exited there.” Simon pointed to an opening in the maze. “This is the end of the maze, and we’ve gone all the way through. Maybe he’s back at Pure.”

  “Okay, so we either make our way across the field without a flashlight or go back through the maze.”

  “I vote for the field,” I said. “I don’t want to go back in there, and we think he went out this way.”

  “Agreed,” Jackson said. “Let’s go.”

  Simon pulled out his phone and put the flashlight app on. “Onward.”

  • • •

  With only the tiny beam of Simon’s flashlight to guide us, it was slow going across the fields and between the rows of vines. Finally, we made it back to the beginning of the maze and went inside Pure.

  “Okay, David’s car is in the parking lot,” Simon said. “Did you see Lily’s?”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said. “I hope that she left already and she’s not with David.”

  “So now what do we do?” Simon said.

  “We’ll have to do one more sweep. Then I think we need to let the police know he’s missing,” Jackson said. “Simon, why don’t you take the offices here—Ivy’s, David’s, and yours—and the kitchen, check the freezer, to be sure. Willow and I will take the tasting room, the B and B, and go back to the barn, just in case.”

  “But no one is out there now,” Simon said. “They left when we did.”

  “Let’s just do a check, and then we’ll reevaluate.”

  We split up and Jackson and I headed to the tasting room, but David wasn’t there. We even checked behind the bar, and in the bathrooms. No David.

  “He could have gone on foot to the main road and hitchhiked anywhere,” I said. “But why not take his car?”

  “I’m not sure that’s what happened,” Jackson said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have a feeling something is up again, like what happened at Salt and in the barn. First, the warning, then he disappears? Simon thinks he saw David and Lily, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. Let’s check the B and B next.”

  But he wasn’t there either. It was still relatively early, just ten thirty, and all the rooms were occupied by guests from out of town. As we walked out of the front door, Jackson said, “If Simon hasn’t found him, then the barn is the last place we can look here tonight.”

  “I’ll text him,” I said, pulling out my phone.

  Moments later Simon replied, No David. Meet you in the barn.

  I texted back, K. “No David, he’ll meet us.” As I shoved the phone back in my pocket, I blew out a breath.

  Jackson put his arm around me. “You okay, Willow?”

  “No, I think you’re right. Something’s happened to David.”

  Jackson opened the barn door and we walked in. The lights were still on, but no one was there. “Let’s look around,” Jackson said.

  We checked Gerald’s office and the bathroom and walked the perimeter, then moved between the racks of wine. “David? David?” I called. No reply. “There just aren’t that many places he could be.”

  Simon ran in. “Is he here?”

  “If he is, we haven’t found him,” Jackson said.

  I looked around the room, at the racks, the cases of wine, the barrels where the tasting had been done. Where was he? Then we all heard something. . . .

  Tap, tap, tap, tap.

  “What’s that?” Jackson said.

  Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

  “Where is it coming from?”

  Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

  “I think it’s coming from over there.” I pointed at a large silver vat in the corner.

  “Oh my God,” Simon said. “He’s in the wine vat!”

  I was closest, so I quickly ran over, climbed the stairs to the top of the tank, and threw it open. Inside was David, up to his neck in wine, his hair plastered to his skull, his face white. He was holding his arm. “David! You okay?”

  “No, someone knoc
ked me on the head and threw me in here. I think I broke my arm. Get me out!”

  Much as I tried, I didn’t have the strength to pull him out. I looked down at Jackson and Simon. “Jackson, can we switch places?”

  “Come down, and I’ll go up.”

  When I got back to the floor, Jackson started up, and I pulled out my phone. “I’m calling the police and 911.”

  “Do it,” Jackson said. “Okay, David, try to remain calm. I’m going to get you out.”

  “If you drain the vat, it might make it easier. The batch is ruined anyway.”

  “Okay, how do I do that?”

  “Simon knows. Tell him.”

  “Simon, David says to drain the vat.”

  “On it.” Simon ran around the vat. “Done. Is the water level going down?”

  “It is. It’ll be empty in a minute,” Jackson said. “David, you ready to try it?”

  “Get me out of here,” David said.

  “Jackson, be careful, remember your back,” I said.

  “I’m okay.” Jackson braced himself against the ladder, then he reached into the tank. “C’mon, David.” They tried for a few minutes, but it didn’t work.

  “I just can’t do it with my arm,” David said.

  “We need a ladder,” I said. “Simon?”

  “There might be one in the gardening shed, behind the B and B. I’ll get it. I’ve got the flashlight.” He ran out.

  “He’ll be right back, David,” I said. “In the meantime, can you remember anything that happened?”

  “I don’t know. I decided to take a walk and took off. When I got to the maze, I went in, did the tour, and came out. I headed to my car, but then realized I’d left my keys in the barn. So I came in here. It was dark, and I reached for the lights. When I flipped them on, someone hit me, and I went down. Then they threw me in here, and I put my hands out to try and cushion the fall, but I ended up breaking my left arm.”

  “I wonder what they hit him with,” I said. “I could take a look around.”

  “No, there might be trace evidence, although I doubt it after all the foot traffic in here tonight. Let’s just wait. David is our top priority right now.”