“I will admit that you had me worried,” Jillian told me the following evening. “Any recipe that includes pork and beans as well as barbecue sauce usually raises my red flags. I want to say that I was wrong. Your casserole was really good, Zachary.”
“No offense was taken,” I assured her. “Cooking is not my forte. However, give me a simple recipe to follow and I can usually hold my own. Besides, I grew up eating this type of food.”
“And you remembered the recipe off the top of your head?” Jillian asked, impressed. “Good for you!”
I finished putting the dishes in the dishwasher, dried my hands, and reached behind the toaster to slide out the old cookbook I had found.
“Not exactly. I had some help.”
Jillian picked up the book, blew off a layer of dust, and hesitantly opened it.
“Oh, Zachary. Is this the only cookbook you have? I am so sorry. Come by my store. The first new cookbook you pick out is on me.”
“Don’t laugh. I think my mom had this very same cookbook. Maybe a few years newer, but I know I remember seeing something like that back when I was growing up.”
“Do you miss her?” Jillian asked. “Didn’t you say that all of your family still lives in the Phoenix area?”
I nodded, “Yes. My parents are in Scottsdale, my sister is in Goodyear, and I have a brother in Gilbert.”
“Do they have kids?” Jillian asked.
“My sister has one son and my brother has two boys and one girl. What about you? You said you’ve lived in PV all your life. Does that mean your parents live here, too? Any siblings?”
“I’m an only child,” Jillian told me. “As for my parents, you’re right. They live here, too, only not at the moment.”
“Are they snowbirds?” I asked. “Do they have a house somewhere else?”
“They bought themselves an RV and are at present somewhere in Idaho. They stopped at a little town called McCall. Apparently there’s some great fishing up there.”
“That must be fun for them,” I said as I finished drying dishes. “Being able to see the country at their own leisure is something I think most of us would like to do at some point. When do you expect them back?”
Jillian shrugged, “Spring of next year, maybe summer. I told them there’s no rush.’
“Well good for them.”
“You’re stalling,” Jillian accused, giving me one of her stunning smiles.
“No I’m not.”
“Then just ask me.”
“Ask you? Ask you what?”
“To go with you to the maze tonight. I know the Samuelsons are going to be there.”
“What is it with women?” I groaned aloud. “Do they always tell each other everything?”
“Tori is one of my best friends. That means I got to listen to how Vance got the two of you lost in the maze.” Jillian laughed and shook her head, sending her brown tresses tumbling about. “I don’t understand how you two could’ve gotten lost. Didn’t Vance use the cheat sheet he was given?”
I shrugged, “Well, yeah, but it didn’t matter. I can’t believe he wants to go again.”
“Are you up for this?” Jillian asked mischievously.
“Wait, are you saying you want to do this? Take on the maze, that is.”
“Sure! I go every year. I’d love to go with you. You can help me beat my personal best time of about 50 minutes.”
I stood up and reached for my wallet and cell.
“You’re on. Let’s see. It’s 5:30pm now. It’ll take us at least 15 minutes to get to Fanny’s Farms. Let’s just round that up to 6pm. That’ll give us about an hour before it gets dark. Do you think we can solve it before it gets too dark to see?”
I extended a hand and pulled Jillian to her feet. She beamed a smile up at me.
“Let’s go find out, shall we? I just need to get my purse. Have you seen it?”
I pointed back at the couch. The only part of the purse that was visible was part of the shoulder strap. The rest was concealed underneath one of two very upset looking corgis. Sherlock was watching us, with both ears straight up. Somehow the little booger knew we were planning on leaving.
“I need you two to watch the house for a couple of hours, okay?” I instructed the two dogs. “You’re gonna be on your own. Try not to get into…”
I trailed off as I watched Sherlock glance once at Watson, and then together they jumped down from the couch. Both corgis trotted over to the door, turned back around to face us, and plunked both of their butts down. There was no way to get outside the house without dealing with their royal highnesses.
“Looks like someone wants to go,” Jillian observed.
“They aren’t invited,” I told Jillian, turning to frown at the dogs. “They… aww, come on. That’s not fair.”
I watched as two sets of furry ears slowly drooped. If possible, both corgis adopted even more mournful expressions and slid into down positions. Sherlock rested his head on his front paws and stared at me, unblinking. Watson gave a low, piteous whine.
“Fine. You win. You two can come.”
In less time that it takes to blink an eye both corgis were back on their feet, barking excitedly, and running laps around us. Sherlock finally hesitated long enough to nose one of the leashes that I keep hanging by the door. Properly secured, we all stepped outside and headed towards my Jeep.
Both Sherlock and Watson fidgeted the entire time we were driving, running from one side of the back seat to the other, yipping excitedly. I’ve driven with the dogs a number of times now. I’ve never seen them this excited before. You’d think I was taking them for an outing to a dog park. I turned to Jillian but was surprised to see her watching me.
“What?”
“I was just thinking about how much you remind me of Michael.”
I reminded her of her dead husband? I didn’t know if that was meant to be taken as bad or good. Without realizing it, I frowned. Before I could say anything Jillian placed her hand on mine, which was currently on the gear shift.
“Oh, no, I don’t mean anything bad by that. I’m so sorry. What I should have said is that you and Michael share a lot of common traits. You’re both kind, you both love animals, you’re both tall. The list goes on and on. It’s almost spooky sometimes.”
“Good spooky or it-creeps-the-bejeezus-outta-me spooky?”
“Good spooky,” Jillian giggled. “What about me? Do I remind you of your wife?”
I hesitated. What was the best way to answer? Truthfully or make something up? I opted for the truth.
“Er, no. Sorry.”
“That’s okay, Zachary. Seeing how painful it is for you to think about your wife, I’m glad I’m nothing like her.”
We pulled up to Fanny’s Farms. While not necessarily packed, there were a lot of cars in the makeshift parking lots. The eatery had a line ten people deep and the small gift shop was overrun with tourists. A local radio station was playing over strategically placed loudspeakers and, I’m sorry to say, I could hear an occasional whistle blast from a directionally-impaired maze runner. Might as well get this over with.
I bought two tickets for the maze. We had some time to kill before we were due to meet up with Tori and Vance so we headed to the back of the farm’s gift shop where we could see that nearly a dozen tents had been set up. This farm, like the first I had seen, had vendors selling all manner of things. Not really sure what to expect, I jammed my hands in my pockets and followed Jillian into the first tent.
I grunted. This tent had rack after rack of hand decorated Christmas ornaments. While pretty, they really didn’t do anything for me. So I pasted an obligatory smile on my face and made appropriate oohs and aahs whenever Jillian held an ornament up for my opinion.
The next tent had mini tombstones. I blinked and looked again. Yep. Anyone who considers him/herself to be a true Halloween enthusiast will most definitely need to consider getting your very own personalized gravestone to decorate your house. Judging by the look of surprise on Jillian’s face, this must be the first time this particular vendor had set up shop in Pomme Valley.
The next stall definitely caught Jillian’s attention. The lady inside this tent was selling hand-decorated eggs. Not just chicken eggs, mind you, but everything from ostrich eggs all the way down to what I was told was a hummingbird’s egg. They had been hollowed, colored with some of the most ornate patterns I had ever seen, and some even had designs cut into the shell’s surface. Confused, I gently picked up a chicken egg that had a significant part of its shell cut away and studied the miniature diorama that was visible inside. A teeny tiny polar bear was sitting on its butt next to what looked like a snow drift. It even looked like it was drinking a bottle of soda.
“That’s cute,” Jillian observed, coming up from behind me to try and look over my shoulder. It didn’t work. She was too short and I was too tall.
“I never knew you could cut through an egg shell like it was paper,” I commented, looking around the display stands. “I mean, look at that one. It has bright, sharp colors and a really cool geometric design over every square inch. How is that even possible?”
“It’s a ‘pysanka’,” an older woman’s voice said.
Jillian and I looked up. A friendly looking elderly lady was standing directly on the other side of a large glass display case and was smiling at us. She looked down, saw the two dogs, and automatically pulled out a bag of doggie treats. Two fuzzy canine derrieres hit the ground even before the bag could be opened.
“How do you make something like that?” Jillian asked, pointing at an egg that was larger than a chicken’s. A goose egg, maybe?
“I start with raw eggs,” the shopkeeper said, dropping several treats on the ground. “I use a pysachok to draw designs onto the surface using beeswax.”
“Does it take a long time?” I asked.
The woman nodded, “As long as you can imagine and even then, sometimes longer.”
I decided to buy an egg and started reaching for the polar bear egg I had noticed earlier when I saw that Jillian had also selected an egg. Unfortunately, hers was bigger. Not to be outdone, I waited for her purchase to be wrapped up before I selected an even larger egg – an emu as I learned later – and tried not to groan when I saw the price tag. It was $149! Oh, well. I’ll chalk it up to helping support the local economy.
I ran our purchases up to my Jeep and returned in time to hear Jillian announce it was time to meet our friends at the maze’s entrance. I held my arm out and waited for Jillian to slide hers into mine. With each of us holding a leash we both headed towards where I remembered the entrance to be. Jillian patted her shirt and winked at me. I knew she had tucked her borrowed whistle under her jacket. I, for one, surreptitiously slid a hand into my left back pocket. I felt the folded piece of paper and smiled. Good. My cheat sheet was still there.
Come on. You really didn’t think I’d leave that behind, did you? That damn sheet is worth its weight in gold, provided I had someone better than me trying to follow it. I just hoped I didn’t have to use it.
Vance and Tori were waiting for us at the maze’s entrance. I smiled. There was a gorgeous German Shepherd sitting complacently by Tori’s right side. He was staring straight at us. Well, straight at the corgis, if you want to get technical. Sherlock caught sight of Anubis and yipped a greeting. Anubis dropped down into a playful dog pose and barked back. Watson elected to remain by my side.
“I’m so glad you brought your dogs!” Tori exclaimed, squatting down to ruffle Sherlock’s ears. Watson pushed by me to secure her own bit of attention. After scratching under Watson’s chin for a few moments Tori straightened, inclined her head at the entrance in the rows of corn, and held out her hand. I heard Vance groan as we all stepped inside.
“Feels like we were just here, doesn’t it?” Vance quipped as we followed a teenage couple into the heart of the corn field.
Since Halloween was just around the corner both of the teenagers were wearing costumes. The girl was dressed as Little Bo Peep while the guy was some type of zombie with a fake knife through his head. Have I mentioned that I’m not a fan of dressing up?
“I can’t believe this is your idea,” I muttered as I came up alongside Vance.
“What?” he asked.
“The fact that we’re back in here,” I answered.
“Oh. Yeah, it kinda is. I’ve never had such crappy luck when navigating my way through a maze. I can only assume that your lousy sense of direction was starting to rub off on me.”
“So this is round two, is that it?” I asked, grinning at my friend.
Vance nodded, “Yep. Man versus maze, take 2. This time we’ll get it right. In case it doesn’t, however, do you… that is to say, did you by any chance happen to bring the, umm…”
“The cheat sheet?” I whispered. “You bet your ass I did.”
“Good man, Zack,” Vance exclaimed, slapping my back.
For the next thirty minutes we all laughed, explored, and got hopelessly lost – again – but you know what? None of us cared. We were all having a great time. We even had that young teen couple from before start to follow us around ‘cause I figure they knew we had a better chance of finding our way out than they did. Jillian later told me that she overheard the girl tell the boy that she thought the dogs were cute.
As I said, things were going well for thirty minutes. Thirty-one minutes passed and things took a turn for the worse. Let’s see if I can remember what happened in the order they happened.
First off, Sherlock stopped, dropped his nose to the ground and sniffed. His ears snapped up and his hackles rose. He looked straight ahead at the endless rows of corn and growled. Within moments all three dogs were growling and I’m fairly certain only one had reason to.
Second, it got eerily quiet. I looked at Jillian with a questioning look. She shrugged. At least she had noticed the absence of noise, too.
And finally, the four of us noticed we were now alone. None of us could remember the last time our group had come across any other runners. We had even lost the teen couple that had been shadowing us for the past half an hour.
“Did we make a wrong turn somewhere?” Vance asked, looking pointedly at me. “Where has everyone gone?”
“I’m more interested in knowing what set Sherlock off,” I added.
“It looks as though he’s pulling on his leash,” Jillian observed. “Let’s see where he wants to go.”
Sherlock promptly led us deeper into the maze. At least we were still following a path through the maze. It was one of my deepest fears that we’d move beyond the actual maze and would stumble blindly about in a huge field of corn.
We rounded a corner and saw three Styrofoam gravestones. Another bend had a series of ‘cobwebs’ stretching across several stalks of corn. By the time we rounded the third bend we started seeing people again. We saw a family of Frankensteins. Yeah, literally. The entire family was dressed up as the same thing. Daddy Frankenstein, mommy Frankenstein, and two little girls. Both Frankensteins. Then we saw another family who looked like the Addams family, which I thought was cute. I briefly looked behind me as we passed them just to see if either of them were Zora Lumen.
Right about then a group of teenagers walked by. Most of them were girls. Of the five girls, four were dressed like Josie and the Pussycats. The fifth was wearing a short plaid mini skirt with a white long sleeve blouse. The lone boy amongst the group of girls was dressed as an Egyptian pharaoh.
As the group of kids passed us by, Sherlock paused only long enough to woof a warning. Once the giggling girls had vanished from sight the tri-colored corgi resumed his growls and led us further away. Watson and Anubis had stopped their own growls but were following Sherlock closely, as if to assure the little corgi that they had his back should the situation call for it.
“I’ve never been able to understand why a young girl would want to dress like slutty schoolgirl for Halloween,” Jillian mused. “No one is scared of a schoolgirl.”
I reluctantly raised a hand, “Not true. I wouldn’t want to be in a room full of teeny boppers. Are you kidding me? That’s the stuff of nightmares!”
Vance laughed, but he was cut off the moment Tori smacked his gut.
Five minutes later we passed what I was certain was the place where we had found the dead body from a few nights ago. The dead mummified body, I reminded myself. I thought Sherlock would stop and at least check the area out. Nope. He glanced over as we passed the large clearing that had recently been cut into the corn but didn’t even break stride. As we came upon the same junction point as we did from before, with at least seven paths heading off in different directions, another group of kids appeared in a path coming from the north. All three were dressed as mummies.
There was no other way to describe what happened next but to simply say Sherlock went bat-shit crazy. He began barking and there was nothing friendly about it. His hackles had risen, his teeth were bared, and if I hadn’t been holding onto the leash, I’m sure he would have torn off after the kids.
Just then, the unexpected happened. One boy took one look at us, cried out in alarm, and fled back up the path. The four of us shared a look. What had just happened?
The two remaining kids looked uncertainly amongst themselves before they turned tail and fled, too.
Sherlock was damn near frothing at the mouth. He was pulling so hard on his leash that he was almost choking himself. He wouldn’t stop barking!
“Sherlock! Be quiet! What’s gotten into you? You’ve seen all those other kids dressed up. Why would those three bother you?”
“They were dressed as mummies,” Vance said as he frowned. “Were those the only mummies that we’ve seen so far?”
Jillian shook her head, “No. We saw one just as we went inside the maze.”
“Remember the boy and girl that followed us around for a while?” Tori asked. “The boy was dressed as a mummy. Sherlock didn’t have a problem with him.”
My eyes widened.
“One of them has gotta be our mummy impostor! And I’m betting it was the boy who fled first! That’s why Sherlock was growling. He must have picked up the same scent he smelled at the exhibition. What do you want to bet that kid knows where the pendant is?”
“Give me Anubis!” Vance demanded, thrusting his hand backwards. Tori tossed the dog’s leash to him. “Anubis, find them! Go!”
Anubis took off like a shot. Vance let out a whoop and gave chase. Both Sherlock and Watson barked excitedly and pulled on their leashes. Clearly they wanted to join the chase.
“Nuh uh,” I told the corgis. “We’ll follow at a more respectable distance. This is a matter for the police, not for us.”
Sherlock whined and tried to get me to pick up the pace. Somewhere up ahead I heard Vance let out a shout. I looked back at Jillian. She was already pulling her whistle out.
“Good. Jillian, get some help. I don’t trust this. Tori, take Watson. Sherlock and I are going to see if Vance needs any help.”
I gave Sherlock some extra leash and we both took off. I let the corgi lead for a few minutes until we saw something laying discarded in the middle of the path. Scraps of linen. It was the kid’s mummy costume. By some strange coincidence there was a mummy propped up like a scarecrow nearby
Vance arrived a few minutes later. Unfortunately, he was empty handed. Somehow, that little puke had gotten away. Again!
“I take it you lost him?”
“Yeah, but I got something even better.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“His looks. I saw him. I’ll work with a police sketch artist and come up with a picture. He’s a young little punk. I’ll bet you a thousand bucks that our perp is a student at the high school.”
“Look around us, pal,” I told Vance. “We’re in the middle of a damn corn field. There’s nowhere to run to. We should be able to find him.”
“Are you kidding me?” Vance asked, incredulous. “The maze itself is 40-acres. Fanny’s Farms must have over 200 hundred total acres. They could be hiding anywhere.”
I promptly pointed down at the two dogs.
“I’ll bet one of them can find him.”
“They’re not bloodhounds,” Vance pointed out. ‘Besides, we don’t have the perp’s scent.”
“Yes, we do,” I corrected. “The costume! I’m pretty sure the kid dropped the costume back there.”
“He did? How did I miss that? Zack, show me. Hurry!”
We rushed back to the wadded up pile of white linen. I pulled my multi-tool from my belt, unfolded the pliers, and gently picked a piece of it up and held it out to Vance.
“Does this look like what the kid was wearing?”
Vance nodded, “Yes. That’s it, alright. I wonder why he dropped it. No matter. This is perfect. If we can get… is that blood?”
Vance took my pliers and held up a few strips of fabric. Sure enough, we could see several dark red smudges on the tattered scraps of cloth, as though someone had used the linen to wipe their bloody hands off. The detective held the strips down for the dogs. Anubis sniffed the costume, dropped his head down to sniff along the ground, and then looked pointedly in the direction the kid had fled.
I took my pliers back and held the strips down for Sherlock to sniff. Turns out my corgi wasn’t interested in the costume at all. He was, however, anxiously pulling on his leash, wanting to go in the direction the perp had fled.
Anubis barked. It was all Vance could do to keep the big German Shepherd in place. After a few moments my detective friend squatted, as though he was going to release the dog, when I laid a hand on his shoulder.
“There was blood on the costume. One of them might be armed. Do you want to run the risk of hurting Anubis?”
“He most certainly does not,” a woman’s voice flatly declared.
We turned to see Tori and Jillian approach, with Watson trailing behind.
“Don’t even think of turning him loose,” Tori warned. “You’re not going to put my dog in danger. If you want him to track somebody then you go with him.”
Vance nodded and looked down at Anubis. He ruffled the big dog’s fur.
“You heard her, Anubis. Let’s go find him!”
The German Shepherd took off like a shot. Vance was practically dragged behind him. I looked back at the girls and made a quick decision.
“Keep Watson safe. Sherlock, let’s go!”