The Hen of the Baskervilles Read Free Page B

to collapse inward from their own weight.
    But what if one that was more rollable than most had been hauled in since I’d given up watching the arrivals? One that could roll over onto someone. Like a child. Of course, the child wouldn’t still be wailing if he’d been crushed by a giant pumpkin. He’d be screaming in agony if he could make any sound at all. But if he’d seen someone else crushed …
    When I pushed my way through the crowd at the pumpkin end of the tent, I saw a boy of about nine or ten sitting on the ground in the middle of the remains of a smashed pumpkin. He was crying uncontrollably and had some kind of goop all over him. Almost certainly pumpkin guts. At a guess, he was surrounded by close to sixteen or seventeen hundred pounds of pumpkin guts.
    â€œWhat happened?” I asked. “Is he hurt?”
    I was already pulling out my cell phone to call Dad.
    â€œTh-they smashed my pumpkin,” the boy wailed. He waved his arms, and since both of his fists were clutching handfuls of pumpkin debris, seeds and little bits of flesh flew everywhere. A man was stooped beside him, patting him on the back.
    â€œWe came in this morning to check on it,” the man said. “And we saw this.”
    He indicated the mountain of pale orange and white debris.
    â€œWasn’t there anyone here in the barn overnight?” I asked. I was pulling out my notebook and flipping to the page where I had a list of all the volunteers with their cell phone numbers.
    â€œVolunteer was at the other end of the barn,” someone said. “Didn’t see anything.”
    I definitely needed to have a word with the volunteers, who seemed under the delusion that their job was purely honorary. And was I premature in seeing a pattern in these two events?
    I already had my cell phone out, so I called Vern.
    â€œWe have an act of vandalism in the produce barn,” I reported. “Someone smashed one of the biggest pumpkins.”
    â€œI’ll be right over,” Vern said. “Just seeing our patient off in the ambulance. He’s conscious and complaining.”
    â€œGood,” I said. “About the conscious part, anyway. Oh, and maybe you could send Horace over when he’s finished with the bantam forensics,” I added, before he hung up.
    â€œNow I’ll never w-w-win,” the boy was sobbing.
    â€œWe don’t know that yet,” I said. “We need to put all the pieces of this pumpkin in something.”
    The bystanders gazed at the huge mound of pulp and seeds.
    â€œLike what?” one of them asked. “A swimming pool?”
    I was calling my tent volunteer. As I heard the ringing through my phone, a trilling musical noise arose from one of the bystanders. A woman in jeans, wearing a t-shirt with the FFV logo of the Future Farmers of Virginia, reached into her pocket, pulled out her cell phone, and then looked up to meet my eyes as she said “Hello.”
    â€œWe need some containers for the pumpkin,” I told her. “Keep everyone away from it until Vern and Horace are finished. Meanwhile I’ll get Randall to deliver some steel drums—I’m sure they have them or can get them over at his construction company. When they arrive, weigh them on whatever you’re going to use to weigh the pumpkins, and then get some volunteers to help you load all the pumpkin debris into the drums.”
    â€œWill the judges accept a pumpkin in pieces?” she asked. “Or in a bunch of cans?”
    â€œI have no idea,” I said. “But before we ask them to consider doing so, we need to save every bit of this poor boy’s pumpkin. Before something starts eating it.” And another thought hit me. “For that matter, it’s also evidence and needs to be collected no matter what the judges decide. So Deputy Vern will be here in a few minutes. He can supervise the collection, and when the police are finished with it,