The Pumpkin Muffin Murder

by Livia J. Washburn

  “You ought to leave her alone,” Carolyn said. “She’s suffered a terrible shock.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Largo said, “but we still have to question her.”

  “Question me?” Dana repeated. “Why do you need to question me?” Her voice rose, became more shrill. “You need to be trying to find out what happened to Logan!”

  “That’s what we’re doing, ma’am.” Detective Largo gestured to a couple of uniformed officers who stood nearby. “That’s why you need to come with me, so I can talk to you about it.”

  Dana shook her head. “But I don’t know anything. He . . . he never came home last night. I was so worried. I was afraid something had happened to him, and . . . and it has.” Her hands came up and covered her face. “He’s dead!”

  The words came out of her in a wail. She shook from the depth of the terrible emotions coursing through her. Detective Largo jerked her hand at the cops, and they hurried forward and reached for Dana. Before they could take hold of her, though, she crumpled. She hit the ground hard and sprawled there, senseless.

  “Oh, dear Lord!” Carolyn said. She started to kneel next to Dana, but Detective Largo got in her way.

  “Everyone stay back!” the detective snapped.

  “But she fainted! She may be hurt.”

  Largo ignored Carolyn’s protests. She called, “Chief, we need another ambulance.” Whitmire started talking emphatically into his radio.

  Phyllis, Carolyn, and Sam couldn’t do anything but stand there, shocked at this sudden turn of events. Phyllis wasn’t too shocked, though, because she had been able to see that Dana was on the verge of collapse ever since the discovery of Logan’s body. At some level, Dana must have realized that the police considered her a suspect in his death, if it turned out that he had died from foul play. The burden of that knowledge, along with everything else, had been too much for her to bear any longer.

  “I hope you’re satisfied with yourself,” Carolyn said in scathing tones to Detective Largo.

  “I’ll be satisfied when I know for sure what happened here, Mrs. Wilbarger,” the detective replied. “But not until then.”

  Dana’s collapse and the arrival a few minutes later of another ambulance with screaming siren got the attention of everyone in the park again. Phyllis wasn’t sure the Harvest Festival could continue after this second disruption. She hoped it would, though, because despite everything else, it was still important to collect as much food as possible for the people who needed it. Hard though it was to believe after everything that had happened, it wasn’t quite noon yet. The festival still had a lot of hours to run, and a lot more food could be collected in that time. Things would settle down once the police were through here, she told herself.

  The EMTs with this ambulance were able to revive Dana after checking her out and making sure her vital signs were stable. “Take her to the hospital,” Chief Whitmire ordered. He added to Detective Largo, “You go with them, and don’t let her out of your sight. As soon as a doctor gives the okay, go ahead and question her.”

  “Right, Chief.”

  From the stony look on the detective’s face, Phyllis knew that Largo was determined to make up for any perceived shortcomings in her earlier questioning. Dana was going to be in for a rough time of it. She couldn’t expect much sympathy from Isabel Largo.

  All of which was ridiculous, Phyllis thought, because they didn’t even know for sure that Logan Powell had been murdered. The cause of death was still up in the air. But just in case it turned out that someone had deliberately caused it, the police didn’t want to let that slip past them. The problem for Phyllis was that she didn’t believe Dana could have done anything to harm her husband, or anyone else, for that matter.

  She hadn’t believed that about some other murderers she had encountered, she reminded herself. But logic was one thing, and belief something else entirely.

  The ambulance crew insisted on putting Dana on a gurney and wheeling her out of the park. She didn’t protest. She wore a stunned, almost uncomprehending look now, as if she could no longer quite grasp what was happening to her. Phyllis’s heart went out to her, and as the siren receded in the distance as it headed toward the hospital, she couldn’t help but think how much it sounded like the wail of a dispossessed soul.

  Chapter 15

  Detective Largo followed the ambulance, while Chief Whitmire stayed at the park to continue supervising the investigation there. He took over the questioning of the other witnesses, primarily Carolyn’s fellow judges in the cooking contest, who had been at the other end of the dogtrot when Logan’s body was discovered. Phyllis didn’t imagine any of them would be able to tell the chief anything he didn’t already know.

  The questioning did clear up the problem of what to do about the baked goods that had been entered in the contest, though. Phyllis had a feeling that Whitmire had considered impounding all of them as possible evidence, since the cause of Logan’s death was still unknown, but after talking to Dolly Williamson and the other judges, all of whom confirmed that the entries had been brought to the park that morning, after Logan’s body was dressed in the scarecrow costume and placed on the hay bale, the chief decided to allow the contestants to claim their entries.

  Sam hung on to the two containers of pumpkin muffins for Phyllis. “Would’ve been a dang shame to have all those goodies go to waste,” he said as he gave the top container an affectionate pat. “At least this way folks will get to eat them.”

  “If anyone wants food that was sitting in the same place where a corpse was discovered,” Carolyn said.

  “Well, it looked like it was all sealed up good,” Sam pointed out.

  Finally all the photographs had been taken and the entire dogtrot, as well as the surrounding area, had been combed for evidence by the forensics team. Phyllis thought it was unlikely they had found anything important. Even though the festival had been going on for less than two hours when Logan’s body was found, scores of people had already trampled all over the place, destroying any potential evidence.

  Phyllis wondered whether the person who had put him on the bale of hay had been counting on that happening.

  Then she thought that she was getting ahead of herself. Again, it was hard to ascribe motives to a murderer when she didn’t even know that a murder had taken place.

  Chief Whitmire issued orders for the crime-scene tape to be taken down. He came over to Phyllis and the others and said, “You folks can go home, or stay and enjoy the rest of the festival—whatever you want. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  “You’re going to let the festival continue as planned?” Phyllis asked.

  The chief shrugged. “It’s been going on all day so far. No reason to stop it now. And it’s for a good cause, after all.”

  Phyllis couldn’t argue with that. Once all the crime-scene tape was down, another local band began playing on the temporary bandstand in front of the other log cabin. People still thronged the park, enjoying the beautiful weather of this crisp autumn day. The ones who were just now arriving might not even know that a body had been found here earlier, although they would probably hear the gossip about it if they were here for very long. Phyllis heard quite a few people talking about the incident as she and Sam and Carolyn walked away from the log cabin.

  A minute later, they spotted Eve and Bobby in front of them. Bobby was eating a corn dog and looked like he was really enjoying it. When he saw Phyllis, he ran toward her, grinning as he called, “Gran’mama!”

  “Slow down, Bobby,” she told him. “You know it’s not safe to run while you’re holding a stick, even if there is part of a corn dog still on it.”

  “That reminds me,” Sam said. “I’m a little hungry.”

  “You’ve got the punkin muffins!” Bobby said. “Do we get to eat ’em after all?”

  “I suppose so,” Phyllis told him. “If you want them.”

  Bobby licked his lips. “What do you think?”

  The little boy’s enthusiasm
brought a smile to Phyllis’s lips. It was very welcome after the grim events of the past couple of hours, too.

  “We’ll take the muffins home and have them there later,” she said. “Right now, why don’t you show us where you got that corn dog?”

  Sam said, “That’s what I was just about to suggest.”

  While they followed Bobby toward the booth where the corn dogs were being sold, Eve dropped back behind with Phyllis and said quietly, “I was trying to keep an eye on what was going on while keeping Bobby away from it. Did you really find Logan Powell’s body?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “How terrible! Poor Dana must be devastated. Didn’t I see them taking her away in an ambulance? Did she faint?”

  Phyllis nodded. “But only after the police started talking about questioning her. I guess that pushed her over the edge.”

  “Questioning . . . ,” Eve repeated. Her eyebrows rose. “You don’t mean they think she had something to do with her husband’s death, do you? Seriously?”

  “It looked pretty serious to me,” Phyllis said. “I’m not convinced, though. For one thing, we don’t know how Logan died. It might have been natural causes.”

  “But then why was he dressed like a scarecrow?”

  That was the question everyone kept coming back to, Phyllis thought. And it still didn’t have an answer.

  “I’m sure all the facts will come out eventually,” she said, knowing even as she spoke that the comment was pretty lame.

  “You’re going to find out what happened, aren’t you?” Eve asked.

  “I don’t see how, unless I read it in the paper or see it on the news like anyone else.”

  Eve gave Phyllis a long, skeptical look. “All those murders you’ve solved, and you’re not even the least bit curious about what happened here?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m as curious as anybody else. But I’m not a detective, Eve. I never have been. I’m a retired schoolteacher.”

  “I’d say that anyone who solves crimes is a detective, even a retired schoolteacher,” Eve insisted. “I know that if I was ever in trouble with the law, Phyllis, I’d want you on the case.”

  That sounded crazy to Phyllis, but she didn’t say so.

  They reached the corn dog booth and had lunch there, then spent the next couple of hours taking in all the other attractions at the festival. By the middle of the afternoon, Bobby was obviously exhausted.

  “I think we’ve seen everything there is to see,” Phyllis told him. “Are you ready to go home, Bobby?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Can I have a punkin muffin when we get there?”

  “I don’t see why not.” She had already let him have way too much sugar since he’d been staying with her, Phyllis thought . . . so a little more probably wouldn’t do any harm.

  The hay bale was still sitting in the dogtrot, she noticed as they walked past the cabin. The sight of it made her frown as she thought of something.

  “Sam, would you mind taking Bobby and Eve back to the house?” she asked him. “Eve still has my keys and can get Bobby’s booster seat. Be sure and put it in the backseat of the cab. I have another set of keys in my purse that I can use. Carolyn and I have something we need to do.”

  “We do?” Carolyn said.

  Phyllis nodded. “Yes, we do.”

  “Sure, I don’t mind,” Sam said. He handed the muffin containers to Bobby. “You can carry these. Unless you’d rather drive the pickup, in which case I’ll hang on to ’em.”

  Bobby giggled. “No, I’ll take ’em.”

  “We’ll be there in just a little while,” Phyllis said.

  She and Carolyn waited until the other three were gone; then Carolyn said, “What in the world is this all about? It’s been a long, hard day, Phyllis.”

  “I know, but I need to pick your brain. We put out all the scarecrows yesterday, right?”

  Carolyn nodded. “That’s right.”

  “I think I remember where all the hay bales were for the ones I put out. Do you recall where the others were?”

  Carolyn frowned as she thought about the question. “Maybe,” she said. “Why?”

  “The bale where Logan was sitting is still in the dogtrot. That means it’s not where it was when one of us put a scarecrow on it yesterday.”

  Understanding dawned on Carolyn’s face. “You want to figure out which bale it is.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why is that important?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not. But I’m curious, and I’d like to know.”

  Carolyn put her hands on her hips and peered around the park. “Hay bales are heavy,” she said. “You’d think that whoever dragged it into the dogtrot, whether it was Logan or someone else, wouldn’t have wanted to lug it too far.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Phyllis agreed with a nod. “Let’s start with the ones that are closest to the cabin.”

  It didn’t take them long. The ground sloped slightly from the parking lot down to the lake, and one of the scarecrows had been placed about halfway between the cabins and the lot, next to one of the paths that led through the park. There was a clump of yucca plants on the other side of the path, surrounded by a ring of rocks.

  “I know there was one right here,” Carolyn declared as she pointed at the now-empty spot. “The bale was sitting there, and I set the first scarecrow I carried into the park on it. I remember it distinctly.”

  Now that Carolyn had pointed it out, Phyllis remembered seeing the scarecrow and the bale of hay as she entered the park the day before. “Then it must have been this bale that wound up down there in the dogtrot,” she said. “We should check the others, though, just to make sure.”

  That took a little longer because of the crowd that had filled the park, but within fifteen minutes they had accounted for the other eleven bales of hay. Each bale was in its proper place.

  Phyllis and Carolyn headed back to the spot where the hay bale had been moved. “All right, we’re sure,” Carolyn said. “What does that tell us?”

  Phyllis thought hard, trying to figure out why her instincts told her this could be important. After a moment, something came to her.

  “The stake,” she said.

  “What stake?”

  “The one that was supposed to hold the scarecrow up. All the others have a stake down the back of the overalls that was pushed into the hay to keep it in place. Where’s the stake from this scarecrow and this bale?”

  Carolyn shook her head. “I don’t know. Whoever moved the bale and the scarecrow must have pulled it out, though. Otherwise they couldn’t have put those clothes on Logan.”

  “And even if he did it himself, he still would have had to pull the stake out first,” Phyllis said. “So where is it?”

  She started to look around. The object of her search was just a simple piece of wood, a section of a one-by-two board about three feet long, with one end cut at angles so that it formed a sharp point.

  Careful. You could kill a guy with that thing.

  She seemed to hear Logan Powell’s voice telling her the same thing he had said to her the day before. He’d been right, too. The stake was sharp enough that someone with enough strength could drive it into a body, yet small enough that it wouldn’t leave a very big wound. If that wound was in the right place, it might not even bleed much. If Logan had been murdered, it was possible that the missing stake was the murder weapon.

  But in that case, wouldn’t the killer have taken it away? Even if the stake had been discarded somewhere here in the park, somebody else could have picked it up and carried it off without having any idea that it had been used to end someone’s life. Phyllis knew that finding it was a long shot. . . .

  Those thoughts were going through Phyllis’s head when her gaze slid over the clump of yuccas on the other side of the path, then jerked back suddenly to the long-leafed plants. She stepped closer to them and bent over.

  “Be careful, Phyllis,” Carolyn urged. “Do you
see something over there?”

  “Yes,” Phyllis said. The stake was there, lying on the ground, nestled in the middle of the plants, almost invisible if a person wasn’t looking for it. No one would be likely to stumble over it, either.

  Phyllis took her phone out of her purse.

  “What are you doing?” Carolyn asked.

  “Calling the police. They have some more evidence to come and collect.”

  Chapter 16

  The 911 operator Phyllis talked to instructed her to stay right where she was. That was fine, because Phyllis didn’t intend to budge from the spot until the stake she had found was in the custody of the police. She didn’t know if it was important evidence or not, but it certainly could be. She wondered if it was possible to get fingerprints off a piece of wood.

  Carolyn offered to stay with her until the police arrived. “I don’t think anyone is going to go wandering out into those plants,” Carolyn said as she crossed her arms and planted herself beside the path, “but we’ll guard it just to make sure.”

  That sounded like a good idea to Phyllis. She took up her position next to them.

  They didn’t have to wait very long before a police van pulled up in the parking lot. Somewhat to Phyllis’s surprise, an unmarked car stopped behind it, and Chief Whitmire got out. Whitmire followed the two officers in Crime Scene Wind-breakers who came down the path.

  “What is it you’ve found, Mrs. Newsom?” the chief asked as he came up to Phyllis.

  She pointed into the clump of yuccas. “Do you see that wooden stake, Chief?”

  Whitmire leaned toward the plants and looked at the almost-hidden stake. “Yeah,” he said. “What about it?”

  “I’m reasonably sure it was used to hold up the scarecrow that should have been sitting on that bale of hay instead of Logan Powell.”

  Quickly, Phyllis explained how the scarecrows had been set up and how she and Carolyn had used a process of elimination to determine which of the bales was now sitting inside the dogtrot.

  “I just got to thinking about that and wondered which bale it was,” she said. “Then I asked myself what had happened to the stake. I noticed that it wasn’t there when Carolyn and I approached the scarecrow in the dogtrot this morning, but then, what with finding Logan’s body and all, I didn’t think about it again until just a little while ago.”