"Well, either way, promise me this… No more kids’ parties?" Simona asked hopefully.
I looked over at Pippa's bulging belly as she walked through the front door and out into the real world. "No," I said. "At least, not for a little while."
I watched her walk to her car, waiting in front of the closed bakery. I gulped. Just wait until that baby grows up to be a teenager, I thought. In that moment, I didn't envy her one bit.
The Pumpkin Killer
Chapter 1
A witch, with a giant green nose and warts, walked past the window of the bakery and I gasped.
Oh, that's right. It's just Halloween. You'll have to get used to that over the next couple of weeks. Don't worry, it's not real, I had to tell myself, hand over my heart. I was extra jumpy. There was just something in the air.
Not that I believe in witches, or ghosts, or monsters, or anything like that. I leave that to my beloved sidekick Pippa, who was currently nine months pregnant and counting, and busy helping me decorate the bakery in black and orange. Not my most favorite colors, I have to admit. I prefer pastels, shades of pink and purple, but those colors don't work so well this time of year.
If it was up to me, we'd cancel Halloween altogether.
Ha. Not going to happen.
"Don't you just love this time of year?" Pippa asked as she picked up a cut-out of a skeleton and admired it. The tiny skeleton looked kind of funny next to her huge pregnant belly. "So spooky."
There were things I loved about it, sure. The excuse to bake pumpkin into all my cakes, the cooling weather, the leaves falling to the ground and the satisfying crunch they made when you stepped on them. The chance to wear all of my ugliest sweaters and get away with it. But not the getting spooked-out bit, no. That's the part I could definitely do without.
One year, I had suggested to Pippa that we do a Halloween party where instead of dressing in scary costumes, all the guest had to dress in anti-scary costumes, like giant teddy bears or fairies or uniforms. She'd just stared at me and called me a Halloween traitor and said there was no point even celebrating if I was going to ruin the holiday with my ridiculous idea. That was the end of that.
She liked being scared, I didn't. That was the difference between us. Well, one of them. There was also another huge difference right then and there. Pippa was about to pop.
Speaking of, I picked up an orange balloon and began to blow into it.
"Careful with those balloons," Pippa cautioned me.
"Why's that..." I started to ask, taking it away from my mouth. Then, as I remembered, a sly little grin crossed my face. That was right. There WAS one thing that really scared Pippa, that she didn't like at all, and that was the sound of a balloon popping.
"What's so funny?" Pippa asked.
I took the balloon out of my mouth again and tied the end together. "I'd just forgotten how much balloons scared you," I said, waving it in her face as she darted to get away. I shook my head. "So ghosts, witches, serial killers, all those things are fine, but balloons are just too much?"
"I just have a thing about them, okay?"
My apprentice baker, Bronson, came out of the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about. "Ooh, balloons," he said, dusting the flour off his hands as he picked one up and shoved it under his shirt. "Hey, Pippa, we're twins now!"
I burst out laughing but Pippa did not seem to find the situation very amusing. Bronson went back to the kitchen, but he was still laughing as he walked through the swinging doors. "He should try carrying around a real one of these," Pippa said, leaning over a table before she let out a groan. "When is this baby coming out?"
"I know, I know," I said, blowing up another balloon. "Come on, Pips. Halloween always cheers you up, at least. Maybe it will be a distraction."
I'd never been head over heels for Halloween, but it was always Pippa's favorite time of the year. She loves anything with even a hint of the paranormal about it. It was good to see her so cheerful after a rough couple of weeks in and out of hospital. Her baby was overdue now and she actually did look like an over-inflated balloon. She also looked utterly exhausted. No wonder. Halloween was a good distraction for her and I didn't want to take the shine off it.
I sprayed some silver glitter over the decorations and then coughed as some of it blew back in my face.
"Tegan is organizing a special Halloween themed tour of the town," Pippa said excitedly. "You should come along, Rach."
The balloon I was holding deflated with a long whizzing noise.
"Umm, I don't think so," I said. Tegan and I had never been the best of friends. But she was very close friends with Pippa; her second best friend actually, after me. Tegan was a 'paranormal expert,' whatever that was, and she made most of her money by giving psychic readings and cleansing auras. But she'd also just started a side business giving tours of Belldale's "Most Haunted” spots and Halloween was, apparently, the best time to debut it.
I had to respect Tegan for being a fellow woman entrepreneur. I really did. And I respected the fact that she was hardworking and industrious, and completely self-employed at such a young age. I just had zero interest in going on a haunted house tour of Belldale. There were certain things about the town that I just didn't want to know. I already knew far too many things. Any more and my head might just explode. I might have to move from the town if I found out any more sordid details about our seemingly (from the outside) sweet little town.
It wasn’t so sweet when you really got to know it, however. And I knew that too well.
"Oh, come on, Rach," Pippa said with a pout, the streamers falling off the wall as she pulled her hand away from the decorations she'd been hanging. "It'll be fun."
"I think I'm too busy here," I told her. "Some of us do actually have jobs to do, you know," I said with a raised eyebrow. "We aren't all off on maternity leave."
"Hey!" she called. "I'm helping you with these decorations, aren't I?"
"Yeah, but you love Halloween," I pointed out. "You'd do this for free."
I sighed as I looked up at our living room wall. It was one thing to have the bakery decked out for Halloween—that was public space, at least some of the time—but my own home? I sighed and shook my head as I leaned the ladder against the wall. Pippa really better be grateful for this.
"Ooh, ladders," Pippa said, sidestepping it dramatically even though she was in no danger of actually walking under it. "You know what they say."
She was always the superstitious one. I was the more level-headed one. "They say it's a silly superstition?" I asked.
Pippa stuck her tongue out at me. "Tegan will be here soon," she said excitedly.
"What, here? In our home?"
Pippa placed her hands on her hips. "Yes, in our precious home, Rachael. Don't worry, she's not going to disturb you. She's just doing a spiritual cleansing on the baby's nursery before it arrives."
"Right. Of course."
"So, when she gets here, can I tell her that you will be coming on her Halloween haunted houses tour?"
I turned away so that she couldn't see the face I was making. "Oh, I think I can smell smoke coming form the kitchen!" I said, taking a step down the ladder.
"You're not cooking anything. You haven't even been in the kitchen since we got home."
Oh. Right. "Well, maybe someone accidentally left the oven on."
"I was just in there," Pippa said. "Nothing is burning, Rachael." She crossed her arms. "What’s going on?"
"Come on, you know the real reason I don't want to go on this tour, Pippa," I said, climbing off the ladder. If she was going to keep pushing and pushing, I was eventually going to blurt out the truth. I picked up some more decorations and climbed the ladder again.
Pippa looked confused. "Because you don't like kids and you can't stand being around them?" She looked vaguely horrified.
Talk about reaching. What was that accusation all about? I stopped hanging the decorations mid-air, halfway up the ladder.
"No, Pippa, that'
s not it at all," I said, horrified myself that was what she thought. I rolled my eyes a little and stuck the giant plastic spider to the wall. "Besides, there won't be many kids on the haunted tour, will there?"
"Well what is it then?" Pippa had dared to come close enough to the ladder to grip the edge. She lowered her voice. "Are you scared?" she whispered.
"Of what?" I asked indignantly.
"Of the stuff Tegan talks about on her tour. The ghosts, the murders..."
I suddenly stood up very straight. Pippa's eyebrows raised.
"Ah, so that’s it then," she said, nodding. "You are scared of ghosts."
I turned back to the decorations. That wasn't entirely it. "Not the ghosts," I stated. "The murder bit. That's the part I have an issue with."
Pippa was still confused. "But it's all stuff that happened in the past!"
I turned back to her. "Is it?"
"Of course, Rachael. She's not going to talk about any of the things you've been involved with."
I stood up straight and dusted myself off. "I just don't want to get dragged into anything," I stated simply. "I mean it, Pippa. I'm done with all that."
I'd solved my fair share of mysteries over the last couple of years. They'd all affected me, all of them were seared into my memory, but it was the last couple that had really stuck with me and kept me up at night. Haunted me, you could say. I felt like sticking my nose into other people's issues—even if I had only been trying to do good—had only caused me trouble. I wanted to start a new chapter, wanted to keep to my own life. My own issues. Not other people's.
Pippa nodded. "I know," she said softly. "You're not getting dragged into any more murder investigations. You've already told me."
"Not just murder," I said firmly. "Any investigations, period."
She looked at me plaintively. "I understand."
"No, you don't," I interrupted her. "Because tours like this are going to bring up all kinds of unsolved mysteries. It's going to stir things up."
"It won't," Pippa promised. "It's simply a historical tour of the town, with a bit of role play and theatrics thrown in. Please," she said, pouting as she rubbed her beach ball sized belly. "I can't go on my own. What if I go into labor in the middle of the tour?"
Precisely why she should be staying at home. I sighed. "Fine then. I will come with you. But I want to be home by nine, curled up in my pajamas with a cup of tea. And you too."
She nodded and grinned. "I promise."
Chapter 2
"Six o'clock," I said firmly to Pippa, who was shivering beside me in a gigantic orange coat. "That only gives us three hours before pajamas and tea."
The designated meeting spot for the tour was in front of the old post office, Belldale's oldest building and a historical landmark. It had stood in the town for almost a hundred and fifty years.
"This is one of the most haunted sites in Belldale," Pippa whispered to me knowingly.
"Really? I thought it was just where I came to pick up the packages I missed at home."
Pippa made a face. "Rachael, at least get into the spirit. Tegan will be disappointed otherwise."
Tegan had managed to pull together quite an impressive turnout, I had to give her that. There were already at least fifty people gathered and from the looks of the stragglers coming down the lane, we were about to get a dozen more. She was charging thirty dollars a head. I quickly did the mental math—impressive, for a few hours’ work. Maybe I needed to close the bakery and start doing spooky tours of the town. Heck, I knew enough about the town and where the bodies were buried, so to speak.
Everyone had gathered, but we had to shuffle our feet and twiddle our thumbs before anything actually happened. The crowd was starting to grow restless. Finally, after about fifteen minutes, people started to sit down on the steps and pull their smartphones out of their pockets.
"What are we waiting for?" I whispered, leaning towards Pippa.
"We have to wait until it gets completely dark," she whispered back. "Otherwise, it won't be scary enough."
Oh great. We didn't want it to not be scary enough. "I thought you said this was going to be mostly historical, Pippa."
Before she could answer, we were interrupted by the sudden, dramatic arrival of Tegan in the middle of the town square, which sat just to the right of the post office.
Tegan was wearing a long red cape like Red Riding Hood and holding a candle in a candle holder. She twirled around dramatically, causing the bottom of her cape to spin round in a circle while she held the candle up to her face.
"Welcome to the Belldale Haunted Houses Halloween Tour," she said in a spooky voice. Everyone immediately put their phones away; she had presence.
"This post office has stood in Belldale for one hundred and forty-nine years," Tegan began. "And some say that it is the very backbone of this town—for both the living and the dead." She pulled her candle down and stared around the silent crowd.
I had to give her props. She was quite the impressive story teller.
"There is an elemental spirit here..." she started to say.
I shot a look at Pippa. "What does that mean?"
"Shh," she said. "Let Tegan explain."
"All right, all right." I wasn't one hundred percent sure I wanted to hear her explanation, it might wind up keeping me up at night, but the rest of the crowd was silently enthralled.
"Elemental spirits belong to the earth," she started to explain in a husky tone. "They are invisible to humans." Oh, thank goodness. "Or, at least, to most of us," she said with a wink, which just happened to linger on me. Great.
"Elemental spirits attach themselves to the earth they belong to, and they are responsible for everything that happens under their domain. They can cause earthquakes, storms, floods, and other strange phenomenon. And this one is not very happy that we built a post office on top of its home."
I could see the rest of the group murmuring and making worried faces—they'd totally bought it. I just rolled my eyes at Pippa. "Two hours until home time," I said as Tegan led the group away from the post office and towards the rest of the supposedly haunted landmarks and homes in Belldale.
She told us tales of ghosts and spirits and hauntings as we trudged on through the maze of streets. Some of it was a little repetitive, but I had to admit that after an hour of hearing how many people had died in the town, I was starting to get a little freaked out.
I started to shiver as we walked down the road. "I had no idea Belldale had such a storied history," I whispered. "It kind of gives me the creeps."
Pippa raised her eyebrows. "THAT'S what gives you the creeps about this town? Not all the things you've actually seen with your own eyes?"
"Well, those too." I shrugged a little. "I suppose I really shouldn't be surprised by anything in this town, should I?"
Tegan and the pack had started to get a little away from us. Well, it was more the fact that Pippa and I had been dawdling and gotten behind. You could hardly blame Pippa for needing to walk slowly, though. It was a chilly night yet she was almost sweating from exhaustion trying to keep up the pace.
"Well, it's home time for you," I stated.
"It's okay, I just have to walk a little slower," she said, one hand on her back as she hobbled along. "Besides, I don't want to leave without letting Tegan know."
"Well, she's right up there." I pointed. Tegan was spinning in her cape again, telling a new story that I couldn't quite make out at that distance. "I'll get her for you."
But just as I was approaching her, she let out a piercing scream. Blood-curdling, actually.
I stopped and spun back toward Pippa. "What the heck?"
"I'm sure it's all just part of the show. Part of her theatrics."
I turned back towards Tegan. "There's a body hanging off that tree," I gasped.
Pippa and I both raced—or waddled, in Pippa's case—to the giant elm tree where Tegan and the rest of the group had stopped. We had wandered a fair distance from the town center now, and
were in the park that separates the two sides of Belldale, the 'good' side of the metaphorical tracks and the 'bad.'
"What is it?" I called out, running to the head of the crowd. "Tegan, is it..."
I stopped. It was just a very realistic looking dummy, covered in blood and hanging from the tree.
"Don't worry," Tegan said with a laugh, her hand to her chest. "It's just a little decoration."
"Little?" I whispered. It didn't look little to me. It was life-sized and creepy.
"Just a Halloween decoration," Tegan said a little nervously, trying to gain control of the crowd again, which was now full of jittery people looking for an escape route.
"So it's not a part of your tour?" I asked.
Tegan shook her head. "We were actually supposed to stop here for refreshments."
I glanced next to me and noticed she had a folding table set up with punch and juice and sandwiches that must have been set up beforehand. This was supposed to be a break from the tour, not part of it.
I ducked out of the way of the swinging dummy and shivered. Was it time to head home yet?
Tegan tried to calm the group. "I know we're all a little jumpy after the things we've heard tonight..." She was struggling to regain their attention. The spell had been broken, and her freak out over the dummy seemed to take away some of her authority. People were starting to leave.
"Come back and enjoy some punch!" Tegan called out as a few people broke away, walking to the other side of the elm tree to cut through the park.
Pippa had finally managed to catch up with us. "What’s going on?" she asked breathlessly. I made her sit down on a park bench and got her some juice.
"I think the tour is in trouble," I whispered to her.
Pippa took a sip and shook her head. "People get scared by anything these days." She rolled her eyes at the decoration. "Imagine being fooled by that."
"It was your best friend Tegan who screamed," I reminded her.
"Oh, right."
From the other side of the tree another scream broke out.
Bakery Detectives Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 7 - 9 Page 10