by Kate Bell
My eyes went to the gun. “This is so unnecessary,” I said. I could feel the anger rising up in me. “You killed Stella! How could you do such a horrible thing? You’ve always been the nicest, happiest person here in Pumpkin Hollow, and you murdered her!”
“It’s not like that, Mia,” she said shaking her head. “I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t plan it out, it just happened. She made me so angry with the way she thumbed her nose at the Halloween season. It was a privilege for her to have that business license over on the Halloween side of town. She had so many opportunities and she blew them all. I just couldn’t take one more minute of it.”
“You had no right,” I said, not taking my eyes off the gun.
“I offered to buy her bakery and to let her take mine. We could have just switched buildings and she could have gone on doing exactly what she had always done. Ignoring the Halloween season. But she wouldn’t hear of it.”
“That’s still no excuse. You had no right to take another person’s life and then tell everyone in town that it was Vince and Angela that did it.”
“You should have seen her,” she went on. “I brought her some of my cookies, the prettiest things you’ve ever seen—just to show her what could be done with a Halloween bakery, if she’d just put in a little effort. She snorted in disgust. In disgust! And then she knocked them out of my hand. How could anyone act like that toward something as darling as my cookies? I told her she would be sorry, but she laughed, turned her back on me and went back into her kitchen, leaving me to stand there like a fool.” As she spoke, her eyes turned glassy and looked far away, remembering that day.
“Beth—” I began, but she kept talking.
“So I made good on what I said. I made her sorry. I followed after her and before I knew what happened, the gun went off,” she said, now focusing her eyes on me.
I swallowed. “We need to calm down. Let’s talk to Ethan about this. He’ll know what to do.”
“I’m sorry Mia, but I’m not going to jail for this. I need you to come back into the kitchen with me,” she said, motioning with the gun.
Before I could make a move, the front door swung open. I turned toward it and there was a uniformed officer walking through the door. The look on his face said he had no idea what was going on, but then his eyes went to the gun in Beth’s hands. Everything seemed to move in slow motion again as he drew his gun. I just had time to duck out of the way before Beth fired at him and missed. The officer fired back, and I heard what sounded like ‘ooph’ and then Beth hit the floor behind the counter.
I looked at the officer as he stood with his gun drawn, his eyes went to me quickly, and I waited for him to begin moving toward the front counter to check on Beth. I didn’t know if she had been shot or if she was laying in wait with her own gun.
“Toss your gun out on the floor where I can see it!” the officer called to Beth. There was a cutout opening in the front counter that he indicated.
When Beth didn’t answer, he repeated the order.
There was only silence in return, and the officer walked slowly toward the front counter. I waited, crouched on the floor in front of the display case, but I couldn’t see Beth from where I was.
When the officer got to the front counter, he peered over and then quickly moved through the opening and crouched down. Then I heard him make a call to dispatch on his radio, asking for an ambulance. I slowly stood up, the adrenaline still running through my body, and peered over the side of the front counter. Red spread out across Beth’s chest. I quickly turned and walked away from the front counter.
“Don’t go anywhere, Mia,” the officer said. I recognized the officer, but I couldn’t come up with a name.
I shakily pulled out a chair from one of the little round tables in the bakery and sat down, waiting for more officers to arrive.
Chapter Twenty-one
I looked up as Ethan walked through the door. It took me a moment to realize who it was. He sat across from me and put his hand over mine.
“Mia, are you okay?” he asked me. The look of concern on his face made my eyes tear up.
“I think so,” I said nodding my head. “Beth killed Stella.”
He nodded. “I know, we were coming to arrest her.”
“You were? You mean right now?” I asked him, trying to put things together.
“We were staking out the place. When I saw you walk into the bakery, my heart sank. I sent officer Riley in to place an order and keep an eye on you. If you hadn’t shown up, we would have gone in with our guns drawn after those other two ladies left.”
“So you knew Beth was the killer all along?” I asked, wondering why he hadn’t told me.
“Not all along. Like I said, I can’t tell you everything I know, but we finally got an arrest warrant issued for her and we were going to arrest her.”
I thought about this for a few moments. “I can’t believe she killed Stella.” I glanced over my shoulder in the direction where she lay behind the counter and then turned back to look at Ethan. “Is she going to be okay?”
He peered around my shoulder to where the officers were kneeled beside her and then he looked at me and shook his head. “Officer Riley just called it in. She’s gone.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach.
“Officer Riley was shocked to see her holding a gun on you when he got inside,” he said.
I nodded. “Me too. How did you know it was Beth?” I asked him.
“The cookies. When she mentioned them on Saturday, I stopped in to get the cookies she offered me on my way in to the station. They were the same cookies we found at Stella’s bakery and they were the last piece of the puzzle.”
I nodded. “I realized the same thing when I saw them in the display case. I’m just so stunned that she killed Stella. I knew there was a rivalry, but I never thought it was bad enough that she would kill her over it. She seemed to feel justified in what she did and I just can’t understand that.”
“I guess a lot of killers feel the same way,” Ethan said and squeezed my hand. “I’m just glad you’re okay. When I saw you walk into the bakery, my heart sank. I figured you would be okay, but part of me said, what if things go wrong?”
I nodded. “It’s a good thing you sent the officer in. She drew a gun on me. She wanted me to go into the kitchen with her and I shudder to think what she would have done had he not stopped her.”
“Mia, I really want you to stay out of trouble. I couldn’t bear to lose you,” he said softly.
I looked into his eyes and saw unshed tears. “I don’t want to have anything happen to me either,” I said and gave him a weak smile.
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
I nodded. “Beth said she brought the cookies to show Stella what she was missing. She said she tried to get Stella to sell her the Sweet Goblin Bakery and offered to give Stella this place in return so that she could operate in the Halloween business section.”
“It’s a shame it had to come to this,” he said with a sigh. “I’m going to have one of the officers take you home now. I’ve got to stay until the coroner shows up. We’ll talk more later. I’ll need a statement for my report.”
I looked at him “I’ll stay here with you.”
He shook his head. “No, I want you to go home and get some rest. Maybe you’d like to go to your mom’s house?” he asked me.
“She’s still working, and I don’t want to upset her. I’ll go home, and make some dinner and when you’re done here, you come by, okay?”
He nodded. “But it might be really late,” he said.
“That’s fine, I’ll make something that will keep until you’re free. I’m glad Stella’s killer was found, but I feel terrible that it was Beth and that she’s dead.” I looked at him and gave him another weak smile. “Beth was always the happiest person I knew. Always smiling and laughing. It just doesn’t make sense that beneath all that happiness was a cold-blooded killer.”
“It doesn’t, does it
?” he asked me. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
I nodded and waited as he went to speak to one of the officers to take me home. I resisted the urge to look in Beth’s direction again. It broke my heart that things had turned out this way, and I really needed to go home and do something, anything, to take my mind off of what happened here.
I said goodbye to Ethan, and I went with the uniformed officer to his patrol car. Some days it just didn’t pay to get out of bed. I was thrilled Stella’s killer had been caught, but I was grieved that it had been Beth.
Author’s Note
Pumpkin Hollow is making a come back for the Halloween season with more activities for the tourists. But, at the same time it appears to be becoming more dangerous to it’s residents. Mia and Ethan’s relationship is getting serious and with Halloween just a couple weeks away, who knows what else might happen?
I hope you enjoyed this installment of A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery!
