The Halloween Pumpkin Spell, page 7
My head was spinning. “Can the lawyer ask Marina if she had any visitors to her motel, and when she first noticed the earring missing?” I asked Ruprecht.
He nodded. “I have already done so. I have also asked him to find out from Marina who she told about the pumpkin. That should narrow it down nicely.”
“We should tell Mint to tell Chris,” I said. “I know Barrett won’t listen to Chris, but Chris can do his own investigating.”
“Good idea,” Ruprecht said.
“And I’ll tell Dawson,” Thyme said. “In fact, I’ll call him right now.”
Ruprecht shook his head. “Don’t speak to him in front of Camino. I don’t want to upset her.”
I was tempted to point out that Camino, if she was aware what was going on around her, was in a position where she couldn’t possibly be more upset. I mean, it would be hard to top being turned into a giant yet attractive pumpkin.
Ruprecht decided to make lunch, leaving me alone at the table. I decided to google the victim to see if that would give us any leads. After all, he was the obvious place to begin. Someone had a grudge against him and we needed to find out why. After I had been googling for about five minutes or so, Thyme came back into the room. “Dawson said he doesn’t know anything,” she said.
“I’ve just found out something. Could you go and get Ruprecht?”
As soon as Ruprecht was present, I said, “I’m afraid lots of people knew Marina was going to enter the pumpkin contest. I found a Bayberry Creek pumpkin growing group on Facebook.”
“You’re kidding!” Thyme said. “How many people are on it? Five?”
“Fifty,” I corrected her. “Fifty people are on it, and there were posts from several weeks ago from Marina herself saying she’s going to enter a pumpkin in the competition.”
“Was the victim in the group?” Thyme asked me.
“There are comments from him, but he’s no longer a member of the group.”
Thyme snorted rudely. “Of course not—he’s dead!”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I mean he wasn’t a member of the group when he died. I’ve gone back through some old comments and he wasn’t a member then. I think he was kicked out because he said snarky things to the other growers. He said that they’d never be able to beat him in the pumpkin competition.”
“Amelia, can you make a list of people who didn’t like him?” Ruprecht asked me.
I raised my eyebrows. “By the look of it, I think there would be about fifty. Okay, I’ll make a list of anyone who said anything rude back to him. Do you know anyone else who had a grudge against him?”
“No I don’t,” Ruprecht said. “Why don’t you ask Kayleen?”
“Honestly, I couldn’t speak to that woman again. She doesn’t like me.”
“It’s either that or go to the hairdresser,” Thyme said. “Hairdressers know everyone’s business.”
“Well then, you go to the hairdresser and I’ll speak to Kayleen,” I said.
“I think Kayleen will know more than the hairdresser.” Thyme folded her arms over her chest.
“Okay, we’ll both go to Kayleen. You can come with me, Thyme.”
“Off you go,” Ruprecht said, making a shooing motion with his right hand. “If you hurry, you can be back in time for lunch.”
As soon as we hopped into my car, I realised something. “Where will we find her?” I asked Thyme. “I don’t want to go to her house and pump her for information. If she knows I actually want information, she won’t give it to me. I had intended to drive around until I saw her so I could pretend I had run into her, but she isn’t delivering parcels today because it’s a Sunday.”
Thyme bit her lip. “The rain’s almost stopped now and the sun’s peeping out. Would she be at the Halloween fair?”
“It’s as good a place as any, I suppose,” I said doubtfully. “It can’t hurt to try. After all, we have to do something.”
I was surprised at the number of people who had braved the rain to attend the Halloween fair. I remarked as such to Thyme. “There aren’t many kids out, only older people,” she said. “Perhaps the parents took the kids home and the adults were bored out of their minds as there’s nothing to do in Bayberry Creek.”
I parked the car as close to the fair as I could and got out of the car, stepping straight into a puddle. “Oh yuck,” I said as water squelched between my toes. “Why didn’t I look before I got out?”
Thyme tapped my arm. “Come on, we have to find Kayleen.”
“What if she’s not here?” I asked Thyme.
“We’ll worry about that later,” she said.
I could see in the distance that the scarecrow tent was cordoned off by police tape. “You should have put your cakes in one of the decorating competitions,” Thyme said. “It would be good for business. We should think about that next year.”
I absently agreed. When we passed an organic herb stand and rounded a corner, I caught sight of Craig. “Look, there’s Craig. Kayleen won’t be far away,” I whispered to Thyme.
“Let’s walk over in his direction.”
By the time we reached Craig, Kayleen was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if they had broken up. “Hi Craig,” I said.
He spun around. “Hi, Amelia. Did you hear someone died?”
“Yes, quite sad, isn’t it. Where’s Kayleen?”
“Very sneaky, trying to chat up my boyfriend when I’m not there.” The voice came from behind me.
“Hi Kayleen.” I tried to force my voice to sound pleasant. Thyme plastered a wide grin over her face and smiled and nodded.
“Are you enjoying the fair?” I asked her.
“Yes, I am,” she said. “Did you know Farmer Bob Willis was murdered?”
I was genuinely shocked she was aware he hadn’t died from natural causes. “Are you sure he was murdered?” I asked, carefully watching for her reaction.
“Yes, police don’t put up police tape when someone dies of natural causes,” she said. “Besides, I delivered him some threatening letters.”
I was going to ask how she knew they were threatening letters, but I didn’t want her to stop talking. Everyone knew Kayleen read their mail. “Oh, really?” I said. “How terrible.” I wondered what else I could say to keep her talking, but she seemed happy to do so.
“Yes, I thought it wouldn’t be too long before he died. I’m not surprised someone did away with him, to tell you the truth.”
“Were there many people who didn’t like him?” I asked her.
“What, you didn’t know?” She looked me up and down. “Oh well, I suppose you haven’t been in town for long. Everyone hated him because he always won the best looking pumpkin contest and the biggest pumpkin contest.”
“But surely no one would kill him just over a pumpkin competition,” I said. “I wonder if he had other enemies?”
To my delight, she answered. “I wondered that too when I saw the threatening letters. I think it was Patricia and Paul Roberts.”
“Who are they?”
She shot me a scathing look. “Really Amelia, don’t you know anything?” She sighed dramatically. “They were having a boundary argument with him. He said their fence line was on his side.”
“But why kill him now?” I asked. “Surely a boundary dispute would have been going on for years.”
Kayleen rolled her eyes. “No, silly. Patricia and Paul Roberts are from the city. They bought the property next to him only recently and they had a surveyor in. Bob was angry that the surveyor was on his land, so he paid for a surveyor to go onto their land as payback, and it turned out that the boundary was too far on his side. He demanded they move the fence back to the correct place and pay for it all. They had been arguing with him ever since. I often overheard them arguing when I was delivering packages.”
“Have you told the police?” I asked her. “They would find that very valuable information.” I was trying to flatter her, but I couldn’t think of anything better to say.
“The police,” she said doubtfully.
“Yes, I’m sure they would find you ever so helpful to them.”
She shot me a suspicious look. “Has your boyfriend been arrested for murder again? Is that why you want me to tell the police?”
“Husband,” I corrected her. “No, he hasn’t been arrested. It’s just that I thought you could really help the police with their case.”
She appeared somewhat mollified. I pushed on. “I mean, they probably don’t have any suspects at all, so you’ll help them if you tell them about the city slicker neighbours.”
“Oh, they’re not the only suspects,” she said brightly. “There’s his estranged son. He’s new in town.”
“Estranged son?” I repeated. “Why would he have a grudge against Bob Willis?”
“I don’t know that much. I’m not the all seeing eye, Amelia,” Kayleen said. “I don’t know what his grudge is, but obviously he has one or they wouldn’t be estranged, now would they?” With that, she took Craig’s arm and marched him away. She shot me a smirk over her shoulder.
“We have to tell Ruprecht,” I said to Thyme. “Let’s go.”
Once we were back in the car, Thyme texted Dawson. “We should tell Mint as well,” I said.
“Good idea, Amelia. You drive and I’ll call Mint to fill her in.”
Chapter 13
Once more, Ruprecht was holding the door to Glinda’s open just before we reached it. Without waiting for us to fill him in, he said, “Something obvious occurred to me just after you both left.”
“What was it?” Thyme asked him, but he merely walked away, beckoning to us over his shoulder. Thyme shut the front door and locked it, and we followed him through the maze of antiques into the apartment at the back of the shop.
“It will sound obvious when I say it this way, but the murderer had to have access to Marina’s motel, either direct access or through an accomplice.”
Thyme and I both nodded. I waited for Ruprecht to continue.
“I think the easiest and most accessible way forward would be to discover who had access to the motel room.”
“Marina’s boyfriend didn’t come to town this visit so obviously it wasn’t him,” I said. “The motel owners would have access, of course.”
“And so would the cleaners,” Thyme said.
Ruprecht’s eyes lit up. “Exactly. I already called the motel on the ruse that I was looking for a cleaner, and they said they only have one cleaner at a time working on a roster system.”
“And I suppose you weren’t able to ask them who was cleaning Marina’s room on that day, as they’d be suspicious,” I said.
Ruprecht’s eyebrows knit together. “I’m not sure of your meaning, Amelia, but one cleaner is rostered on five days straight. I told them I’d heard a report that the cleaner they had rostered on this week was very good, and they gave me her name. Clara Crocker.”
“Clara Crocker!” Thyme said.
“Do you know her?” Ruprecht asked her.
Thyme shook her head. “No, it rings a bell though. I just thought it was a strange name.”
“I don’t think it’s a strange name,” I said. “Do you ever watch Escape from the Country? They have some strange names in that. I mean, some of those English towns!”
Ruprecht cleared his throat. “Ladies, this is a serious matter. Let us focus. I need you both to go to Clara Crocker’s house now and question her.”
“You’re kidding!” Thyme said.
“But we’ve just interrogated that dreadful Kayleen,” I said. “Don’t you want to hear what she said?”
The look on Ruprecht’s face was resolute. “Yes, I do want to hear what she said, but I won’t forget that you are both to go and question Clara Crocker right away.”
Thyme groaned and I sighed. After we filled in Ruprecht on everything Kayleen had said, he seemed in better spirits. “All right, make notes so we can follow up those leads later.”
“By we, I hope you mean you as well,” I said.
His expression was pained. “Of course, Amelia. How could you say such a thing? You had better go and speak to Clara before it rains again.”
“Whatever are we to say to her?” I asked him. “Invite her to come and clean your shop?”
Ruprecht gasped. “Oh goodness gracious me! No, of course not. Have you gone completely mad? I don’t want some strange woman touching my valuable antiques. For all we know, she’s the murderer.”
I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with protesting, so I caved in. “Okay, just tell us what to say and we’ll go and speak to her.”
“I wish you wouldn’t speak for me as well, Amelia,” Thyme said, elbowing me in the ribs.
“Don’t let on you suspect her, of course,” Ruprecht said. “Use the pretext of asking her if she saw anything suspicious around Marina’s room or if she saw anyone coming or going. Tell her Marina’s your friend and you know she didn’t commit the murder. It’s a foolproof scheme. If she’s the murderer, then she might let something slip, and if she isn’t the murderer, then you might glean some valuable information. What could go wrong?”
“She might poison us with non-whatsit cardiac thingymebobs,” I said.
“Nondigitalis cardiac glycosides,” Ruprecht supplied.
“Whatever you call it, it’s surely deadly.” I pulled a face as I said it.
“Just make sure you don’t eat or drink anything when you question suspects.”
I shot him a dirty look. Clearly, Ruprecht wanted us to interrogate more than one suspect. I took Thyme’s arm. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
“Wait!” Ruprecht called after us. “Marina was in room number five. And don’t you want to know where Clara lives?”
I felt quite foolish. “Oh yes, of course.”
It turned out that Clara lived out of town on a remote dirt road in the middle of boring, perfectly flat country dotted everywhere with dead gum trees. Those trees had been long dead. No one was exactly sure of the cause although some put it down to beetles. The phenomenon was known as New England Dieback. It wasn’t a pleasant landscape, the dry, dusty paddocks punctuated by pale, spectral gum trees.
“Why couldn’t the suspect have lived in a nice resort in the middle of town?” Thyme complained.
“There is no nice resort the middle of town,” I pointed out. “There isn’t even a horrible resort in town. The words ‘resort’ and ‘Bayberry Creek’ somehow have nothing to do with each other.”
Thyme chuckled.
“I hope this isn’t a wild goose chase,” I added.
“Well, it has to be done. Ouch!” That was as I had just driven into a pothole in the dirt road.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see that one coming.”
Thyme grabbed my wrist. “Slow down! Causeway.”
I slowed down to a crawl. There was plenty of water in the causeway and both sides were steep. I drove slowly to avoid water splashing up into the engine and cutting it out. I certainly didn’t want to go floating downstream in the car. “I wouldn’t like to hit this causeway with any speed even when it’s dry,” I remarked.
It took us another five minutes to reach the gate. Thyme got out to open it. She held it open for me to drive through and then shut it. When she climbed back into the car, I noticed a coating of thick mud on her shoes.
We wound down the long, muddy road until a house finally came into view. It was a white weatherboard house, and appeared to be in good condition although it was hard to tell from a distance. Plenty of unkempt bushes grew around the garden, but there wasn’t much in the way of flowers.
Five or so barking dogs greeted us. “I’m sure they won’t hurt us,” Thyme said.
“I’m not getting out until someone comes out,” I said to Thyme. “Look at that blue heeler.”
Thyme had been halfway through opening her door, but shut it as soon as she saw the blue heeler. The other dogs were kelpies.
We waited for a while and the kelpies continued to bark. The heeler just watched us. “What will we do if no one comes out?” Thyme said. “I can see a ute over there.”
“Clara must’ve heard the barking dogs. I wonder if she lives alone?”
Thyme had no chance to respond because a woman suddenly appeared behind the dogs. She was wearing an angry expression and a long blue skirt with huge yellow daisies embroidered all over it. She looked strong and wiry, despite her slender frame. The woman called off the dogs and motioned for us to get out of the car.
“You get out of the car first,” I said to Thyme.
“No, you get out first. Take a look at that dog!”
“He won’t bite us with the owner there. Those dogs are nothing if not obedient.”
“If you think so, then you get out first.”
I gave up. I got out of the car, keeping one eye on the dogs. Thankfully, they stayed back with the owner. Thyme and I approached her, but did not get too close due to the warning growl from the blue heeler.
“What do you want?” she said.
In case she thought we were door-to-door salespeople or religious folks, I said, “I’m Amelia and this is Thyme. We really need your help.”
Her wary expression faded, but was replaced by one of confusion. “Is something wrong with your car?”
Thyme shook her head. “Nothing like that. We thought you might have some valuable information for us. Our friend Marina Mercer has been accused of Bob Willis’s murder.”
The woman looked shocked. “She’s been accused?” she said in a small voice. “Has she been arrested?” She had the mannerisms of a bird, although she looked anything but frail.
“Yes, but she didn’t do it,” I said firmly. “She’s been a friend of my family’s for years. In fact, my grandmother was friends with her grandmother.” I don’t know why I said that, but I tend to ramble when I’m nervous.
