“And I’ll get some pictures and do a little feature on her baking so people will forget about Francine’s hatchet job.”
“Yes! You and Moira can work the crowd outside, Gladys and Mildred inside, and Trevor and I will be your baristas!”
I was back. Funny how a little hope can change you from a huddled mass of tears into Super Girl in the blink of an eye. Now I’m the freight train. Watch out!
Toe and Harvey were almost normal today, although Harvey was still drinking not-too-hot tea with honey. He was eating his chocolate chip muffin and fiddling with his iPad mini as usual. Instead of solitaire, he was doing crossword puzzles today.
“Hey, Toe, what’s a six-letter word that means the opposite of ‘malignant’?”
“I guess that would be ‘benign,’ Harv.”
“BEEE…NIGN.”
Okay, maybe not that normal. I noticed that his face was looking a lot better today too.
“Hey, Harvey, the scratches from Miss Pickles seem to be almost gone already. That’s pretty fast.”
“Yep. The Pastor, Miranda Cassidy, healed me.”
I’m burning all my Stephen King books. I’m not sure if that made me more freaked out or more curious. But it was Tuesday, so tonight Eli and I would do a little snooping around the church.
Of course, Trevor was more than happy to pitch in during the parade and the entire Harvest Festival if we needed him. He would do anything for Eli. Plus he liked the idea of having a little extra spending cash around his favorite holiday – Halloween. It’s a pretty big deal for the kids in Sweet Home.
Maybe the biggest perk of all was that it would get Trevor out of working for his dad’s landscaping company. Mike Barton had a good-sized crew now for his growing business, so he didn’t need the help, but he liked to keep his son busy. Mike had all the attachments for his big tractor-mower to keep him busy year-round with tilling and even some small harvests.
Eli even arranged for Trevor to work at the Coffee Cabana tonight too so we could check out the bingo hall. Jules had a lot of writing and ad design to do for the Gazette, but she asked Moira to come over and help Trevor (which Moira was eager to do, since she had a crush on Trevor), and she would sit at a table there to do her work and keep an adult eye on the business.
The parking lot of the Methodist Church was jam-packed with golf carts from the retirement village and all of the other Sweet Home seniors who preferred that form of transportation. Harvey’s shark fin was right up front, so he obviously was an early arrival.
Eli and I set up our stakeout next to O’Hennessey’s Funeral Home across the street and watched the people line up to get inside. The sun was just settling beneath the horizon shortly before 7:00 p.m. so Eli was using his night vision binoculars. He had a regular pair for me.
“What’s Albert Johnson carrying in his arm, Eli? It’s moving around.”
“It’s a chicken. A big, plump chicken.” What the frick?
“Why is he bringing a live chicken to bingo?”
“I don’t know, but I can see three or four feathered hens in the crowd. And I’m not talking about your aunts.“ Eli chuckled at his funny. “Mary West has small basket of fruit or tomatoes or something. A lot of people are carrying things.”
“And there is almost no chatter coming from that big group of people.”
Pastor Miranda Cassidy had walked from her home nearby in a long black choir robe and was approaching the crowd in front of the Methodist Church. She was a fit, chipper woman of about 50 with blonde hair in a very short pixie cut.
“Praise the Lord!” she said loudly, extending both arms toward the heavens.
“And pass the bingo cards!” The entire mob spoke with one enthusiastic voice, and then they all applauded and whistled as she made her way through the crowd. Handshakes, hugs, and cheers were bestowed on her as if she were a rock star.
“God bless you, Miranda!”
“We love you, Pastor!”
Shouts of praise and love were coming from everyone in the crowd. They were reaching out their arms to get a touch of her hand as she passed and snapping pictures as if the woman was walking into a movie premier on a red carpet.
Eli and I looked at each other.
“Well, she certainly has them under her spell,” he said, his binoculars now intently focused on the crowd and their beloved leader.
She got to the front of the crowd and stood atop the steps to face them.
“Six of you have been selected by the Almighty Father and me to be the chosen ones tonight. He will look into your hearts as He listens, and after three nights and three days the Lord will reveal the one that He will take to the mountain top to sit at His right hand.”
The crowd cheered and began filing into the church and down the stairs to the bingo hall.
I was more than a little concerned. “Eli, this is unsettling. She sounds like a cult leader. I think they’re going to sacrifice those chickens this week and then pick a human sacrifice for next week. You’ve got to stop this!”
He watched silently but without concern for a few minutes as the crowd disappeared inside. His “cop sense” seemed to be telling him everything was okay.
“Well, I’ll admit this is a little weird, but we don’t have any probable cause to go inside. There’s nothing to indicate that a crime has been committed or is imminent, Lily.”
“So, you have to wait until they actually kill somebody?”
“They’re not going to kill anybody, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart? Okay! What were we talking about?
“Look, my dad’s in there, so if I thought anything was going to happen I’d break the doors down and bust up their little bingo game.”
I felt a little better sitting next to my big strong galoot, but I still needed the satisfaction of knowing what was going on in there. We sat there for a while longer, watching the lights in the basement windows flash from time to time as a muffled roar emerged through the walls.
“What was that, Eli?”
“Let me think…a Bingo? Lily, it’s getting dark and you don’t have to be back for a while. How about if we take a pass by the cemetery and see if we can catch anybody in the act of committing any shenanigans over there?”
“Sure.” I took his arm in both of my hands and put my head on his shoulder. He didn’t seem to mind.
We drove along the frontage road along the cemetery and behind a row of houses, including his dad’s. Most of the houses were dark, as the seniors who lived there were all playing bingo.
“Keep your eyes and ears open for anything unusual, Lily.”
“Like what?”
He turned his head and looked at me with a grin. “You’re a pretty good detective. You’ll know if you see something important.”
We crept slowly along until we got to the gate of the cemetery.
“Let’s pull inside and just sit tight for ten minutes.”
He pulled his black unmarked car in, parked behind the old weatherworn chapel just inside, set back maybe 50-feet from the entrance, and turned out the lights. Then he put his finger to his lips to signal me to be very quiet and put his arm around my shoulders.
“Just look and listen,” he whispered.
It was hard to concentrate on looking for high school kids wreaking mischievous havoc on the cemetery with Eli so near, but I tried. The night was still, and there was just a waning crescent moon behind the trees. No breeze or birds could be heard, just the crickets. After a few minutes he smiled at me and kissed my forehead.
“Why, Officer Davis,” I said trying to take on the persona of a Tennessee Williams Southern Belle out with her gentleman caller, “I do declare, are we here on a stakeout, or have your intentions taken a turn toward more manly motivations?”
He was amused and came in for a real kiss. It was at that precise moment that our attention was drawn to a clattering sound in the trees perhaps a hundred yards away beyond the biggest monuments in the cemetery.
We looked up and s
aw a very strange figure in the hazy distance. Its long body glowed a luminescent green, and its bright orange head flicked as it rose up on its hind legs. Then, just like that, it was gone.
Chapter Four
Wednesday morning began a brand new chapter right out of Bizarro World. Things had changed from inside out to upside down.
“Lily!” Essie sang in an unusually melodic tone as she put the fresh chocolate chip muffins in the display case, “could you ask your auntie – the chubby one over there – to bring me the cream cheese frosting for the pumpkin muffins, please, dear? It’s on the table by my purse.”
Uh-oh. Hildie was an inch or two shorter and maybe seven pounds heavier than Essie, but they could still wear each other’s clothes.
Hildie strutted over to the table and brought me the bowl of frosting. “Lily, dear…” Such pleasant voices coming from these ladies, but the words…not so much. “…would you please give this to your auntie – the nasty one that smells like muskrat. Oh…and ask her to say ‘I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!’ It seems her real identity was revealed last night.”
Hildie chuckled a little, under her breath.
Essie inhaled deeply. “I do not cackle or scare small children. That Pete Best is just an old sour puss.” She bit her tongue…for a moment. “Anyway, he told Felicia Roberts that you sound like Snow White getting a root canal.”
“And tell Essie I’m having the flamingos on her golf cart replaced with broomsticks.”
“That’s enough! No more talking!”
What was I saying? I had been wishing for a week that they would talk, and now that they were, it was worse then ever. And they still weren’t talking to each other. It’s like that story about the monkey’s paw. You make a wish on it for a million dollars, and then your whole family dies in a plane crash or something, and the insurance company gives you the million. There really is some kind of curse in the air around here. I had to run away and find safe haven before I pulled the few hairs I had right out of my head.
“I’m going next door to see Jules.”
“Bring her some tea.”
“And a pumpkin yogurt.”
“And here’s a coffee for you.”
“I’ll bag it all up for you.”
Well, at least they were still being sweet to other people.
Jules’ Office & Party was decorated to the hilt. The windows were an autumn wonderland with a harvest and Thanksgiving theme, and some removable Halloween spookiness thrown in for good measure. She had a small rack of Halloween costumes for small children that could be seen from the sidewalk and artistically carved pumpkins on the checkout counter and windowsills. The girl was an artist and had a great mind for business too.
“Good morning, neighbor. I brought you some hot tea and a snack.”
Jules was restocking spiral notebooks in the school supply aisle and got up to give me a little hug
“Wow. What’s the occasion? I haven’t seen you on my side of the wall since the week I moved in.”
Was I really that bad of a neighbor? “I had to get away from the old birds.”
“Ah. Essie and Hildie still aren’t talking?” Jules put the rest of the notebooks on the shelf and then started breaking down the box and flattening it out.
“Oh, they’re talking, alright. That’s the problem. They aren’t talking to each other, so they were using me as their bickering-board in the middle.”
“Well, at least they’re back to work. What brought on the sudden change?” Jules took off the red apron with the logo from Buster’s Home Improvement Center, which she used to keep the dusty boxes from getting her clothes dirty, and she folded it over her arm. She had on a pretty harvest brown cotton dress with a print of autumn leaves today. She was such a girl.
“It’s always the morning after Bingo night that things seem to change, and never for the better.”
“Hmm. Let’s go back in my office for our coffee break. I didn’t get a chance to ask you about what you and Eli dug up at the Methodist Church last night.”
“How can we go in the back if you’re running the shop?” I looked around to see if one of here sales people was on duty, but we seemed to be alone.
Jules smiled and pulled a small remote out of her pocket. It looked like a car remote on a keychain. “One of the perks of owning your own business in a small town.” She pushed the top button on it, and a “whoop” came from the front door that sounded like she was arming a car alarm.
“I just locked the door and changed the LED readout to say, ‘Please ring the bell.’ If I push it again, it’ll unlock the door and change the sign back to ‘Come in! We’re open.’ It cost a couple hundred bucks, but it’s a lot cheaper than hiring another person to stand here all morning. Not much happens before noon around this place, but I don’t want to miss a big order from an office either.”
“Smart.”
I got Jules up to speed on the chickens, Pastor Cassidy’s odd speech, the bewitched gang of avid followers, and the glowing apparition in the graveyard. I told her about Trevor’s story about the crying baby and the mischief around the graves and the nearby houses too.
“This is some pretty strange stuff, Lily. But I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for all of it.”
Jules was a little more practical and a lot less superstitious than me, which was probably the kind of anchor in reality I needed right now.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” I wasn’t so sure. “But I am getting a little nervous about the Harvest Festival starting tomorrow. The parade will kick it all off tomorrow at 4:00, and then it will be non-stop until Sunday.”
“Well, Moira and I will be there tomorrow and Trevor is coming tonight to train a little more. Did you get a hold of Gladys and Mildred?”
“They’re all set. They don’t seem to be zombies for some reason,”
“Maybe they don’t play bingo.”
“Good point. Gertie is busy getting ready for the pumpkin baking contest on Saturday. Everything has to have pumpkin in it, so she’s transforming her famous apple pie into ‘papple-umpkin’ or something like that.”
“That could be great! Or maybe awful, I’m not sure.”
“Well, she’s going to spend the whole week perfecting it; so, with her baking talent, I’m guessing I’d be willing to take a bite.”
Jules turned her head to try to hide her amusement. Let’s face it: I’d take a bite of anything warm with sugar and pumpkin in it. It was nice to have a friend who didn’t take advantage of every stupid thing I said to set myself up for ridicule.
“Well, I don’t want to keep you from your work for too long, Jules. I’m going to take advantage of the aunts running the shop and go and pick up some things I need for the Harvest Festival.”
“Can you wait till noon? Alexis comes in then, and I can go with you. I wouldn’t mind getting out of this place for a couple of hours.”
“That would be great, Jules.”
I went back to the Coffee Cabana, not sure what to expect. Essie and Hildie were sitting on either side of Harvey Davis, giggling like schoolgirls. Hildie was rubbing his bald head, and Essie was looking at him like he was Paul McCartney in 1964. Toe was by himself on the other side of the table. He was trying to get Essie’s attention, but she didn’t seem to know he was there. Somehow, this all seemed perfectly normal.
Jerry Thatcher and Martha White were sitting at a table in the front observing the spectacle in the corner. The self-proclaimed comedian of Sinking Springs Retirement Village had left his rubber chicken golf cart at home today. Since he started courting Martha White, they usually used her beautiful pumpkin golf cart when they were together. Her idea, I’m guessing.
“Hi, Martha. Good morning, Jerry. Have you two been helped?”
“Not yet.”
Really? Essie and Hildie were ignoring customers and friends to fawn over old Harvey who was in here every day?
“What can I get for you?”
“I’ll have
a decaf, and give Jerry a bottle of water with a glass and a slice of lemon. And we’ll share a cookie.”
Jerry shook his head. “Just the water for me,” he said softly.
He was usually very talkative and jovial, but he was uncharacteristically quiet today. I brought them their beverages, and put half of a cookie on a plate for Martha. I was pretty sure the other half wouldn’t go to waste.
“So, how was your long weekend at Universal Studios?”
Jerry won the vacation package in nearby Orlando by winning the golf cart race early in the summer, and he had asked Martha to go along with him.
“It was wonderful,” Martha said with a bright-eyed smile, taking Jerry’s hand across the table.
I had my doubts earlier. I didn’t think the jokester would have a chance with the sophisticated society lady, but it seemed the old boy was winning her over. Good for him.
I took a look through the refrigerators, under the counters, and on the shelves in the backroom to see what I needed. I figured we would stop at the Farmer’s Market and maybe the Price Club to pick up a few things. I wanted to stock up on some fruits for smoothies and muffins, maybe some dairy products, condiments, and extra paper and plastic goods for the rush. I didn’t want to blow through all of our expensive logo cups during the festival.
“Essie.”
No answer.
“Hildie.”
No response.
“Hey, Harvey!”
They must all be on catnip or something.
“Toe?”
“Ya, what?”
Finally. Somehow he had avoided the body snatchers. “I’m going to run out for a couple of hours or so. You’re in charge.”
“Me? What? I don’t know anything about making coffee or running this place.”
“You don’t have to. You just have to make sure that when people come in, Hildie and Essie take care of them. Can you do that?”
“Well, ya, I guess. I can try anyway.”
Punked by the Pumpkin: A Cozy Mystery (Sweet Home Mystery Series Book 4) Page 3