“She was furious I’d been investigating her cousin. She told me I was nosy and untrustworthy, and she’d never asked me to do it. It wasn’t fair! I was only telling her the truth. I deserved a reward, not to be fired.”
“But why didn’t you come forward when Dr. Levant was killed?” Takako asked.
“For all I knew,” Alfreda said, “Elon had done it. I mean, it’s always the spouse, right? And I did tell someone.”
I groaned. “Tristan Cannon.” A sudden burst of anger dizzied me. If only she’d told the police, hadn’t been so damned greedy, he might have survived.
“Tristan deserved to know. He was an investor too.”
“And then he was murdered,” Charlene rasped, “and you still didn’t tell the police.”
“Denise tried to frame me with that paperweight!”
“How did she get it?” I asked, thrusting a cornstalk aside.
“I’m not sure. I keep a key under my front mat. She might have found it.”
A gust of smoke rolled through the corn.
“So, she tries to frame you,” I said, coughing, “and instead of telling the cops, you tried blackmail.” I shoved a cornstalk aside and let it go too quickly. It struck Alfreda.
“Ow!”
I looked over my shoulder. “Sorry,” I said, insincere.
“I’d been fired.” She pushed forward. “This was all Kara and Denise’s fault. I deserved—” Her expression shifted. “I . . . deserved to know the truth. It wasn’t really blackmail. It was just a ruse. I thought I could flush her out.”
“Liar!” Charlene shook her finger.
“You can’t prove anything,” Alfreda said.
“When Denise is caught,” I ground out, “and Gordon will catch her, she’ll tell the police about your attempted blackmail.”
“She’s a killer.” Alfreda shrugged. “Who’ll believe her?”
Sirens wailed in the distance.
“We should leave you in this field.” Charlene’s bellow twisted into a cough.
Alfreda’s eyes widened and teared up. She blinked rapidly. “You can’t!”
“We should leave you,” Charlene said, hurrying onward, “but we won’t, because we have a code.” She checked her phone and pointed. “That way.”
We jogged through the corn.
My lungs strained. Was the snapping and crackling of the cornstalks fire or the sound of our passage?
The four of us burst onto a curved road.
Charlene bent, one hand to her chest.
On my shoulder, Frederick stirred and emitted a concerned meow.
I felt the blood drain from my face. “Charlene!”
Takako and I hurried to the older woman.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “What are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, dammit.” She swatted our hands away. “Just a little winded. I knew I should have taken up martial arts instead of yoga.” She drew a long breath, coughed, and stood. “Gimme Frederick.”
I handed her the cat.
She coiled him around her neck. “Where’s Alfreda?”
We looked around.
Aside from the three of us, the road was empty.
Takako paled. “Did we leave her in the field?”
“No,” I said. “She was here, on the road. I’m sure of it.”
“She’s running,” Charlene said. “But she won’t go far.” She skimmed her fingers across the phone’s screen. “Got her.”
My insides knotted. “Where is she?”
“Around that bend.” Charlene motioned down the road. “She’s heading northwest.”
“Okay,” I said. “She’s an adult, and she’s safe for now. As far as I’m concerned, the police can deal with her. What’s our best exit?” I asked Charlene.
“The fire’s by the barn. But there are fire trucks there, in the parking lot. I say we follow the road back toward them. Oh. The barn’s smoking.”
“Smoking? The barn was damaged?” I’d completely forgotten about Joy, and I pulled my phone from my pocket. There were three missed calls from Gordon. I called him, got voice mail, and rang Joy.
“Yes,” she said, unflappable as ever.
“Joy, it’s Val. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. The barn needs a new roof.”
“Thank God. Not about the barn. About you.” I covered the phone with one hand. “She’s okay.”
Charlene gave me two thumbs-up.
“Where are you?” Joy asked.
All I saw was dark and smoke and fog. “We’re on the road to . . .”
“The pumpkin cannon,” Charlene said. “Tell her Alfreda’s done a runner.”
“Right,” I said. “Joy, is Gordon there?”
“He looks busy.”
Gordon was okay. Weak with relief, I pressed one hand to my eyes. “Can you tell him Alfreda took off? She’s on the same road we are, but headed in the opposite direction.”
A glimmer of orange limned the fog like an outraged sunset. Then the glow faded to black.
“The firemen have everything under control,” Joy said. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. Gordon will understand.”
“Roger.” She hung up.
“Well?” Charlene asked.
“The barn roof took some damage, but Joy is fine, and the fire is under control.”
Takako’s shoulders slumped. “What a relief.”
We walked at a more relaxed pace down the road.
“You didn’t have to make yourself a hostage,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault Frank left.”
“Intellectually, I know it was Frank’s fault. But the signs were all there that something wasn’t right, that he wasn’t being honest about something. I just didn’t want to see them. And because of me, your family was destroyed.”
But a new one had been created. I had a brother. “My mother threw him out because of his involvement with certain, um, criminals. He didn’t leave. He was pushed.”
Takako stopped in the road. Soot smeared her face. “She did?”
“She kicked him to the curb. She didn’t know about you.” I wasn’t a hundred percent sure of the last bit. But I was sure enough, and Takako needed to hear it.
“Then I didn’t break up their marriage?”
“No.”
She threw her arms around me. “Oh, thank God. This has been . . . You have no idea how much this has . . . I haven’t talked to Doran about this yet.”
“I won’t say anything.”
Charlene clapped her shoulder. “Don’t you worry. Val’s good people. She can keep a secret, and so can I.”
I called Gordon again.
“Val!” Anxiety roughened his voice. “Where are you?”
“Safe. We’re on the road by the pumpkin cannon.”
“Thank God. When I saw the fire, I thought you might have been—”
“In it?” I loosed a quavering laugh. “Not quite. But we lost Alfreda. Not in the field. She knows she’s in trouble for trying to blackmail Denise. As soon as we reached the road, she headed in the other direction.”
“Don’t worry about Alfreda.”
“Did you—?”
“We have Denise.”
We passed the unmanned cannon and headed toward the barn. Coils of smoke twined from its peaked roof.
The three of us made our way through the outbuildings and to the parking lot.
Gordon paced beside his gray sedan. He gestured roughly at Chief Shaw.
It was a moment I probably shouldn’t interrupt, but pent-up adrenaline flooded my system. I raced to him on wobbly legs. “Gordon!”
He looked up, said something to Shaw, and in two strides he was gripping my shoulders. Laughing unevenly, Gordon hauled me into a rough embrace. “You had to be in that damned field. Where else would you be?”
“You got Denise?”
“I caught her setting a fire by the highway. She was using gas from the generator.” His face darkened
. “Why were you still in the field? I was sure you wouldn’t stay after I’d left you.”
“Denise drove us in there. I thought she was just buying time for a clean getaway. And she had a gun.”
Gordon’s jaw hardened. “She tried to kill you. I never should have—”
“Oh, Detective!” Marla waved and swanned over to us. “I hate to break up this little reunion—”
“I told you to go home.” He frowned.
Charlene stormed to our group. “For Pete’s sake, they’re having a moment. Leave the kids alone!”
“I tried to go home.” Marla braced her hands on her hips. “But then that stupid receptionist ran out in front of me—”
“Office manager!” Charlene said.
I gasped. “Alfreda?”
Marla rolled her eyes. “Alfreda’s fine. But you wouldn’t believe the caterwauling. I had to put her in the back of my Mercedes and promise to take her to the hospital. But the road’s blocked and there are all those lovely firefighters and paramedics here.” She laid a hand on Gordon’s broad chest and batted her eyelashes. “Can you be a dear and take care of her for me?”
“Do you mean to say, you’ve just captured a fugitive blackmailer?” Gordon asked. “With your car?”
Charlene brushed a fleck of ash off her sleeve. “She’s an associate Baker Street Baker, you know.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Charlene’s doorbell trilled. She peered through a gap in the drapes and cackled. “Remember the drill—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Distract them with candy while you scare them from behind.” Normally, I was against terrifying children. But tonight was Halloween, and all bets were off.
Bowl of candy in hand, I opened the door.
A half-dozen ghosts and goblins raised plastic pumpkins and pillowcases. “Trick or treat!”
“Happy Halloween! You all look great.” I dumped candy into the sacks. One thing I’d say about Charlene, she was generous when it came to Halloween treats. I handed out full-sized candy bars plus smaller candies as accessories.
Silent as a vampire, the pumpkin drone lowered behind the children. Candlelight flickered from the villainous jack-o’-lantern. Because the drone itself was black, the jack-o’-lantern appeared to be floating in midair.
It was seriously creepy.
“Thank you,” the kids caroled.
So sweet. So innocent.
They turned and shrieked at the drone.
I chuckled. “It’s only a—”
An unholy groan emerged from the jack-o’-lantern’s mouth.
The children’s squeals turned to genuine screams of terror.
Escape blocked by drone and porch railing, the trick-or-treaters stormed through the doorway, knocking me flat.
Candy flew across Charlene’s faded carpet. A panicked ghoul stepped on my midsection.
“Wheeeeee!” Charlene cackled, dipping and bobbing the drone. “Happy Halloween, jerks!”
I wheezed. “Eeep.”
Charlene strolled to the entryway, phone in hand, and chuckled. “Haven’t you ever seen a pumpkin drone?”
She demonstrated how to work the device. Soon they were happily buzzing other trick-or-treaters. Superheroes and villains screamed down the sidewalks.
We only removed the kids from Charlene’s house when the next gang of candy hunters arrived. By this point, the entire street was aware of the drone, so their reaction wasn’t quite so hysterical.
I handed out candy and shut the door. “Small flaw in your plan.”
“Where? I haven’t got this much screaming since my husband built that haunted house in our yard. Now that was a Halloween.”
And my getting trampled was a small price to pay. I sighted a stray candy bar beneath an end table and dropped it into the bowl. “I guess all’s well that ends well.”
My phone rang. I whipped it from my pocket and checked the number. It wasn’t Gordon.
“Ray?” I asked. “What’s up?”
“Hey,” the engineer said, “I had that pumpkin Charlene gave me tested. It’s pesticide-free.”
“It is? Thanks!” I didn’t really think he’d be able to pull that off. It looked like Kara really had started that rumor out of nothing.
People are nuts. Some delightfully nuts, like Charlene. But others . . .
“Need anything else?” he asked. “I need to keep my associate membership with the Baker Street Bakers active.”
“Don’t worry. You’re good through at least next year. I’ll talk to you later.”
We signed off.
“Laurelynn’s pumpkins are organic,” I said.
“Kara was lying about the pesticides,” Charlene said. “I’m guessing that’s because she knew about Elon’s feelings for Laurelynn.”
“You’re probably right.”
The doorbell rang.
“Hurry,” Charlene whispered. “Get in place, get in place!”
I gave her a minute to fly her drone into position, then opened the door.
Gordon stood on the porch, a flat, rectangular package beneath one arm. “Happy Halloween, you two.” He stepped inside and drew me in for a kiss.
Charlene’s drone let out a ghastly wail.
Gordon cocked a brow and glanced over my shoulder. “Flying a pumpkin without a license?”
“It’s a jack-o’-lantern,” Charlene said loftily. “And licenses are for suckers.”
“I’m just glad she hasn’t lured you into another Bigfoot hunt,” he murmured into my hair.
“There’s always Christmas,” I whispered back. We’d probably be staking out Santa Claus.
“What’s the word on Alfreda?” Charlene asked.
“Alfreda?” he asked. “I thought you’d be more concerned with Denise.”
“Well,” Charlene said, “I assumed you’d be prosecuting Denise for murder.”
“The DA is. Forensics found one of Denise’s hairs in Alfreda’s apartment. Alfreda’s neighbor says he saw Denise lurking the day Tristan was killed. We’re assuming that’s when Denise stole the paperweight. The pieces are coming together, but we have a lot of work to do collecting evidence.”
“What about all the people who invested in her company?” I perched on the arm of the leather couch.
“The forensic accountants are figuring that out,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“At least Marla didn’t invest,” I said. She didn’t have the money to lose. But who in San Nicholas did? The investors I’d met hadn’t exactly been wealthy, and I worried about the aftermath.
“Marla will land on her feet.” Charlene peered through the curtains at the street. “She always does. I wish Alfreda had sued.”
Alfreda had threatened a lawsuit after Marla had hit her with the Mercedes. Luckily for Marla, the crash-scene investigators had pinned the blame on Alfreda. With the threat of the suit hanging over her head, Marla had been surprisingly quiet about her role in “apprehending” the blackmailer.
“Have you heard if the prosecutor is going after Alfreda for blackmail?” Charlene asked.
“They’re still arguing over whether they can make it stick,” he said. “They’re also looking at charges for interfering in an investigation. Alfreda withheld evidence from the police and lied about it during her interview.”
Charlene nodded wisely. “Interfering in an investigation is a serious offense.”
And one we regularly skated on the wrong side of. I smothered a guilty smile.
“So, what’s in the package?” Charlene asked.
He handed it to me. “For surviving your first pumpkin festival.”
Perplexed, I tore the brown paper wrapping. Cat. Barn. Pumpkins. It was the painting I’d coveted, and I gasped. “How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That I wanted this painting?”
His cheeks reddened. “I didn’t. I just figured . . . I mean your house is so small, but I thought there might be room for something on
the wall.”
“It’s perfect,” I said. “You’re perfect. Thank you.”
“Should have got her the T-shirt,” Charlene said. “It would have been cheaper.”
“I hear Petronella’s going to be managing Pie Town on Tuesdays,” Gordon said. “And by coincidence, I’ve got next Tuesday off.”
I slid my arms around his waist. “Do you now? I can think of a few things we might do.”
“Cool it, lovebirds. Or get a—” Charlene hissed. Dropping the curtains, she drew away from the window. “Brinks, I’ve got you now,” she growled softly. “Scuffing my fence. Scaring my cat. Egging my house.”
Gordon and I glanced at each other.
“Charlene,” I said, “he’s a kid.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“If he runs into the street,” Gordon says, “and gets hit by a car—”
“That’s not the plan.” She stared out the window, her shoulders hunched. “Come on . . . a little closer.”
“What are you doing?” I strode to the window and yanked back the curtains.
“Now!” she shouted.
Something round and white bulleted downward. It slapped atop the head of a freckled kid in a THIS IS MY COSTUME T-shirt. There was an explosion of water, and he shrieked.
“Ooooh.” I dropped the curtain shut. She’d water-ballooned him. Via drone strike.
“Gotcha!” Charlene raced to the door and threw it open. “It’s karma! You’re lucky I didn’t egg you, you little—”
I tugged her inside and slammed the door. “Charlene, that’s—that’s—” I looked helplessly at Gordon.
He bent over an end table and studied the sleeping Frederick. “Didn’t see it,” he muttered. “I didn’t see a thing. It didn’t happen. There are all sorts of things flying around tonight. A water balloon could have come from anywhere. Teenagers. Birds.”
“I think he’s snapped,” Charlene said in a low voice.
“I’d better take him home,” I said and led him onto the porch. “I’m sorry about Charlene. I had no idea—”
“I’ve been trying to nail that kid for vandalism all year, and she just . . .” He shook himself and braced his hands on my shoulders. “I just realized something.”
“Oh?”
“In forty years, that will be you.”
“Possibly.” If I was lucky. “It wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it?”
Gourd to Death Page 29
