The Pumpkin Thief: A Chloe Boston Mystery

by Melanie Jackson

  “Boston!” he shouted. “Come with me! Everyone else, stay calm!” And then he started up the hill.

  A blizzard would be envious of how cold the chief can sound when he’s upset. It was obvious that something was very wrong and my first thought was that maybe there was a fire. Dad might have thought that too because he was right beside me. Dad is a member of the auxiliary firefighters and has EMT training. Dad, Blue and I raced after the chief, pushing our way through the crowd. Dad was saying soothing things to everyone we passed, telling people not to panic and they calmed right down though they kept talking excitedly.

  Mr. Jackman joined us about half way up the hill. He is also a volunteer fireman as well as a Lit Wit. That night he was dressed as a clown.

  “God’s nightgown,” I breathed as we finally made it to the haunted house.

  Dad said something worse and I didn’t blame him.

  Officer Bill’s papiermache head was no longer on the body hanging from the tree, and I understood why the scarecrow had looked so very authentic when I passed it that afternoon. It wasn’t stuffed with straw; it held a real man. A real dead man.

  The chief was on his cell demanding that every officer be called in and for Bryce to get the crime kit and get out to the Burn’s house immediately.

  “He didn’t die from strangulation,” my dad said calmly, looking at the pale face. I think he was almost relieved to find a body and not a fire.

  “No distortion in the features,” Mr. Jackman agreed. He and Dad looked pretty silly standing there in their costumes staring at a corpse, but then I guess we all did. Except the chief.

  “Blue, guard the gate,” I said, signaling her to sit by the ticket-takers abandoned table. No one needed to guard the gate, but it gave her a plausible reason for being there.

  I want to state for the record, that I was not happy about there being a dead body at the haunted house. But I couldn’t help but be pleased that the chief had wanted me to come along to help. Most of the other police officers have no use for me and sneer at my wish to become a detective. One with a title. I already am a sleuth, but it would be nice to be official. I quest after the position like Cousin Althea quests after engagement rings and with as little success.

  “Boston, do you recognize this man?” the chief asked. I answered though it occurred to me he might be talking to my dad.

  “No. Maybe he came for the festival.” I looked at his manicured hands showing under the straw stuffed in his sleeves. There was a bit of blood on the left one. “He has money— not motor court material. Want me to call the Morningside Inn?”

  The chief blinked.

  “First go see if anyone is in the house. I don’t want anyone else blundering into the crime scene and for sure we don’t need any children seeing this. If you find them, guide them out the back, okay?”

  I nodded reluctantly. I didn’t really want to go into the house. It has always scared me. I got away from it as a kid and I have long suspected it wanted a grudge match.

  The chief turned to my father and Mr. Jackman. I heard him ask my father to go back down the hill and see if anyone knew who the dead man was and to also collect names of anyone who had been at the haunted house when the body was discovered. Mr. Jackson was sent to the corn maze to make sure it was empty.

  Something about the ground under the body made me stop and look around. I swear I wasn’t just eavesdropping.

  “Chief,” I said. “Look at Officer Bill.” I meant the head. The shadows were long and the lighting deliberately ghastly, but clearly there was a caramel apple stuck to Bill’s forehead. The apple had a large rotten spot.

  “Was it the apple that knocked the head down?” Dad asked. I knew he was talking to me.

  “Yes. It was probably a teenager— a boy— who threw the apple. It wouldn’t take much to knock it down. The head never did stay on the way it should. I think we weren’t supposed to find the body for a while.” The chief was giving me more odd looks, but Dad and Mr. Jackman just waited while I thought. “Talk to Randy Meyers.”

  “He’s the pitcher for The Prospectors varsity team, right?” Dad asked. “The boy has an arm on him.”

  “And he’s disrespectful enough to throw the apple,” Mr. Jackman added. “And pushy enough to be first in line for the haunted house.”

  “It probably doesn’t matter,” I said. “But just in case. And the dead guy is left handed.”

  I started again for the house but Dad stopped me once more.

  “Chloe, there’s no visible head trauma.” Dad asked, “Was it a gunshot?”

  “No, stab wound. Probably to the heart. And it didn’t happen right here. There would be at least a little blood. Real blood,” I added, looking at the various gory monsters posed around the hay bales. “Bill was on those bales over there earlier today. We should start looking there.”

  Dad said nothing else and neither did the chief, so I continued toward the house, not thrilled about going inside the haunted mansion alone, but grateful I hadn’t been sent into the corn maze. It wouldn’t do for the chief to find out just how big a chicken I really am.

  We have a few Federal-style McMansions and one or two questionable Greek Revival abodes in the new section of town. Downtown, everything is period Victorian or else bungalow. That makes the Burns’ mansion unique. Even before the high school drama department had run amok with black and red paint. I thought it looked horrible, but the city had claim to it because of the last owners dying with taxes due and they could do whatever they wanted with it, even make it a bigger eyesore than usual.

  Thick ivy covered the west wall. It smelled fusty and I was sure there were spiders in it. The leaves also made an unpleasant whispery noise as the wind tossed through them. The art department couldn’t improve on that so they had left it alone.

  I didn’t touch the gargoyle knocker since it was painted foam and just for show. The door was open anyway. I did pause just inside the threshold, both to listen for voices but also to take in the sights. It was not the way I remembered it. I told myself I was being sensibly cautious because there was a murderer on the loose, but I was pretty certain that our man was long gone. Even if he had lingered on site until the house opened, escaping with the panicked and costumed crowd made wonderful sense. But I was also remembering a morbid poem that my nasty Cousin Todd had read to me as a child: Open lock to the Dead Man's knock! Fly bolt, and bar, and band!—

  The lighting was suitably dim but adequate. The exterior was gothic revival but the interior was not. I wondered where they had stored the furniture. The house was full of antiques, though not true gothic furniture— probably too uncomfortable for day to day living. Perhaps everything was upstairs where it was safely away from the students’ red paint and the tourists’ sticky fingers.

  The house was suitably ghastly. The foyer’s red-flocked wall paper hung in shreds, obviously clawed off the walls by some giant beast and not drooping due to mundane water damage. Cobwebs dripped off of everything they could possibly hang from except the cracked mirror in the antique frame which I suspected had been made of distorted glass because one of my eyes was bugged out big and one was very small. ‘Blood’ dripped from the chandelier and pooled on the rug in an easily avoided puddle. It was gory, but illogical. How would blood get there? It wasn’t like you could have butchered anything hanging from the chandelier. It was too delicate.

  Still, though I knew it was paint and quite dry, I stepped around it. Nor did I touch anything with my hands. It seemed to me that a haunted house would be a fine place to murder someone. There would be zillions of finger prints and who would detect the extra blood? And you could even store the body unnoticed for hours, if you wanted. Just throw a sheet or mask over it and it became another anonymous corpse. Hang it in a tree and no one would get a good look at it. Maybe not for days since the weather was cold.

  “Hello,” I called. I kept my voice soft so it would be reassuring to any lost children. And so the monster lurking in the closet wouldn’t he
ar me. The house was too quiet. There would normally have been costumed drama students around playing monsters, guides and storytellers. There should have been kids gasping and shrieking.

  I noticed that the mansion’s gory decorations had been limited to what could be mended with a coat of paint or some new wallpaper. Claw marks would have been great around the door frame, but they had stopped with the wallpaper. Nor did they get paint on the marble floors. Instead there were non-period rugs everywhere. Some were even bathmats.

  The haunted house tour was designed to lead guests down an obvious path. The front parlor with its delicate stained glass windows was barricaded with a torn up settee adorned with more red paint. The room looked empty, but I leaned over the barricade to check the space beyond for scared people or even other bodies. There was nothing but a grandfather clock with the hands running rapidly backwards and a creepy portrait of a vampire with glowing red eyes hanging crooked on the wall— and more blood on the wallpaper though none on the portrait and floor. Clearly no one in the art department had ever taken a class in blood-spray patterns. Blood doesn’t avoid paintings and carpet when being sprayed from an artery. The silliness of it was making me feel better about being alone.

  A thick silk cord roped off the upstairs. I knew that I would have to check it eventually, but my first sweep was for stragglers, maybe kids frightened by the screaming who were too terrified to come out on their own.

  I stepped into the carpeted hall— more shredded wallpaper, more blood— and felt something shift beneath my foot. Toccata and Fugue in D minor underscored by snarling and screaming thundered at me from speakers shrouded by more cobwebs, and I realized I had stepped on a pressure plate and triggered the din. Bach would not have been amused, and so much for being quiet and not scaring anyone left in the house.

  The dining room was supposed to be elegant, I guess, and certainly there were goblets and candelabras on the table. But someone had gone a bit nuts with the fake dust and cobwebs. One could barely see the blood and eyeballs in the wine goblets. There was a serving platter with withered greens around an entrée of plastic skull. The potential for serving something really gory had been resisted. Someone had liberated the skeleton from the science room and set him up at the head of the table. He was wearing a noose like a tie. Under the present circumstances, it seemed in bad taste.

  The fake fire in the fireplace was a nice touch, if again nonsensical. Any place abandoned long enough for things to get that filthy would not still have a fire burning in the grate. I decided that next year I would screw up my courage and volunteer to help with the haunted house so it would be more logical.

  My amusement ended as I entered the master bedroom. The wall sconces held maybe twenty watt bulbs and were shrouded with dust and cobwebs, but there was enough light to still see clearly. There was plenty of fake blood and torn wallpaper, but there were some realistic splotches of rather rusty blood on the chaise lounge near the fireplace and one of the curtains had been ripped from the window and left in an inartistic pile. There was a hunting knife on the floor and a convenient wardrobe that could hold a body. Also there was a certain smell in the air— nothing too strong but quite unpleasant in the nostrils and in the imagination when you weren’t expecting it. It was important to let the tech people process the scene but I wanted very much to open the wardrobe door and look for blood stains inside. It took effort but I resisted temptation and the door remained properly closed.

  Until the wardrobe burst open and a figure in a black cloak and a goblin mask ran past me bellowing unintelligibly. After one gasp and a stumble against the wall— and I think I was entitled to a moment of fear— I gave chase. More pressure plates, more screaming and then we were out a side door.

  There was no garden out back, just a paved courtyard and a low fountain filled with dry leaves instead of water waiting to trip me. As I righted myself, the dark figure ran for a hedge at the edge of the patio, pushed through with suspicious ease, and took off into the corn maze.

  I said some really bad words in a really loud voice.

  “Boston?” It was the chief. He was pushing through some bushes and probably ruining his suit. That would make him cranky.

  “Out back! Murder happened in the first floor bedroom—a suspect has entered the maze!” And then I surprised myself. Though terrified and a lot smaller than the person I was chasing, I nevertheless ran for the place in the hedge where I had seen him— or her— disappear.

  “Boston!” The chief’s voice was closer. But Blue’s howling said she was closer still. I was going into the corn maze, but I wasn’t going alone. I thanked God for my dog beside me.

  Chapter 3

  There are worse places to pursue someone than a corn maze— through an alligator-infested swamp or quicksand, for instance— but I couldn’t think of them that night. That field of towering corn stalks was the scariest thing on the planet and I was in it.

  The desire to get out of the maze leant wings to my feet and following the suspect who seemed to know the way seemed only sensible. I was supposed to be chasing him anyway. But wings don’t help much in narrow, choking rows and I didn’t want Blue to hurt herself by running too fast.

  Ever been in a cornfield? At night? Outside sounds are deadened while all around you the dry crunch and whispers of the corn stalks grates against the ears. Things seem to snap and snarl all about you and it is impossible to believe that you are alone. The stalks will cut you just like paper and bare skin begins to itch and sting.

  The light was also bad. The exterior edges of the field were lit up brightly enough, but the klieg lamps did not penetrate beyond a few rows of corn. The maze paths would have been marked, but I hadn’t found one. I was running through virgin territory and wondering what flaw of mind and twist of spirit led to anyone inventing such a horrid entertainment.

  I was terrified of the corn. Of spiders. Of monsters with scythes. Of being lost in the field until I was nothing but bleaching bones that would be disked under by a tractor come spring. Of a possible murderer deciding to turn around and attack me in the increasing dark. Though the last one was a more reasonable possibility, it was actually the least of the terrors that stalked me.

  Blue, on the other hand, was having a grand time. Usually she is silent when we go for walks, but something about the dark and comparative wildness of the setting had her sending up joyous ululations and bouncing like a puppy. This made it easier for the chief to follow me. And it was his presence behind us and the thought of Mr. Jackman before us that kept me from utter panic.

  My craven heart was beating uncomfortably hard and the pounding was louder than the suspect’s wild thrashings. I faltered. I tripped. But the sight of what was doubtless a very frightened corn snake only inches from my nose had me on my feet and running in moments.

  It was another minute of terrified tramping before I realized that I couldn’t hear the suspect at all any more. I stopped cold and listened. Blue obligingly ended her lope and sank down on the ground. We were both breathing heavily, but I soon realized that I was hearing another person drawing in terrible sobbing breaths, and their obvious terror knocked the blind fear out of me.

  “Hello,” I called softly, using the voice I would with a stray dog or wary cat. I turned back over my shoulder and called softly: “Hold up, chief! I think it’s a kid and he’s scared to death.”

  The sounds of crashing stopped.

  “Blue— go slow,” I said. There was always the chance that Blue would frighten a child. She is a Rottweiler. But I was having a hard time judging direction in that horrible, oppressive place and knew that her nose was better than my ears. And since Blue loves people, she would probably take me directly to whoever was crying so piteously. Or to Mr. Jackman who would help me find whoever was crying.

  Blue got to her feet and began pushing crosswise through the corn rows. We were making a mess on the dried stalks and I was positive that I was getting spiders on me as I shoved them over, but I followed Blue unquestion
ingly. A minute later I found my cloaked goblin. The hood of the costume had fallen back and I saw spikes of familiar golden hair. The goblin was crouched low, weeping. His mask had fallen off.

  “Jack. Jacky MacKay,” I said softly. “It’s okay. It’s me, Chloe, and my dog Blue.”

  The sobbing was swallowed in one or two gulps and a terrified face looked up at me. It was red and rather embryonic. One hand covered his scratched cheek, the other was carried awkwardly because the arm was broken and in a sling. Jacky MacKay is ‘challenged’. He came into the world just shy of the six months where babies are typically saved these days and was a living testimonial to the wonders of modern medicine. He was also what many people call ‘simple’.

  Blue went over and started laving the boy’s face. I say ‘boy’ because though Jacky is physically seventeen, his demeanor is more that of a backward five year old. Jacky hugged Blue for a moment with his good arm and then said: “Hi, Chloe.”

  “Did I scare you in the house?” I asked, squatting down. I tasted salt on my lip before I felt the sting and realized I was bleeding. I must have bitten myself when I fell. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “You were like a black ghost. You chased me,” Jacky said. And I realized that though ninety-nine point nine percent of the world would never be afraid of me under any circumstances that, to Jacky, I might very well have looked frightening in the dim light with a billowing black cloak that made me look rather larger than I am.

  “I’m sorry. You sure scared me too. I guess we looked pretty silly running around like that.” This got a watery chuckle.

  “Silly,” he agreed. “I don’t want to play hide and seek anymore.”

  “Is that what you were doing? Playing hide and seek with someone?”