Town in a Pumpkin Bash

by B. B. Haywood

  First she caught just a glimpse of it—an arm or leg, the bones imprinted on the black fabric oddly luminescent, or just the skull itself as it wove through the partiers. At times it seemed to be looking straight at her, watching her. Candy felt a chill as she realized it appeared to be exactly the same mask she’d seen looking in through the window at Sapphire Vine’s house a few days ago.

  Candy turned, about to say something to Tristan, but he’d disappeared. She searched the room, and spotted Mrs. Pruitt talking to an elderly couple, laughing and joking with them. But there was no sign of Tristan.

  He must be mingling, Candy thought, as she surreptitiously searched for the skeleton costume again.

  But it, too, had disappeared.

  Candy drifted to the right, weaving her way through the crowd, half-empty champagne glass in hand, feeling strangely out of place without Tristan. Several masked and costumed guests nodded politely at her has she passed, and a few offered brief greetings, but Candy was too preoccupied to engage anyone in conversation.

  What had happened to Tristan?

  And the skeleton?

  She saw it then, standing near the door that led out of the room. It seemed to be watching her again, grinning. And then suddenly it was gone, ducking out of the room into the front hallway and foyer, where the staircase to the second floor was located.

  Candy hesitated.

  Should she follow? Was the person in the skeleton costume the same one who had kidnapped Olivia March? Was it the same person who had killed Sebastian J. Quinn?

  She looked back down at her watch. It was a few minutes before nine.

  There was only one way to find out.

  She scanned the room one last time, hoping that her backup was near, and watching.

  Then she took a deep breath and started across the room, following the skeleton figure out into the foyer and up the stairs to the second floor.

  FORTY-NINE

  At the top of the stairs, she paused, holding tightly to the banister as she looked both directions.

  The skeleton had disappeared. On either side of her stretched the two hallways, one leading to the left, to the Lavender Wing, where Mrs. Pruitt’s bedroom was located, as she’d told Candy a few days earlier. To the right were the bedrooms of the late Cornelius Pruitt and his wife, the late Abigail Pruitt, maintained as they’d been when both were alive.

  Candy heard a creak coming from that direction, the smallest of sounds, as if a door had swung open a fraction of an inch. “Hello?” she called in a loud whisper. “I’m here, just like you asked.”

  She took a few steps to the right, but heard no other sounds coming from the hallway. The door to Cornelius Pruitt’s room, straight ahead at the far end of the hall, was closed. But it looked as if the last door on the left—the one that led to Abigail’s bedroom—stood open a few inches.

  “Hello?” Candy called again, taking a few steps closer, her back hugging the wall.

  The voices from the party downstairs drifted up to her, crescendoing as the nine o’clock hour chimed somewhere in the house. In the mix of voices and sounds from below, she thought she heard someone call her name.

  For a moment, she hesitated. Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea, following a stranger—and supposed killer—along a shadowed, deserted hallway into a dark room. She thought briefly about heading back downstairs, but something prevented her from retreating. She wasn’t the only one involved in this mystery anymore. Someone had been taken hostage. Someone’s life was in danger. And at this moment, she was the only one who could help, because she carried in her purse the item the kidnapper wanted.

  So she took a few more steps forward, toward the end of the hall. When she reached the last door on the left, which stood ajar an inch or two, she placed her hand on the knob and pushed.

  The door swung open with the barest creak, a skittering sound that swelled in the sudden stillness.

  Candy stopped at the threshold, standing perfectly still, her breath held deep within, her skin tingling as she scanned the scene before her. The room was dimly lit and deeply shadowed—and empty, as far as she could see. Only a single pool of light, cast by a small shaded lamp sitting on Abigail’s writing desk, provided illumination on the far side of the room. But the area of the room immediately to Candy’s right, off to the side of the canopied bed, was hidden in shadow.

  The drapes were pulled shut, but Candy could hear faint sounds of the dark sea beyond. “Are you in here?” she breathed into the eerie stillness. “I’ve got what you want.”

  Hesitantly, she took a few steps forward, into the room. “Hello?”

  There was a shift of shadows then, a swish of movement. Candy jumped back, halfway out the door, her pulse quickening and her heart catching in her throat as the skeleton emerged from behind the brocade curtains that covered the far left window, near the opposite corner.

  “Shut the door,” a voice croaked.

  The costume’s bones glowed in the faint light, and the rest of the black fabric almost entirely disappeared, making it seem as if she were being addressed by a real skeleton.

  Candy hesitated for a moment, finally taking a few steps back into the room. She shut the door softly behind her but remained alert and ready to run if required.

  The area around her darkened even more, as the faint light that had been coming in from the hall was cut off. She was left standing in shadows.

  “So you have it?” the skeleton asked in its harsh, muffled voice.

  “Not the key, like you asked. But I found the diary,” Candy said. “It’s right here.” She opened her small clutch purse and withdrew the leather-bound volume. It smelled a little musty, having sat in a dark, damp basement for more than two years. But otherwise it was in good shape.

  She considered for a moment what to do with it. Finally she walked forward and placed the diary on the center of Abigail’s bed.

  “I thought I should return it to where it belongs. Abigail probably wrote that diary sitting in this very room—at that very desk.” Candy pointed before retreating again to the interior wall, near the door, just in case she had to flee fast.

  “I want the key,” the skeleton said, touches of anger and impatience in its voice.

  “You read the clue…right? You’re the one who stole that volume of Pruitt history from my car, right? And my daypack? You must have seen the note inside the book.”

  The skeleton grunted and shifted again. It reached a bony hand inside its costume, and withdrew a small shiny object—a silver pistol, Candy realized.

  The skull mask seemed to grin as the skeleton leveled the weapon at Candy. “No more games. I want the key.”

  “Why?” Candy asked, knowing she was pushing her luck, but also knowing this might be her only chance to get answers to her questions. “Why do you want the key so badly?” She paused a moment, her gaze shifting toward Abigail’s desk. “It opens the document drawer, doesn’t it? That’s what you want. You want what’s inside.” Candy looked back at the skeleton. “What’s in there that’s worth murdering someone for?”

  The skeleton seemed to tense, and Candy stiffened, too, not knowing what was coming next. She almost closed her eyes, fearful this might be the end. But after a few moments the skeleton waved the pistol at her, signaling for her to stay where she was. Then it walked forward to the bed, and still holding the gun on Candy with one hand, snatched up the diary with the other.

  “Don’t move,” the skeleton said.

  “Not a muscle,” Candy assured it.

  The skeleton retreated to its far corner, taking along the diary. A few moments later, Candy saw a small pen-sized flashlight click on. The skeleton turned the narrow beam of light into the diary’s binding, searching the tight pocket along the spine. The skeleton then pulled out another tool, a thin blade, sliding it along the length of the narrow space.

  It took a few moments, and Candy waited anxiously, knowing exactly what the person dressed in the skeleton costume would find in the book’s bin
ding.

  The same thing she and Maggie had found.

  “Nothing,” the skeleton said after a few moments of careful searching. Finally, it tossed the diary back onto the bed. “The key’s not there.”

  “No,” Candy agreed, “it’s not there anymore…but it was.”

  The skeleton took a step toward her, holding out the weapon dangerously, aiming it at her chest. “You’re not listening to me. Don’t play games!” it repeated in a forced, gravelly voice, brandishing the pistol. “Where is the key?”

  “Sapphire Vine found it first—and she hid it in a different place.”

  “Where?” the skeleton demanded angrily, the pistol shaking in its hand.

  Candy swallowed hard. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “but first show me Olivia March. I want to make sure she’s alive and unharmed.”

  “What makes you think she’s unharmed?” the skeleton asked. “I made no such promise.”

  “But you…”

  “The key!” The skeleton thrust the pistol forward. “Now! Or I can guarantee you, both you and Olivia March will die!”

  FIFTY

  Candy knew she had no other choice, and had no more cards to play—except one.

  Pressing her lips tightly together, she opened her clutch purse again and withdrew an old metal key ring with perhaps a dozen keys hanging from it, as well as a well-worn miniature metal lighthouse, painted white and red. Many of the keys on the ring looked old and unused, their nickel and brass surfaces worn and dull.

  Candy pointed to the diary. “Like I said, Sapphire figured it out first, several years ago. She got her hands on that diary long before you or I had any idea what was going on. But that was Sapphire’s skill, I guess. She always was a step or two ahead of everyone else. She always knew exactly what was going on around town—and how best to use that information for her own benefit. And in the end, that’s what got her killed.”

  “Where is the key?” the skeleton demanded impatiently.

  Candy sighed and held up the key ring, jangling it in the air. “It’s right here. You’re looking at it. I’ve been looking at it, too, for quite a while, not even knowing what it was. This key ring has been sitting in a junk drawer in the kitchen of Sapphire Vine’s old house on Gleason Street. We thought they were just duplicate keys—and most of them are. But there were one or two we could never identify. We never found the locks they opened. They’re sort of like orphan keys, you know? Keys without a home. Anyway, as close as we can figure, after Sapphire stole Abigail’s diary from the library downstairs, right from under Mrs. Pruitt’s nose, she stashed it in her red purse and took it home to examine it. She must have found the key almost immediately. She probably did the same thing you just did the moment she was alone with the diary. She knew exactly what she was looking for—and there’s only one way she could have known.”

  Candy saw the eyes behind the skeleton’s grinning skull mask shift curiously. “And what’s that?” By the tone of the voice, Candy could tell the person behind the mask was sneering at her.

  “It’s simple,” Candy said softly. “Your mother told her.”

  The skeleton froze. The eyes behind the mask widened. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.” Candy’s voice took on a sharper edge, an almost accusatory tone. “It happened when they were both in that mental institution down in Portland, didn’t it? Sapphire was there because her husband, a young man barely in his twenties, had died tragically in a car accident. She was pregnant at the time of his death, and after the baby was born, she wound up giving it to a foster family. In the months that followed, the loss of her husband and then her child literally drove her crazy. It’s one of the reasons she wound up in that institution. And while she was there, she met another patient—a woman named Emma.”

  Candy thought she heard the skeleton repeat the name in a muffled breath of air. The pistol faltered for a moment, then steadied. “How did you find that out?”

  “Both Sebastian and Sapphire had files on Emma. It wasn’t hard to make the connection. The two of them—Sapphire and Emma—must have had an instant connection in that institution,” Candy said, starting to talk faster now, “because Emma also had a child, didn’t she? I saw a photo of her with an infant in her arms. That was Emma’s child, wasn’t it? So what happened to it?” Candy paused, letting the question linger briefly before she continued. “I can guess. She was forced to give up the baby, which made her own behavior more erratic. I’m not sure exactly what happened back then, or who she contacted, but it was enough to prompt someone to put her away in that place, probably to hide her or maybe just to get rid of her. And so, when she met Sapphire, the two women had an immediate common bond—they’d both experienced the trauma of having their children taken away. I imagine they talked quite a bit about that, perhaps even told each other their life stories. Emma probably explained how she’d been raised in an orphanage, and later moved to an isolated house out on Wren Island, where she was made a virtual prisoner. And how, one day when she was still a teenager, she had a strange little party, and Abigail Pruitt showed up on a boat and made her sign some sort of legal document. Emma must have wondered what became of that document, and she might have even searched for it herself, until one day, either while she was still on the island or perhaps after she left, someone gave her a clue. Someone told her about a certain key that opened a certain drawer: To find the key, search that which binds.”

  Candy paused. “But you already knew about that, didn’t you? You didn’t need to read that note Emma placed in the volume of Pruitt history. You already knew. Sebastian did too. That’s what you were both searching for. As far as I can figure, Emma must have mentioned something about it to Sapphire when they were in the institution together. And Sapphire must have told Sebastian—and he told you, right?”

  “Something like that,” the skeleton agreed, its voice so low and rough Candy could barely hear it.

  She pressed on. “Sapphire knew what the key opened, and she also must have known what’s still locked up inside that drawer—the document Emma signed on the island that day Abigail Pruitt came out to visit her. Emma probably told Sapphire about that too. And after Sapphire left the institution and took on her new personality, she figured that if she could get her hands on that document, she could use it in some way—possibly to blackmail the Pruitts, or at least that’s my guess. So she stole the diary, recovered the key, and put it on the key ring with all the other house keys—essentially hiding it in plain sight. But before she could use it to do any harm, she was murdered. And after she died, her house—and all the keys that went with it—passed on to her sole heir, Cameron Zimmerman, and his family.”

  “The key ring,” the skeleton said, nodding, as if finally understanding.

  “The key ring,” Candy echoed, her gaze narrowing. “That’s what Sebastian was after, wasn’t it?” Suddenly it dawned on her, and her eyes widened as one of the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “But you didn’t know that until just now, did you? That’s why you killed him, isn’t it?”

  The sudden clarity drove her thoughts now. “Because he knew where the key was at—but you didn’t. That’s it, isn’t it? He knew the key he wanted was on this key ring.” She held it up in front of her, as if it were an exhibit at a trial. “That’s why he told Maggie he wanted to get his hands on the keys to the house as quickly as possible. And that’s why he was holding the keys like that in his fist when we found his dead body buried under the pumpkins. He was trying to tell us something in the last few seconds of his life, after you’d shot him, and started piling pumpkins on his body—something that Sapphire must have told him before she died. That the key was on the key ring in a drawer at Sapphire’s house. But you didn’t know! You thought the key was still hidden in the diary’s binding—you showed me that when you searched for it just now. You didn’t know.”

  Candy paused again, this most recent revelation almost taking her breath away as her gaze shifted back and forth bef
ore returning to the frightful skeleton mask. “Once Sebastian rented Sapphire’s old place, you thought you were going to spend several days with him searching the house. You thought you were going to find the key together, and Sebastian was going to share whatever was locked inside Abigail’s box with you, right? You two had an agreement—a scheme. But in the end, he had no intention of sharing anything with you. He just wanted to get his hands on this key, so he could get that document, and then he was probably headed straight back out of town, cutting you out of any deal he was planning. And that’s why you killed him, isn’t it?”

  The skeleton seemed to stiffen. It brandished the pistol. “I knew I could never trust him,” the voice growled in a burst of anger. “He played me from the beginning. He said it took him a year to find me, and when he finally contacted me, he said he could make me rich. He told me he knew a secret no one else knew, and that if we worked together, he’d ask for only a small share of the fortune. So, yes, I helped him put the whole thing together. We even came up once or twice to check out Sapphire’s old place, and just for fun, we scared a few of the renters. We were waiting until the place was empty—and then he had other issues he had to deal with for a while. But finally we figured out the perfect time to rent the house—and to sneak into Pruitt Manor once we found the key.” There was a pause, and the skeleton’s voice darkened. “But he had inside information. Something Sapphire Vine had told him. Something he didn’t tell me.”

  “So you shot him,” Candy pressed.

  “Yes, I shot him. He betrayed me.”

  “But what’s that document?” Candy asked, her eyes going to the locked drawer. “What makes it so important? Why kill for it?”

  The skeleton laughed. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you?”

  “Tell me,” Candy said, “and then turn yourself in. You can’t get away with this.”

  “Do you suppose I’m stupid enough to tell you?” the skeleton said coldly. “You’ve done your job. You found the diary—and the key. That’s part of the reason I shot him in that pumpkin patch—and buried him there. I knew you’d find him, and I knew you’d get involved. He told me we had to watch out for you—that you’re too smart for your own good. He wanted to take you out—do you realize that? Early on, he suggested that we should just kill you to get you out of the way. But I had a better idea. I knew you had access to certain information I didn’t have.”