The Pumpkin Problem

by Beth Byers

  “Does the wound on Jerry make anyone not a suspect? Like you’d have to be a certain height or strength?”

  Simon shook his head. “It seems that whoever killed him somehow knocked him down. Tripped? Pushed? There isn't a wound from it, but the killer stabbed downwards onto his back. They can’t narrow down the height of the killer from that.”

  I frowned and then said, “What about whoever set up the pumpkin display?”

  Simon shook his head. “Aaron Welch knew who it was. They did it around midnight.”

  “Why did someone put the jack o’ lantern over his face?”

  Simon sighed and said, “Probably because kids are downtown a lot. Or they wanted to obscure what happened. I don’t know? Sheer creepiness? I won’t look at a pumpkin again the way I did before I saw that.”

  “Tell me something happy instead,” I said.

  “Have you heard?” He grinned at me and said, “I’m gonna be a daddy.”

  I laughed and said, “I have heard that. I’m thinking pretty seriously about going home after this lunch and cooking the baby some. Maybe in on the couch with my favorite throw. Maybe in our bed.

  “I’ll take you home and lay with you for a while. Carver has the other boys out running your and Zee’s errands.”

  “How did they knock him down?” I asked suddenly. “Did he fight?”

  Simon shook his head and I said, “We should double check the alley.”

  He shrugged, and we walked out to the alleyway. There was nothing. Our dumpster. Some leaves. Dirt against the walls since people didn’t sweep alleyways, but nothing that really explained it.

  “I can’t see it,” I told Simon.

  “Don’t try,” he suggested, “You’ll have dreams about it later.”

  I nodded. There was nothing. No cracks in the cement. No debris. No rocks. Why would a full grown man get knocked down for no reason? So conveniently?

  “Maybe the killer came up behind him and just stuck out their foot real fast?”

  It didn’t make sense. I glanced down at the blood spot. I could see that someone had power-washed the spot. The chalk outline they’d made was gone. The blood spot was gone. The…dirt had been swept towards the dumpster.

  I just couldn’t see it. The way the murder happened didn’t make sense. I stared at the dumpster and then asked, “Why didn’t the killer just pick up Jerry and put him in the dumpster? Why a pumpkin to hide the body?”

  “Jerry wasn’t a small man,” Simon said. “With dead weight, they might have been unable to. Except for Henry, I can’t see that any of our suspects would have had a chance.”

  I stepped towards the dumpster and stared at it. I wouldn’t have been able to get anyone into it.

  “Even the brother, Dave?”

  Simon nodded and I asked, “What about Janice’s husband?”

  Simon’s head cocked and he said, “Maybe Whitey could. Actually, I’d bet he could.”

  “Maybe the sheer reason that the body wasn’t put in the dumpster was because he could do it.”

  Simon frowned at me, thinking it over. My gaze was caught by something, and I picked it up. Smooth and round, I played with it as Simon stated Whitey didn’t have any better of an alibi than Janice. Both of them had been together, they’d both been sleeping. Simon looked past me and I thoughtlessly put the item in my pocket.

  I wondered about that. What if he’d watched his wife tormented for years by an an unrepentant abuser? Maybe he snapped? Could he have known that Jerry would be alone that morning? If so, maybe Whitey had decided enough was enough, and he wouldn’t watch his wife be harassed by her brother any longer.

  “I’ll talk to Whitey again,” Simon said. He took my hand and pulled me to the car, driving me home while I yawned the whole ride. When we got to our house, Simon took the dogs out while I laid down on our bed. By the time he curled himself around me, I was half-asleep. I relaxed into his warmth and was only vaguely aware of his alarm later and the fact that he’d left to go back to work.

  * * * * *

  When I woke I messaged Zee and asked her to nicely ask Janice for the details of how her brother treated her. I didn’t want to know, but I thought it was relevant. If Janice’s husband had killed her brother for her, then…I wasn’t sure I had a problem with it. Someone should stand up for Janice. Someone should make her safe and comfortable. From what I could tell her own mother hadn’t.

  Zee messaged me that she’d come get and we’d go see Sheryl. I couldn't do that. Instead I messaged her back.

  Rose: I promised Simon I wouldn’t be going to a possible murderer’s house, and I won’t.

  Zee: The mom? Really?

  Rose: Probably not. But I’m still not doing it.

  Zee. Gah! Fine. I’m coming with her to your place. Make snacks. I’m starving.

  I rose from the bed and let my dogs out into the yard. It was late-afternoon and Simon had gone sometime around 1:00 pm or 2:00 pm, I guessed. I yawned as I started a pot of tea and then pulled out bread to make sandwiches.

  I’d do a tray of cucumber and tomato sandwiches or turkey and cheese. If Sheryl didn’t like those, I couldn’t help her. I wasn’t all that pleased she was coming here. I kept seeing little Janice in my head and marveling at how hugely Sheryl had failed her daughter. What did you do when one child hurt another? So terribly?

  It wasn’t like Sheryl had stopped being Jerry’s mother. I yawned again and then pulled out a package of grapes and added them to the tray. I added celery sticks spread with peanut butter and then waited. Zee showed up about twenty minutes later with Sheryl Voe.

  She came into the house and she looked like death warmed over. My eyes immediately teared up as I took her in. Her child had been killed, and she was not all right. All of my judgement fled as I stared at her.

  “Thank you for coming to see me, Sheryl,” I said.

  She nodded and then said, “Janice said I had help. She’s so bossy.”

  I blinked at that and Zee rolled her eyes from behind Sheryl. They crossed to the kitchen table. I started to get up, but Zee snapped at me to sit, so I did.

  Zee was familiar enough with my kitchen to pour us all hot water for our teacups and then we went about doctoring our tea while Sheryl settled in.

  “I…” I didn’t know what to say. I could see her pain, and I was a sympathetic weeper when I was pregnant. Just the thought of crying with her made me want to cry right at that moment.

  I sniffed and Zee shot me a look that demanded I hold it together.

  “Janice says that you gave your son quite a bit of money,” Zee said to Sheryl.

  She harrumphed and then said, “She moans on and on about that money. It was mine to give wasn’t it?”

  “It was. It just left you pretty tight, didn’t it?”

  Sheryl’s lips pressed together and she said, “It’s been a little harder lately, but I believe in my boy.” She sniffled and then pulled out a crumpled handkerchief and said, “Janice had no business telling you about that.”

  I ignored that and tried to focus on the facts. “But you gave Jerry about 90 thousand dollars?”

  “It costs a lot to start a business,” Janice said, not denying the amount. “Jerry wanted to be a partner not an employee. I wanted that for him. That’s what mothers want. You’ll see when you meet your baby.”

  I placed a hand over my baby and he or she moved under my hand as if aware that I was thinking of them. Or maybe it was the rush of anger I felt in the face of such…condescension.

  “And Janice? Do you want her to be happy too?”

  Sheryl paused, and I could see her realizing that we knew what Jerry had done—or at least that he’d done something. She didn’t like it. Her mouth pursed and her gaze narrowed.

  “I see she’s telling that story again.”

  I bit my lip to keep myself from smacking the woman upside the head. It took me a moment to gain control of myself and Zee’s daggered expression wasn’t helping at all.

  “The sto
ry where Jerry hurt her when they were children.”

  “Children is the key word there,” Sheryl said angrily. “She needs to get over it.”

  “You don’t just shake off abuse like she endured,” Zee said flatly.

  “I thought you were helping to find Jerry’s killer not to make him a monster he wasn’t.”

  Zee cleared her throat and then said, “Perhaps Janice finally had enough of you choosing him over her. Perhaps your daughter was tired of the constant demands that she ‘get over it.’”

  “It is long since over,” Janice said. “There comes a time when you stand up and leave behind the things that happened as children. They were, both of them, children.”

  I couldn’t do this. I just couldn’t. I rose and left my own dining room. I wanted to puke. Whatever Janice said was going to be warped by her need to defend her child. What about defending her daughter? I love my little baby so much. I couldn’t imagine putting them at risk. Maybe it was better to just have one child. Simon and I weren’t young. The idea that our baby needed a sibling suddenly seemed like a bad one, and I hated that Sheryl and her mess was ruining that dream for me. I message Simon that I loved him and reminded myself that Simon and I were not Janice. Whatever happened to our children—we’d never choose one over the other. We’d find some other way.

  CHAPTER 10

  “You’re off your game,” Zee told me.

  “This isn’t a game,” I shot back. “I just didn’t have it in me to talk to her any longer. She made me want only one baby. I wanted more than one before this. Maybe two. Maybe three. She was stealing that from me.”

  Zee stared at me for a minute and then she said, “Jerry was a terrible human being. And it’s so easy to blame the moms. But in this case, I have to think she was part of it.”

  I nodded. A tear slipped down my cheek.

  Zee said, “You aren’t Janice.”

  “I…I…know,” I hiccuped fighting for control over my emotions. I was so very tired of being a weeper.

  “Your kids aren’t going to be the mess that her kids are.”

  I stared at Zee and then I said, “Good parents have kids who are either jerks or who mess up big time.”

  “That’s true,” Zee said. “No one is perfect. But the outcome wouldn’t go like this. Years of passive abuse and forced acceptance. Janice is lucky her brother is dead. Her mother is lucky he’s gone too. Maybe she can start parenting the child who kept caring when many people would have walked.”

  I nodded. I was tired in my heart from all of this, and I wanted nothing more than to choose a baby name or two with Simon and to finally decide on furniture for the baby room. But I was also done. The protective mama in me was rising up and, I was going to do what I could for Janice. Except, I kind of thought Janice was the killer. Still though, I was done.

  Zee left and I went to sleep before Simon got back. He messaged me that he’d be late and not to worry. I smiled at the phone. He was over-protective. It came from nearly losing me a time or two and then growing the baby. He’d settle down when he stopped having such bad dreams.

  When I woke, I could see that Simon had been and gone. I was betting he’d be guzzling buckets of coffee today as he worked to wrap up this case. I had no doubt, he was trying to get it done before I ended up at risk again.

  Too bad for poor Simon, it was too late to truly keep me out of it. I messaged Zee to join me and grabbed my leggings of the day before and as I did, I felt something in the pocket. I frowned as I pulled out a marble. What…in…the…world? I stared at it and then finished dressing, trying to remember why I would have a marble in my pocket. As I walked out to the front house, I took my sweet puppies out.

  Matthew Morgan would be coming soon. I messaged him. We’d long since gone past actually needing help with the dogs, but Matthew needed good work, and he loved the dogs. Hiring him helped us all. I gave all the dogs a good rubdown and threw the toys for them while I waited for Zee to arrive.

  Just before she got to my place, I went inside and made toast and tea for the day. We weren’t going to indulge Simon’s overprotectiveness today. When Zee came inside she crowed, “There she is!”

  “Shut up,” I told her.

  “I thought pregnancy brain might have turned off the personality I liked so much.”

  I took a bite of my toast and repeated, “Shut it.”

  “What mischief are we getting into today?”

  “We’re going to meet Dave and Janice’s husband, Herman. And I want to know how many people were going to pull their business from DeVoe Produce.”

  “A lot of them. Josephine said it didn’t matter if the bill was right or wrong, the way they treated her to her face as compared to the letter she received about her bill upset her. She’s already set up a new service.”

  My brows rose at that and I adjusted my pants, feeling that marble in my pocket again. I pulled it out and frowned at it. Zee looked into my hand and asked, “Did you find one too? There was one on the sidewalk outside of 2nd Chance. It almost took down George Hennessy.”

  I stared at Zee and then back down to the marble.

  “Kids probably playing marbles,” Zee muttered.

  “This isn’t 1940,” I shot back to Zee with a scoff. “This isn’t a kid’s toy. Our kids play laser tag and Pokemon Go.”

  Zee frowned at my scoff and then asked, “Well what is it, oh wise one?”

  “It’s part of the murder trap,” I told her. “Can’t you see it? I couldn’t imagine it before. But Jerry…he must have delivered the produce to Bella. He’d have been parked outside our diner. Why move the truck twice when it was just across the street? And we have that wide open spot.”

  I could just see it. Park in the empty spots in front of The 2nd Chance Diner, deliver the smaller order to Bella. Go from there, load up a hand truck with our big order. Would it take one trip or two? I frowned. The killer would have to know. Otherwise, they’d lose their chance. Either way, the last trip is done. The killer had enough time to grab the pumpkin carving tools. Because they were convenient? The marbles told me the murder had been deliberate—which is what I had believed before this.

  So, maybe the killer brought a weapon. But those pumpkin carving tools made it even more obscure. No need to track who bought the weapon—I had. So, Jerry delivers the last of the food, someone hides well enough to throw the marbles—making him fall. Then, while he’s down, he gets stabbed. It’s a killing blow. Maybe he dies immediately. Maybe he was incapacitated and bled out. Either way, with Jerry’s still warm body nearby, the killer cleaned up the marbles. Missing a few. And then…the killer had grabbed the pumpkin, placed it over Jerry’s head, and left the scene. He hadn’t just left though, had he, he’d taken the delivery truck and left it somewhere.

  I explained my theory to Zee, and her brows rose. “It’s so weird. Why not put the body in the dumpster? Or drag him behind it? Why leave it out? Why your tools? Why the pumpkin?”

  I frowned. I had no idea. The fact that the body hadn’t been dumped pointed to Janice. Zee called Aaron and asked what had happened to the delivery truck while I struggled to find the shoes I could wear without having to bend over.

  When I did, I told Zee, “I’m pretty tired of not being able to see my feet.”

  She laughed at me as she said, “You’ll probably be even bigger next time. You’ll be like those sweet chubby little moms with a baby on each hip.”

  “Did you have to use the word chubby?”

  “Girl, it’s not the words you need to worry about, it’s the waffles.”

  “Thickish would have been fine.”

  “Thickish implies you were just muscular. You’ve got some real chub there.”

  “You’re a skin stretched over bones,” I told her. “Without an ounce of softness.”

  Zee laughed and said, “Cuddly as a cactus.”

  “And as kind,” I said. I scowled at Zee. It ruined everything when you were trying to insult someone back and they didn’t even car
e. “What happened to the truck?”

  “It was locked and parked in the Safeway lot.”

  Weird. The new day was as rainy and drizzly as the one before, but it was also the day before Halloween, and I was wearing my skeleton sweater and skull choker. The murder had ruined many things, but I was done being a hormonal mess. I was going to rise up, find this person, have a black waffle that Az had figured out and then I was going to give out so much candy the kids would be on a sugar high in a week.

  “I want to talk to Herman,” I said. “I need to understand the relationship between Janice and her brother better.”

  “Do you think it was Janice who killed her brother?”

  “I think she had a lot of reason to, a massive motive. I think she knew her brother for what he was and was exhausted by their mom constantly choosing him over her. I think that she’s smart to have done what was done, you could have easily figure out her brother’s route, and I think she would have been as enraged at what Jerry was doing with her mom’s money and Henry would be, if he knew. What if Janice found out that Jerry didn’t invest it all? So do I think Janice did it? I don’t want her to have, but I think she probably did.”

  Zee’s brows rose and she said, “Janice did hate him. I’m not sure I could do what she has done—stay involved in her family with the way her mom acts like it’s almost her fault that Jerry hurt her. Whatever he did—and it was bad—her mom doesn’t dispute it happened. There must be solid proof. Yet, somehow, Janice is at fault.”

  I refused to take Zee’s car even though she’d blocked me in. So she moved her car while I snuggled the dogs and then put Goliath in the backseat. I wasn’t going to risk my baby being hurt. It wasn’t just Simon who was feeling overprotective. We’d been afraid I wouldn’t be able to get pregnant. I was older for a first-time mom, and so many couples struggled with having trouble conceiving. The fact that I had felt like a miracle.

  I drove down the side of the mountain where Simon and I lived with Zee muttering machinations next to me. She wanted to get into trouble before my rational side re-employed.