Candy Corn Murder

by Leslie Meier

  “Not so much,” said Lucy. “They have more choices now, so the academically challenged students end up taking classes like that and the college bound take advanced placement.”

  “And they say there’s no child left behind,” scoffed Rachel.

  “Actually,” said Lucy, “Zoe’s taking wood shop—it was the only class that fit into her schedule—and she’s loving it. I think she’s her father’s daughter.”

  “Good for her,” said Miss Tilley. “Are there many girls in the class?”

  “I didn’t think to ask,” admitted Lucy, checking that the zipper worked smoothly. “I guess we girls have come a long way.”

  “I don’t know,” said Rachel, who was watering the African violets that were flourishing on Miss Tilley’s windowsill. “Take that Brian Mitchell. I used to enjoy watching him give the weather report, and all that time he was beating up his girlfriends and getting away with it.”

  “A stormy personality,” said Miss Tilley, who was seated in her Boston rocker, with her beautiful Siamese cat, Cleopatra, on her lap.

  “Sara and some other kids at Winchester College are holding a Take Back the Night March a week from Sunday,” said Lucy. “It’s been an annual event at the college, but this year they’re taking it to Main Street. It’s going to be a candlelight vigil for Mary Winslow.”

  “Good for them,” said Rachel. “I’ll go.”

  “Me, too,” said Miss Tilley, surprising her friends. “If you’ll give me a strong arm to lean on.”

  “Absolutely,” said Rachel.

  “You can count on me, too,” said Lucy, snapping the last thread on the costume and giving it a shake. She laid the black costume out on the dining table and began folding it. “But the march will be tiring, and it might be chilly. Are you sure you want to risk catching cold?”

  “Lucy, I’m surprised at you,” chided Miss Tilley. “You can’t catch a cold from the cold.”

  “I know,” said Lucy. “But if you get chilled and tired, it puts a strain on your immune system, doesn’t it?”

  “She’s right,” said Rachel. “Remember how long it took you last winter to get over the flu?”

  “Flu, shmoo,” scoffed Miss Tilley. “You may not realize it, but I was a feminist pioneer here in Tinker’s Cove. I started one of the first women’s liberation groups in the state, right here at the library, back in nineteen seventy-nine.”

  “I had no idea,” said Lucy, impressed.

  “I’m not surprised,” said Rachel. “You’ve always been a bit of a rebel.”

  “And back then, we really made a difference. If this Mary Winslow had come to us, we could have got her away from that Brian Mitchell. We had safe houses, a whole underground system to help battered women escape from dangerous situations.”

  “That would make a great story,” said Lucy.

  “Sure,” said Miss Tilley with a shrug. “I remember one woman in particular. She was practically a prisoner in her own home, but we got her away.”

  “Who was she? Can I interview her?” asked Lucy.

  Miss Tilley shook her head, and Cleopatra leaped lightly off her lap, then stretched in a perfect cat’s pose, one that the most lithe yogi could only hope to imitate. “We never heard from her again, but that was the way it worked. It was like the witness protection program. The woman had to cut off all ties in order to be safe. Otherwise, there was always the risk that the husband or boyfriend or father—whoever the abuser was—could track her down.”

  “What happened to the group?” asked Rachel.

  “Oh, you know how those things are,” said Miss Tilley, with a flap of her big, clawlike hand. “I think our little group was a victim of its own success. The members went back to school and got degrees and jobs, some of the very unhappy ones got divorces, a few moved away, and after a while nobody was coming to meetings anymore.”

  Lucy nodded, seeing a parallel to her own life. When the kids were small and she was home caring for them, she had time for club meetings and volunteer jobs, like being a Cub Scout den mother. As they grew older, however, and she began to work outside the home as a reporter for the Pennysaver, she found she had less free time for such activities. All of a sudden the days were too short for everything she had to do, the shopping, cooking, cleaning, the chauffeuring, and the interviews, the writing, and the deadlines.

  “I’m glad they’re having the march,” said Rachel. “It’s overdue.”

  “Quite frankly, I think women are losing ground,” said Miss Tilley. “They’re losing control of their own bodies.”

  “I heard that in some states they’re arresting women who have miscarriages, charging them with child endangerment or some such thing,” said Rachel.

  “How can that be?” asked Lucy.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It is something Bob told me. I guess the presumption is that the mother was taking drugs or drinking alcohol or misbehaving in some way that caused the miscarriage.”

  “That’s a scary thought,” said Lucy, thinking of her three daughters, who were all of childbearing age. She certainly didn’t want them to become prisoners of their biology; she wanted them to have the freedom to determine their futures. “I guess I’m going to be marching, too.”

  “But I’m not burning my bra,” said Miss Tilley with a wicked grin. “Those days are over.”

  “Did you ever?” asked Lucy.

  “Off the record, yes,” she said as the grandfather clock in the corner began to chime eleven o’clock.

  “Oh, my goodness,” said Lucy, hopping up. “I’m late. I’m supposed to cover the opening of the Harvest Figure Display. Corney’s going to kill me!”

  Lucy stuffed the costume in her tote bag and grabbed her jacket off the hook. At the same time Rachel retrieved her handbag from the chair where it was resting and handed it to her. Then Lucy was out the door with a wave, dashing down Miss Tilley’s steps, where a gray and blue salt-glazed crock held a gorgeous bronze chrysanthemum, and hopping into her car.

  Fortunately, it was only a couple of blocks to the town common, the big, open space in the center of town, which had once been used by residents to pasture their cattle. Now it was a park, with a bandstand and a grassy lawn, dotted with bright yellow–leaved maple trees. Lucy arrived just as things were getting started, and found Corney Clark and several town officials gathered beneath a Giant Pumpkin Fest banner that was hanging from the bandstand. The town band played the last notes of “America the Beautiful,” and Corney stepped forward, microphone in hand.

  “Thank you so much. That was our talented town band, led by Norm Philpott.”

  A handful of citizens who had gathered for the event, mostly seniors and a few moms with small children, gave a little burst of applause.

  “Now I’d like to introduce Roger Wilcox, chairman of our board of selectmen, who has a few words.”

  Roger Wilcox, a distinguished man in his sixties, who had swapped his usual half-zip sweater for a camel hair blazer in honor of the occasion, stepped forward. “Well, this is indeed an honor, to open this, our very first Giant Pumpkin Fest in Tinker’s Cove. A lot of people have put a great deal of effort into this event, and I am sure it will be a great success for our town, this year and hopefully for many more years in the future. So, without further ado, I hereby announce that the Giant Pumpkin Fest has now officially begun.” He cut an orange ribbon that had been stretched from the bandstand to a nearby tree, and everybody clapped again.

  Lucy was able to snap a photo of the ribbon cutting and joined the group of people following Corney and Roger to view the displays of pumpkin people that had been erected by various local businesses.

  They trooped along to the first display, created by Marzetti’s IGA, which featured a family of pumpkin-headed figures, their vintage clothing stuffed with straw. The figures were seated at a 1950s chrome and vinyl dining set, preparing to eat an apple pie. Lucy noticed that one of the figures, the mother, looked a bit like Dot Kirwan, the cashier at the IGA, and sh
e snapped a picture.

  “Terrific, terrific,” murmured Corney.

  “So clever,” agreed Roger. “I like the dad’s plaid shirt and the mother’s shirtwaist dress.”

  “And the kids have striped T-shirts right out of Leave It to Beaver,” said Lucy, snapping a photo.

  The next display, from the Cut ’n’ Curl salon, showed a well-endowed figure seated in a salon chair, its pumpkin head stuffed inside the plastic hood of a hair dryer. The figure was a bit askew, as if the wind had blown it over, and its skirt had risen, revealing the stuffed panty hose, now spilling straw from its torn crotch, that served as the figure’s legs.

  “Oh, dear!” exclaimed an embarrassed Ann Briggs, who owned the shop. “Just let me fix this.” She straightened the figure and replaced the skirt so it covered the rather lewd damage, and everybody clapped in approval.

  When they viewed the following display, a wedding scene created by Orange Blossom Bridal, it was clear that the wind hadn’t done the damage. Here the bride had been thrown on her back, her straw-filled stomach had been ripped open, and her pumpkin head smashed. The pumpkin groom’s mouth had been carved into a leer, and his stuffed gloved fingers arranged in an obscene gesture.

  “Come away, Jessica,” said one of the mothers, leading her daughter away from the display. Other parents followed with their children, leaving a handful of puzzled observers.

  “Who would do this?” asked one gentleman, leaning on his cane.

  “What a shame,” tutted his wife, shaking her neatly clipped head. “So much work.”

  “This is an outrage,” said Corney, looking ahead to other displays, which had been similarly vandalized. The grass was strewn with smashed pumpkins, overturned furniture, and ripped costumes that flapped in the breeze. “What are we going to do?”

  “First off, we close the exhibit,” said Roger, taking charge of the situation. “Then we call the police.”

  “How can we do the judging?” fretted Corney. “We promised prizes to the entrants, but now the judges can’t possibly see what the displays were originally like.”

  “They can rebuild,” suggested Lucy. “It’s only pumpkins and old clothes and straw.”

  “Some are too far gone,” said Corney sadly.

  “We’ll give honorable mentions to the folks who don’t want to rebuild. How about that?” suggested Roger.

  “That’s not fair,” protested Ann Briggs. “I’m not going to get a prize, because my display wasn’t vandalized enough? That stinks! I worked really hard on this, you know?”

  “It was just an idea,” said Roger as a police cruiser arrived, siren blaring. “We haven’t come to a final decision. We’ll certainly keep your comments in mind.”

  “What’s the trouble here?” asked Officer Barney Culpepper, shifting his heavy belt as he joined the group. Barney was an old friend of Lucy’s, and she gave him a little smile.

  “The displays have been vandalized,” said Corney, waving her arm at the destruction.

  Barney planted his feet firmly, removed his cap and ran his hand over his gray brush cut before replacing it, and studied the situation.

  Lucy knew that Barney had seen a lot of things he wished he hadn’t in his thirty or more years on the Tinker’s Cove police force, and this certainly wasn’t in the same category as a tractor-trailer crash on Route 1. Nevertheless, observing the way his jowls were quivering, she understood that he found the scene troubling.

  Following his gaze, she noticed that the figures that had been most severely damaged were all representations of females, and they’d been attacked viciously. There was the disemboweled bride, a witch slashed to ribbons, a grandma whose wire-rimmed glasses dangled from a completely smashed head, and a chorus girl whose fishnet-stocking legs were splayed wide open and whose torso was split from her crotch right up to her neck.

  “This is a crime scene,” he said, his tone flat. “Everybody out.”

  “But what about the Giant Pumpkin Fest?” demanded Corney, practically in tears.

  “Sorry,” said Barney. “I don’t have a choice. This here is a hate crime, and I’ve got to call in the state police.”

  “It was probably just kids,” protested Corney, turning to Roger for support. “Don’t you think it was just kids?”

  “Probably,” agreed Roger.

  “Mebbe you’re right,” said Barney. “But if these were kids, they were a bunch of sick bastards.”

  “Can I quote you?” asked Lucy, who had been writing it all down.

  Barney stretched out his arms and gestured for everyone to leave. “Move along,” he said. “Clear the area. Nothing to see here.”

  On the contrary, thought Lucy, there was plenty to see, and if she was right, it was evidence of a severely troubled personality. Whoever did this, she decided, really hated women. She only hoped he would stick to pumpkin-head figures and would not take his anger out on real flesh-and-blood women.

  Chapter Seven

  Tinker’s Cove Chamber of Commerce

  Press Release

  For Immediate Release

  Giant Pumpkin Fest in Full Swing! Don’t Miss the Awesome and Imaginative Display of Jack-o’-Lanterns on Main Street, While Enjoying Sidewalk Sales and Free Refreshments Offered by Local Retailers. Be Sure to Stop in at Country Cousins to Enter the Candy Corn Contest and Guess How Many Pieces of Candy Are in the Canister!

  Sometimes, thought Lucy as she yanked the Pennysaver door open on Monday morning and heard the jangling bell announce her arrival, it was a relief to go to work. She suspected this was a secret that men had kept from women for years, leaving their wives home to cope with all the messy little disasters of daily life while they were free to concentrate on the more straightforward demands of their jobs. While it was true that the workday sometimes posed difficult challenges, she was always able to walk away at the end of the day, while problems at home just seemed to simmer on and on, like one of those big pots of split pea soup that you never thought you’d ever get to the bottom of.

  Truth be told, she was sick and tired of having Ev Wickes around the house all the time. There was the matter of his questionable hygiene, for one thing, and the fact that he drank beer all day long. Bill was joining in, somehow feeling it was rude to let him drink alone, and the pair of them were a very bad influence on little Patrick. She was counting the days to the pumpkin hurl, figuring that once the catapult was built, Ev wouldn’t be hanging around, but this morning Bill had mentioned something about having him help with some repairs on the garden shed.

  “Everything okay?” asked Phyllis, peering at Lucy over her half-glasses. She was seated at her desk behind the reception counter, the bulwark from which she handled reader queries, subscriptions, ads, classified ads, and accounts payable.

  “It’s been a tough morning. I never thought I’d pry Patrick away from Ev Wickes and get him fed and dressed and off to day care,” said Lucy. “Is there any coffee?”

  “I made a big pot this morning,” said Phyllis, lifting her favorite mug, printed with perky French poodles. “I didn’t get much sleep last night, because Wilf installed lights for his pumpkin. They’re triggered by a motion sensor, and apparently, there’s a lot more motion in the backyard than he thought. Every time a cat or raccoon went through, the lights flashed on.” She took a big swallow of coffee. “I didn’t get much sleep.”

  “With Bill, it’s the siren,” said Lucy. “Patrick loves setting it off, and every time the darn thing sounds, I jump out of my socks. My nerves are shot,” she said, adding some milk to her mug of coffee. “If you ask me, it’s a lot of fuss over a vegetable.”

  “Actually, pumpkins are fruits,” said Ted, emerging from the morgue, where old copies of the Pennysaver were stored. He was carrying several of the oversize volumes containing copies of the papers dating from the early 1900s. “They have seeds, so they’re fruits.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t like pumpkins, and I don’t like Halloween. I want it to be over,” said Lucy, plun
king herself down at her desk and powering up her PC.

  “It’s not over till it’s over,” said Ted, grinning broadly and setting the big books down on the rolltop desk he inherited from his grandfather. “And I’m happy to say we’ve sold all the ad space in the Giant Pumpkin Fest special supplement.”

  Lucy noticed he looked a lot more relaxed than he had in weeks, and attributed his improved attitude to the increased ad revenue. These days it was a challenge to keep a small town weekly newspaper afloat, and Lucy knew Ted and Pam sometimes had to resort to using their home equity line to pay the bills.

  “And, even better, Country Cousins has signed a contract to run a full-page ad every week until Christmas,” he continued, leaning back in his swivel chair. “So if either of you has some free time, I’d like you to look through these old papers for graphic elements. They want old-fashioned illustrations for the ads.”

  “And just when do you think I’ll have this free time?” asked Phyllis, her thinly plucked eyebrows rising above her reading glasses.

  “That goes double for me,” said Lucy. “I’ve got this big story about the vandalism at the Harvest Figure Display, on top of everything else.”

  Normally, these protests would earn a sharp rebuke from Ted, but today he replied only, “We’ll work it out.” He turned his attention to the door, where the bell was tinkling, as Corney Clark breezed in. “Hi, Corney!” he exclaimed. “What have you got for us today?”

  Despite her dyed orange hair, Corney was not in a holiday mood. “Oh, Ted,” she moaned, sinking into a chair and clutching her tote bag in her lap. “I really think someone’s out to ruin the Pumpkin Fest.”

  “Probably just kids,” said Ted. “Kids can’t resist smashing pumpkins.”

  “I don’t know,” said Lucy, remembering the female harvest figure slit from crotch to neck. “From what I saw, I don’t think it was kids.”

  “Probably kids, but who knows?” said Corney, rummaging in her bag and producing an envelope, which she passed to Ted. “It’s a letter to the editor, thanking the Harvest Figure Display contestants for their participation, and also the Rotary Club. The club members came out big-time yesterday afternoon and repaired the damage. The display is better than ever.”