Pumpkin Roll

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Paint?

  She fumbled for the light switch on the wall. The three steps to the switch were sticky and slick with her shoes covered in paint. Once the lights were on, she bent over enough to assure herself that it was red paint, not blood. The face of a Labrador retriever on the front of one of the magazines was slowly being engulfed by the growing red pool. Sadie could just make out the white address label in the bottom corner before it disappeared completely.

  Her relief at not having stepped in a pool of blood was short-lived when she realized she’d just tracked wet paint across half the room. Her face heated up as she imagined how she was going to explain this horrendous mess. Then she wondered what a spilled can of paint was doing on the floor anyway. Had she kicked it over? Was that what her foot had hit? But a can of paint would be heavy. She hadn’t hit it very hard, and yet the puddle was still expanding, proof that the paint hadn’t already been there when she came in. A look at her hands caused her to jump again when she discovered paint on her fingers as well. The whole wall just inside the sliding glass door had been freshly painted red. Since she’d fumbled for the light, the paint was all over her hands too.

  She felt horrible about the mess and confused at what was happening. Mrs. Wapple was painting? Then she remembered Mrs. Wapple’s call for help. Was this some kind of setup? Her spine prickled and her stomach tightened. What was going on here?

  “Delores!” she shouted. “Mrs. Wapple!”

  She turned her attention toward the lit room again, able to see a portion of the doorway from where she stood. What should she do? She could leave and tell Pete what happened, or she could take off her shoes and investigate the room. The fear that she wasn’t safe here was strong, but she had faith in her abilities to deal with that. What she didn’t have faith in was anyone else finding the answers if she left this undone right now.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she bent down and began pulling at the laces of her wet and paint-covered sneakers, her adrenaline pushing her forward. Her heart rate sped up as questions began colliding into one another in her mind. There wasn’t any other painting paraphernalia scattered about, so why the paint can? And why was the house so dark? It was four thirty in the afternoon. Once Sadie had unlaced her shoes, she stepped out of them and left them where they were as she hurried toward the stairs, being more careful where she put her feet this time.

  “Mrs. Wapple,” Sadie yelled, in a voice louder and more concerned than she’d been using so far. “Mrs. Wapple, are you there?”

  As she passed through the kitchen, she looked around. Like the sitting area, the kitchen was not tidy. There were piles of papers, empty cans, and a sink full of dishes. It smelled like overripe fruit, something Sadie had smelled yesterday. She crinkled her nose and turned back to the hallway. “Mrs. Wapple,” she called again. “What’s going on here? What’s—” She stopped short, almost skidding to a halt on the kitchen linoleum.

  She could see into the doorway of the lit room. There was some clothing strewn around the floor, but her attention was fixed on a single shoe poking out from behind the bed. Just one. It wasn’t on its side as though flung aside; rather, the toe pointed toward the ceiling like the Wicked Witch of the East’s feet did after the farmhouse fell on her in The Wizard of Oz. Sadie’s heart began to race with the implications. Was there a foot in that shoe? A foot connected to a body hidden from her view by the bed?

  “Mrs. Wapple?” she said, her voice almost a whisper. She took a single step into the room before stopping. She stared at the shoe and tried to swallow the lump in her throat as a quick reminder of all the bodies she’d seen over the last year played through her head. It isn’t another dead body, Sadie chided herself. You’re overreacting. But she couldn’t make her feet move forward. What if it was a body? Mrs. Wapple’s body. The title of the article Jane had written about her last summer came to mind: “Modern Miss Marple: A Magnet for Murder.” It was a clever alliteration, she knew that, but it wasn’t normal how many cases of homicide she’d stumbled into lately. Was she prepared to find Mrs. Wapple dead in her bedroom?

  “You just spoke to her,” she said out loud. Her words felt weighed down by the walls that seemed to be moving in on her.

  “Help me.”

  Sadie whipped her head around. The voice hadn’t come from the bedroom, but from further down the hall, where the boxes stacked along both sides of the hallway blocked any light.

  “Who’s there?” Sadie asked into the heavy darkness, her voice shaking. She looked back at the shoe, still trying to decide what to do.

  “Help me, Sadie,” the voice said again—the same voice Sadie had heard on the phone and the same voice she thought she’d heard in her bedroom last night right before the door had slammed shut. Suddenly a burst of air came from the direction of the hallway like a gust of wind: chill and . . . wet?

  Fear streaked through Sadie like a lightning bolt, and she ran into the lit room, slamming the door closed behind her. Then she turned and felt the room begin to spin as she looked at Mrs. Wapple laying on her back between the bed and the wall, peaceful in her repose other than the deep red blood, the same color as the paint, that was matted to the side of her head and pooling into the carpet.

  Chapter 18

  The scene didn’t make sense, or, rather, Sadie couldn’t make sense of it as her thoughts became suddenly sluggish. Why was Mrs. Wapple lying there like that? An uncharacteristic darkness pulled over Sadie’s eyes, and she felt herself falling backward against the wall. Her breathing was coming in jagged clumps, and she gripped her chest as though she could force her lungs to fully inflate. She blinked several times, ordering herself to retain her senses, and after a few seconds the air began to clear. She could see again, but the scene before her hadn’t changed. Sadie swallowed, still gasping for air as though she’d run a mile.

  “Mrs. Wapple?” she croaked, taking a step forward as tears filled her eyes. “Oh, please . . .”

  Mrs. Wapple didn’t move, but as Sadie lowered herself to her knees, knowing she needed to check for a pulse, she noticed Mrs. Wapple’s chest rise and fall. Sadie was finally able to take a full breath of her own. Mrs. Wapple was alive!

  To make certain, Sadie carefully took Mrs. Wapple’s wrist; it was cold and limp in her hand, but she checked for a pulse, relieved when she felt the slight expanding of Mrs. Wapple’s artery beneath her fingers, weak but apparent.

  She isn’t dead, Sadie said to herself as tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks. She isn’t dead.

  But she was in serious need of help.

  She stood up, reaching for her phone in her pocket. She turned on her sock-clad heel, pulling open the door of the bedroom and running for the sliding glass door.

  In her haste she forgot about the paint and slid across the tile in her socks. A pile of boxes was the only thing she could grab for, but they weren’t steady and she pulled them down with her as she fell. She landed hard on her side with an “oomph” as the contents of the boxes spilled all over the paint-covered floor. Spools of thread, some pens, and numerous papers went everywhere. Sadie’s phone was somewhere in the midst of the new mess she’d made, and she got on her knees, scrambling to find it in the debris. She was moments away from abandoning the phone completely when she found it partially covered in wet paint. She tried to wipe off the paint with the clean tail of her blouse as she ran into the backyard.

  The run across the yard wasn’t very long, but as soon as she was out of the house she began to doubt everything she’d seen. Paint on the wall. Spilled paint on the floor. Dark house. A single light in a single room. The strangeness made Sadie want to go back and verify all the details before she pulled Pete in, but then she pictured Mrs. Wapple unconscious on the floor and she sped up. A car honked as she ran into the street; she hadn’t looked both ways. She waved her apology but didn’t break her stride. She ran up the front steps of Jared and Heather’s house and threw open the door.

  “Pete!” she called out breathlessly. Was he sti
ll outside? “Pete!”

  He looked up from the table, where he was helping Fig stir some mini-marshmallows into his hot cocoa. As soon as Pete saw her, he straightened, dropped the spoon, and hurried toward her.

  “What happened?”

  Confused by his intensity, Sadie looked down and saw the red paint on her hands and smeared down the left side of her pants and shirt where she’d fallen on the tile. She hadn’t even registered the pain from the fall when it happened, but now it caught up to her as her hip began to burn and her shoulder throbbed. She hurried back to the parquet wood by the front door, not wanting to get paint on the carpet.

  “Blood!” Kalan blurted out.

  Sadie looked past Pete to see Kalan staring at her with wide eyes. Fig sipped his cocoa with his spoon, and Chance spun around in his chair to look at her.

  “It’s not blood,” Sadie hurried to assure them. “It’s—”

  “Paint?” Pete said, leaning closer and sniffing. He lifted his hands as though he wanted to put them on her shoulders and hold her still, but inches away from her, he changed his mind and took a step back while looking her over.

  Sadie nodded, feeling oddly vulnerable beneath his inspection. “Yes, it’s paint.” She gave the three boys a fake smile as she reached for Pete’s hand. “Everything’s fine,” she said in a high-pitched voice. She could feel herself beginning to shake as the shock set in. “Keep drinking your cocoa.”

  Pete pulled his hand out of reach, and she looked down to see the paint on her fingers. “What’s going on?” he asked quietly, looking at her with an intensity she didn’t like. It felt accusatory somehow.

  Sadie took a breath and explained it all in two sentences, finishing with, “We need to call 911.” Her phone! She held it up in both hands and realized the 911 call she’d attempted at the house had been dropped at some point. Pete headed down the hallway toward the bedrooms.

  “Where are you going?” Sadie said, stepping toward him before remembering the carpet and moving back to her square of fake wood.

  “You’ll need to stay with the boys,” he called back to her.

  Sadie bent over and peeled off her paint- and snow-drenched socks and balled them up by the door before hurrying to the doorway of his room, careful not to touch anything. She watched as he dug into his suitcase and pulled out the leather clip with his badge attached. Then he punched in the code to his portable gun safe and grabbed another magazine; he’d been wearing his shoulder harness all day.

  “Why are you taking your gun?” Sadie said, scared that he was armed for some reason. Maybe it just made it that much more serious. She held her phone in both hands, knowing she needed to call 911, but . . .

  Pete glanced at her, and she immediately recognized his detective-face expression. “Promise me you’ll stay here.” He put the magazine in his front pocket. “Don’t change your clothes. And don’t wash your hands either. Call 911.” He nodded toward the phone she was still clutching.

  “Of course,” Sadie said. He pushed past her, causing her to lean against the wall, but she stepped away quickly for fear of painting the doorway.

  Sadie followed Pete down the hall, wishing she was going with him, but then feeling glad she wasn’t. “Go through the backyard, and mind the paint inside the sliding glass door.”

  Pete headed toward the front door while Sadie punched in the numbers for 911 a second time. Kalan was watching her carefully—scared—and Sadie tried to give him a reassuring smile as she went into the living room and watched Pete disappear through the gate leading to Mrs. Wapple’s backyard.

  It was all so surreal, and she found herself still questioning what she’d seen as she put the phone to her ear and listened to it ring on the other end. What if she’d somehow created this in her mind? What if it wasn’t real? The heavily accented voice on the other end of the phone brought her back to reality with a sharp sting. “This is the 911 dispatchah. What’s ya emahgency?”

  Chapter 19

  For the next hour and a half everything was sheer chaos. Sadie put a movie on for the boys while she answered the dispatcher’s questions, but it only diverted their attention until the first siren came blaring down their street. There were two more patrol cars, an ambulance, and a newspaper reporter within minutes of the first responder. Pete stayed at Mrs. Wapple’s house, which meant Sadie had no idea what was going on. She closed the curtains and tried to keep the boys distracted from what was happening outside, finally resorting to letting them eat chocolate chips straight from the bag and turning the sound on the movie way up.

  Per Pete’s instructions, she didn’t change her clothes, but she could feel everyone staring at her when an officer came to the door and invited her outside so she could talk to him without the boys overhearing. She put on her clogs but didn’t dare grab a coat for fear that the paint might still be wet in some places. The left side of her body was saturated with it; she could feel her clothing sticking to her skin.

  It was nearly dark outside and she shivered on the porch amid the lightly falling snow, though no one else seemed bothered by the weather. Another officer stood inside the front door, keeping an eye on the boys. The ambulance was already gone.

  “Had you evah been in Mrs. Wapple’s house before this aftahnoon?” the officer asked.

  “No,” Sadie said, trying not to notice the reporter standing on the sidewalk writing frantic notes as he looked at her, covered in red paint. “I hadn’t been inside—just in the backyard yesterday. Is she okay?”

  “She’s stable, if that’s wha’ you mean,” the officer said, skimming his notes. “She’ll be fully assessed at the hospital.”

  “Thank goodness,” Sadie said, bouncing on the balls of her feet in an attempt to warm up.

  “You went ovah to her house today because of a phone call whe’ Mrs. Wapple asked for help?”

  “Yes,” Sadie nodded and shifted her weight. She was freezing.

  “How did you know it was Mrs. Wapple?”

  “She said she was Delores.”

  “What exactly did the callah say?”

  “She said ‘Help me’ over and over, and when I asked who it was, she said Delores.”

  “And yet you also believed this to be the same woman who broke into your house ahlier today. Why did you go ovah?”

  “Because she said she needed help.”

  “Why not call the police?”

  “Because it felt urgent.”

  “Were you, perhaps, angry with hah and wantin’ a confrontation?”

  Sadie stared at him and could no longer ignore the trap being spun around her. Anger began rising in her chest and neck. They could not think she had done this. “I know it looks bad,” she said, waving toward the paint that had dried solid on her clothes. “But I did not hurt her. Why would I? I went over there to help her. Trace the number—whoever made the call set me up.”

  He didn’t answer her but kept taking notes.

  She noticed Pete and another officer exit the gate at Mrs. Wapple’s. Someone had let him get his coat at some point, or had he grabbed it on his way out the front door? For a moment she thought he was coming back to the house, but the officer stopped and the two of them continued talking on Mrs. Wapple’s sidewalk, Pete glancing up at her every so often. Sadie wondered if he was answering the same type of questions she was.

  After another volley of accusations meant to sound like questions from the officer she was talking to, Sadie watched as Pete crossed the street, only to be stopped by yet another officer. She wanted so much for him to be next to her, supporting her, not looking at her like she was a criminal.

  “I undahstand you called social sahvices this mornin’ to report a problem with Delores Wapple,” the officer said.

  “Um, no, I didn’t place the call. Pete Cunningham did.” She inclined her head toward Pete, who was standing just outside the chain-link fence surrounding Jared and Heather’s yard. An officer opened the gate and Sadie noted that it didn’t squeak. When had Pete oiled it? Had sh
e remembered to ask him to? “When we saw her outside a couple of nights ago she seemed to be in a lot of pain. Our attempts to contact her family were unsuccessful.”

  “Why, exactly, were you so detahmined to involve yourself with this woman who you don’t know and who you felt was harassing you?”

  Pete was suddenly beside her. Finally. He took her elbow and steered her away from the officer, explaining he’d return her in just a moment. His voice must have held the right amount of authority, since the officer didn’t try to stop him and instead turned his full attention to the notes he’d been taking.

  When they were a few feet away, Pete let go and leaned toward her, lowering his voice. “They want you to go to the station.”

  Sadie’s heart jumped. “Why?”