Four Seasons of Mystery

by Karen MacInerney

  I stifled a groan at the thought of rolling out the dough for all those lattice-topped pies. And the memory of half the island regurgitating them on my lawn. “Fine,” I said, “if nobody else will step up to the plate.”

  “I knew you'd say yes,” Charlene said. “You always do.”

  “It's my Achilles heel,” I said. “But next year? I'm making cobbler.”

  Double-Berry Lemon Muffins

  Ingredients

  1/ 2 cup lemon yogurt

  3 tablespoons vegetable oil

  1 tablespoon lemon juice

  1 egg

  1/ 2 teaspoon lemon extract (optional)

  1 1/ 2 cups all-purpose flour

  3/ 4 cup white sugar

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  1/ 4 teaspoon salt

  1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

  1/ 2 cup raspberries

  1/ 2 cup blueberries

  2 tablespoons coarse sugar

  Directions

  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease or line 12-muffin pan with muffin cups.

  In a large bowl, mix together the lemon yogurt, oil, lemon juice, eggs, and lemon extract.

  In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, 3/ 4 cup sugar, baking powder, salt, and lemon zest.

  Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and mix until just blended (lumps are good). Gently stir in the berries.

  Spoon batter evenly into the prepared muffin cups and sprinkle coarse sugar over the tops.

  Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the top springs back when lightly touched. Cool muffins in the pan on a wire rack.

  Pumpkin Pied

  Pumpkin Pied

  “Have you heard about the new ghost?”

  Charlene Kean sat at my big pine farm table, sipping a cup of the spiced coffee I’d made for us as I stirred a bit of lemon zest into a bowl of pumpkin pie filling. She’d taken the afternoon off from her duties as Cranberry Island’s postmistress and storekeeper and was keeping me company as I worked on a new recipe for Turtle Pumpkin Pie, which I was hoping to enter into the pie contest at the upcoming Harvest Festival. The warm yellow kitchen of the Gray Whale Inn was filled with the autumnal scents of nutmeg and cloves, and the maple tree outside my kitchen window blazed red in the afternoon light. It was another magical October day at the Gray Whale Inn.

  “What ghost?” My college roommate Lucy, who was visiting from Texas, walked into the kitchen as I gave the filling a last stir and poured it into the pie shell, I’d made earlier. She hung up her jacket on the peg and sat down next to Charlene. Her long brown hair was pulled up into a ponytail; despite a few strands of silver, she hardly looked older than she did when we were at school together.

  “Hey, Lucy. How was your walk?” I asked. “Marvelous,” she said. She smiled; her eyes bright.

  “It’s so good to be out of Houston, where it’s still 1,000 degrees.” She turned to Charlene. “I want to hear about the ghost!”

  “I’m waiting to hear, too.” I knew there was a resident ghost at the inn, although I hadn’t encountered her for years, and there had been rumors of a ghost ship just offshore, but I hadn’t heard about this one. “You don’t think somebody’s just been reading too many scary stories? It’s almost Halloween.”

  “Even Eleazer told me he saw it,” Charlene said, her mascaraed eyes wide. “By the field where the harvest festival is.”

  “Eli? That’s not a big surprise. He believes in ghosts,” I said.

  “He’s got good reason to,” Charlene said. “He’s seen a few in his day.”

  I had too, come to think of it—or at least had experiences I couldn’t explain any other way.

  Goosebumps rose on my arms as I thought of some of the things I’d seen since moving to the island. I slid the pie into the oven and set the timer, then reached for a bag of pecans. “Where is this new ghost hanging out?”

  “It’s right near the harvest festival, actually—in the woods by the corn maze,” Charlene said, sipping her coffee. “There’s a rumor that there’s an old Indian burial ground there.”

  “I heard something about that. Didn’t someone find a shell midden near it awhile back?” I asked as I measured out pecans.

  Charlene nodded. “One of the archeology professors at Bowdoin was talking about opening up a dig site, but they never got around to it. And now that Eileen Franklin has passed and the property is up for sale, it’ll probably never happen.”

  “It’s sad, isn’t it?” I asked. The town harvest festival had been held in the meadow for as long as anyone could remember; it belonged to Eileen, and she had donated use of it to the islanders. She’d passed a few months ago, though, and her off-island children were selling the property to a wealthy family from Boston.

  “Maybe you can get some kind of archeological exemption,” Lucy said, looking thoughtful. “I mean, if it’s a burial ground… aren’t there limits to what you can build?”

  “Just because there’s a midden nearby doesn’t mean it was a graveyard,” I pointed out as I added a hunk of butter and the pecans to a bowl, my mouth already watering at the thought of the praline topping.

  “Maybe, but lots of people are reporting seeing weird lights down there at night,” Charlene said, reaching up to unstick her eyelashes. Unlike the rest of us islanders, Charlene was always perfectly turned out, much to the admiration of the local lobstermen. Today she wore a red cashmere sweater with a pair of dark-washed jeans that clung to her ample but curvy figure. “Not just Eli. It’s been all the talk down at the store.” As postmistress of Cranberry Island and the owner of the general store, Charlene heard just about everything that happened on the island.

  “Probably flashlights,” I said, reaching for the brown sugar.

  “Not from what I’ve heard. People who’ve seen it say it’s kind of flickery and comes out late at night. And you know that garden Henry put in down there?”

  “Yeah,” I said, adding the brown sugar to the saucepan and turning the burner on low. I’d heard all about Henry’s garden—as had the rest of the island. He’d planted pumpkins in May, feeding them weekly with his family’s secret tea and maple syrup recipe, and couldn’t stop talking about the orange monsters he’d been growing. Everyone else had harvested their pumpkins before the first frost, but he’d erected a greenhouse and, I’d heard, a portable heater to keep them warm. As a result, he was a shoo-in for the Cranberry Island Harvest Festival’s big pumpkin contest—or at least that’s what he’d been telling everyone who would listen for the past several weeks.

  “Well, there seems to be a blight on his pumpkin patch. People are saying it’s because it’s on cursed land.”

  “More likely to be squash bugs,” I suggested.

  “Well, I think we should go check it out.”

  I stopped stirring. “Check out the pumpkin patch?”

  “No, silly. The ghost.” When I didn’t respond, she leaned forward in her chair. “It’d be fun. I’ll bring a batch of my pumpkin whoopie pies, you can bring a thermos of cider… we’ll sit on a blanket under the stars.”

  “Can’t we do that on my back porch?”

  “But then we wouldn’t see the ghost!” Charlene pointed out.

  “But… what about everything here?”

  “You don’t have any paying guests, John’s in Ellsworth with his mother, and Gwen’s in California. So, unless you think Biscuit will die of loneliness, I think you’re safe.”

  I followed her eyes to my orange tabby, who was asleep in her usual spot on the radiator. She didn’t even flick an ear at the mention of her name.

  I sighed. “Okay. But there’d better be whoopie pie.”

  “There will be,” she said, finishing off her coffee and standing up. “I’m headed over to make them right now. I’ll pick you up at 7; I’m counting on you for the hot spiced cider.”

  “I’ll be the photographer,” Lucy volunteered.

  “Maybe mulled wine would be a better choice,” I said as my friend bus
tled out the door toward her truck.

  The warm afternoon had faded to chilly twilight by the time we started trundling down a narrow forest path toward the meadow, laden with blankets, thermos, and a large Tupperware container filled with Charlene’s famous whoopie pies. Charlene had insisted on parking well away from the site, so that no one would see us.

  “I thought you said it was a ghost,” I complained as I tripped over a tree root. (Charlene had forbidden flashlights, too.)

  “I said it might be a ghost,” she corrected me.

  “And ghosts are offended by pick-up trucks and

  flashlights?”

  “Shh,” she reprimanded me. It was a good thing she’d brought whoopie pies, I thought as a branch whacked me in the face. “Sorry about that,” Charlene whispered from somewhere in front of me.

  “And I thought we Texans knew how to have fun,” Lucy said.

  “It’s always a barrel of laughs with Charlene,” I said, comfortable that I was far enough behind Charlene that she couldn’t whack me.

  It couldn’t have been more than a quarter mile, but it felt like we’d been tramping through the woods for hours when Charlene decided we’d arrived at a likely spot.

  “We can see it from here,” she said. She was right; our location gave us a view not only of the corn maze and the stalls that had been put up for the harvest festival, but of the glowing tent-like structure about fifty yards away.

  “That’s the greenhouse?” Lucy asked.

  “Everyone else has harvested their pumpkins, but he’s keeping it warm through the frost. He’s growing a monster, apparently.”

  “I thought we were here to see a ghost, not a giant pumpkin.”

  “We couldn’t see it if we wanted to,” she told Lucy and me as she shook out the blanket and laid it down on the grass. “He’s got that thing wrapped up like it’s the crown jewels.”

  I helped her straighten the blanket and sat down on it, reaching for the thermos. Hot cider sounded pretty darned good right now; my sneakered feet were chilled from the damp grass, and my light jacket wasn’t enough to stave off the frost in the air. “How much is the contest worth?” I asked as I unscrewed the lid.

  “A hundred dollars,” she said. “But it’s the bragging rights he’s after. It’s been hotly contested for years.”

  “I guess when you live on an island, you’ve got to make your entertainment,” Lucy said with a grin as I filled mugs with cider. “Where are those whoopie pies?” she asked.

  “Right here,” Charlene said, and I heard the sound of a lid being removed. She handed each of us a moist cake sandwich cookie; I took a big bite.

  “This almost makes it worth it,” I mumbled through a mouthful of crumbs.

  “I’ll say,” Lucy said. “Although I should have brought another sweatshirt.”

  “Just you wait,” Charlene told me. “I have a feeling about tonight.”

  “So do I,” I replied. “A cold and damp one.” I took another swig of cider, and we settled in to wait.

  We’d been sitting for about an hour when I started to think about going home. My foot kept falling asleep, both Lucy and the cider were getting cold, and I was regretting having eaten three whoopie pies. “Ready to head back?” I whispered.

  “Ssshhh.” Charlene put a hand on my arm. “Over there.”

  As I peered through the scrim of bushes separating us from Henry’s glowing pumpkin tent, something caught my eye. A light, bobbing along near the ground.

  “I didn’t know ghosts carried flashlights,” I whispered.

  Charlene whacked me lightly on the arm. “It’s not a flashlight,” she hissed.

  She was right, I realized as it hovered close to the glowing tent. I strained to see if I could catch a glimpse of a person, but the bobbing light disappeared behind the tent seemingly on its own.

  “What do we do now?” Charlene asked when it didn’t reappear after a minute or two.

  “Call Ghostbusters?” I quipped, but something about it creeped me out. We waited a long time, but the light didn’t reappear.

  “Let’s go check it out,” Lucy whispered.

  I turned to look at my old college roommate. “You, too?”

  “If anything, it will keep my feet from freezing off. Remember, I’m used to Texas, not Maine,” she said.

  “What if they come back?” I asked.

  “Then we say hi,” Charlene said. “Come on.”

  I followed my intrepid friends over to where the lights had been bobbing. “There are footprints,” Charlene said, looking at where the ground was lit by the greenhouse.

  “Probably Henry Hoyle coming to check on his prize pumpkin,” I pointed out. I peeked into the greenhouse. Henry’s pumpkin was an absolute monster; whatever he was doing seemed to be working. “You could fit Cinderella and both of her stepsisters in that thing,” I said.

  “The leaves are looking a little yellow, though, don’t you think?” Lucy asked. “It doesn’t look like mosaic virus.”

  “How do you know about mosaic virus?” I asked.

  “I’m supposed to know about things like mosaic virus. I’m thinking of buying a farm, remember?” she asked. Lucy’s grandmother’s old farm had recently come up for sale in Buttercup, Texas, and she was considering quitting her job and buying it. I was all for it, but she was still on the fence.

  “The footsteps go into the woods, though,” Charlene said. “And his house is over there,” she said, pointing to where the windows glowed a hundred yards away.

  “And the lights moved away from the house,” Charlene pointed out.

  “I thought you said it was a ghost.” “I said it could be,” she said.

  Charlene’s eyes glinted. “Maybe it’s the ghost who keeps messing with the corn maze.”

  “Don’t remind me,” I groaned. The town council had grown a big field of corn for a fall corn maze, and I’d spent half of the last week helping him cut down stray stalks and putting in destination markers. Unfortunately, someone seemed to think it was fun to relocate them for me. So far, they’d turned up at the lighthouse, the general store, and Marge O’Leary’s chicken coop.

  “At least you got out of judging this time,” she pointed out.

  “It was a stroke of genius to say I wanted to be a contestant instead of a judge,” I agreed. Last time I’d agreed to judge an island cooking contest, it had taken me six months to soothe the hurt feelings. “Gertrude Pickens is already unpopular; she can’t do herself any more damage.” The local Daily Mail reporter was not an island favorite. I turned to Lucy. “If you do move to Buttercup, don’t agree to judge any cooking contests.”

  “I promise,” Lucy said, and peered into the greenhouse. “Wow. That really is an enormous pumpkin. I see he’s using the sugar-water trick.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “See how there’s a slit in the stem, and a wick going into it?” she asked. I looked; there was a wick leading from a gallon jug and feeding into the stem. “What does that do?”

  “The sugar water helps it grow bigger,” she said.

  “It’s maple syrup, I hear.”

  “Same concept,” she said. “You do that the last few weeks before harvest.”

  “I wonder if that’s what Phoebe McAlister is doing, too,” Charlene wondered.

  “Who’s Phoebe McAlister?” Lucy asked.

  “She’s on the east side of the island, and apparently is growing a monster of her own,” I said.

  “Competition is supposed to be fierce this year,” Charlene told her. “Henry and Phoebe have been duking it out for years; this is the first time Henry thinks he really has a shot at the title.”

  “I’ll say,” Lucy said. “I just hope it makes it that long… it looks a little… saggy.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlene asked.

  “Look,” she said, pointing to the top of the pumpkin. Lucy was right; it did seem a bit wrinkled around the stem.

  “I thought pumpkins were supposed to last fo
r months,” I said.

  “Maybe it’s diseased, or something. But I can’t think what it would be.”

  As she spoke, the lights flickered in the distance again. “Wait a moment,” I said. “That’s right by the corn maze!”

  “Something tells me it’s not a ghost,” I said. “Let’s go!”

  Together, we hurried through the woods. By the time we reached the maze, though, the lights had vanished.

  “I don’t see anything out of place, do you?” Charlene asked, scanning the maze with her flashlight.

  “Do you think they’re in the maze?”

  “I’m guessing they’ve done what they came to do,” she said, training her lights on the entrance. I gasped.

  “Is that blood?” Lucy asked in a low voice, looking at the dark red liquid that had been splattered all over the corn stalks flanking the entrance.

  “It sure isn’t hot chocolate,” I said.

  “It looks like someone was murdered,” Lucy breathed.

  “What’s that?” Charlene said, her light focusing on a reddish lump near the entrance.

  I took a few steps forward. “I… I think it’s a heart,” I said.

  Lucy’s hand leapt to her throat. “You don’t think it’s…”

  “Human?” Charlene said. “I sure hope not, but I think it may be time to call John.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, Nat,” John said later that night, when we were back in the kitchen at the Gray Whale Inn. Lucy had gone up to bed, and my handsome fiancé, the island deputy, had just gotten off the phone with the mainland police.

  I cradled a mug of tea in my hands; I was still chilled. “Do what?”

  “Find trouble,” John said.

  “Charlene wanted to see the ghost,” I said. “We were trying to make a fun night of it.” I sipped my tea. “What’s the verdict?”

  “We’re supposed to keep it in the freezer,” he said, “but the coroner says it’s a pig heart.”

  “That’s a relief,” I said, slumping back.

  “And the blood?”