Gourd to Death. Kirsten Weiss

entry in the race,” Charlene said.

      “And this is my, er, this is Takako Harris,” I said. “Please accept my condolences on your loss. Kara was a wonderful doctor.”

      He studied his tennis shoes. “Thank you.”

      “What can we do to help?” Charlene asked.

      “Nothing.” He looked past my shoulder, his gaze unfocused. “Kara was such a planner, she had everything organized, even for her death. Now, I’ve got nothing to do, except think. And I don’t want to think, not today.” He swallowed convulsively. “They said I should stay home. But I’d already taken today off to volunteer, and I didn’t want to sit home alone. And now I’m talking too much. That’s what comes from being a salesman, I guess.” He touched his eyeglasses. “I talk.”

      My chest pinched with sympathy. I wasn’t sure what to say that wasn’t a platitude.

      “Such a stupid prank,” he continued. “Kara’s death was meaningless.”

      “Prank?” I asked.

      He blinked and focused on me. “The pumpkin. She must have been trying to stop some foolish sabotage.”

      “You think she was killed because of the pumpkin,” I said slowly.

      “What else could it be? She didn’t have enemies.”

      “Everybody has enemies,” Charlene said.

      “Not Kara,” he said. “Her biggest rival was Laurelynn Lelli, and that was nothing.”

      “Laurelynn?” I asked. She was wholesaling our mini pumpkin pies this month at her organic pumpkin patch.

      “They went to high school together,” he said. “She owns the pumpkin farm on Lincoln Way. They were always bickering about something. It was silly.”

      “Anything lately?” Crumb. I really didn’t want one of my wholesalers to be a killer. I was just getting that side of the business started.

      He shrugged. “Who knows what it was about this time?”

      This time? I glanced at the line behind us. It stretched to the street.

      Charlene squeezed his hand. “You’re a good man. You’ll get through this.”

      A cast-iron weight settled in my chest. How do you get through your wife being smashed by an oversized pumpkin?

      “At least Chief Shaw is taking over the investigation,” Elon said. “It will get the attention it deserves.”

      Charlene’s mouth puckered.

      “I’m sure he will,” I said.

      “Whatever you do,” he continued, “don’t go back.”

      I looked at him blankly.

      “When you’re in the haunted house,” he explained. “Keep moving forward, and you won’t get lost or ruin it for others.”

      “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

      We muttered more condolences and walked into the darkened barn.

      “That poor man,” Takako said.

      A sheet-covered ghost popped from behind a tombstone, and I jumped.

      Charlene chuckled. “He got you good.” The whir of her racer was lost in the shrieks ahead of us.

      Takako slid her hands into her pumpkin festival jacket pockets. “I read about his wife’s death in the paper this morning.”

      “Oh?” I asked.

      We moved into a mad scientist’s laboratory.

      I scanned the tables for places someone could hide. A motionless Frankenstein’s monster lay upon an angled operating table. “What did the article say?” I asked.

      The racer circled a long table with beakers bubbling on it. Someone squawked behind the table.

      A zombie hopped up. “What the—?”

      “Just testing,” Charlene said to the zombie. “Sorry, Takako, you were saying?”

      “The article wasn’t very illuminating,” Takako said. “It said the body was found beneath one of the giant pumpkins, and that her death is being considered suspicious.”

      No kidding.

      We twisted and turned through the rooms-a haunted fairground, a haunted asylum, a classic haunted mansion. Through some trick, the barn seemed bigger on the inside than on the outside.

      Takako, Charlene, and the pumpkin fell behind, and I found myself alone on a haunted pirate ship.

      I waited for them beside a ship’s wheel, draped with fake spiderwebs. Charlene had been right to drag me from Pie Town. I would have hated to miss this. Of course, if I hadn’t come, I’d never have known—

      Something creaked behind the mast.

      I whirled, expecting a demented pirate.

      The ship’s deck was empty.

      Feminine screams echoed from the room next door.

      I backed up, bumping into the ship’s wheel, and jumped again.

      Brilliant. Scares were a feature of haunted houses, not a bug. I exhaled a shaky breath. And where were Charlene and Takako?

      There was a faint popping sound. In the dim room, I turned, orienting on the noise.

      A tennis ball bounced across the wooden floor. It slowed, rolling to a stop in front of my sneakers.

      Oh, that wasn’t creeptastic. Not one bit.

      “Charlene?” I called. “Takako?” Enough of this. I’d just go back and find them. I moved toward the entrance to the pirate room.

      A sheet-clad ghost leapt from behind a pyramid of grog barrels. The spirit brandished a two-by-four. Nails sprouted from its business end.

      “Okay, okay.” I backed toward the exit. Sheesh. The church took the keep-moving-forward rule seriously. “I get the point. Heh, heh. Point. Nails. Get it?”

      The ghost wafted closer and raised the board, menacing.

      My muscles tensed. “I’m going.” I turned and hurried forward. Stupid haunted house. Stupid rules. And what did ghosts have to do with pirates?

      The skin between my shoulder blades heated. Sensing movement behind me, I pivoted.

      A blur of white. The ghost leapt, board swinging.

      Chapter Seven

      I’d like to claim my catlike reflexes saved me. But I did not dive elegantly to safety.

      Awkwardly, I half jumped backward. My heel caught on a coil of thick rope and I tumbled to the straw-dusted floor.

      The board whizzed past my head. It thunked against the ship’s wheel, nails sparking off the brass.

      I shrieked. But it was one shriek lost in a chorus of feminine screams echoing through the barn. My stomach bottomed. In a haunted house, no one can hear you scream.

      I rolled blindly. My feet tangled with the ghost’s, and my attacker collapsed in a pile of bedsheets. My assailant sprang to its feet. Sheet flapping, it darted from the pirate ship and into the next room.

      I scrambled to standing, tripped again over the stupid rope, staggered after my attacker. Pushing past gaggles of squealing girls, I raced into a weird, fog-filled maze. A werewolf sprang from behind a cardboard tree. Unthinking, I punched, catching myself just in time and jerking back and grazing its snout.

      “Hey!”

      “Sorry.” I ran outside the barn and into the watery sunlight.

      A