Pumpkin Picking with Murder

by Auralee Wallace

  Giant swans. Giant swans flying through the air with people riding them. Kit Kat and Tweety riding them. Giant swans diving. Dive-bombing! Right above my head! No! No!

  “Erica, wake up,” Freddie said, jerking my elbow. “You’re making that snoring sound at the back of your throat.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, wiping my hand against my mouth. “What’s happening?”

  “They’re between games. Time to go.”

  I pushed myself off the wall with my foot to follow.

  “Oh look! There’s Mr. and Mrs. Cruikshank,” Freddie said with obvious affection in his voice. “They hate each other. Let’s go say hello.”

  “What? Freddie—” But he was already on his way. All I could do was hurry to keep up. Now that the round was over, more than a few players were giving me curious looks. Everyone was probably still getting used to the idea of me coming back to town more often.

  “Hi, guys!” I heard Freddie call out cheerfully to the older couple. The man must have been about six four, a little hunched in the shoulders, but in pretty good shape considering he had to be in his seventies. The woman was only maybe five foot and had a slightly bewildered look about her eyes.

  “Freddie,” the man said, taking his hand. “Good to see you. Keeping things running smoothly?”

  “You know it.”

  “Are you dating anyone yet?” the woman popped in.

  “Mildred,” Freddie said with a chuckle. “You know I don’t date.”

  “Well, you’d better get started,” she said, shaking her whole body side-to-side. Her neck must have been frozen. “You’re never going to get to adopt a baby if you don’t hurry up and get married. It takes a long time to adopt a baby.”

  “Mildred,” the larger man said with a sigh.

  “Well, he’s going to have to adopt unless he gets a surrogate. Are you getting a surrogate? Maybe, maybe her?” she asked, jerking a thumb in my direction.

  “I would rather die,” Freddie said.

  I smacked him on the arm.

  “What?” Freddie asked, throwing me a look.

  Mildred nodded before leaning in to him to whisper, “Her eggs are getting old anyway.”

  I felt my mouth open to say something, but I caught it just in time.

  “Mildred, really,” the man said, giving me an apologetic smile that looked even more worn out than I felt.

  Mildred backhanded her husband lightly on the belly without turning the rest of her body. “You never want me to talk about the important stuff.”

  “Leave the boy alone. He’s busy keeping the town secure.”

  I suddenly remembered what Grady had said about his war for public perception. “Well,” I said, “Freddie and the sheriff’s department of course.”

  The older man scoffed. “That’s questionable. How long was Forrester investigating the wrong suspect for Dickie Morrison’s murder?”

  “Yeah, but he wasn’t the only one,” I said. “A lot of us thought—”

  “It’s what all the gay couples do now,” Mildred said jumping back in. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “I know there’s nothing wrong with it,” Mr. Cruickshank answered with a sigh, “but maybe Freddie doesn’t want kids. Maybe he doesn’t want to get married.”

  Freddie chuckled and leaned over to me to whisper, “Aren’t they great?”

  “Of course he does,” Mildred replied. “Everybody wants to get married. It gives life meaning.”

  The older man was shaking his head now. “What I’d give for a little less meaning.”

  “Oh really?” Mildred suddenly twisted the cap off her dauber and gave three good pounds with it across her husband’s white shirt, leaving three purple circles behind.

  “That’s the fourth shirt this month.” He rubbed the spot in between his eyebrows. “And she does the laundry.” He sighed again before turning back to his wife. “He’s never going to want to get married if you keep behaving this way.”

  “Stop it. Marriage is good,” she said, patting Freddie on the arm. “And you don’t want to leave it until it’s too late.” I’m not sure if she was even making an attempt at subtlety, but her eyes most definitely slid in my direction. She then patted my arm and turned with her husband to talk to someone else.

  “Well,” Freddie said carefully. “We didn’t find much out, but that was—”

  “Can I just ask why are they all supportive of your babies, but I’m a spinster? I’m still in my twenties!”

  “Well, I would say it’s because babies are cute, and spinsters aren’t, but—”

  “I hate you.”

  “I’m kidding! I’m kidding,” he said, laughing. “Ah, it’s good to have stressy Erica back. Come on. Let’s mingle.”

  “This is not at all how tonight was supposed to go,” I said, following Freddie around a table toward the other side of the room.

  He kept walking. “I know.”

  “If only I’d kept my mouth shut, I can’t even imagine what Grady and I might be doing right now.” I let my hands flop to my sides. “Okay, let’s get on with this. Look, there’s—” I stopped suddenly because I heard someone talking from somewhere behind me. Talking about the twins.

  “Tweety always did have a reputation for being a bit loose. And then there’s the Viagra he was taking.”

  I spun around to see who had said it.

  I saw the back of a magenta-colored head of hair. Marg Johnson. The same woman talking trash about Tweety at the fair.

  “Erica,” Freddie said. “Where are you going?”

  I couldn’t answer; I was too busy walking in the opposite direction.

  “Erica! Slow down,” Freddie called after me. “Remember what you said about laying low?”

  This woman needed a talking-to.

  “This doesn’t feel low, Erica!” Freddie shouted. “Not low!”

  Chapter Eight

  I positioned myself right behind Marg’s chair and said, “I’m sorry, Marg. What was that you were saying?”

  She looked up at me over her shoulder. “Erica Bloom. No surprise you’d be defending the old hussy.”

  I reeled back a few steps. I totally should have let Kit Kat kick this woman’s ass back at the fair. “You take that back, Marg. I mean it.”

  Suddenly I noticed that the entire room had turned to look at me.

  The man with the microphone then announced, “Quiet now! Quiet now. We need to get started.”

  Freddie appeared at my side, hand on my elbow. “Erica, I think maybe—”

  I yanked my arm away from him. “I mean it. Take it back.”

  Marg pointedly ignored me and leaned over to her friend, whispering intentionally loud enough for all to hear, “Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they still had a thing going on.” She flared her nose with disgust. “Flaunting it for all to see. No morals, that one.”

  “N-seven!” the man with the microphone announced, with just a touch of worry in his voice. “I’ve got an N-seven!”

  “O-two!”

  Whoa. What crazy person had shouted that?

  Oh right. It was me.

  “I-twenty-four! N-thirteen!”

  Shocked faces turned in my direction.

  Freddie leaned in and whispered, “What exactly are you doing right now?”

  I locked glares with Marg. “Nobody’s playing this game until she takes it back.”

  The man at the microphone recovered himself. “That was an N—”

  “Y-thirty-three!” I yelled.

  “There’s no Y in Bingo!” Freddie shouted back.

  “Get her out of here!” a woman from across the room cried.

  Then someone else shouted, “What did he call?”

  “I don’t know,” a reply came. “Does anyone know? Half the damn room’s got dementia!”

  “Sorry!” I shouted. “But I’m not leaving until she takes it back.” I kept my gaze locked on Marg. “Take it back.”

  “Marg! Take whatever the hell it is back!�
� a voice shouted. “We want to play!”

  The man with the microphone politely cleared his voice and said, “Could someone please escort—”

  “I’m on it!” Freddie shouted. “I’m on it.” He then moved to grab my arm, but I spun on him and shouted, “Nyet!”

  “Russian? Really? ’Cause that’s going to help you with this crowd,” Freddie said. “Erica, are you ok—”

  I quieted him with a look. “I told her to take it back. And she’s going to take it back.”

  Freddie put his hands up.

  “For the love of God, Marg! Just take it back, so we can play,” another voice called out.

  I spun back on the Magenta Menace. She readjusted herself in her seat. “Fine. I take it back. Satisfied?”

  I gritted my teeth. “For now. But you’re done talking this filth. Are we clear?” I turned and faced Freddie. “Let’s go.”

  “Sure. Sure,” he whispered before licking his lips. “But do you think we could make it look like I was, you know, pulling you out of here … by force? It would be good for my image.”

  I sighed and stuck my wrists out like I was waiting to be cuffed.

  His eyes lit up, and he mouthed the words, I’ll buy you a beer, before announcing, “On your way, Bloom. Nobody wants your shenanigans here.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, I cut the motor to my mother’s boat and let it drift toward the dock. It had been a pretty chilly ride. I could barely feel my fingers. Freddie had begged me to stop at the Dawg for beers, but I really felt we had spent enough time together for one evening. The fair had also shut down for the night, and the sound of crickets replaced the grating mechanic hum of the rides. I hopped out of the boat and tied it off on the dock just as my phone buzzed in my back pocket.

  Grady.

  “Hey,” I said in a tired but happy voice.

  “Hey,” he replied, in an also tired, but a little less happy tone. “I just wanted to call and say I’m sorry about tonight, and—”

  “No, I’m sorry,” I said pacing the planks of the dock. “You went to all that trouble, and then I had to go and derail your one-track mind—speaking of which, is everything all worked out with Mr. Masterson?”

  I heard Grady sigh on the other end of the line.

  “It’s not?”

  “I’m waiting for a report.”

  “A report?” My mind flitted through the possibilities of what that could mean. “Grady, tell me this is just a formality-type thing.”

  He sighed again. “All I’m going to say is there’s still a chance it was accidental.”

  “You’re not saying…?”

  “Erica,” he said, voice full of warning.

  “I know. I know. You can’t talk about it. But…” I stopped to chew the side of my thumbnail.

  “What?”

  Ugh, I could practically hear his brow furrowing through the phone. “Just in the spirit of us being honest and all that,” I said, before taking a breath. “Did you know that Mr. Masterson was taking Viagra?”

  Silence.

  “I just mean, maybe the medication brought on a coronary because I thought people with heart conditions weren’t supposed to take it.”

  Another moment of silence passed before he said, “Actually, I just learned tonight that that is no longer the case. It depends on the condition. Sometimes Viagra actually helps the heart.” Ooh, he was talking in a tone that I didn’t like at all. “But where did you get this information?”

  “Nowhere,” I said attempting to kick a pebble off the dock, but all I managed to do was kick the edge of an uneven plank, making me stagger forward a little.

  “Erica.”

  “Well, after I left your place, I ran into Freddie and—”

  “No. No. No. No.”

  I paused a beat then added, “And we went to play bingo.”

  Grady sighed again, only this time it sounded a little more … angry.

  “And some people were talking—”

  “So you and Freddie just randomly decided to go play bingo?” he asked, not letting me finish.

  “Well…”

  “You know, Erica,” he said, “if you don’t want to date me, there are easier ways to go about it. Just say, Grady, I don’t want to date you.”

  “What?” I shouted, making some creature plop into the water. “What are you talking about?”

  “This elaborate plan to sabotage any chance we have by playing detective with Freddie?”

  “I’m not playing detective. People talk, Grady. It’s a small town.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I smacked my lips together. “Fine, maybe we were a little bit. But this is Kit Kat and Tweety we’re talking about. I’m worried about them. I’ve never seen Kit Kat act that way before. She was practically threatening me.” I heard my voice echoing off the water.

  “Really? Threatening? You failed to mention she was threatening, but I bet you shared that little tidbit with Freddie.”

  I looked up to the stars, shaking my head. “Grady, come on. I swear, we didn’t do anything illegal. We were just talking to people.”

  “And then you’ll be breaking into somebody’s house, and—”

  “One time!” I said putting my one time finger in the air as if he could see it. “I swear, you break into a house one time, and nobody wants to let it go. I thought we were past all this!” I dropped my voice. “How is Tommy doing, by the way?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “And I was worried you were going to arrest me for murder!”

  “And there it is. The real issue.” I heard him take a breath. “You don’t think I can do my job.”

  My head was already shaking no. “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t have to!” he shouted. “Look, I get that there was a good six-, seven-year break in our relationship—”

  “Eight.”

  “But I’ve grown up since then,” Grady finished. “I no longer drive snowmobiles over ice that is too thin. I don’t ride around in the back of pickup trucks, especially not with beer. And I don’t phone it in to work just so I get to wear a uniform that makes the women crazy.”

  “Women do not get crazy.” Although I nearly did the first time I saw him in it. In fact, for a second there, I think I might have mistaken him for a stripper cop.

  “Whatever. The point is I have grown up! I am good at my job. It’s one thing to have Freddie undermining me at every turn—”

  “He doesn’t mean to undermine you. He’s just—” I struggled to find the right explanation. “He’s just finding his place—”

  “I don’t need you doing it too!”

  I froze for a second. “Grady … I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t realize you felt this way. I—”

  “You know what?” he said, once again sounding tired. “It’s been a really long day. A day that didn’t turn out at all how I expected.”

  “I know! I—”

  “Maybe we could just talk tomorrow when we’ve both had some sleep.”

  I didn’t want to do that at all. I wanted to solve it now. But I figured I was in no position to make demands. “Okay.”

  “’Night Erica.”

  “’Night.”

  I ended the call and hugged myself a little against the cold before I smacked my phone against my forehead a good three or four times.

  I then turned on the dock to head up to the retreat—only to see about fifteen silent people, looking horrified and poised to run in about fifteen different directions to hide. They must have come down the steps not realizing I was here.

  My mother at least had the decency to have her face twisted in an apologetic grimace.

  “Midnight meditation?” I called out in a loud voice.

  She nodded.

  “Good. Good.” I walked toward the crowd of silent people, who quickly moved to let me through. “You know, I think you people may be onto something with this whole silence thing.”

  * * *

  If I had been asked to guess the night b
efore, I would have thought I’d wake up in a bad mood. But I didn’t. I had left my bedroom’s window—I mean, my old bedroom’s window—cracked just a little, and the crisp fall air had blown in, leaving me snug under quilts and comforters. Bright sunlight also filled the room, promising me another spectacular fall day. I listened to the distant sound of a chain saw rippling across the lake and the noisy calls of geese talking about flying somewhere warm. Nope, it wasn’t a bad day. Not at all. It couldn’t be a bad day because it was do over day.

  So yesterday hadn’t exactly launched my trip off to a good start. And I hadn’t exactly handled everything the way I would have liked. My mind suddenly tripped over the memory of me shouting out random bingo numbers the night before, but I shook it off. In fairness, a lot had been thrown my way in a short amount of time. I snuggled more deeply under the covers. And really, a good night’s sleep could add a lot of perspective to a situation. So Mr. Masterson had been getting a little pharmaceutical help in the penile direction; that didn’t make him a target for murder. Hell, if that were the case, half the men in America would be dead. Well, maybe not half, but I could see my point. Mr. Masterson’s death had just been a shock. That’s why people were acting all crazy. That’s probably why Grady was getting some sort of report. And once he had that report squared away, everything could get back on track. He still had the rest of the week off, and that gave me a lot of time to convince him I thought he was a great sheriff. Because I totally did! Okay, maybe when I first came home a month or two ago I was a little surprised at his career path, but I had seen a different side of him since then. He was rapidly becoming the most responsible person I knew living in Otter Lake, which was really bizarre … and sexy. I think it was time for Sheriff Forester to take me in for all my crimes. Yeah, now that’s how I wanted to spend the week.

  I wasn’t Stressica.

  As for the Freddie–Grady situation, really, I just needed to sit the two of them down with a couple of beers to talk this whole who is responsible for keeping Otter Lake safe thing through. I knew that Freddie secretly looked up to Grady, and Grady needed to see Freddie for the resource that he was. Whatever that was.