Final Fondue (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) (10 page)

“Where are you, Val? I can’t see you.” Bethany sounded panicky.

Val fought her own case of nerves. “The flashlight fell. I’m trying to find it. Oh, wait. My phone has a flashlight too.” She pulled the phone from the back pocket of her jeans, turned on its light, and trained it on the ground.

“I don’t have my flag, Val. The boys grabbed it.”

Val spotted the tiny flashlight at the edge of the cornstalk wall. She picked it up and turned it on. “The light works. Don’t worry about the flag. We’re not going to get lost.” She tucked her phone away.

They started walking again, but could no longer see beams from other flashlights in front of them. Maybe the path ahead curved and, once they rounded the bend, they’d see the lights again. Odd, though, that no one behind them had caught up with them after the time she’d spent searching for the flashlight. A lot of people must have opted for the concert instead of the maze tonight.

Val saw a post in the beam of her flashlight. “Here comes a signpost. Now we’re good. Gunnar’s just around the corner. Hold the flashlight while I get my question list. I want to double check that we should turn left.” She definitely didn’t want to take a chance on turning the wrong way. She gave Bethany the light and fished a small booklet, the maze “passport,” from her pocket.

Bethany held the flashlight toward the post. “Didn’t you say this is supposed to be signpost number five?”

“Yup.” Val opened the booklet. “Shine the flashlight on this, would you?”

“Okay, but it’s useless to look at question five because this is signpost number six. We must have missed one. We’ll have to go back.”

“Huh?” Val had concentrated on finding the posts. How could she have missed one? Maybe she hadn’t. Bethany needed glasses, as her bad line calls in tennis games suggested. She could have mistaken a five for a six. “Shine that light on the post again.”

With the number illuminated, Val clearly saw a six. She also saw something odd about it. The number looked larger than the ones she’d previously seen on the posts. She touched the surface and felt a raised edge of a rectangle around the number.
Mystery solved.
She used a fingernail to get under the corner edge of the rectangle.

“What are you doing, Val?”

“This is signpost five. Somebody, probably one of the kids who ran by us, slapped a stick-on number on top of the five. I’m peeling the number off.”

“Kids like that are why I teach first grade, not middle school.”

“They may have done the same thing on a previous signpost after we passed it. If they did, everyone behind us answered the wrong question and took a different path. That would explain why we’re alone.” Had Jennifer, Sarina, and Noah been among the latecomers diverted onto the wrong path? Or had they entered the maze earlier, before the pranksters?

“What’s the trivia question for signpost five?” Bethany asked.

Val put the paper under the beam of the flashlight. “What time is it on a Saturday night in Billy Joel’s song
The Piano Man?
”

“What time? I thought the answer to all these questions is left or right. Oh, I get it. The answer’s nine o’clock, isn’t it? We turn left like you said.” Bethany checked her watch. “That’s eerie. It’s just about nine o’clock on a Saturday night.”

Val laughed. “I don’t know if that’s a good omen or a bad one.”

“Only one way to find out—turn left.”

Bethany sounded more cheerful now that she was sure they weren’t lost. They turned onto a path that looked like the last one, but even narrower. Not a soul on this one. The only sounds were muted howls from remote paths. They tramped for fifty feet before the flashlight illuminated a break in the corn wall.

“Gunnar should be near that clearing up ahead. Here Zombie, Zombie,” Val called out as they neared the cross path. “Show yourself, Zombie. We know you’re there.”

A zombie scarecrow shambled into the path. His face, lit from below by a flashlight, was dead white and his eyes had black rings around them. Maroon streaks suggested dried blood dripping down his forehead and from a gash on his cheek.

“Yow!” Bethany backed up.

“Sorry I scared you. Not really. My job is to scare you.” Gunnar brushed aside strands from his twisted cotton mop wig. “You took so long to get here I was getting worried. A lot of people came past here earlier, but no one’s shown up lately.”

Val told him her suspicion that kids had covered the numbers painted on the signposts with stick-on numbers. “That happened at signpost five. If the kids tampered with the numbers below that, the people who entered the maze after us may have gone off the main path.”

“The maze owner will have to send out rescue teams. And I’m doomed to spend the next hour alone with no one to scare.”

A scream came through the cornstalks from a path on the left. “Help me,” a woman yelled. “Help!”

Val froze, torn between rushing to help the woman and fleeing in the opposite direction.

Gunnar trained his flashlight on the path opposite the one where he’d hidden. “Stay here!” He headed toward the cries for help.

“Let’s go with him.” Bethany took off behind Gunnar.

Val sure as heck wasn’t staying by herself. She followed, using her flashlight to illuminate the path ahead. “Hurry, Bethany. We don’t want to lose him.”

They lost him in less than a minute at a point where they had to choose between turning left or right. No sign of Gunnar’s flashlight between the tall stalks lining both paths.

While they talked about which way to go, Val glimpsed a light on the path to the left, a flashlight belonging to a couple who came toward them. “Did you guys pass a zombie?” she asked.

“Yes, just a moment ago,” the woman said.

“Let’s go.” Val led the way along the path to the left. When it curved, she aimed her flashlight ahead and saw the back of a man, his white mop wig swinging as he ran.

Someone in front of the zombie screamed.

“Wait up, Gunnar,” Val called out.

The monster turned, tall and hulking.
Not Gunnar!

Bethany shrieked and ran back. Val tore after her.

Val’s heart pounded as she ran away from the zombie. If the man in the zombie getup had been hired, like Gunnar, to stay at his post and frighten people, why would he chase after her and Bethany? She glanced behind her without slowing down. No flashlight, no movement. Unless the zombie was wearing night-vision goggles, he wasn’t following them.

Ahead of her, Bethany turned onto a path to the right.

“Stop, Bethany! We’ve been that way. Go the other way.”

The two of them nearly collided at the intersection.

“I want to go back to the last signpost.” Bethany panted. “Then we can get trace our way back out of the maze.”

Val was all for getting out, but not going back. They were more than halfway through the maze. “It’s faster to keep going. Gunnar can’t be far ahead of us.”

“What if the strangler jumped him?” Bethany’s voice verged on a whimper.

“It would take a gang of stranglers to get the better of him.” Val sounded more certain than she felt. “Let’s try this other path. If we don’t find him in a couple minutes, we’ll turn around and backtrack.”

Bethany followed her. “Don’t run. I’m out of breath.”

A minute of fast walking brought them to a path on the right. Val heard a murmur of voices coming from that direction. “Let’s wait for these people. Maybe they’ve seen Gunnar.”

“Jennifer, where are you?” a woman on the path shouted.

Val’s pulse sped up. “That’s Sarina.” Was Jennifer playing hide-and-seek in the maze or was she lost . . . or worse?

“
Jennifer
?” a man bellowed.

Val trained her flashlight toward the voices. “Noah? Sarina? It’s Val.”

Noah sprinted toward her. “Have you seen Jennifer?”

“No. Why isn’t she with you?” Val said.

Sarina joined them, breathless from trying to keep up with Noah. “I tried calling her cell phone. No answer.”

A woman yelled for help. Val ran in the direction of the voice, farther along the path she was already on. She led the way with her flashlight, the others running behind her. Why hadn’t Gunnar found Jennifer? Maybe he had, and that was the problem. The zombie disguise might have frightened her. “Gunnar? Wait up. We’re coming.”

“Who’s this Gunnar?” Noah roared. Without waiting for an answer, he elbowed his way in front of Val.

Val couldn’t believe how fast Noah, who’d struck her as a desk potato, was moving. She had trouble keeping up with him. “Gunnar!”

“I’m here,” Gunnar called out from somewhere off to the left. “I saw a woman running on this path.”

Noah turned onto a path to the left. Val and Bethany followed a second later. Sarina brought up the rear, calling out Jennifer’s name.

Gunnar stood aside for them, his back up against the cornstalks.

Jennifer emerged from the dark path ahead and ran to them. “Someone was chasing me. I was so scared after what happened to Fawn.” She cried on Noah’s shoulder and then on Sarina’s.

When her sobs died down, Val asked her how she became separated from her friends.

Jennifer sniffed. “A brawny kid in a crab hat tried to take my flag. I wouldn’t let go, so he pushed me down into the cornstalks. When I got up, there was a crowd of people standing around in the dark. Then a woman with a flashlight yelled that some bigger kids were on the rampage, coming toward us. When she said
Let’s get out of their way
, I followed her and the guy with her. I thought Sarina and Noah were behind me.”

“We were searching for our flashlight,” Noah said. “The kids knocked it out of Sarina’s hand. Why didn’t you stay with the couple you followed?”

“I nearly tripped on my shoelace and stopped to tie it. By the time I got up, they had disappeared. Then I heard someone coming up behind me in the dark. I got scared and ran. I yelled for help a few times, but no one came. Whenever I slowed down, I could hear the person behind me getting closer. I kept running until I came to a dead end.”

Val shivered, imagining herself in Jennifer’s shoes. “Then what did you do?”

“I ran deep into the corn and kept quiet. I turned off my phone in case it rang.” Jennifer took a tissue from the pocket of her jeans and blew her nose.

“Why didn’t you use your phone to call for help?” Bethany asked.

“I thought the glow from the display would give away where I was hiding. After I didn’t hear anything for a while, I crept back to the path. Then I saw the zombie with a flashlight coming. I yelled and hid again.”

Val pointed to Gunnar, who was talking on his cell phone. “There’s your zombie with the flashlight. He was with Bethany and me when we heard you cry for help.”

Gunnar announced to the group that the GPS on his phone was guiding the maze manager and a sheriff’s deputy to this spot. They would conduct everyone to the exit.

Jennifer dabbed her eyes. “Thank you, thank you.”

She looked so grateful that Val expected her to kiss the zombie.

For the next two minutes, they had to flatten themselves against the corn plants as other maze visitors filed by them.

When the maze manager arrived with a young sheriff’s deputy, he gave Gunnar directions to the nearest signpost. “Stay at that location and call me if those damned kids come by. We’re trying to round them up and get them out.”

Gunnar went to his post, while the manager and the deputy escorted Val, Bethany, and the wedding group out of the maze. A brisk five-minute walk brought them to the ticket shack. They exited the maze on one side of the shack, while visitors entered it on the other.

The deputy pointed out a picnic table near the maze entrance. “Let’s go over there. You can tell me what happened and I’ll file a report about it, if necessary.”

Jennifer sat on a bench, flanked by her two friends. Val perched across the table from her, between Bethany and the deputy. He took notes as Jennifer repeated what she’d told the others earlier, this time without tears. Now that they were all safely out of the maze in an oasis of light near the ticket shack, the cornfield chase sounded less frightening. Val would have chalked it up to Jennifer’s nerves getting the better of her, if it weren’t for Fawn’s murder.

“Can you describe the person who ran after you?” the deputy asked Jennifer. “Male or female? In costume or not?”

She massaged her temples as if trying to coax a memory to the surface. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t see anything in the dark, but it was probably a man. I run a couple of times a week, and I’m fast for a woman. Whoever was behind me was keeping up with me. If that was a woman, she either runs regularly or has long legs.”

“What did you two do,” the deputy said, pointing his pen first at Sarina and then at Noah, “while your friend was lost?”

Noah spoke up. “We shouted and searched for her on the paths closest to where we’d lost sight of her. We were still searching when we ran into Val and Bethany. We all took the only path none of us had tried and heard Jennifer shout. Then we found her. She’d run away from a man in a zombie costume. Val knows him. Maybe she can tell you why he was chasing Jennifer.”

Val didn’t pick up immediately on Noah’s cue. Her attention was on a group of preteen boys the maze manager was escorting to the exit, most wearing crab hats, none of them burly enough to be the one who’d shoved Jennifer.

“The zombie’s name is Gunnar Swensen,” Bethany said. “I can tell you why he was running after Jennifer.”

She explained at length how Gunnar responded to a woman’s cries for help and what she and Val did as they followed him.

Val kept watching people filing out of the maze. A security guard herded a dozen or so boisterous teenagers out of the maze, possibly the ones who’d gone on the rampage when Jennifer was separated from her friends. A tall woman in a crab hat exited the maze next and mingled with a group of middle-aged visitors walking toward the parking lot. The woman in the hat had the same body type as Payton’s ex-girlfriend, the long-legged Whitney Oglethorpe, but the hat made it hard to see her face.

Sarina spoke up when Bethany finished talking. “Noah left something out when he told you how we looked for Jennifer. He and I split up for a while to check two different paths.”

Val jerked to attention. The deputy’s head swiveled from Sarina at one end of the table toward Noah at the other end.

Noah smacked his forehead with his palm. “Right. I forgot.”

“Lawyer, liar, pants on fire,” Bethany whispered in Val’s ear.

Val coughed to cover a laugh. Noah might not have lied, but he’d certainly had a convenient memory lapse. By leaving out part of what had happened, he’d given himself and Sarina an alibi for the whole time Jennifer was alone. Once Sarina drew attention to the gap in his story, his
I forgot
made a good excuse. No one could prove what someone else remembered or forgot.

The deputy turned to Sarina. “How long were the two of you apart?”

“Six minutes. I took the path behind us, where we’d just been, in case Jennifer had retreated that way. Noah took the path to the left. He used the light on his phone, and I had the flashlight. We agreed to go as far as we could for three minutes and then turn around. If we located Jennifer or came to a dead end, we would return sooner.”

Val decided to go through the maze tomorrow in the daylight and try to work out which paths they’d all taken.

The deputy thanked them for their help, stood up, and hailed the maze manager.

Sarina put an arm around Jennifer’s shoulder. “You could probably use a stiff drink.”

Jennifer managed a feeble smile. “You’re right. Let’s go to the Bugeye Tavern. Payton and I ate there last night. I’ll call and tell him what happened. Maybe he’ll join us there.”

In the car Val asked Bethany if she’d noticed a tall woman in a crab hat leaving the maze. She hadn’t. Bethany wasn’t her usual talkative self while driving back to Bayport. A week of first graders, a day at the festival, and a night at the maze must have tired her out. And, of course, it was way past the bedtime of anyone eating baby food.

While Bethany concentrated on driving, Val pondered whether the maze chase had anything to do with the murder, aside from making everyone jumpy about something they would otherwise have laughed off. The same person might be responsible for both strangling Fawn and chasing Jennifer. Maybe the murderer had meant to kill Jennifer last night and pursued her tonight, hoping for another shot. In that scenario, Payton’s ex-girlfriend made a good suspect. If Val pointed that out to her grandfather, he might give up the idea that she was the strangler’s intended victim and leave his shotgun locked up.

Bethany dropped her off at Granddad’s house, and Val walked up the path to the house. As she climbed the steps to the front porch, she heard a motor start up. She turned around and saw a flame flicker inside a car across the street.
A cigarette lighter?
She heard a deafening bang and hit the porch floor, her heart racing. Another bang. She rolled toward the front door. Tires screeched and an engine roared. Val waited until she heard the engine noise fade and then scrambled up.

Her mother opened the door. “Who’s setting off firecrackers out there?”

Before last night, Val would have identified the bangs as firecrackers, especially after seeing the lighter in the car across the way. Tonight she’d mistaken the sounds for gunshots because the murder, the voodoo doll, and the claustrophobic maze had given her the jitters.

Though she preferred firecrackers to bullets, the person who’d tossed them from the car had obviously intended to scare her. Henri, of course. She hadn’t heard a car engine that loud since she drove his 1960s Pontiac. If he’d replaced it after the accident with another vintage car, it would make more noise than newer passenger cars.

She went into the sitting room with Mom. Granddad was reclining in his chair, his eyes closed and a newspaper on his lap.

Val collapsed into the armchair near the sofa. “What have you been doing tonight, Mom?”

“Not getting those graded.” Mom pointed to a stack of student papers on the coffee table. “The phone’s been ringing nonstop. Someone posted a video online called
Strangler’s Rope.
It showed the police examining a rope plant hanger while your grandfather stood watching.”

Oops.
“So reporters were calling to talk to him?”

“Yes, and I got rid of them with a
no comment
. The neighbors called too. Someone saw the emergency responders arrive last night. Now everyone knows where the strangling happened. They warned me that murders would decrease the value of the house and make it hard to sell.”

Granddad opened his eyes. “Who’s selling the house? Not me.”

“You’ll want to sell it someday, Pop. I didn’t mean now.”

Nice job of backpedaling.
Eight months ago Mom had tasked Val with nudging Granddad toward selling the house, the sooner the better. Val had put that task at the bottom of her to-do list at first and erased it entirely since then. Mom would have to deal with Granddad’s resistance.

“Where did you and Bethany go tonight?” Mom asked, wisely changing the subject.

“To the corn maze.”

Granddad scowled. “You shouldn’t have gone there with a murderer on the loose.”

“Bethany had her heart set on going to the maze, and I didn’t think she should go alone.” Granddad and Mom would probably hear what had happened there tomorrow at breakfast. Val might as well tell them now. “Jennifer got lost and frightened in the maze. When Gunnar, Bethany, and I found her, she was a wreck because someone had run after her. She got away by hiding among the cornstalks.”

“Where were her friends?” Mom asked.

“Jennifer got separated from them. They split up to search for her at first, before they joined Bethany and me to look for her.”