Gourd to Death

by Kirsten Weiss

  “The sign’s not the problem.” Thistleblossom leaned on her thick, black cane. “Last night, some San Nicholas hooligans vandalized San Adrian’s festival.”

  My chest heated, the warmth spreading to my neck. “Did they?”

  “They stole the pumpkins and put up inappropriate decor,” Mrs. Thistleblossom continued. “The vandalism at the corn maze is tit-for-tat. You know what will happen next. The same fools who attacked the San Adrian festival will do something worse. Things are spiraling out of control. Someone needs to put a stop to these idiots.”

  “I wouldn’t call them idiots,” Charlene said loftily.

  I would. I never should have gone along with the raid.

  “People are on edge because of the murders,” I said. “Maybe a harmless prank on San Adrian is like a safety valve, a way to blow off steam.”

  Charlene rubbed her chin. “If you want people to calm down, we need to solve these murders. Where were you three Thursday afternoon between three and four o’clock?”

  “What do I have to do with the murders?” Mrs. Thistleblossom squawked. “And you already know where I was. Finding the poor man’s body.”

  “Where were you, Laurelynn?” Denise asked coolly.

  The pumpkin farmer shot her a startled look. “I was here. Working, like I always am.”

  A crow alighted on the old truck and cawed, stretching its massive wings. Mrs. Thistleblossom glanced at the bird and shook her head slightly.

  “Can anyone verify that?” Charlene asked. “You could have slipped away to murder Tristan.”

  “Why would I want to murder Tristan?” Laurelynn snapped.

  “I don’t know,” Charlene said. “Why would you?”

  “Laurelynn wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Elon stepped closer to her. “This needs to stop.”

  Denise’s nostrils flared. “What needs to stop are these murders.”

  “Whatever’s going on clearly has to do with that optometry practice,” Laurelynn said, “not me.”

  “We can’t know that for sure,” I said. “True, Tristan and Kara worked together. But they could have had connections outside work.”

  Elon frowned and adjusted his tortoiseshell glasses. “I know you’re coming at this from a good place, Val, but these are real people we’re talking about. I loved my wife, and I respected Tristan. This isn’t a game for us or a puzzle for your Baker Street Bakers. It’s a nightmare, and one we’d do anything to end.”

  He was right. This wasn’t a game. Two people were dead, and I swallowed, but I fumbled onward. “Have the police questioned you about Tristan’s death?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “They have not.” He reached toward Laurelynn, then his hand dropped to his side.

  Mrs. Thistleblossom lowered herself to sit atop a box of Blue Hubbards. She cocked her head, looking like a wicked fairy on its proper perch.

  “The police haven’t questioned me either.” Denise’s voice was sharp, and she rubbed her watch. “I assumed it’s because they have other leads they’re following.”

  “What if they don’t?” Charlene asked.

  “They’d be wasting their time with me anyway.” Denise’s mouth pinched. “I have an alibi. I was working at my office that afternoon. Elon, where were you when Tristan was murdered?”

  His head reared back, his face contorting as if he’d been struck. “Denise?”

  “Kara and I may not have always gotten along,” Denise said, “but she was my cousin. And whoever killed her, killed Tristan.”

  A second crow joined the first on the truck’s muddy cab. They clicked deep in their throats, a secret conversation.

  Mrs. Thistleblossom shifted on the pumpkins and clicked her tongue.

  The birds lifted into the air and winged toward the grass-covered hill.

  “Elon?” Denise prompted.

  Pressing my back against the barn, I stared after the black specks, winging over the hill. It almost seemed like the old woman had ordered the birds to leave.

  Nah.

  “I was at the cemetery,” Elon said, “talking to the people in charge.” He smiled bitterly. “I don’t know why I bothered. Kara had everything planned. She’s already got us both a plot, and an inscription for her headstone. Even the service is organized.”

  “It’s almost as if she knew she was going to die,” Mrs. Thistleblossom graveled.

  “No.” He shook his head and glanced at Laurelynn. “She was just that way—a planner.”

  “So, what were you doing at the cemetery?” I asked him.

  “Talking to one of the representatives about Kara’s service. Or being talked to by one of the representatives, to be more accurate. But, Denise, you know I couldn’t have hurt Kara.”

  Denise’s face crumpled. “I know.” She strode into the barn.

  “Denise, wait.” Elon hurried after her.

  Mrs. Thistleblossom lurched off the pumpkins. “Curiouser and curiouser.” She stumped around the corner of the barn.

  “Well, that’s it then.” Laurelynn shot a worried look toward the barn. “Thanks for the check.” She strode inside and banged the door shut.

  “I wouldn’t put murder past the lot of ’em,” Charlene said.

  I stacked the boxes of pumpkins in two nearby wagons. “Let’s get out of here.” I pulled the red wagons through the pumpkin patch and to my van.

  Charlene leaned against the pink van as I loaded the Blue Hubbards into the rear. “No one’s got an alibi,” she said, “except maybe Elon.”

  “What do you bet they really came here to exchange notes on the murder?”

  Charlene nodded. “They’re worried. But I can’t figure Mrs. Thistleblossom’s interest.”

  Aside from an infernal curiosity? “She did help discover Tristan’s body.” I shut the rear doors with a clang.

  We climbed into the van, and I backed from the spot.

  A Bel Air station wagon turned sharply in front of us, blocking the drive. Its front passenger wheel sank into a ditch beside the fence. The Bel Air’s tires spun, flinging mud.

  I cleared my throat. “Did you, uh, see what Mrs. Thistleblossom did with the crows?”

  “No. What?”

  “She clicked at them, and they flew off.”

  “And?”

  “It just seemed strange, that’s all.”

  The station wagon lurched forward and settled deeper into the mud.

  “So, she shooed them off.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  She swiveled in her seat. “What are you saying?”

  “Don’t you think she’s a little . . . strange?”

  She smiled. “Ah. I see.”

  “See what?”

  “You think she’s a witch.” She patted my knee. “It’s all right. When I was a girl, I thought so too. It’s a rite of passage. But Mrs. Thistleblossom’s no witch. She’s just old and mean.”

  “Does she know she’s not a witch?”

  “Of course, she knows.”

  I shifted in my seat. “What about that performance she put on in Pie Town with her cane?”

  “She’s always banging that thing around. It makes her feel powerful.”

  “And those weird gestures she makes with her fingers?”

  “So, she’s got weird fingers. What? Do you think she cast a spell for someone to graffiti Pie Town?”

  “Exactly!” Tingling swept my face. “I mean, no, of course not, but—”

  My protests were drowned by Charlene’s hooting. She wiped her eyes. “Oh, Thistleblossom got you good.”

  A teenager stepped from the station wagon and glared at the sunk tire.

  “Learn to drive!” Charlene shook her fist out the open window and turned to me. “We’re not getting out this way. Go around the back of the patch. I know a shortcut.”

  Face burning, I made an eight-point turn and reoriented the van. Since when did Charlene talk me down from thinking something supernatural was going on?

  My idea wasn’t so crazy. Ther
e are plenty of people who practice witchcraft, especially in California. True, Thistleblossom didn’t look like the New Age type. But there was something off about the woman.

  We drove up the muddy hill, following the arc of the miniature train track. The dirt road narrowed, curving downward.

  “Turn right,” Charlene said, “and it will take us behind that little winery and back to the highway.”

  The massive gray farm truck we’d seen earlier, its windows obscured by mud, ground up the hill toward us.

  I shifted gears. This track wasn’t wide enough for the both of us. “I don’t remember the rules. Do I have to back up or does he?”

  “You do.”

  “Goody.” I slowed to a stop and shifted into reverse.

  The truck didn’t alter its pace.

  “Okay, okay,” I muttered. “Don’t be so impatient.” I twisted, one arm on the back of Charlene’s seat, and peered through the rear windows.

  “Val, watch out!”

  The van lurched. Metal screamed, and we tilted sideways.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Metal rending, the farm truck pushed the van, angling us upward.

  I stood on the brake. But my van was out of the truck’s weight class. Helplessly, we slid up the hill and sideways.

  I swore, steering wheel in a death grip. “What’s that idiot doing?”

  My van listed, its nose swinging upward.

  Charlene and I screamed.

  Another screech of metal. The van pitched.

  The truck roared past and up the hill. Pumpkins jounced from its bed and rolled down the road.

  I gasped, still clutching the wheel. “Are you okay?”

  Face pale, she clung to the seat belt across her chest. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.” I panted. “Our pumpkins!” I twisted in my seat. Bluish-gray pumpkins lay piled against the van’s rear doors, but none seemed broken.

  Charlene’s eyes bulged. “Fred—” She reached for her knit jacket’s collar and sagged. “I didn’t bring him this morning. Thank God. He could have gotten whiplash.”

  We might have whiplash. Shifting the van’s gears, I stepped on the gas. The engine ground. The van skidded farther off the road.

  “Why are you turning the van that way?” Ropy tendons bulged in Charlene’s neck.

  My pulse skittered. “I’m not! There must be something wrong with the wheel.”

  Dread puddling in my gut, I pushed open my door. Gravity swung it back toward me, and I struggled to escape the van. Finally, I managed to haul myself out and drop to the sodden ground.

  A nasty gray scuff striped one side of my van, cutting through Pie Town’s smiley face logo like a knife. The metal above the front-passenger wheel crumpled inward.

  I walked around the van and winced. It hung catawampus over a low ridge on the road’s shoulder. Only three wheels were on terra firma. The fourth, rear wheel, hung in midair over the ridge.

  I stomped around and swore some more.

  Charlene leaned out the open window. “What if whoever drove us off the road is still out there?”

  I froze, my scalp prickling. Was pushing us off the road only stage one in a deadly plot? I fumbled in my hoodie’s pocket for my phone, dialed Gordon.

  Silence. No signal.

  I kicked a loose stone down the hill. “Seriously?”

  “What’s wrong?” Charlene asked.

  “I don’t have a signal. Do you?”

  She held her phone out the open window and waved it in a circle. “Nope. It must be blocked by that hill. Reception is sketchy on the coast.”

  “Tell me about it,” I muttered.

  We stared at each other.

  “Well,” I said, “we can’t wait here. I’ll walk back to Laurelynn’s pumpkin patch. Maybe I’ll have better luck with reception there.” And I wanted to find out who had been driving that truck. It had to have been the truck behind Laurelynn’s barn.

  “You’re going to leave me here? Alone?” Face ashen, Charlene opened her door and scrambled to the ground. She buttoned her green knit jacket to the top, brushed off her brown leggings, and we squelched down the road.

  Soon, we arrived in a small vineyard, the wrinkled grape leaves painted in autumnal hues.

  “I got a signal!” Panting, Charlene plopped onto a wooden bench beside a bocce ball court. “I’ll call a tow truck.”

  “I’m going to find Laurelynn.”

  I walked behind the winery, along a narrow road to the pumpkin patch.

  Laurelynn stood behind the counter in her red barn. She looked up from wrapping a papier-mâché pumpkin, and her eyes widened. “I thought you’d left.”

  Her customer, a woman with salt-and-pepper hair, edged away and put her back to the counter.

  “We tried.” I worked to keep my voice steady. Some of the earlier adrenaline was still jouncing around my system. “One of your farm trucks ran us off the road.”

  Laurelynn fumbled the decoration, catching it before it could hit the counter. “What? How do you know it was mine?”

  “Because it was on your road, and it was full of pumpkins.”

  “In the parking lot?”

  I dug my fists deeper into my hoodie pockets. If only. Then there might have been witnesses. “No, on the road that wraps behind the train track and runs down to the winery.”

  She stuffed the wrapped pumpkin in a black paper bag. “What were you doing there?”

  “The driveway was blocked.”

  “By the farm truck? I thought you said it ran you off the road.”

  The customer’s gaze ping-ponged between us.

  “No,” I said, frustrated. I got it, I really did. It was a weird story, and who wanted to believe their truck was stolen? But I just wanted to find out if it had been Laurelynn’s truck, get help, and go. “By some teens in a station wagon. Then someone in a gray farm truck with muddy windows pushed my van off the road. It looked like the one that was behind the barn.”

  “I thought you said he ran you off the road,” Laurelynn said, “not pushed you off the road.”

  “He did both. My van’s stuck. Charlene’s calling a tow truck.”

  “Well, I hope it isn’t blocking the road. My neighbors use it too.”

  “The gray farm truck behind your barn . . .” I inhaled slowly, exhaled. Never mind. “Look, can I go back there?”

  “Only if I go with you.” She handed the customer the black bag and hurried from behind the counter. “And I will, if it will get you to better explain what you’re talking about.”

  Striding to the rear of the barn, she opened a door into a storage area, and I followed. A second door, at the end of a path lined with boxes, stood open.

  “I thought I closed that door,” Laurelynn said.

  “Denise and Elon and Mrs. Thistleblossom were in here. Where are they, by the way?” I stepped past her and outside. The gray truck was gone.

  “No idea.” She emerged into the hay-strewn yard. “What the . . . ? You were telling the truth. My truck’s gone!” She cursed.

  “Who had access to the keys?”

  “I kept them . . .” She motioned behind her.

  “In the storage area?”

  “There’s a board,” she said, deflating. “I mean, who would want to steal that old truck? This is a good neighborhood.”

  “So, anyone who’d walked through the storage area could have grabbed them?” Like Elon. Denise. Laurelynn.

  “I suppose. I just didn’t think . . . But I didn’t think anyone would kill my old high school rival, either. What is happening to this town?”

  And where was that truck? I eyed the pumpkin farmer. Could she have parked it nearby and returned to the barn before me?

  “I’m calling the police,” Laurelynn said, turning to the barn door.

  “Good idea.”

  I spent the next hour dealing with cops and a tow truck driver. The SNPD found Laurelynn’s truck parked at the top of the road, behind a stand o
f eucalyptus trees. They fingerprinted the door and wheel but didn’t seem hopeful.

  The tow truck driver, Fred, was able to drag the Pie Town van off its perch. But my delivery vehicle wasn’t going anywhere soon.

  Fred cheerfully rattled off a string of mechanic’s jargon that left me dazed.

  He crossed his arms over his broad chest, exposing a hole in the elbow of his greasy sweater. “The good news is, I’ve got a part I can cannibalize to get you back on the road. The bad news is, it’s going to take a few hours. I’ll have to tow your van back to my shop.”

  I slumped against a eucalyptus tree and stared glumly at my van. “Can you give us a lift back to town?”

  “No need,” Charlene said. “I’ve got us a ride.”

  A black Lincoln SUV drove up the dirt road and parked. The window whirred down.

  “I heard you need rescuing.” Takako leaned from the SUV, the strings of her hoodie dangling. It was the same Pies Before Guys hoodie I wore today.

  I glanced at the open doors of the van. “Do you have room for pumpkins?”

  I ended up sharing the SUV’s back seat with bluish pumpkins. Charlene explained what we’d learned, and the two plotted the next steps in our investigation.

  “Do you think they’re lying?” Takako asked.

  “Assume everyone’s lying.” Charlene scratched her arm over the fabric of her tunic jacket. “That’s my motto.”

  “I don’t like that someone tried to hurt you and Val.” Takako slowed at a stoplight, and we idled behind a silver Audi. “We need to check their alibis.”

  I shifted the pumpkin on my lap. “No, you don’t—”

  “I’d like to redeem myself,” Takako said in a low, firm voice. “And I do know how to dig out the truth.”

  “I’m game, if you are,” Charlene said.

  “We could split up to save time,” Takako suggested. “I can check Laurelynn’s alibi, because it would be strange if the two of you returned to her pumpkin patch. It sounds like she might not be too happy to see either of you.”

  Charlene glanced over the seat at me. “That’s not a bad idea. What do you think?”

  I shoved aside a pumpkin that had been digging into my hip. “I think Doran will kill me.”