Page 3 of Pumpkin Patch Peril (Brook Ridge Falls Ladies’ Detective Club #1)

CHAPTER THREE

The Brook Ridge Falls Retirement Center buzzed with its usual mid-morning activity as the four ladies made their way down the carpeted hallway.

Somewhere behind closed doors, a television game show blared at maximum volume, while the faint aroma of overcooked vegetables drifted from the communal kitchen.

“Hold the elevator!” Ruth called, moving with surprising speed for someone who’d just committed vehicular flower-slaughter.

Ida shoved her arm into the door to prevent it from closing. “Got it! And I’ve still got the pastry box, so nobody panic.”

The elevator ride to the third floor was mercifully brief, though Mona noticed Helen examining her reflection in the polished metal doors with the critical eye of someone who’d spent decades in front of newspaper cameras.

“My hair looks like I’ve been through a wind tunnel,” Helen muttered, patting at her silver waves.

“That’s what happens when you ride in Ruth’s car with the windows down,” Ida pointed out cheerfully. “Good thing we didn’t hit any actual wind.”

Mona’s apartment welcomed them with the familiar comfort of floral wallpaper, overstuffed furniture, and the lingering scent of the vanilla candles she favored.

The mahogany dining table dominated the center of the room, its polished surface reflecting the morning light streaming through lace curtains.

“Right,” Mona announced, heading straight for the kitchen. “First things first—coffee. Ruth, you get the whiteboard from the spare room. Helen, the good china for the pastries. Ida...”

“I’ll supervise,” Ida said, settling herself at the mahogany table and immediately opening the bakery box. “Someone needs to make sure these don’t go stale while you’re all busy.”

She pulled out her small spiral notebook and spread it beside the pastry box, flipping to a fresh page covered with more bingo charts. “And I can work on my frequency analysis while I supervise.”

“Try to leave some for the rest of us,” Helen called from the kitchen, where she was retrieving Mona’s delicate china teacups—the ones with tiny roses that had been a wedding gift forty-seven years ago.

Ruth disappeared into the spare room, and the sounds of furniture being moved suggested she was wrestling the whiteboard from its storage spot behind the guest bed.

The whiteboard had been Mona’s investment in their detective work, a six-foot-wide mobile unit with markers, erasers, and enough surface area to organize the most complex case.

“Got it!” Ruth emerged backwards through the doorway, pulling the whiteboard on its wheeled stand.

The thing had character—a few permanent stains from previous cases, wheels that squeaked like mice in distress, and a surface that had seen everything from murder investigations to Ida’s attempts at solving crossword puzzles in permanent marker.

The coffee maker gurgled to life in the kitchen, filling the apartment with the rich aroma that signaled serious business was about to begin.

Mona returned with a steaming pot, and Helen arranged the delicate teacups around the mahogany table—each one a work of art with hand-painted roses and gold-rimmed edges that caught the light.

Meanwhile, Ida had arranged her bingo notebook alongside the investigation materials, muttering about “caller tendencies” and “optimal card positioning” while making neat tick marks in her charts.

“All right, ladies,” Mona said, positioning herself in front of the whiteboard with a red marker in hand. “Let’s see what we’ve got so far.”

She drew three columns across the top of the board in neat block letters: Suspects, Motives, and Clues.

“First suspect,” she announced, writing “Laura Jenkins” in the left column. “Environmental activist with a grudge against Brenda’s pesticide use.”

“And she’s got the arms of a scarecrow,” Ida added around a mouthful of apple cider donut. “No way she could move a five hundred pound pumpkin by herself.”

“Maybe she had help,” Helen suggested, carefully lifting her delicate teacup. “Environmental groups stick together and can be very... enthusiastic about their causes.”

Mona wrote “Pesticide Opposition” under Motives and “Physically unlikely” under Clues. “Second suspect—Tom Knowles, the neighboring farmer. Pesticide runoff affecting his organic operation.”

“Now there’s someone with the equipment to move a giant pumpkin,” Ruth observed, consulting her iPad while balancing her rose-painted teacup. “I’m looking up his farm now... Knowles Organic Produce, established 1987, specializes in heirloom vegetables and chemical-free farming methods.”

“Motive and means,” Mona said, adding Tom’s information to the board. “What about opportunity?”

“Neighboring farm means he’d know Brenda’s routines,” Helen pointed out. “When she’s home, when she’s not, where she keeps her prize pumpkin...”

“Third suspect,” Mona continued, “Gertrude Hartwell. She’s trying to break Brenda’s five-year winning streak.”

“Now that’s a motive I can understand,” Ida said, reaching for a pumpkin muffin. “Nobody likes being the eternal runner-up. I once knew a woman who cheated at bingo for three months straight rather than keep coming in second.”

“What happened to her?” Helen asked.

“They caught her marking cards with a special pen. Banned her from the community center for six months.” Ida shook her head sadly. “Never was the same after that. Started playing the lottery instead, convinced herself that was less risky.”

Ruth looked up from her iPad. “According to this, Brenda Mossberry has won the Giant Pumpkin Competition five years running with pumpkins weighing between four hundred and eight hundred pounds. Gertrude comes in second place almost every year.”

“Meaning if Brenda’s out of the competition, Gertrude finally gets her chance to win,” Mona concluded, adding Gertrude’s information to the board.

“Hold on,” Helen said, setting down her delicate teacup with a thoughtful expression. “Shouldn’t we check whether the police know about this theft? I mean, if someone stole a five hundred pound pumpkin, surely Brenda would have filed a report.”

Mona paused with her marker halfway to the board. “Good point. Let’s call Lexy and see if Jack’s heard anything.”

She retrieved her phone from the kitchen counter and tapped Lexy’s contact, putting it on speaker so everyone could hear.

“Hi, Nans,” Lexy’s voice came through clearly, accompanied by the background sounds of the busy bakery. “How did the pastries work out?”

“Great. And we’re working on a little case,” Mona said. “Has Jack mentioned anything about a theft report? Specifically, a very large pumpkin stolen from Mossberry Farm?”

There was a pause, followed by what sounded like Lexy talking to someone else—probably Cassie, her assistant.

“Sorry, I was just checking with Cassie to see if anyone’s been talking about it.

Nothing here, and I haven’t heard a word from Jack.

But he works homicide, Nans. A missing pumpkin wouldn’t cross his desk unless someone got murdered over it. ”

Ida perked up. “Well, the day is young.”

“Ida!” Helen scolded.

“What? I’m just saying, people get passionate about competitions. Remember the Great Pie Incident of twenty-nineteen?”

“Nobody died in the Great Pie Incident,” Ruth pointed out.

“No, but Martha Cookwell came close when she found out someone switched her sugar for salt.”

“Ladies,” Mona interrupted before the conversation could spiral into a complete recounting of Brook Ridge Falls’ competitive baking disasters. “Lexy, if you hear anything from Jack, let us know?”

“Of course. And Nans? Be careful. I know you’re probably just helping someone find their missing pumpkin, but...”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. It just seems like such an odd thing to steal. Unless there’s more to this than meets the eye.”

After they’d hung up, the four ladies sat in contemplative silence for a moment, sipping their coffee from the delicate rose-painted teacups and studying the whiteboard.

“No police report,” Ruth mused. “Either Brenda hasn’t filed one, or she filed it somewhere Jack wouldn’t hear about it.”

“Maybe she doesn’t trust the police to take a pumpkin theft seriously,” Helen suggested.

“Or maybe,” Ida said slowly, finally looking up from her bingo charts, “she has her own reasons for keeping this quiet.”

Mona capped her marker and stepped back from the whiteboard. “Only one way to find out. Brenda said we could inspect the barn anytime, and I’d say now is as good a time as any.”

“Road trip!” Ida announced, carefully re-wrapping half a cinnamon roll in a napkin and tucking it into her purse alongside her bingo notebook. “But maybe Ruth should practice parking before we get there.”

“My parking is perfectly adequate,” Ruth said with wounded dignity. “Those flowers were practically asking to be run over, sitting so close to the curb like that.”

“They were planted there, Ruth,” Helen pointed out gently.

“Well, they should have been planted somewhere safer.”

Mona gathered her purse, cutting off the parking debate before it could escalate. “Come on, ladies. Let’s go see what story the crime scene tells us.”