Town in a Pumpkin Bash

by B. B. Haywood

  “Happy birthday, Candy!” the waitress said, giving her a hug. “And what’s this?” Juanita asked, admiring Candy’s latest piece of jewelry.

  “Doc gave it to me this morning.” Candy held out her wrist. “It’s a handmade blueberry bracelet. See, the blueberries are actually blue coral, but don’t they look amazingly like real blueberries? And these little blueberry leaves are bronze with a hand-painted patina. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “It is,” Juanita said admiringly. “Which reminds me, I have a gift for you too.”

  She dashed away again but was back in an instant with a neatly wrapped package, topped with a red bow. Inside was an autumn-colored scarf with matching hat and gloves. “The snow will be flying before we know it!” Juanita said cheerfully as she hurried off to tend to her other customers.

  There were birthday gifts from the boys as well. Bumpy presented her with a Vermont Teddy Bear dressed like a farmer, Artie gave her a first-edition Stephen King novel he’d bought on eBay, and Finn bestowed upon her an expensive-looking bottle of French wine. Then Maggie burst through the diner’s front door and made for their table, a large flower-and-balloon bouquet in hand, just as Juanita and Dolores came out of the back with a freshly baked blueberry muffin topped by a single candle. Candy was genuinely touched as everyone in the diner sang “Happy Birthday”—and the muffin wasn’t too bad either. Because she’d just had some of a mysterious baker’s apfeltasche, however, she sliced the muffin in half. She took one half for herself and offered the other to Maggie, who had slid in beside her.

  “I wasn’t going to worry too much about what I ate today, since it is my fortieth birthday, you know, and I’m allowed to party a little,” Candy said to her friend. “But if I’m not careful, I’ll gain ten pounds today.”

  “Tell me about it. Luckily for you, I’m here to help out.” Maggie broke off a chunk of her half and popped it into her mouth. “After all, what are friends for? And just so you know, I have a feeling this isn’t the last celebration you’ll be experiencing today, so better get used to it—and maybe sign up for a gym membership.”

  “Thanks for the warning. I’ll try to moderate myself—though I have a feeling that will be difficult to do.”

  “Honey, look at you—you’re forty and you have the body of a thirty-eight-year-old! That’s a cause for celebration. Live a little!”

  “You know, you’re right,” and Candy defiantly broke off another piece of the muffin for herself.

  Later, they climbed into Maggie’s Subaru station wagon and drove out to the pumpkin patch for their last few hours of operation. They planned to close the patch down for the season at noon, and then head over to Town Park to take in some of the Pumpkin Bash events.

  The morning hours whirled by as Wanda’s bus tour came and went a few times, and each time the crowds swelled, with many carrying away multiple pumpkins for the day’s upcoming events. Over the past few days, Doc and the boys had consolidated the piles of pumpkins, moving them closer to the front of the patch, and had cut the last few remaining pumpkins from thick vines. Now even those last few piles were dwindling.

  Around eleven, Doc and the boys showed up to help, but there wasn’t much left to do. Candy and Maggie made their last few sales, the last few customers trickled away, and everyone helped close the place down.

  “We’ll take the tractor and hay wagon back to Mr. Gumm’s other farm over the weekend,” Candy told Doc after they’d cleared away and packed up the last few crates and stands. “And who knows, maybe we’ll give all this another shot next year.”

  “Maybe we will,” Maggie said, draping her arm around her friend’s shoulder. “We worked pretty hard, that’s for darn sure. And we did pretty good. Only next time, it would be great if we could do it without the dead body buried under the pile of pumpkins.”

  “You got that right.”

  As the morning had progressed, whenever they’d had a spare moment, Candy had told her friend all that had happened over the previous day or two, and Maggie had listened with interest. And like Candy, she’d hadn’t been totally surprised to hear that the Sykes family was somehow involved. “I wondered if that name might turn up again,” she’d told her friend. She’d come to Candy’s aid during a run-in with a Sykes once.

  “You don’t know the half of it. If you asked me, I’d say there was some sort of conspiracy going on. Of course, other than the inscription on the tombstone, there’s no real proof that they had anything to do with this, including Sebastian’s murder. Or anything else that’s been going on in town.”

  “So what’s the next step?” Maggie had asked.

  “Well, I’ve been giving that some thought. One way or another, we have to find Abigail’s stolen diary. That might contain the clue we’re missing.”

  “And which clue is that?” Maggie had asked, becoming slightly overwhelmed at the sheer amount of information she’d had to process in a short span of time.

  Candy had then told her about the note she’d found in the volume of Pruitt history, adding even another layer to the mystery. But before they’d had a chance to discuss this latest discovery any further, they’d both been drawn away with customers, and it was a while before they had a chance to talk again. But as Candy hurried around the field, carrying pumpkins and taking customers’ money, a certain phrase kept buzzing through her head.

  To find the key, search that which binds.

  Binds what?

  She’d been pondering that question ever since she found the note, and the answer had finally come to her.

  A bookbinding.

  The binding of Abigail’s diary.

  It all made sense, she realized—and explained why Sapphire stole the diary in the first place.

  She’d been searching for a key, too, hidden in the binding of the diary.

  Had she told Sebastian about it? Was that what he’d been looking for as well?

  It all seemed to make sense, and was worth checking out—if they could find the missing diary.

  “It must still be in that haunted house of Sapphire’s,” Candy had told her friend just before Doc and the boys showed up. “We’re going to have to go back there this afternoon and search the place one last time. It has to be there somewhere. That has to be what Sebastian was after when he rented the place.”

  But first, she had a festival to cover for the newspaper—even though she’d have to do it the old-fashioned way, with a pen and notepad, since her digital recorder and camera had been stolen with the daypack.

  So once they’d loaded the last few items into the back of Maggie’s wagon, and put out signs announcing that the patch was closed for the season, they all headed downtown to the Pumpkin Bash.

  FORTY-FOUR

  The end of October was upon them, signaling the close of the annual leaf-peeping season, yet a sizable crowd—a good mixture of locals and tourists—turned out to enjoy the day-long celebration. Cape Willington’s two intersecting streets, which represented the village’s business district, were aswarm with people. As the town had done for previous events like the Blueberry Festival, held every August, they’d blocked off Main Street and Ocean Avenue, allowing only pedestrian traffic to wander the thoroughfares. Crews had worked for the past few days setting up booths, tables, viewing areas, and display stands for the thousands of pumpkins they expected to light at dusk. Folding tables located throughout Town Park were laden with mature pumpkins of all shapes and sizes, some carved and ready for display, while others awaited the artist’s touch. Children, parents, seniors, teens, and anyone else who could lend a hand were helping out with the carving, and finished pumpkins were being shepherded by wagon or wheelbarrow to the waiting displays up and down the street. Cape Willington’s pumpkin event wouldn’t be as big as the one in Keene, New Hampshire, where they regularly displayed more than twenty-five thousand pumpkins, or a record-breaking Boston event, where a little over thirty thousand were carved and lighted on Halloween night. But the citizens of Cape Willington planned to
put several thousand carved and lighted pumpkins on display—and to achieve even that number, everyone in town had to pitch in and help.

  Candy and Maggie, along with Doc and the boys, were ready to do their part. So after spending a few minutes watching the pumpkin weigh-in—the results of which would be announced at two P.M.—they found places at the carving tables and set to work.

  An hour and a half later, Candy blew away a few strands of hair that had fallen over her face and let out a long, deep breath. “Boy, these things sure have a lot of guts in them,” she said, pulling her hand out of a particularly plump pumpkin and withdrawing a clump of pale orange plant goop consisting of damp, stringy clumps and clots of seeds. She looked over at Maggie. “How many have you carved so far?”

  Maggie held up her plastic-gloved hands, coated with the same organic material, and wiped an arm across her forehead. “I think I’m working on my sixth or seventh. Something like that. I’ve lost count.”

  “I’ve done about the same,” Candy said. “My arms are getting tired.”

  “Mine too. Why don’t we take a break after we’re done with these and see what else is going on around town?”

  “Sounds like a brilliant idea.”

  But a little later on, as they toured the craft booths and food tables, checked out the other carving stations, and watched volunteers shuffling back and forth with their wagons and wheelbarrows, Candy felt at a sudden loss. “I don’t have my camera,” she said, somewhat morosely, “or my recorder. I feel empty-handed.”

  “You still have your phone,” Maggie said helpfully as she eyed a beautifully decorated, ruby red candy apple that was calling her name from a shelf in a nearby food booth. “That looks so delicious but I absolutely, positively know I shouldn’t.”

  “What? Oh, here.” When Candy saw what her friend was indicating, she fished a few dollars out of her pocket. “It’s my birthday. I’ll splurge and we’ll both take a few bites.”

  Maggie flashed a smile. “Well, if you insist. And don’t worry, honey—we’ll figure out a way to get your stuff back. And if we don’t, we’ll just buy you all new stuff. That actually might be fun, you know. And the newspaper will spring for some of it, won’t they? Or they’ll have something they can loan you until you get a chance to replace it, right?”

  Candy thought about that as she took a bite of the apple. “Now that you mention it, you’re exactly right. I think I have some extra notebooks in my office, and maybe I can borrow a little digital camera from Jesse, if he’s around.” Jesse Kidder, a rail-thin twenty-five-year-old, was the newspaper’s graphic designer and on-call photographer who had a second-floor office near Candy’s. “Come to think of it, I’ll text him right now and see if he has something he can lend me.”

  Taking alternate bites of the apple until they’d eaten it to the core, they swung by the pumpkin weigh-in station to find out who won, and following Maggie’s suggestion, Candy took a few quick photos of the winners with her smart phone, and entered the winning names in a note-taking app. After that, they walked out of Town Park and up the gently sloping Ocean Avenue toward the newspaper’s second-floor offices. By the time they reached the wood-and-glass door to 21B, Jesse had texted her back and told her where she could find a point-and-click digital camera in his office. She could borrow it for as long as she needed it.

  The office door at the top of the stairs was locked, and after fishing out her keys, Candy unlocked it, stepped inside, and disarmed the security alarm before she ushered Maggie in and locked the door after them. “I thought someone might be up here today, but I guess they’re all out covering the Pumpkin Bash,” Candy observed as they walked past the unoccupied offices—including Ben’s, still shadowed and deserted like the rest. He’d texted her earlier that morning from the San Francisco airport and told her he was on his way home, but he wasn’t expected to arrive back in Cape Willington until later in the evening.

  Candy led Maggie through the rabbit warren of offices to her own. But as soon as she walked in the door, she stopped abruptly and scanned the room. “Someone’s been in here,” she said to her friend, who came up short behind her.

  “What?”

  “Someone’s been riffling through my stuff.”

  Maggie was suddenly sharp-eyed, her gaze sweeping the room as well. “How do you know?”

  “Things have been moved.”

  “Has anything been taken?”

  “I don’t know,” Candy said, “but someone’s been riffling through my filing cabinet.”

  “And someone left a note for you.”

  “What?”

  Candy turned around. Maggie was pointing at something that had been left in the center of her desk, right in front of the computer terminal and keyboard. A white envelope, with her name on it.

  She eyed it suspiciously, hesitant to approach it. “Do you think we should call the police?”

  “Because of a letter?”

  “Well, what if it’s…you know, toxic or something?”

  Maggie studied the envelope carefully for a few moments, then took several steps toward the desk, snatched it up, opened it, and looked inside. After a moment, she reached in and withdrew a folded letter. “There’s just this old letter inside. Doesn’t look toxic to me.” She unfolded it, scanned it, made a face, and handed it to Candy with a frown.

  “But you might want to think twice before you call the police.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  The letter was a typical computer printout, on nondescript white paper, in an average font. She doubted it was traceable. Too generic.

  The message was short and to the point:

  Bring the key to Pruitt Manor tonight. Upstairs, 9 P.M. I have a hostage. Someone you know. Her name is Olivia March. Fail to bring the key and she dies. Tip off the police and she dies.

  That was it. Candy read it again, and then a third time, shocked.

  She finally looked up at Maggie with worried eyes. “What are we going to do?”

  Maggie made a gesture with her hands. “I suggest you take the key to Pruitt Manor at nine P.M.”

  “But I don’t have it. I think it’s hidden in some binding somewhere.”

  “What did that note say again?” Maggie asked, trying to recall what Candy had told her in the pumpkin patch that morning. “The one you found in the history book?”

  “It said, To find the key, search that which binds.”

  “So we just have to search that which binds, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “I think it could be referring to the binding of Abigail’s missing diary.”

  “Okay, good, that makes sense. So then we just have to find this diary, right?”

  “Right. But that’s what we’ve been trying to do for the past few days. We’ve spent hours looking and still haven’t found it.”

  “Yes.” Maggie paused. “But we haven’t searched the basement of Sapphire’s house yet.”

  “No, but there’s nothing down there. We cleaned it out, right?”

  “There are a few boxes of old stuff left, I think—things we were going to take to the thrift store but never did. But maybe it’s something else. Maybe there’s a secret hiding spot down there, or some back cubby where Sapphire hid things away, or something like that.”

  “Hmm, maybe,” Candy said, “but basements aren’t the best places to hide books. They’re dark and musty and filled with spiderwebs.”

  “And dead bodies.”

  “Right, there’s that too. So if Sapphire went to all the trouble of stealing the diary, why would she hide it in a musty old basement where it could get ruined?”

  For a few moments they thought in silence as Candy began reequipping herself. In her excitement that morning, she’d left her main tote bag at home, but she found her old one in a corner of the office, and it still had some old pens and small notebooks in it, as well as assorted paper clips, loose change, some old folded-up tissues, stray makeup cases, a few stamps and sticks
of gum, and lots of scribbled reminders to herself on numerous small pieces of paper, mostly receipts and old grocery lists. She cleaned out some of it before she began to refill it. “Isn’t it funny what we leave behind in our old bags?” she said as she worked. “It’s like an archaeological dig, except it’s usually from just a year or two ago, rather than a few millennium. But in some ways that makes it even more interesting. You know, I’ve found stuff zipped into hidden pouches or buried in pockets of bags I abandoned years ago. Something will suddenly just disappear, and years later I discover it in an old bag somewhere, zipped away, almost lost forever. Has that ever happened to you?”

  She looked over at Maggie, who had a frozen expression on her face.

  “Hey, what’s wrong? You look ill.”

  When Maggie didn’t immediately speak up, Candy squinted at her. “Are you okay?”

  Maggie blinked several times. “Yes, it’s just…I just…It’s what you just said.”

  “What?”

  “About the bags.”

  “What bags?”

  “Old handbags and tote bags and things like that. About how you’re always leaving stuff in old bags you’ve used.”

  “Yes? And?”

  Maggie looked pale. “One of the boxes in the basement of Sapphire’s house—the ones we were going to give to the thrift store? One of them had her old purses and bags in it.”

  FORTY-SIX

  “We thought they were worthless,” Maggie said as they hurried out of the office. They’d made a quick search of the place to determine if anything was missing—and as far as Candy could tell, nothing was—and they’d swung by Jesse’s office to pick up the loaner digital camera. Candy now carried her backup tote bag, having replaced most of the items she’d lost when her daypack was stolen.