“I don’t like any pumpkins,” Pewter replied.
“Do I want to pick this one up? I might fall over from the size of it.” Jim smiled but put his large hands around Danny’s pumpkin anyway. The enormous pumpkin was much heavier than the other pumpkin, oddly heavy. He replaced it. Puzzled, he lifted it up again.
Pewter, never able to control her curiosity, inspected the back of the pumpkin. A very neat, very large circle had been cut out and then glued back into place. If one wasn’t searching for it, the tampering could easily be missed.
“Look,” she said with forcefulness.
Danny Tucker was the only human who paid attention to her. He picked up his pumpkin.“Mayor Sanburne, I know my pumpkin’s heavy, but notthis heavy. Something’s wrong.”
“Thatis your pumpkin,” Miranda stated.
“Yes, but it’s too heavy.” Danny picked it up again.
Pewter reached up and swatted the back of the orange globe. This led Danny’s eyes, much sharper than Jim’s or Miranda’s, to the patch job in the back.
[Êàðòèíêà: _2.jpg]
“Jim, we’re waiting. We want a winner,” Mim called out impatiently.
“Yes, dear, in a minute,” he replied and the crowd laughed.
Danny pushed the circle and it wiggled. He reached into his jacket, retrieved a pocketknife, and slid it along the cutting line. The glue dislodged easily and he pried out the big circle.“Oh, wow!” Danny saw the back of a head. He assumed one of his buddies had done this as a joke. He reached in, grabbed the head by the hair, and pulled it out. A wave of sweet stink alerted him. This was no joke, no rubber or plastic head. Not quite knowing what to do he held the head away fromhim, giving the crowd a fine view of the loathsome sight. What was left of the eyes stared straight at them.
Danny, now realizing what he held, dropped the head. It hit the table with a sickening splat.
Pewter jumped away. She ran down to the squashes. If this was what the job of playing Halloween cat entailed, she was resigning.
People screamed. Jim Sanburne, almost by reflex, handed the ribbon to Miranda.
“I don’t want it!” Miranda screamed.
BoomBoom Craycroft fainted dead away. The next thud heard was Blair Bainbridge hitting the ground.
Then Little Marilyn screeched,“I’ve seen that face before!”
21
Therapists in the county agreed to work with the students at Crozet High to help them through the trauma of what they’d seen.
Rick Shaw wondered if they could help him. He disliked the sight of the decayed head himself but not enough to have nightmares over it. When he and Cynthia Cooper collected the head, the first thing they did, apart from holding their noses, was check the open mouth. Not one tooth remained in the head. No dental records.
Cynthia led Little Marilyn away from the sight and asked her to clarify her statement.
“I don’t know him but I think that’s the vagrant who was wandering around maybe ten days ago. I’m not certain as to the date. You see, he passed the post office and I walked to the window and got a good look at him. That’s all I can tell you.” She was shaking.
“Thank you. You’ve had more than your share of this.” Cynthia patted Little Marilyn on the back.
Fitz-Gilbert put his arms around her.“Come on, honey, let’s go home.”
“What about Mother?”
“Your father’s taking care of her.”
Meekly, Little Marilyn allowed Fitz to shepherd her to their Range Rover.
Cynthia stuck her notebook back in her pocket. As Rick was talking to other observers, the press photographer fired off some shots.
Cynthia took statements from Harry, Susan, Herb, Carol, Market, just everyone she could find. She would have interviewed Pewter if she could have. Market held the cat in his arms, each of them grateful for the reassuring warmth of the other.
Holding his wife’s hand, Cabell Hall mentioned to Cynthia that she and Rick might want to call the video stores and have them pull their more gruesome horror movies until things settled down.
“Actually, Mr. Hall, I have no authority to do that but as a prominent citizen you could, or your wife could. People listen to you all.”
“I’ll do it then,” Taxi Hall promised.
It took Cynthia more than an hour to get everyone out of there. Finally, Cynthia and Rick had a moment to themselves.
“Worse than I imagined.” Rick slapped his thighs, a nervous gesture.
“Yeah, I thought we’d find the head, if we found it at all, back in the woods somewhere. It would be something someone would stumble on.”
“You know what we got, Coop?” Rick breathed in the cool night air. “We got us a killer with a sick sense of humor.”
22
Firelight casts shadows, which, depending on one’s mood, can either be friendly highlights on the wall or misshapen monsters. Susan, Harry, and Blair sat before Harry’s fireplace. The best friends had decided that Blair needed some company before he returned to his empty house.
The Harvest Fair had rattled everyone and Harry found another surprise when she opened the door to her house. Tucker, in a fit of pique at being left behind, had demolished Harry’s favorite slippers. Mrs. Murphy told her not to do it but Tucker, when furious, was not a reasonable creature. The dog’s punishment was that she had to remain locked in the kitchen while the adults talked in the living room. To make matters worse, Mrs. Murphy was allowed in the living room with them. Tucker laid her head between her paws and howled.
“Come on, Harry, let her in,” Susan chided.
“Easy for you to say—they weren’t your slippers.”
“Actually, you should have taken her. She finds more clues than anyone.” Susan cast a glance at the alert Mrs. Murphy perched on Harry’s armchair. “And Murphy, of course.”
“Is anyone hungry?” Harry remembered to be a hostess.
“No.” Blair shook his head.
“Me neither,” Susan agreed. “Poor you.” She indicated Blair. “You moved here for peace and quiet and you landed in the middle of murder.”
The muscles in Blair’s handsome face tightened. “There’s no escaping human nature. Remember the men put off the H.M.S.Bounty on Pitcairn Island?”
“I remember the great movie with Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh,” Susan said.
“Well, in real life those Englishmen stranded on that paradise soon created their own version of hell. The sickness was within. The natives—by then they were mostly women, since the whites had killed the men—slit the Englishmen’s throats in the middle of the night while they slept. Or at least historians think they did. No one really knows how the mutineers died, except that years later, when a European ship stopped by, the ‘civilized’ men were gone.”
“Is that by way of saying that Crozet is a smaller version of Manhattan?” Harry reached over and poked the fire with one of the brass utensils left her by her parents.
“Big Marilyn as Brooke Astor.” Susan then added, “Actually, Brooke Astor is a great lady. Mim’s a wannabe.”
“In the main, Crozet is a kinder place than Manhattan, but whatever is wrong with us shows up wherever we may be—on a more reduced scale. Passions are passions, regardless of century and geography.” Blair stared into the fire.
“True enough.” Harry sank back into her seat. “How about Little Marilyn saying she recognized that head?” The memory of the head made Harry queasy.
“A hobo she saw walking down the tracks while she was inside the post office.” Blair added, “I vaguely remember him too. He was wearing old jeans and a baseball jacket. I wasn’t that interested. Did you get a look at him?”
Harry nodded.“I noticed the Mets jacket. That’s about it. However, even if these body parts belong to the fellow, we still don’t know who he is.”
“A student at U.V.A.?”
“God, Susan, I hope not.” Harry allowed Mrs. Murphy to crawl into her lap.
“Too old.” Blair folded his hands.
“It’s a little hard to tell.” Susan also called up the grisly sight.