Pumpkin Picking with Murder

by Auralee Wallace

  “He sprayed me with his gun.” Freddie said each word very carefully.

  “I know. I know,” I said, nodding. “But … you did try to spray him first.”

  Freddie’s eyes, unbelievably, grew even wider.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. You had the law on your side,” I said, trying to pin his eyes with my own—they were wandering back to Rex. “But you have a job to do. You were saying something about me getting Kit Kat out of here?”

  Freddie’s brow furrowed. Then he blinked a few times. “I was, and don’t think that I don’t know you are manipulating me right now.” He slid his head sideways to look at the Water Pistol Cowboy and mouthed the words, This isn’t over, before sliding his face back in front of mine. “Just get Kit Kat out of here. Believe me, I’ve been really patient with Grady and his problems with sharing authority, not to mention all his jealousy issues over the boat situation—”

  “Boat situation?”

  “But it’s all starting to get annoying. I just want to get past all that and have him accept me as a brother in uniform.”

  I closed my eyes. I had been home what? Half an hour? “I can’t do it, Freddie. Kit Kat will kill me. She’s going to find out I took her from the scene. And she will kill me. They’re twins.”

  “Please?”

  Nope. This was not at all what I had imagined coming home would be like. Just then a woman accidentally bumped my shoulder, making me drop my candy apple to the dirt.

  “Sorry,” she called out with a whoopsie face.

  I waved her off and turned back to Freddie. “Fine, but you owe me.”

  “Whatever,” Freddie said, picking up my apple and tossing it in the trash. “Just go!”

  I turned on my heel back to face Kit Kat … when I suddenly found myself saying, “Freddie, tell me that is not Kit Kat pushing up her sleeves like she’s about to fight someone.”

  Freddie didn’t have time to answer before Kit Kat shouted, “You did not just call my sister that!”

  Freddie hiked up his belt. “And here we go.”

  Chapter Four

  We ran toward Kit Kat, who was barreling her way through the crowd toward a huddle of women—in the middle of which stood Marg Johnson. I recognized her instantly. The magenta-colored hair always gave her away. Marg was the proprietor of The Sharpest Cut and the only hairdresser in town. She was also, therefore, the town gossip. Given how things were going, that seemed about right.

  We got to Kit Kat just as she reached the bunch.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, stepping in front of her.

  She pushed her sleeves up even farther on her fleshy but still-muscular arms.

  “Stop it!” I snapped. “You are not fighting Marg Johnson.”

  “I’m not afraid of you, Kit Kat!” Marg shouted. “Bring it!”

  I whipped my head around to the other contender. “Really?”

  “Step aside, Erica,” Kit Kat said from behind me. “This is old business we need to settle.”

  “Simmer down everyone!” Freddie yelled, jumping in. “I don’t want to have to take you all in.”

  Kit Kat never moved her eyes from Marg, but said, “You and what mall cop army, Ng?”

  “Wow,” Freddie said, looking to me. “Is it just me, or does this town have a real problem with authority?”

  Kit Kat lunged forward, taking both Freddie and me by surprise. Thankfully, some onlookers moved to help keep the ladies apart, but the situation was deteriorating rapidly. The crowd was already on edge, and more people were pushing in to see what all the hubbub was about. If someone didn’t do something soon—

  “Enough!”

  All heads whipped over to the Tunnel of Love.

  And there he was standing on the dais of the ride … hands planted on hips … sheriff’s hat darkening his eyes … muscles rippling everywhere. The sunlight silhouetted him from behind, casting a shadow of manliness over us all.

  Grady Forrester.

  Freddie leaned toward me. “I swear, he practices that in front of the mirror.”

  I swallowed and nodded.

  Grady stepped down from the platform. People fell back to clear a path as he strode toward us.

  “Everybody calm down.” Grady cast a pointed look in Freddie’s direction.

  “I tried!” Freddie yelled. “Erica wouldn’t cooperate.”

  “Please, let’s all show a little respect.” Grady inhaled deeply, causing the most mesmerizing rise of his chest. “Erica,” he said, keeping his eyes on the women. “Why don’t you take the twins home? We’ll come by later if we have more questions.” He waved Tweety toward him. She had been standing by the swan, arms crossed over her stomach, looking pale.

  “Okay,” I said, linking arms with Kit Kat. “Come on, Freddie.”

  “No,” Grady said with a point at Freddie. “You stay. The town’s paying you good money. This is your chance to earn it.”

  “Of course,” Freddie said in the deepest voice I had ever heard him use, before turning to me to whisper the words, “Would it kill him to say please?”

  Grady exhaled roughly and rubbed the bit of forehead showing underneath his hat. When he opened his eyes, he found mine. He gave me a small smile—a smile I couldn’t help but return.

  “Ew,” Freddie said, a little louder this time. “Get a room.”

  “All right, everybody!” Grady clapped his hands together. “Let’s move it along.”

  Tweety was already lowering herself from the ride and making her way over to us. I pulled on Kit Kat’s arm to walk her away from the crowd. “Let’s get out of here, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said, not moving. “I just need to—”

  I cut her off when I grabbed the hand she had put up in the air. “Are you throwing gang signs? How do you know gang signs?”

  “You don’t know what I know.”

  “You’re right. Let’s just go.”

  * * *

  I started the climb up the log steps that led up the hill to the retreat after having dropped the twins off in their boat. I had tried talking to them on the short boat ride back, but both had been stone-faced and tight-lipped. In fact, they had barely even looked at each other, but when they did … well, I found myself wishing we were on a bigger boat. I really did want to know what Tweety was doing on that ride with Mr. Masterson, but I also knew it was none of my business.

  I sighed as I looked at the tiger lily bushes that ran up either side of the steps. Even though the flowers had long since died, the long-tongued leaves were still a pretty yellow. I felt the tension in my shoulders ease a little. I lifted my head and took in the tall cedars and pines reaching for the sky. They were magnificent. I certainly didn’t have this view back in Chicago. I decided to stop midway up the stairs to really let the nature sink in. Earth, Moon, and Stars was a special place. Little had been done to the property or the cabins since it was built in the 1950s, so it gave off a sleepy sense of nature mixed with nostalgia. It also had just a hint of machete-serial-killer-ness to it to keep things interesting. I took a deep breath. Okay, things had gotten off to a rough start, but I could still do this.

  * * *

  I resumed my climb and didn’t stop until I reached the top of the stairs. At the foot of the weedy gravel path that led up to the retreat, I dropped my bag from my shoulder. Red had offered to drop it off for me at our dock. He was that kind of guy.

  The main lodge stood a couple hundred feet away. I rubbed the shoulder that had been carrying the weight of my bag as my eyes ran over the overgrown hydrangeas nestled up against the sturdy wraparound porch of the lodge. I also noticed the small display of misshapen gourds lining the steps. My mother always did plant the cucumbers too close to the pumpkins.

  Behind the lodge, twelve cabins dotted the woods. As far as I knew, only five were in working order. And by working order, I mean, didn’t leak. None of the cabins had electricity or plumbing. Just beds, curtains, and the sweet smell of cedar. They’d get cold at
night this time of year, so the guests had to bring some pretty warm jammies—all part of the experience, I guess. More pebbled paths led from each cabin to a communal washroom outfitted with three composting toilets and three showers connected to tanks filled with sun-warmed water, but I hadn’t been in there in years. The resident fishing spider and I had come to that agreement together.

  A thin trail of smoke spiraled out of the stone chimney of the lodge, which sat in front of a backdrop of trees flashing their fall colors. It was so welcoming … so cute … so cozy. Now if I could just tell that to the part of my brain that wanted to chew off all my fingernails …

  No. No. Things were different now. I had grown. My mother had grown. It was time to develop our new relationship. It hadn’t always been easy growing up with a vegan, hippie mom in small-town New Hampshire. I mean, getting through high school is hard enough without having a mother who didn’t believe in shaving her armpits. I always felt like I had to protect her from so many things: embarrassment, herbal remedies gone wrong, accusations of satanism … basically herself. It was a lot of pressure. But last visit, I had come to realize that Otter Lake had come a long way in accepting my mother for who she was. And I had seen firsthand that she did do a lot of good at the retreat. She really cared about people. It had all led me to believe that it was time I let go of some of my teenage stuff and forge a new adult relationship.

  As if on cue, a giant mauve butterfly opened the door of the lodge and descended from the retreat steps in a flutter. My mother and I both had blue eyes and brown hair, but it was hard to spot our resemblance right away mainly because her eyes always seemed to be widened in innocence, and I was pretty sure mine were not, and her hair floated around in a cloud of curly masses, whereas mine just fell straight. She rushed toward me, arms waving in the air, making the silky folds of her caftan ruffle under her shawl. My mother loved caftans. She’d wear them until the snow fell.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, a smile spreading across my face.

  She stopped a few feet in front of me, clasped her hands together, and smiled back … not saying a word.

  “Hi?” I tried again.

  She smiled wider and held her arms out for a hug, still not saying anything.

  I took a half step back. “What’s going on here? Why aren’t you talk—” Suddenly I felt my face drop. It knew what was happening before I did. “No. No. No.”

  Her already impossibly round blue eyes widened in question.

  “Tell me it’s not…” I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. “Tell me you are not doing a Silence of the Soul.”

  I cracked open one eye to see my mother beaming with pride, like I had just won the third-grade spelling bee.

  “Mom,” I said, rubbing my face roughly. “When we spoke yesterday morning—yesterday—you said, you were doing a Hey Sister, Whole Sister.” Normally, I wouldn’t be looking forward to a retreat for feuding sisters, but given the alternative …

  She smiled again and shrugged.

  And that would be all the explanation I’d get for days. Because for the duration of the retreat, my mom and all her guests would be completely silent. Nature walks. Meals. Meditation. All silent. And how would my mother accomplish this feat? Answer questions? Guide the guests from one activity to another? Let’s just say she could be very theatrical.

  Those who knew my mother and me might be tempted to think I’d enjoy her silence for days at a time. But they’d be wrong. I could remember many an aggravating incident as a teenager wanting a simple answer to a simple question like, Where are the boat keys? or Have I been vaccinated for measles? I have a rash, only to have to endure a bizarre form of charades that could go on for what felt like a silent eternity. Yup, my mother felt that even writing things down was a form of cheating—because our souls should be able to commune without words.

  I groaned as she brushed my bangs away from my forehead—which I took to mean that they needed a cut. I closed my eyes again. Suddenly I felt her embrace me, pinning my arms to my sides. I allowed the smell of the lemongrass and mint wafting from her mass of wavy hair to fill my senses. Despite everything, I couldn’t help but allow myself a moment to enjoy her mom-ness. I sighed and opened my eyes. “It’s good to see you too, Mom.”

  She leaned back and smiled with way too much satisfaction before moving to lead me inside.

  Once we got to the foot of the porch steps, I stopped to let my mom go ahead … mainly because of the orange-and-white planet-sized cat who sat cleaning himself at the top of the stairs, seated amid the display of misshapen gourds.

  The cat rolled onto his butt, back legs spread wide into the air to clean his enormous belly.

  “Caesar,” I said in tired greeting.

  He slowly lifted his head from his legs, tongue still half out of his mouth.

  Caesar was the closest thing I had to a sibling, and he was definitely the favorite child. He consumed at least 50 percent of my mother’s waking thoughts, and house rules stated if he was sleeping, he was not to be moved—even if he happened to be sleeping on the pillow of my bed. He was also the only one in the house allowed to eat meat.

  “Hey, Caesar, what do you say—just this once—you not swipe my legs as I walk by?”

  He didn’t answer, just stared back at me with flat eyes.

  I held my breath and walked up the steps, giving him the widest berth possible. Then just as I made it to the top—

  “Ow!”

  * * *

  Thankfully, when we got inside, the retreat was empty. I could have asked my mom where all of her retreat-goers had made off to, but I didn’t think I had it in me to watch the answer. Plus, I was too busy inspecting my ankle for fatal wounds. Once I assured myself I wouldn’t, in fact, die from the blood loss, I quickly hustled off to my room telling my mom I needed a nap. It was entirely possible she didn’t like that idea and was arguing for me to stay, but I didn’t turn to see. The whole silence thing wasn’t without its advantages.

  I dropped my bag on the thick-planked wood floor of my old bedroom and looked around. Yup, nothing much had changed. Same frog clock telling time with his fishing poles. Same canoe paddles crossed on the wall, although my mom must have hired someone to reattach the one I had ripped off the last time I’d been home. In fairness, I had been under attack by a murderer with a weenie skewer, so it was totally justified. Yup, everything was all the same … except for the pile of books left on my dresser. I gently tipped the stack with my fingers to catch a look at the titles. My Mother Myself. Freeing Your Orgasm. The Vegan Path to Reincarnation. Nope, nothing had changed.

  I flopped on my spring bed and stared up at the ceiling.

  I couldn’t help but think that Mr. Masterson’s death in the Tunnel of Love seemed a little like a bad omen. Grady and I had been talking a lot on the phone for the past couple of weeks. We really knew how to work a relationship when it was long distance. And over the course of many phone calls, I think we were both starting to have some hope that it might go somewhere. The obvious problem, of course, was that I lived in Chicago, and Grady, well, I don’t think Grady would ever consider living anywhere but Otter Lake. But the funny thing was, once I had gone back to Chicago after my last visit, I found that I had started to miss being home. I missed the colors of the trees. I missed the smell of the lake. I missed Freddie … and all that came with him. I was still missing the sound of my mother’s voice.

  What I did not miss was all the chaos that came with being home and what it did to me as a person. I felt so out of control. Otter Lake was a strange little place with lots of characters … and I always seemed to turn into one of them whenever I was here.

  I didn’t have these problems back in Chicago. I led a quiet, normal life. I worked. I sometimes ran … although I was letting that slide now that I had started a very serious relationship with my online streaming TV service. Freddie had gotten me watching the British crime shows. Those detectives with their big brains always made tracking down killers look so easy. And yeah,
now that I had been talking to Grady, and thinking about the possibility of … future possibilities, I realized that I had grown some roots there too. I liked my co-workers. Well, not Gary, he was always stealing my yogurt out of the shared office fridge, but Lisa and Kate were really cool and they had just introduced me to this new sushi place that had awesome California rolls. There wasn’t much sushi in Otter Lake. Kate had also invited me to try a Zumba class with her, which, you know, I wasn’t entirely sure I could see myself doing because that really seemed like something coordinated people would do, but I wasn’t about to rule it out entirely. And it wasn’t just my co-workers or the food, or the Zumba obviously, that had kept me living in Chicago all these years. It was the freedom. I could be whoever I wanted in Chicago … not just Summer Bloom’s daughter. If I wanted to sign up for Zumba class in Otter Lake, well, first, that would be silly because there were no Zumba classes in Otter Lake, but if, say, I wanted to start one, there’s a good chance it might become a thing. A thing that everybody would need to discuss. Maybe start a petition over. It looked like Freddie had somehow managed to break free of worrying about what people thought, given his new uniform and all, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to jump back into living in a fishbowl. A fishbowl with lots of moose. And flannel. Kind of made me wonder if I ever would be.

  I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. Everything had seemed so possible in those conversations with Grady on the phone. I had been thinking that if things kept going as well as they had been, maybe in the not-so-distant future I could look for jobs in New Hampshire. Maybe I could live with my mom until I found a place of my own … maybe by the lake, where I could swim every morning before I went to work … maybe with Grady … maybe without our clothes. But now that I was here, it all just seemed so impossible.

  My phone buzzed, cutting me off from my thoughts.

  I lifted it up and peeked at the screen through my fingers that were still covering my face.

  We still on for tonight?

  Grady.

  I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face.