Corpse on the Cob

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  I tried to dig into my brain for my last mental image of my mother. As I recall, she was a bit taller than me and about sixty to seventy pounds lighter. Her hair was also similar to mine, a medium brown, but her eyes were different. I had green eyes, like my father. My mother’s eyes were brown. But thirty years could have shortened her and added pounds. And hair color was always a wild card. It could be white, gray, or dyed any number of colors by now. I would just have to scrutinize all faces within a certain age group and hope Mrs. Rielley was right, that I did look like Grace Littlejohn. Surely I’d be able to recognize my own face in a crowd.

  Later, when the police questioned all of us who were in the maze, I felt like I was retelling a dream. The whole thing was a hazy occurrence stuck on replay in my brain. I was in the maze, bumping through the closely planted rows over a dirt path, looking for clues to the riddle that was part of the maze’s game. The clues were puzzle stations set up in many of the tiny clearings and along larger aisles. If you solved the puzzle, it gave you a clue to plug into the riddle sheet they gave you when you entered the maze. If you got them all correct, you won a pumpkin. I didn’t care about the pumpkin, but I do like puzzles and was enjoying the novelty of my first corn maze. It also kept my brain from being trapped in a neurotic spooling loop about my mother.

  When I didn’t locate Grace Littlejohn among the food booths, I’d decided to check out the maze before the clouds overhead did more than threaten—and before I ate three or four more deep-fried Twinkies. One of the greasy, sweet, and yummy concoctions had been enough. Returning to my car, I stashed my bulky bag in the trunk and walked down to the corn maze. After taking in the maze, I figured I would do another turn through the food section, providing I hadn’t successfully talked myself out of it.

  When I first entered the maze, an attendant gave me the riddle sheet and a tall, skinny pole with a stiff numbered pennant attached to the top. The teenage girl who got me started explained that the flag helped control how many people were in the maze at one time and also served to locate folks who might get lost. If I got lost or tired and wanted someone to help me out of the maze, the pretty, freckle-faced girl advised with a toothy smile, all I had to do was raise the flag and start waving it above the corn. A spotter posted on a wooden tower just above the field would see it and send help. If the low number on my flag was any indication, the maze wasn’t very busy yet.

  As I explained to the police, I was stopped in a small cleared circle, trying to solve one of the puzzles, when I heard screams nearby. As quickly as possible, I dashed through the maze, taking a zigzag path towards the noise. I wasn’t the first to arrive. Ahead of me was a woman with a boy and a young couple. I’d met the couple at breakfast that morning at the B & B. Their names were Ollie and Abby. Like me, they were from California. The two of them were taking an uncharted road trip through New England.

  Ollie was tall and slim. He wore wire-frame glasses, khaki shorts, and a Heroes tee shirt. Abby was shorter but just as slim. She was dressed in denim shorts and a bright blue tee shirt. On her head was a UCLA cap with her long brown hair pulled through the back. She was burrowed into Ollie’s side, crying, as he put a call through to 911 on his cell phone.

  The woman with the boy had been the one who’d screamed. And she was still screaming. The boy, who looked to be around twelve years old, resembled a startled meercat as he stood at attention and stared with wide eyes into a small patch of crushed cornstalks. It was here, among flattened cornstalks, that a body lay on its back with a woman hovering over it.

  I turned the kid away from the macabre scene. “Here,” I said, thrusting my flagpole into his hands, “lift this up and wave it around really fast. That will bring help.” After a slight hesitation, he grabbed the pole and did as I asked, though he seemed listless about the task.

  I turned to the woman. “This your son?” She was white as a sheet.

  “Nephew. I have to get him out of here.” Her voice rose with each word into a building shriek.

  “Help should be here soon,” I told her, trying to calm her down.

  Indeed, people were heading towards us. The corn bordering the aisle gave way to the crush of a dozen looky-loos, all with their own flags. The stalks of corn bent with a loud rustling and cracking as the arteries of the maze filled with people pushing forward to get a gander at what was causing the fuss.

  The maze had opened at noon. The girl at the entrance had said people usually visited the maze after they took in the fair, leaving the earlier hours less crowded. By late afternoon, she’d said, there would be people waiting for their turns through the field. Considering there was a corpse in the corn, I was very glad the maze was sparsely populated. I turned from the crowd and faced the problem at hand.

  The murder weapon was obvious. A flagpole, broken in half, had skewered the man like a hunk of shish kebob. A bright red flag bearing the number one was stuck into his chest and stood straight up as if heralding the first hole on a golf course. Kneeling beside the man was an elderly woman. It didn’t take me long to place where I’d last seen her. As soon as recognition set in, my knees wobbled and the deep-fried Twinkie and corn dog in my gut did synchronized flip-flops.

  I moved closer.

  My eyes bugged out of my head as my dry mouth tried to wrap itself around my next word, a word as uncomfortable as chewing nails. “Mom?”

  Even above the pandemonium, the woman heard my voice. She looked up. When she did, it was her turn to go bug-eyed and pale. She stared at me as if I were a ghost, totally forgetting that a dead man was stretched out in front of her, and his blood was on her hands. Forgetting, too, that we were surrounded by acres of tall, claustrophobic corn on a humid September day in rural Massachusetts. My long-lost mother looked at me as if I were something from another world—something fearful that had come to snatch her soul.

  Maybe I was.

  And maybe being a corpse magnet is genetic.

  Ollie stepped forward with caution and checked the speared body for life. After placing his hand against the victim’s neck, he shook his head slowly at the small crowd and returned to Abby’s side. She leaned once again into his embrace and turned her head away from the scene.

  Although she’d made no move towards Ollie as he checked the body, no one approached my mother. Unsure of whether or not she was the killer or just someone who had happened upon the body amongst the corn, everyone played it safe. Even I didn’t move any closer than where I was at the front of the pack, but my inertia wasn’t out of fear of harm, it was out of shock. I had planned on meeting my mother quietly, hoping to stem the surprise to both of us with some dignity.

  Well, that ship had sailed.

  I bit the inside of my lower lip. Greg was right: I should have called ahead.

  A siren could be heard in the distance, its whine gaining in intensity like a hurricane hitting land as it got closer to the farm. Then it stopped short, like a voice cut off in mid-sentence. Soon authorities pushed through the crowd, ordering people to make room.

  “Mom?”

  This time, the word didn’t come from me.

  “Greg, are you sitting down?”

  “I’m always sitting down.” He laughed.

  I was back in my room at the Maple Tree Bed and Breakfast, sitting in a comfortable reading chair in a corner by an open window. There were two chairs, perfect for a little quiet time for a visiting couple.

  From my second-story room, I had a lovely view of a meadow bisected by a meandering country road. Lining the road and dotting the landscape were beautiful trees, their green leaves tinged with red, orange, and gold. In a few weeks, they would be ablaze with full-blown fall colors. I had been sitting there quite a while, cell phone in hand, dreading making the call I knew I had to make. The sooner the better, I told myself. Like yanking a Band-Aid off a boo-boo, it would be unpleasant but unavoidable, so just get on with it.

  It had been a few hours since I’d found my mother perched over a dead body in the corn maze. Once
the authorities arrived, we’d been herded out of the maze and into an area containing a half dozen or so picnic tables. As soon as other officers arrived, we were efficiently divided up and our statements taken. Because we were the first to stumble across the murder scene, they held me, along with the couple from California and the young woman and her nephew, the longest.

  The picnic tables were under a tent, and good thing. Halfway through giving my statement for the second time, it started to rain. It wasn’t a cool, refreshing rain, but a short shower that only succeeded in making everything wet and the air thicker and stickier. I wasn’t used to this type of humidity. My clothing stuck to me, and my hair was limp and lifeless. Between the cloying air and the stress of seeing my mother, not to mention a dead man, I felt like I was breathing inside a balloon. The young officer taking my statement noticed my distress and brought me a cool drink.

  Besides the body, Grace Littlejohn was the last one brought out of the maze. Guiding her was the man who’d called her Mom. He was tall, slim, and blond, probably in his mid-thirties. He wore a police uniform. While in the maze, I’d looked him over and spotted a name tag that read Littlejohn.

  My mother was thicker in build than I remembered. Her hair was white, worn short with a tight perm. She was dressed in navy blue slacks and a pale green tee shirt embroidered with small blue flowers. Blood stained the front of her shirt.

  A couple of news trucks had appeared on the scene. Not a swarm like I was used to seeing in California, but enough to let me know that the murder was huge local news. Two reporters with microphones shouted questions at my mother and the cop as they passed. Officer Littlejohn whispered something into my mother’s ear. She shifted her head down, away from the news cameras and reporters, as she was taken from the maze directly to a waiting police car. She was not handcuffed. Along the way, she passed those of us being questioned at the picnic tables. Only when she was near me did she look up. Her eyes latched onto my own and held, but she made no move to initiate further contact. I was sure she knew who I was, but circumstances were hardly conducive to a family reunion.

  A few steps behind my mother was another cop escorting a young man. He was cuffed. He was tall and lanky and looked like he was in his late teens or early twenties. He wore the same shirts as the other kids who worked the maze—tee shirts printed with the farm name. His head lolled on his long neck and he displayed a goofy grin as he scuffled to another waiting police car. I didn’t recall seeing him before, either in the maze or before I entered it. But being cuffed as he was made me think he was a suspect in the killing.

  “What’s up, sweetheart? Didn’t the meeting go well?”

  I struggled to find the right words to say. Greg was going to hit the roof when he found out I’d stumbled upon another body.

  “Oh, don’t tell me,” he continued, his voice sounding disappointed. “Grace Littlejohn isn’t your mother after all. The trip was just a wild goose chase.”

  I wish.

  I cleared my throat. “No, Grace Littlejohn is definitely my mother. I recognized her right away.”

  “Did you speak with her?”

  “Yes.” One word constitutes speaking, doesn’t it? I mean, he didn’t ask me to quantify my speech.

  When I paused again, Greg cut to the chase. “Just spill it, Odelia. I know you too well. Whenever you have something unsavory to say, you either babble uncontrollably about nothing or clam up. There’s no middle of the road with you. Just tell me what happened.”

  “Okay, Greg, here’s the thing.”

  I took a deep breath of humid New England air through the open window. It smelled fresh and earthy.

  “I did find my mother. I did speak to her, and she saw and heard me. She even recognized me.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “Um, nothing. It was an inconvenient time for her.”

  “Quit stalling, Odelia. You know it drives me nuts.”

  “Okay.” I took another deep breath and shut my eyes tight, as if I were heading into a tunnel on a scary amusement ride. “At the time I found her, she was hovering over a … um … a…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  After a very long stretch of silence, Greg started to talk in a steady, firm voice—the voice he uses when he’s desperately fighting to maintain control. “Odelia Grey Stevens, please tell me the next words you’re about to say are not dead body.”

  I said nothing.

  “Damn it, Odelia. If this is a joke, I am not amused.”

  “It’s no joke, Greg.” He wasn’t the only one getting hot under the collar. “And don’t get mad at me. It’s not like I arranged the whole situation just to annoy you. Believe me, if I’d known this was going to happen, I’d have stayed in California. In fact, it wasn’t even my idea to come here in the first place, was it?” I took a deep breath. “And don’t you even dare bring up the fact that I should’ve called first.”

  There was another long pause while the two of us retired to our respective emotional corners. Greg spoke first.

  “Tell me what happened. And don’t spare the details.”

  I brought Greg up to speed on everything, including the fact that someone else, one of the police officers, had called Grace Littlejohn Mom.

  “Where are you now?”

  “At the B & B.”

  “Why does this keep happening to you, Odelia?”

  “Wish I knew. Maybe it’s some curse we can have exorcised when I get home.”

  We fell into another uncomfortable silence, and once again Greg was the one to speak first.

  “I want you on a plane home as soon as possible, Odelia. I don’t want you mixed up in anything where I can’t protect you.”

  “I’m not mixed up in anything, Greg. But I do need to make sure my mother is all right. Now that I’ve found her, it hardly seems right to just dump everything and run home, especially since she knows I’m here.”

  “This morning you were begging to come home.”

  “This morning I hadn’t seen my mother bent over a body with blood on her hands.”

  “Do you think she killed him?”

  I was about to say I didn’t know but upgraded it after a quick spin through my brain. “No, I don’t. At least not on her own. Since I don’t know my mother very well, I can’t speak for her mindset, but I doubt an elderly woman could have overpowered and killed a man that way. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old either. It took strength to do that. Then there’s also the guy they took away in cuffs. He seems to be the most likely candidate.”

  “So you think Grace just stumbled across the body? Hmm, maybe it’s a family trait.” His sarcasm was crystal clear.

  “Maybe. Except one thing is bothering me. My mother was supposed to be managing the food booths across the street from the corn field. It was lunchtime, and the food booths were busy. What was she doing wandering the maze when she was needed at the booths?”

  “You’re getting involved, Odelia. Just put your brain in park and get your backside on a plane home. Let your brother handle this.”

  My brother? Like a karate kick to my head, the implications of that officer calling Grace Littlejohn Mom hit me. If he was her son, then I had a brother—a brother I knew nothing about. Did he know about me?

  “I can’t, Greg. Not now. Please understand. What if it had been your mother?”

  Greg let out a sharp bark of a laugh. “You really think my mother would even go into a corn field?”

  Greg’s mother, Renee Stevens, was the picture of gracious living. Lovely, relaxed, and always a lady, she never had a hair out of place, not even during harried holiday dinners. Greg’s father, Ronald, doted on her, as did her three children. But she also had a core of steel and a generous heart that I’d seen in few others. Renee had been her son’s biggest champion and strongest advocate following the tragic accident that had put him in a wheelchair when he was just thirteen. And it had been Renee who’d drummed into Greg’s head that he could do and be anything he wanted in life, wh
eelchair or no wheelchair.

  Renee Stevens would never hike through a corn field or tackle a corn maze by choice, but put a loved one in trouble in the middle of it and she would take a machete to every stalk until she reached them. I loved my mother-in-law to pieces.

  “Forget the corn maze, Greg. But if your mother were in trouble, wouldn’t you want to help?”

  “Of course I would, but when you help, you damn near get yourself killed.” He paused long enough for me to almost hear the wheels grinding in that handsome head of his. “Okay, Odelia, if you won’t come home, then I’m coming out there.”

  “There’s no need, Greg. And you’re so busy this weekend at the shop.” Through the phone, I heard the clickety-clack of a keyboard being punched.

  “There’s a nonstop redeye into Boston. I can take care of work and then grab that.”

  “No, Greg. I’m fine.” But he wasn’t listening.

  “Not as convenient as Hartford, but at least it’s nonstop.”

  “Don’t come, Greg.”

  “Could you find your way to Logan Airport?”

  “I can find my way anywhere except out of this loopy conversation.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “There is no need for you to come here, Greg. I’m going to see my mother, check in with my newfound brother, and see what’s going on. I’ll be back in California Monday night, as planned.”

  There were several deep sighs on the other end. I knew that sound. It was the sound of surrender. The sound of Greg understanding that I wasn’t going to budge on the topic.

  “Okay,” he finally said, “stay if you like. Just be on that plane heading home on Monday and call me regularly. And let the police handle the murder investigation. Just meet and visit with your mother. Make sure she’s okay, but that’s it. And if you get the urge to come home early, give in to it. You understand?”

  It was agreed that I would continue with my plan to meet my mother. Since I also wanted to meet Officer Littlejohn, I could kill two birds with one stone and also find out about her involvement in the murder. But, I assured Greg, that would be it. I’d always wanted a bigger family, body or no body gumming up the works. He understood that.