Pumpkin Blend (A Paramour Bay Cozy Paranormal Mystery Book 14) Read online

“What? What did you see?” Heidi’s head whipped from side to side as she reached out and clutched the steering wheel. “Is it him?”

  Sweet angle of mercy! Are you trying to scare the last of my nine lives right out of me? We’ve already established that I might actually be on my ninth life, so you can’t go reacting like that to a bird. Even with an eyepatch, I was able to see that it was a crow swooping down.

  “That’s because you have better night vision,” I muttered in aggravation, reaching for the napkins that Heidi had also thrown into the bag. “Heidi, it was just a bird.”

  “It is kind of creepy out here, isn’t it?”

  As I cleaned myself off and also finished pouring myself some coffee, I warily glanced at our surroundings. The large pumpkin patch was to our left, where rows upon rows of the orange fruit occupied the land. I’m pretty sure that it was the looming scarecrow in the middle of the patch that gave off much of the ominous vibe.

  The iconic figure had been hoisted upon a wooden stake to keep the crows away, and I was surprised it hadn’t kept everything and everyone else at bay. Its faceless head with random straw coming out the sides was downright disturbing.

  What? You think putting googly eyes on him would have made it better?

  To our right was a large, open field of land that was surrounded in an uneven livestock fence. I had no idea what the Stellhorn’s used the parcel of land for, but the fact that clouds kept covering the moon meant that the majority of it was shrouded in darkness.

  It was the kind of scene one might see in horror movies.

  I shot Leo a glare, but I was in the passenger seat. That meant his eyepatch, which I’d readjusted to his right eye, prevented him from witnessing my irritation.

  Oh, I saw that scowl. It reminded me of your dear sweet mother. Did you know that a lot of scientists say that we have a third eye? Basically, it’s a sixth sense sort of thing. I’m relatively certain that my blueberry-filled treats contribute to my newfound ability, though I’m currently lacking in that department. Whose fault would that be? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

  “So, what makes you think the thief will strike the pumpkin patch tonight?” Heidi asked, going back to enjoying her chocolate bar as she diligently stared ahead where the entrance of the farmstead was located. “I mean, just how many pumpkins does this guy need?”

  “Or woman,” I threw out there, sitting back in my seat so that I could also keep a close eye on the dark area behind us. “I thought that maybe Agnus might have something to do with the recent thefts, but Ted’s details of their conversation have me thinking otherwise. Besides, he can’t lie. If Agnus had sent Justine to pilfer some pumpkins, he would have come clean to me.”

  I think it has more to do with the fact that I heard them making Weeble last night. They were wobbling all night long. You and my reinstated soulmate were up so late that I popped into to the Ted-Shed for some shuteye. One of the worst mistakes of my life, because that horrifying sound of—

  “Stop!” I explained, shaking my head so as to get the graphic image out of my head. “Ted and Justine were carving pumpkins for Agnus, Leo. That’s what you heard.”

  Oh. Well, how was I to know? It’s not like I was going to look!

  Heidi chuckled, having caught the gist of our conversation.

  “I’m just saying that no one needs…how many pumpkins do Virgil and Beau think were taken over the last week? And considering that the prized one weighed close to two hundred pounds, I’m going to go with a male suspect.”

  Someone who knows about the squirrelpocalypse, that’s who. It could also have been zombie squirrels, for that matter. Huh. I wonder if there is such a thing. Remind me to look into that subject matter later.

  “At least ten pumpkins so far, and that doesn’t include the prized jack-o-lantern,” I replied, scrunching my nose when I thought about the so-called urban legend. “Leo and I were talking about the history of the jack-o-lantern earlier today. If we stick with that theory, then who in town would need to ward off evil spirits?”

  “Ohhhh,” Heidi exclaimed as if she had the answer, waving her half-eaten chocolate bar my way. She’d never know how much she was tempting fate. “Who died recently? Didn’t Mrs. Marinus lose her husband a few weeks ago? Maybe she thinks that he’s going to return from the grave.”

  I’d be afraid that old geezer would haunt me, too. Did you know that he used to feed the neighborhood squirrels? On purpose! I mean, who does that? Well, besides the old biddy at the inn, but that was just because she was tired of them hijacking the seeds from her bird feeders. She gets a pass on that one.

  “You’re right!” I exclaimed, quickly setting my coffee cup into the holder. I reached for my cell phone, which I’d slid into the pocket of my jacket. It wasn’t my really big, overstuffed winter coat, but it was heavier than the one I used during the day this time of year. “We should make a list of those residents who died within the past few months. We can swing by their houses tomorrow to see if anything unusual sticks out.”

  You mean like their front lawn being littered with mutilated pumpkins?

  “The pumpkins need to be carved,” I reminded him, knowing full well that he was being sarcastic. Still, Heidi had a valid point. Who else would be scared of an evil spirit but someone who recently lost a family member, friend, or enemy? “Mrs. Marinus is top of the list. Who else?”

  “Didn’t Candy’s aunt die a couple of months ago? She lived in North Carolina, though. Does that matter?”

  “Not if Candy feels that her aunt would come back and haunt her for some reason,” I replied, typing in Candy’s name on the list that I was creating on my phone. I’d had to lower the light on the display so that I wasn’t wincing to see the screen. “Speaking of which, Candy came into the shop this morning. She was talking about what happened last night at the festival, but she was the one to bring up the fact that maybe the prized jack-o-lantern was taken while Virgil and Beau were here instead of town square.”

  She probably dyed her aunt’s hair purple. That would be enough for me to haunt her, but I’m partial to my seasonal orange tufts now that I’ve had time to get used to them.

  “Do you remember that auditor that was murdered at the inn?” Heidi asked, polishing off what was left of her chocolate bar. “What if Gertie or Beverly thought that he would return from the grave to haunt the place after he died? You did say that Gertie believed in holistic and new age remedies, and you even suspect that she knows about you being a witch.”

  I pondered over such a scenario, but I discarded the inn theory after much consideration. After all, Rye had made a trip to the pumpkin patch specifically for her. He wouldn’t have done that if he’d seen she’d already had some.

  “Gertie is in her nineties, and Beverly wouldn’t have the strength to lift a one hundred and eighty-three pound pumpkin,” I replied, although I did have to hand it to Gertie’s employee. Beverly never tired from all the upkeep that she did for the inn. If that had been me, I would have collapsed after the first hour of the first day. “Plus, Rye would have said something to us. And wouldn’t we have seen them out on the front porch?”

  “Has anyone thought to take a drive through the town’s neighborhoods?”

  Or the park? Maybe I’ve been thinking about this case all wrong! What if Skippy and his minions have figured out my most treasured secret? What if they discovered that the supernatural exists, and that I’m a familiar? They could have stolen all the pumpkins to ward off evil spirits, which means they would have placed them in front of their hibernation stash. Raven, this is it! I must find those pumpkins! Once I do, I’ll have discovered their main resupply base!

  Chapter Seven

  I’d been completely okay with the fact that the clouds repeatedly covered the moon and its natural illumination for the last few hours, but that was when I’d been in the safety of Heidi’s vehicle. The doors had been locked, we’d been relatively secure, and Leo’s head had basically been on a sw
ivel.

  Being out in the middle of the pumpkin patch was downright spooky.

  Plus, Leo had all but abandoned the stakeout to go in search of the pumpkins in the park. I’m not so sure that he would have been so willing to do so if the town hadn’t erected lampposts to surround the playground after Spot had run away from home. The Williamsons’ new puppy had dug a hole in his back yard and made his escape to go play in the sandbox, which just so happened to have an old tennis ball buried in it.

  Leo might fit the label of scaredy cat, but his scream of terror could alert the dead.

  Not having him by my side at the moment had me a bit wary of my surroundings, which at moments had me unable to see my hand in front of my face. I bit my tongue to prevent me from calling out to Liam. He’d told me exactly what row that he’d gone down to set up his own stakeout, but I had to have walked three quarters of the length and hadn’t seen him yet.

  “It’s not a real stakeout if the culprit knows that he’s being watched,” Liam said wryly, his voice coming out of the darkness and having my boots come at least three inches off the ground. “Raven, what are you doing traipsing through the pumpkin patch in the dark? You’re lucky that you didn’t trip and break an arm.”

  “And you’re lucky that you didn’t give me a heart attack,” I muttered as I caught sight of Liam’s shadow on my right. He must have been in the row next to the one that I’d walked down, but we were close enough now that I could make out his features. It also helped that some of the clouds overhead had finally parted to allow some moonlight to sift through. “I thought you might be cold, so I brought you some coffee.”

  Liam pulled me close, and I savored his body heat as I held his disposable cup of coffee way up in the air so that it wouldn’t spill. My hat and gloves were still damp from my spill earlier, so I hadn’t worn them on this little diversion.

  “It’s going on one o’clock in the morning.” My words were muffled by his jacket, so I turned my head and reiterated my statement. “Do you still think that the thief is coming tonight?”

  “No,” Liam responded in resignation, taking the coffee from my hand so that I could snuggle against his chest. “You had a good idea, but I think that maybe I can talk Virgil and Beau into putting up some security cameras. Not the expensive kind, but one or two cameras that can capture a couple of likely entry points.”

  “If Virgil and Beau install cameras here at their pumpkin patch, the entire town will know it,” I pointed out as I gave into my fatigue and closed my eyes. There was a chance that I might actually fall asleep standing up. Liam’s body heat had basically chased away the cold. “That would mean that the culprit might not come back to steal more.”

  “That’s the point—deterrence,” Liam replied with a chuckle.

  “But then we won’t catch him or her in the act.” I popped open my eyes and leaned back against his left arm. “How does that help us?”

  “It makes it more difficult, I give you that.” Liam paused to take a sip of the coffee that I’d brought him. “But part of my job as sheriff is to make sure that the residents are safe, and I intend to stop their property from being robbed.”

  I groaned at the catch twenty-two that his job presented in this situation.

  How was it that I was a witch with all these special abilities, yet I couldn’t figure out a spell for a simple theft of pumpkins?

  “Go on home,” Liam said softly before gently placing a kiss on my forehead. “I’m going to stick around for a while.”

  “You don’t have any backup.”

  “Yes, I do,” Liam replied with certainty, gesturing behind me with his disposable coffee cup. “I have Joe here to keep me company.”

  I muffled a laugh with my hand, not wanting my voice to carry through the pumpkin patch. While I could admit to the scarecrow being a bit disturbing, he certainly hadn’t done a good job keeping the vandals at bay.

  “Joe? You couldn’t come up with a better name than that?”

  “Don’t offend my new friend,” Liam quipped as he began to escort me back to Heidi’s car. “He likes things simple.”

  You two are so odd. I leave for twenty minutes, and you’re necking in the middle of a pumpkin patch and naming inanimate objects. Wait. We already did that twice. Sweet angel of mercy! Are you trying to tell me that faceless ghoul is alive?

  “Leo,” I whispered harshly so that he wouldn’t panic over something that hadn’t taken place. He’d appeared out of nowhere, almost tripping me. I most likely would have fallen had Liam not had his arm around my waist. “We didn’t do anything of the sort. Liam just made up a name for him, that’s all.”

  Why would he go and do something like that? It’s just inviting bad spirits. There’s something wrong with all of you. First, I find Heidi hiding in the car with a can of pepper spray at the ready. I only have one good eye at a time lately, and she seems to want to take it out of commission. Now you two go and name an inanimate object, who for all we know could be a vessel for an evil spirit. If that thing so much as twitches, you better hurl an energy ball at him.

  “Leo, you’re in charge of making sure the women get home safely,” Liam said seriously, bringing Leo up short. Thankfully, he had been to the side of me this time around. “I’ll take over here.”

  Hmmm. That sounds like a pretty good deal, but I’m wondering if there is a catch somewhere that I’m missing. The good ol’ sheriff is basically telling me that I can get my beauty sleep.

  “Leo said that he’ll make sure we all get home okay,” I said, purposefully changing up Leo’s sentiment. I was exhausted, and I was grateful that I didn’t have to open the shop tomorrow until eleven o’clock in the morning. “Will you call me if anything happens?”

  “Absolutely,” Liam replied, seeing a pumpkin that had somehow rolled directly into our path. I frowned and stopped when he would have leaned down to move it aside, because it definitely hadn’t been there when I’d first come through. “What is it, Raven?”

  “I’m not sure,” I whispered, glancing around us to see if anyone else was out and about. Nothing else seemed disturbed in our immediate area. “Leo, did you come through here?”

  The hairs on my arms all stood at attention while my palm began to tingle in warning that all was not as it seemed. Someone or something had been through here recently, and we’d somehow missed it.

  Do I look like I have a death wish? Of course, I didn’t come this way. Once my soulmate screamed bloody murder after I graced her with my presence in the car, I did a disappearance act faster than she had time to activate that pepper spray of hers.

  “Raven, the pumpkin probably got too heavy on the stem and rolled into the path,” Liam explained, handing me his coffee as he knelt to the ground. He then unhooked a small flashlight that had been in the utility belt that he always wore with his uniform. “See? There are no other footprints here but yours.”

  I leaned over at the waist to get a better look at the ground where Liam was shining the light. Sure enough, I could see my own imprints in the dirt thanks to the rain that we’d received on Thursday, but there were no other footprints to be found.

  “Odd,” I murmured, cautiously looking around our immediate area as I straightened my shoulders. Nothing seemed to be out of place, yet the palm of my hand was indicating otherwise. “I could have sworn…”

  Raven, you really need to be more accepting of your shortcomings. You have a defective ability to sense danger. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, and you should embrace your flaws like I have mine. It’s very freeing, you know.

  Liam shifted the pumpkin so that it was out of the path before turning off his flashlight. He hooked it back onto his utility belt as the moonlight became just a little brighter with the movements of the clouds.

  “Let’s get you to the car,” Liam said quietly, as if he even sensed something hanging in the air. I caught him monitoring our surroundings now that a bit more illumination had presented itself. “Sleep in tomorrow, and then I’ll bring
you a Pumpkin Spiced Macchiato from the bakery.”

  “You’re so good to me,” I murmured, leaning my head against his shoulder as we walked the rest of the way. Sure enough, Heidi was looking like an owl, with her wide eyes and her head on a swivel. Just as Leo had mentioned, she had her pepper spray in hand and ready to use at a moment’s notice. “I’m pretty sure that Heidi is ready to go home and crawl into bed, but you should know that we plan to drive around the neighborhoods tomorrow to see if anyone has an abundance of pumpkins on their front porch…or even the prized jack-o-lantern itself, although that would be pretty foolish for a thief to do.”

  I’ve heard about those Darwin awards…

  “I already drove through the neighborhoods, and I also took a drive around the outskirts to those residences technically not in my jurisdiction.” Liam walked me around the front of Heidi’s car and opened the passenger side door. “Sorry to break it to you, but no abundance of pumpkins.”

  “So, we’re back at square one,” I said with a frown.

  “I’m working on it. It’s called the process of elimination for a reason,” Liam said, flashing me a smile and not seeming at all tired or frustrated after a full day of investigations. “Be careful driving home, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  You really need to start trusting the good ol’ sheriff to do his job, Raven. You’re going to give the man a complex.

  Liam closed the door, leaving me to catch Heidi up on everything that had happened in the last ten minutes. I even included the peculiar sense of uneasiness that had come over me when we found one of the pumpkins in the middle of the path that I’d previously taken to reach Liam.

  “I’m taking Leo home with me tonight,” Heidi declared, turning the key over in the ignition. The engine purred to life, and I leaned back to enjoy the heated seat. Leo had hopped into the back, because Heidi had already turned on the seats, knowing just how much he enjoyed them. “I can handle witches, werewolves, and now vampires after finding out about Beetle being one, but this whole Pumpkinhead thing is starting to freak me out.”