Pumpkin Roll

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “Aren’t you glad I came?” Jane asked.

  “Yes, I am,” Sadie said, not wanting to be ungracious. She decided that voicing her concerns about Jane’s lie to the police wasn’t necessarily a priority. “But you didn’t have to drop everything. I’m sure the officers would have taken me home.”

  “Maybe,” Jane said. “After they parboiled you, mashed you into a pie, and baked you at five hundred degrees.”

  Cooking analogies were not Jane’s strong suit, though Sadie was impressed Jane knew what parboiled meant. “It wasn’t like that,” she said, unsure of why she felt the need to defend the police. They hadn’t been overly nice to Sadie, but they hadn’t been terrible either. They were just doing their job. She smoothed the fabric of her gray scrub pants and realized that no one had told her how and when to give the clothes back. She certainly had no reason to keep them, though they were rather comfortable in a shapeless and unattractive way.

  Jane turned onto Green Street and became part of the slow-moving herd of vehicles on the narrow street. “Oh, honey,” Jane said as though talking to a child. “It is so like that.”

  “No offense,” Sadie said, trying to keep her tone easy, “but you’ve only been here for the ride home, so you don’t know the whole story.”

  Jane smiled and picked up her iPhone from the middle console. With one hand on the steering wheel, she started toggling through her phone.

  Sadie double-checked her seat belt to make sure it was secure. “Um, I don’t think it’s safe to be—”

  She was cut off by the sound of a horn from the car behind them. Traffic had sped up but Jane had not. Sadie startled, but Jane caught up with the other cars without even acknowledging the problem.

  “Here you go,” she said, handing the phone over to Sadie. “Tell me what they left out.” Her tone oozed vindication, and she made a quick jerk to the right, changing lanes fast enough to get honked at again.

  Sadie took the phone somewhat reluctantly and pulled it closer to her face so she could read the tiny print. The first headline said “Colorado Woman Detained for Questioning in Jamaica Plain Assault.”

  “Goodness,” Sadie said, scrolling down to the next one, which read “Jamaica Plain Woman Hospitalized; Is the Babysitter to Blame?” She could stomach only a few more titles before she put the phone back in the console and looked out the window, trying to get hold of her turbulent thoughts and emotions. Not again was the only thought that kept spinning through her mind.

  The memory of another article that questioned her character was suddenly fresh in her mind. The writer of that article—the article that had changed everything for Sadie a few months ago—was sitting less than two feet away and driving like a true Bostonian.

  “How could those stories be out so fast?” Sadie said. “It’s only been a few hours.”

  “Do you have any idea how many reporters spend their day listening to police scanners in their cars so they can rush to the scene of a story?” She shook her head as though censuring this breed of ambulance chasers. “Once they grab hold of an angle, they don’t let go.”

  “I’m tired of being an angle,” Sadie said, folding her arms over her chest, her residual anger toward Jane resurfacing. She thought she’d gotten over the betrayal she’d felt when the article had come out last August, but perhaps not; her pain felt as sharp as ever at this moment.

  Jane didn’t answer, and they both remained silent for the rest of the drive. Sure enough, there were no less than six cars parked along the curb in front of Mrs. Wapple’s house, where yellow tape stretched across the front door. As soon as Jane parked, a fresh-faced, twenty-something-year-old girl stepped out of a black Ford Escort and came toward them with a bright smile on her face as though applying to be their newest BFF. The doors of the other cars clicked open, and Sadie dropped her head, horrified by the new development. What would Heather and Jared think of their house being on the news?

  “I’ve got this,” Jane said, hurrying to get out of the car. By the time Sadie had opened her door, Jane was nose to nose with the girl, towering over her in both height and overall presence as she calmly but boldly told the woman in no uncertain terms that she was not welcome here. The other people kept a distance, but Jane looked them over to ensure they understood they were included in her instructions. Sadie wasn’t sure whether to wait for Jane or not, but when she saw a man in a truck down the road snapping pictures, she hurried to the front door, certain that Jane could fend for herself. She just wanted to get away from it all and find her sanctuary.

  Her foot was on the top step when the front door opened and Pete stepped out. He didn’t hug her, but he smiled as he took her hand and pulled her inside. Once they were over the threshold with the door shut behind them, he gathered her in his arms, and Sadie heard and felt him let out a long, deep breath. Sadie closed her eyes and let herself completely melt into the embrace, wishing he would never let her go and that she could feel this safe, this secure, forever.

  It didn’t last long, however. A moment later there was a light tap and Sadie pulled out of the embrace to open the door. The reporters were chatting with each other on the street, but staying away from the house.

  “Can I come in?” Jane asked when Sadie didn’t invite her inside automatically. Sadie nodded quickly and stepped aside. As she closed the door, she noticed that Pete had installed the eyebolt while she’d been gone. She glanced at him, pointing toward it, and he shrugged as though he knew it was too little, too late. Sadie lifted the chain and slid it into the lock on the door, feeling better anyway.

  Pete said a polite hello to Jane before turning to Sadie. “How’d it go?”

  “Okay, I guess,” Sadie said as Jane dropped onto the couch and immediately pulled her phone out of her pocket, texting or going online or something. Sadie took off her coat and hung it in the closet while she continued her explanation. “They said they might have more questions for me tomorrow and that I shouldn’t go anywhere, but they didn’t hold me, didn’t even question me all that . . . energetically. Mostly they wanted me to explain my record.”

  “Good,” Pete said with a sharp nod. “That’s really good.”

  Sadie looked past him into the kitchen. “Is that pizza?” she asked, nodding toward the boxes as her stomach growled. Why hadn’t they eaten the beans she’d made for dinner? Then she remembered the cinnamon twists she’d set out to rise just before going over to Mrs. Wapple’s. They were surely ruined by now. What a waste.

  “I’d already ordered it before I remembered you’d made those beans. Sorry. But the pizza helped take the boys’ minds off everything else.”

  Sadie forgave Pete easily. Compared to everything else, wasted beans were barely worth noting.

  “Pizza?” Jane said from the couch.

  “Would you like some?”

  Ten minutes later the three of them sat around the kitchen table. Jane was on her fourth slice of pizza, while Pete kept lifting and lowering his water glass, making rings on the Formica tabletop. Sadie had passed up reheated pizza in favor of dried-out beans. She was glad she’d tasted them that afternoon when they had been at their prime so she could fully appreciate how delicious they could be. She hadn’t worked up the strength to check on the cinnamon twists still covered with a dish towel on the counter. There were only so many failures a girl could handle at one time.

  “Thank you for bringing Sadie home,” Pete said to Jane. “I hope it wasn’t too much of an imposition.”

  “It was actually a nice break,” Jane said. “I’ve been knee-deep in college kids for the last week and I’m ready for real conversations, if you know what I mean.”

  Shawn is a college kid, Sadie thought to herself, but she lacked the energy to worry about Shawn and Jane’s possible relationship right now. “Will you be heading back tonight?” she asked.

  “I already booked a room at the Longwood Inn over in Brookline. After I knew I was coming, I made some calls and lined up a couple interviews for tomorrow, adding a littl
e Harvard into my Yale-heavy research.”

  “Oh, good,” Sadie said, relieved that Jane hadn’t come just for her. She was feeling more comfortable with her as the intensity of the police station experience wore off. “I’m glad you didn’t waste your time, then.”

  Jane looked at her. “Helping you wasn’t a waste of my time, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  That’s exactly what Sadie had been implying, but she was embarrassed for having been caught. Jane continued. “I just like to multitask, that’s all.”

  “Well, I really appreciate your help.”

  “No problem,” Jane said with a quick shrug as she picked a piece of pepperoni off her pizza with her purple fingernails and popped it into her mouth. “I’ll be around tomorrow too if you need help with anything else.”

  “Thanks,” Sadie said. “That’s very generous of you. The boys’ mother will be back tomorrow evening, so I guess we’ll be off the clock by then.”

  She looked up at Pete, noting the tightness around his eyes. He must still be feeling bad that this mess had happened on his watch. But Sadie was pretty confident that once Jared and Heather understood what had happened, they would calm down. She wondered why Pete didn’t have the same confidence, however. Maybe because Jared was his son. Maybe because of the mysterious Michaels?

  “So,” Jane said, drawing out the word until both Sadie and Pete looked at her. “Shawn said some weird stuff’s been going on around here.”

  Sadie and Pete shared a glance. “Did he?” Sadie asked, stalling for time.

  Jane shrugged. “He was worried about you,” she said. “And he needed to talk to someone—you know how he is.”

  Sadie did know how Shawn was; the boy had never been able to keep his thoughts and worries to himself. That detail of his personality made it strange that he was so good at the PI work he’d taken on these last few months. But that wasn’t what held Sadie’s attention. Instead she was trying to suppress the jealousy she felt at not being the one Shawn talked to. Jane was watching her intently so she simply nodded in response, hoping her face wasn’t too easy to read.

  “Well, after he told me about it,” Jane continued, “I did a little research on Delores Wapple, just for the sake of curiosity, ya know, to see if she had any . . . connections to weird stuff.”

  “What kind of weird stuff?” Pete asked, leaning forward slightly. Sadie watched the detective mask descend over his face, a combination of careful intent and open-minded interest.

  “Wicca, gypsies, poltergeists.”

  “You can research that kind of thing?” Sadie asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jane said with a nod. “If you know where to look.”

  Sadie didn’t glance at Pete this time. They had both assured one another that they didn’t believe in ghosts or witches, but Pete hadn’t heard his name whispered in dark corners of two different homes. He hadn’t had doors slammed in his face and wet gusts of wind come from empty hallways. Sadie didn’t believe—she didn’t—but she was curious and couldn’t pretend otherwise.

  “Did you find anything?” Pete asked when Sadie didn’t.

  “In fact, I did,” Jane said, smiling triumphantly. “Her father fancied himself a kind of medium and wrote articles on things like séances and crossing over earthbound spirits.”

  Sadie and Pete both blinked at her, which apparently encouraged her to continue.

  “He was one of the early experts in modern ghost hunting, and he was one of the first people to publicly introduce the idea that earthbound spirits were here by choice rather than some kind of damnation.”

  “Earthbound what?” Sadie asked. Surely she was not having this discussion.

  Jane turned her dark brown eyes to Sadie. “Earthbound spirits are souls who have died but haven’t gone into the light. Don’t you ever watch Ghost Whisperer reruns?”

  Sadie shook her head. “Not my kind of show.” She looked up at Pete, who simply held her eyes before turning his attention back to Jane. Sadie was sure he wasn’t buying any of this either, but he was used to letting people say whatever they wanted to while appearing to reserve judgment. Sadie wished she were better at that.

  “Well, anyway,” Jane said, “Daddy Wapple wrote about this stuff back in the late seventies. Most of what he wrote hasn’t been archived digitally, but I found references to at least a dozen articles in old collections around the country. I found one or two of his articles online, though I had to dig forever to unearth them. They were very Melinda Gordon.” She looked at Sadie. “That’s Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character in Ghost Whisperer—I can’t believe you’ve never watched that show! Her husband is totally hot.” She shook her head. “Anyway, if spirits don’t go into the light when they die, they become earthbound spirits and can wreak havoc among the living. They are basically what we think of as ghosts.”

  “What kind of havoc?” Pete asked, still guiding the discussion.

  “They thrive off energy, right? So, they get people all freaked out using air movement, temperature changes, and electrical surges. They can even move things sometimes, but they have to be totally ticked off to do stuff like that.”

  “Electrical surges?” Sadie repeated, thinking of the exploding lightbulbs and power issues they’d had.

  “Big time into electrical,” Jane said with a nod. “Energy is energy, so they mess with it.” She shrugged like that was a small detail. “Anyway, isn’t that kind of thing pretty similar to what you guys have been dealing with?”

  Sadie and Pete remained silent, neither of them wanting to agree it was a possibility.

  “So you believe that the experiences we have had are linked to ghosts?” Pete asked in a perfectly level voice.

  Jane looked at him without apology. “Maybe.” She said it simply, but Sadie’s thoughts were going in a totally different direction while Jane continued speaking. “It’s pretty rare for earthbounds to hurt people, but it’s been known to happen. Daddy Wapple swore that they had a spirit in their home and that it liked to short out the toaster. That’s how he first got involved in all that ghost busting stuff.” She shrugged again.

  “But why would spirits bug us?” Sadie said. “Heather said nothing like this has happened before. So why now?”

  “Unfinished business is the number one reason earthbounds hang around,” Jane said with an air of authority. “Maybe Daddy Wapple isn’t done yet.”

  Sadie almost chuckled, it was that preposterous, but quickly moved forward in her own growing theory. “If the dad was into this stuff and believed in it, then that kind of interest likely trickled down to his children. Now, assuming that’s what happened, and one of these children wanted to . . . bother someone, they would have a lot of information from which to draw to make things appear as though ghosts or spirits or something spectral was taking place, right?”

  Sadie was thrilled to find a family history that supported the theory she’d already discussed with both Pete and Detective Lucille.

  “Excellent point,” Pete said, nodding. “But it still goes back to motive. Why do this?”

  “If it’s a spirit,” Jane said, not letting go of that possibility, “they just like to stir the pot. You can get rid of them, though, and then things go back to normal. Easy breezy.”

  They all were quiet for a moment, until Pete pushed away from the table and stood, picking up his glass. “Well, regardless of who or . . . what is behind it, Mrs. Wapple isn’t there anymore, the police are investigating now, not us, and I’m hopeful we’ll get a full night’s sleep tonight.”

  Sadie smiled, but she couldn’t smile away the heaviness in her heart. As much as she wanted this to be done, it wasn’t. The knowledge that Mrs. Wapple’s father was involved in spirits and such was very uncomfortable to her and opened even more questions. “I wonder how Mrs. Wapple is doing,” Sadie said as Pete took his glass to the sink.

  Pete leaned against the counter. “I called the station for an update while you were gone. They didn’t give me much, but they said that
her skull had been fractured. Luckily, the knife wound in her side wasn’t serious.”

  Sadie pushed her empty bowl of beans away, suddenly feeling sick to her stomach. “Has she regained consciousness? Is she going to be okay?” All along Sadie had assured herself that Mrs. Wapple would be fine. It made her feel very foolish to have assumed she hadn’t been seriously injured.

  “I don’t know,” Pete said, giving her a sympathetic look that helped her know he understood her concern for the Witch of Browden Street, weird or not. “They didn’t tell me that.”