“Well, thanks anyway.” I turned to go.
He grasped my arm. “Wait,” he whispered. “Did you hear that?”
My scalp prickled. “Hear what?”
“I don’t hear anything,” Takako said.
Charlene scanned the empty road. “Petros is right. It’s quiet.” She lowered her chin. “Too quiet. Quick, into the corn.”
I blinked rapidly. “What—”
Prodding us from behind, Charlene and Mr. Scala shuffled Takako and me into the cornfield.
“Get down,” Mr. Petros hissed.
I squatted beside a straw basket of miniature pumpkins. And in spite of the ridiculousness of the situation, my heart was thumping, my breath loud in my ears.
Then I heard it too—stealthy footfalls, the gentle crunch of boots on dry earth.
Mr. Scala backed farther into the corn. He drew a red handkerchief from his jacket pocket.
On the road, a group of unfamiliar men and women crept toward the pumpkin cannon.
Mr. Scala threw his handkerchief high above the corn. “Now!”
Miniature pumpkins whizzed through the air. San Nicholas farmers stormed, shouting, from the field.
I grasped Charlene’s hand.
She jerked free. “No time for that. Stay sharp!”
I glared at Charlene. “Couldn’t you have armed yourselves with something less dangerous? Like, I don’t know, throwing axes?”
“We could have,” she said speculatively. “But we really needed to get rid of these extra pumpkins. Waste not, want not.”
I looked helplessly to my stepmother.
“Val, there’s something I need to tell you,” Takako said.
A pumpkin whizzed over my head, and I ducked. “Now?”
“You need to know. This affects you. You, Gordon . . .”
“Did you learn something about the murder?”
“No, I did the math. It is my fault Frank left you.”
My brain froze. “What?”
Charlene reached into the bin of pumpkins and hurled one into the melee.
“You said you were three when he left,” Takako said. “You’re twenty-eight, right?”
“Yes.”
“Doran’s twenty-six.”
“Okay, what does that . . . Oh.” Doran was two years younger than me, and that meant Frank had been seeing Takako while he’d been married to my mother.
I swayed, heat flushing from my chest to the top of my skull. Why hadn’t I asked Doran how old he was? Or had he told me and I hadn’t listened, because I hadn’t wanted to know the truth?
Now I couldn’t avoid it. Nausea spiraled up from my gut at my willful blindness.
It wasn’t like I’d ever thought my father was exactly a good guy. He wasn’t the devil, but he was more flawed than the average man.
A pumpkin thudded to the ground beside me, and I flinched.
The newcomers fell back beneath the barrage of minipumpkins. “Counterattack!” one shouted.
Minipumpkins pelted the cornfield. One slammed into my shoulder. Hot pain shot down my arm. I lurched backward, biting back a shout.
Takako caught me before I could fall.
“Take cover!” Charlene bellowed, grabbing pumpkins from the basket and piling them in her arms. Hooting, she raced into the road.
Takako flung herself on top of me. We tumbled to the soft earth.
“Oof.” I gasped, the wind knocked from me. Takako didn’t weigh much, but I hadn’t been expecting the fall.
Tiny pumpkins thumped to the nearby ground. Shouts and curses echoed across the dirt road.
I couldn’t think about Frank right now. “Someone’s going to get hurt,” I shouted. This was out of control.
I wriggled from beneath my stepmother.
She grasped my arms. “Val. Say something.”
“It’s okay.” It had to be okay, because I couldn’t deal with more revelations. “But now we need to stop this.”
“I’ll help.”
Charlene stood atop the old fire engine. She pitched pumpkins like a baseball star, one leg raised in the windup.
“She’ll fall and break a hip.” I hurried from the corn.
A minipumpkin struck me in the lower back.
I staggered, grabbing the fire engine’s brass railing. “Charlene, get down!”
She hooted, brandishing pumpkins. “I haven’t had this much fun since our pie-tin UFO invasion!” A pumpkin whizzed past her left ear. Charlene ducked, wobbling on the fire truck.
My heart clenched. I grabbed for her and missed.
She straightened. “Whoa. Close one.”
“Charlene,” I said, “these are terrible battle tactics. You’re exposed out in the open.”
Pain exploded across one side of my face. I gasped, my knees striking the ground. Tears dampened my eyes.
“Val,” Charlene shouted. “Woman down! Cease fire!”
One hand braced on the dirt, I touched the side of my head. I didn’t feel blood, and I was still conscious. The pumpkin must have grazed me. But ow. Ow!
“Val?” Charlene touched my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Experimentally, I wiggled my jaw. “It’s all fun and games until someone gets hit with a pumpkin.” I sat back on my heels.
“In fairness,” Charlene said, “it was only a minipumpkin. But that must have smarted.”
I took stock of the situation. The San Adrianites had vanished. The defending farmers raised pumpkins in their fists and cheered.
I brushed at the dirt on my sweater and vest, but it was hopeless. I should have known to wear dark clothes when with Charlene. “Where’s Takako?”
“Your stepmother?” Charlene scanned the area. “Still taking cover in the corn, I expect.”
“I hope she wasn’t hurt,” I fretted. Bracing one hand on the cool metal side of the fire engine, I stood. “Takako?”
I walked to the edge of the cornfield and peered in. “Takako?” I brushed past the drying stalks. The basket of pumpkins lay overturned, tiny orange gourds scattered across the dirt. “This is where we were hiding,” I muttered. “I’m sure of it.” So, where was she?
Charlene followed as I pushed deeper into the field.
“Takako?” I called. “Are you all right?”
“Try her phone,” Charlene said. “Maybe she ran deeper into the field and got lost.”
I dialed. My call went to voice mail.
“She’s not answering,” I said.
“Reception’s poor here,” Charlene said. “It’s probably nothing.”
My mouth went dry. “But where is she?” I returned to the road and searched the charcoal horizon.
Petros ambled to my side and brushed off his hands. “You okay?”
“Have you seen my stepmother?” I asked.
“She was . . .” He turned in place and frowned. “She was next to me during the fight.” He waved toward a gray-haired woman collecting miniature pumpkins in the road. “Hey! You see Val’s stepmother? Asian woman about yea high?” He held one hand at chest level.
She shook her head. “I thought she was with San Adrian.”
I sucked in a breath. “You didn’t hit her with a pumpkin, did you?”
“No,” she said, indignant. “She was unarmed, even if she was on the wrong side.”
“She wasn’t—”
Charlene clapped her hand on my shoulder. “We’ll find her.”
In the end, we organized a search party. The farmers walked through the cornfield shouting Takako’s name.
But Takako was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The cornfield rustled in a bitter Pacific breeze. A door in the black barn creaked eerily in response. It slammed. Creaked. Slammed. Creaked.
My teeth clenched. I strode to the rear of the barn—the only spot I could find cell reception—and I leaned against the door. Charlene’s Jeep sat parked beside an old tire. Hidden somewhere nearby, a generator rumbled.
I checked the glowing clock on my
phone. Five-thirty. We’d spent over an hour combing the cornfields for Takako. Charlene had even brought out her rotting pumpkin drone for an aerial search.
Dread squeezing my lungs, I called my brother.
“Hey, Val. What’s up?”
I looked skyward. Sunset had turned the western sky a magnificent tangerine streaked with blackberry clouds. “Um, have you heard from your mother?”
“No. Why? Has she done something? I told her to give you some space.”
“No, she’s . . . she’s missing.”
There was a long silence.
His voice rose. “What do you mean she’s missing?”
“We were at the corn maze—”
“Isn’t that closed today?”
I paced the dirt. “Yes, but we wanted to talk to some people—”
The door behind me banged.
“Talk?” Doran asked. “Don’t tell me she got involved in one of your investigations.”
I winced. “She might have tagged along. We were only talking to people!” But that was a lie. We’d been talking to murder suspects, and whatever had happened to Takako was my fault. I took a deep breath. “And then San Adrian attacked with pumpkins—”
“What?”
“Minipumpkins. There was a battle.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I think they’d come to sabotage the cannon or something. Anyway, when the dust cleared, your mother was gone. We searched the cornfield—”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” he asked, his tone ominous.
“We can’t find her, and she’s not answering her phone.”
“Well, look again!”
The barn door banged, and I returned to lean against it.
“We are looking,” I said. On the nearby hillside, lights bobbed in the cornfield. “I think—”
“Hold on.” He paused. “A text just came through from Mom. . . . It says she’ll return to the hotel late tonight.”
My shoulders collapsed with relief. “Thank God. Where is she?”
“Wait a sec. I’ll ask.”
I waited.
“She’s not responding. She never was one for texts though. So, thanks for panicking me over nothing.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
He chuckled. “Don’t feel bad. My mother makes me crazy too. I’ll talk to you later.”
The door bumped beneath my weight, and I jerked forward. Charlene emerged from the barn.
“Okay,” I said to Doran. “Bye.”
We hung up.
“What?” Charlene pulled Frederick to her chest. The purring cat hung limp over the arm of her yellow knit jacket, his eyes shut. “What did he say?”
“Takako texted him. She’s okay. She’ll be late returning to the hotel.” But how was she getting there? I pursed my lips, doubt quivering in my gut. We’d come to the corn maze in Charlene’s Jeep. It was a longish walk back to Takako’s hotel and along a poorly lit highway with no sidewalks.
“That can’t be right,” Charlene said. “Takako doesn’t text.”
“How do you know?”
“We talked about modern technology over my special root beer. She says she hates texting. Only does it in emergencies.”
We stared at each other.
“I’m going to try calling her again.” I dialed my stepmother.
No answer. And since Takako’s voice mail box was full, I couldn’t leave a message.
Charlene’s brow furrowed. “All right. I’m going to call off the search here. You keep dialing.” She strode down the dirt road.
Bracing myself against the barn door, I phoned again. It was probably nothing. There had to be a reasonable explanation for her disappearance. So why did I feel so worried and . . . guilty?
The door shoved against me, and I leapt away.
Joy emerged from the barn. A faint line creased the spot between her brows, but I might have been imagining it in the dim light. “Any luck?”
I shook my head. “She sent a text to Doran saying she’d be back late, but I don’t understand how. She came here in our car.”
She nodded. “That leaves two possibilities. Uber or San Adrian.”
“Yeah, if that crew hadn’t come here to do whatever, this never would have happened—”
“No, I mean San Adrian might have her.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Maybe I’ve been reading too many of my own comics, but think about it. They disappeared, and so did she. She might have sent that text under duress.”
“But kidnapping?” I took a step backward and my thigh nudged the Jeep’s fender. “That seems a little extreme.” But one of the pumpkin cannon defenders had said she’d seen Takako with the San Adrian crew.
Charlene rounded the corner of the barn. “Kidnapping?”
“It’s one explanation.” Joy shifted her scarf.
Charlene adjusted Frederick in an unconscious imitation of Joy. “I’m afraid she may be right, Val. Something’s off.”
“This is—” I sputtered. “They have to know kidnapping’s not a prank—it’s a felony.” But where was Takako?
The phone vibrated in my hand. I started and looked at the screen. “It’s Takako.” I sagged against the door, my muscles turning liquid. We’d—I’d been freaking myself out over nothing.
“Takako! Where are you?” I put the phone on speaker.
Charlene leaned closer, head cocked.
“I’m with some friends from San Adrian,” Takako said carefully.
My stomach bottomed. No. Joy and Charlene had been right. She’d been taken. “Are you okay?” I whispered.
“Of course. They want me to tell you not to call the police. They’re quite insistent on that.”
My heart thudded in my ears. “Are they listening now?”
“You know my phone. I always have it turned to the loudest setting. I’m sure everyone can hear.”
“What about my boyfriend?” I asked. The San Adrianites wouldn’t know I was dating a cop.
She sighed. “Oh, Val. It’s so obvious what’s going on.”
“It is?” I glanced at Charlene.
She shrugged and shook her head.
“Don’t let your father do to you what he did to me,” Takako said. “I haven’t been able to trust myself or anyone else since he left. I buried myself in work, because I was on solid ground there. At work I could be confident and whole. But there’s more to life than work. Don’t make my mistake.”
“My father?” My father was a criminal. Was this a code? Was Takako surrounded by the pumpkin mafia? I gripped the phone more tightly. “So, you think I should talk to Gordon?”
“Absolutely. Clear communication is critical in a relationship. If he’s worth it, he’ll understand where you’re coming from. And if you’re worth it, you’ll be brave. I think you are worth it.”
A bitter wind whipped across the highway from the Pacific, rippling the corn.
So . . . be brave? Did that mean it was up to me to rescue Takako? My stepmother won points for cryptic, that was for sure. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to my boyfriend.”
“Good. You’ll hear from me again soon.” She hung up.
Charlene whistled. “She’s good.”
Joy frowned. “Sorry, but I didn’t understand that bit about your father. I thought he wasn’t around when you were growing up.”
“Exactly,” Charlene said. “He abandoned Val and her mother, and Doran and Takako. That’s what he did to them both.”
“Oh,” Joy said in a monotone. “That will do a number on a girl’s confidence with men.”
“My confidence is fine,” I said. “We—”
“Sure, at Pie Town.” Charlene arched a snowy brow. “But don’t you wonder why you fill every waking hour with something or someone? You need to spend more time just being.”
My gaze flicked skyward. Takako had been kidnapped, and they picked now to psychoanalyze me? “Charlene, we talked about this. You know you’re not supposed to bu
y any more of those self-help books.”
“I didn’t buy any more,” Charlene said. “I checked one out from the library.”
“But she may have a point,” Joy said. “Pie Town does sometimes seem like a shield for you. I mean, I don’t work thirteen-hour days at my comic shop.”
“You don’t have to start baking at five,” I snapped. “I’m calling Gordon.”
Joy shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“She said not to get the bacon involved,” Charlene said.
Ignoring them, I called Gordon.
“Val.” His voice rumbled through me. “What’s going on?”
“Takako’s been kidnapped. I think.” I explained our conversation, leaving out the weird bit about my work-life issues.
Gordon was silent for a long time. A wisp of fog swept above us. It billowed toward the low hills.
“Are you sure that’s what you heard?” he asked.
“No,” Charlene shouted into the phone. “She left out the bit about turning into a workaholic.”
“Workaholic?” he said.
“Over her daddy issues,” she yelled.
“What daddy issues?” Gordon asked.
Biting back a curse, I told him the rest. “So?” I asked, anxious. “What do you think?”
“Well, I knew about your father,” he said. “And then after what happened with your ex, it’s little wonder if you’re feeling self-doubt. That’s why we’ve been taking things slow. I guess I didn’t get that was why you’ve been burying yourself in work.”
Unimportant! “Takako’s being held hostage!”
“There’s no real evidence of that,” he said. “She texted Doran and said she’d be late. She told you she was fine—”
“She told us not to call the police.”
“That is strange,” he said, “but it could be innocent.”
“How?” I asked. “How can it be innocent?”
“If she hasn’t been kidnapped, there’s no reason to call the cops. Look, I believe you, but the SNPD isn’t going to mobilize without more evidence. Your stepmother’s an adult, and she said she’s safe. I can’t believe any prankster from San Adrian would actually harm her. Can you?”
When he put it all rationally and everything . . . Heat suffused my face. “No,” I said, a trifle sullenly.
“All right,” he said. “I’m about an hour outside San Nicholas. Can you meet me at Charlene’s?”
Gourd to Death Page 25
