Murder in the Corn Maze

Book 2: Granny Reid Mystery

by G.A. McKevett

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Female Sleuths; Thrillers

Synopsis

It doesn’t take cash, just some good old-fashioned creativity, to turn a pillowcase into a ghost costume or a trashcan into a suit of armor. So even if she has to stick to a budget, Stella Reid always makes holidays like Halloween memorable for twelve-year-old Savannah and the rest of her grandchildren.

After joining the other townspeople for trick-or-treating and the annual parade down Main Street, Granny Reid and the kids head to Judge Patterson’s antebellum mansion, where a corn maze awaits. Most of the youngsters are too terrified to make it all the way to the middle. And that’s lucky for them—because when Savannah and Granny get there, it proves to be even scarier than they expected: half-buried in the mud at the center of the maze lies a human skull.

The grisly discovery uncovers a mystery that stretches back decades—and seems to be related to the long-unsolved murder of Granny Reid’s own part-Cherokee mother. After all this time, the culprit may be long gone...or still hiding among them. It’ll be up to Granny to dig into this Southern town’s history and a mess of old family secrets.

Release date: September 24, 2019

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

“Who woulda thought a shaggy ol’ brown rug could change a nice little boy into a snarlin’, spittin’-mad grizzly bear?”

Stella Reid stuck her needle into her pin cushion, sat back in her recliner, and admired her handiwork. Taking her praise to heart, her nine-year-old grandson, Waycross, cranked up the drama by lunging at his oldest sister, paper claws “shredding” the air a few inches from her nose.

“Watch yourself there, Mr. Grizzly Bear,” Savannah warned him with all the authority of a precocious sixth-grader. “I’m the one carryin’ the gun, and I’m death on soup cans on a fence. I could take you down with one shot.”

“Could not neither!” Waycross stood on tiptoes in a vain attempt to be eyeball-to-eyeball with his sister. “That’s nothin’ but a silly BB gun you got there, and it ain’t loaded! Even if it was, it couldn’t bring down a rabbit, let alone a snarlin’, spittin’-mad grizzly bear like me.”

He turned to his grandmother, his freckled face almost as red as his mop of curly hair, which was sticking out from under the cap with round bear ears—also made from what had formerly been Stella’s kitchen sink rug. “She couldn’t take down no grizzly bear with a dumb ol’ BB gun, huh, Gran?”

Some days, Stella felt like 90 percent of her time and energy were spent acting as judge and jury to settle disputes between her grandchildren. With all seven of them living beneath her roof, there was seldom a moment when there wasn’t some sort of “trial” underway.

She liked to tell herself that she was “growing in understanding” along the way. She figured by the time she got to the Pearly Gates, she’d be able to give King Solomon himself a run for his money in the wisdom department.

“It’s Halloween, Mr. Waycross,” she said with a tired sigh. “So, your sister’s as much of a real hunter as you are a real grizzly bear.” She reached over and tucked some of his copper curls back beneath the cap. “And I reckon her gun’s about as deadly as your claws. You both better show each other some heartfelt respect, if you intend to get through that parade tonight still alive and kickin’, let alone with the prize!”

Both kids giggled, and the argument was ended, at least for the time being. Stella savored the momentary peace.

But her golden silence was short-lived.

A few seconds later, a series of bloodcurdling shrieks erupted from the children’s bedroom. It sounded like someone’s hide was being removed, inch by inch, with red-hot pinchers.

Or perhaps, one of the girls had grabbed eleven-year-old Marietta’s favorite hair bow. With Miss Mari it was often hard to tell if she was being tortured or just pitching a hissy fit.

Stella jumped to her feet and ran from the living room into the bedroom, ready to apply a tourniquet, fetch the fire extinguisher, or remove sharp objects that had been manually inserted into a kid—who might or might not themselves be innocent—by a malicious, mischievous sibling.

Fortunately, the latter didn’t happen often, but it wasn’t exactly unheard of in the Reid household.

The last incident was when ten-year-old Vidalia had snuck beneath the bed and stabbed the sleeping Marietta in the rear with a hat pin.

The injury was worse than what Stella could treat with her bottle of Merthiolate and had required a trip to the doctor’s office for a tetanus shot. Then there was a follow-up visit for antibiotics when the wound got infected.

Vidalia had spent some meaningful, educational time with her grandmother behind the henhouse for that infraction.

As Stella charged into the bedroom, she hoped that whatever the crisis might be, it would prove less expensive this time. Doctor visits, shots, and penicillin didn’t come cheap these days, and she did well to afford oatmeal, bologna, and potatoes.

The vision that greeted her inside the tiny bedroom was one of mayhem. She had arrived not a moment too soon, because Marietta was trying to pull Vidalia off the top berth of one of the three sets of bunk beds. Only a year younger than Marietta and nearly as large, Vidalia wasn’t making it easy for her.

Although she was completely off the bed, Vidalia’s arms and legs were wrapped around the railing, and she was hanging on for dear life.

To make the scene even more bizarre, Marietta was attired in a red, chiffon evening dress and Vidalia a tropical-print, satin sarong. Both dresses had been borrowed from Stella’s next-door neighbor, whose extensive wardrobe was far fancier than her own.

The girls also wore paper crowns spangled with glitter and the occasional rhinestone.

In the four seconds it took Stella to rush across the room, pull Marietta off her sister, and lower Vidalia safely to the floor, Stella had plenty of time to wonder how those crowns had managed to stay on during the fight that would have put a St. Paddy’s Day, Irish donnybrook to shame.

“That stupid-face, contrary Mari was trying to snatch my crown,” Vidalia wailed. “She was fixin’ to rip it right off my head after me spendin’ all day long gluin’ glitter and diamonds on it!”

“I need it more than she does!” Marietta yelled. “She’s just a princess, and I’m a queen. I need to wear the bigger crown, or we’ll both look dumb as gutter dirt, and folks will laugh at us tonight at the parade.”

Stella stood for a moment, staring at her granddaughter, whose audacity never failed to amaze and alarm her. Not to mention the girl’s vocabulary.

“Do you have any idea what ‘gutter dirt’ is, Miss Marietta?”

The child thought it over for a while, then shrugged. “No, but it’s what Vidalia’s made of. And rat tails and slug slime and maggot poop and—”

“Okay! That’ll be quite enough out of you, young lady. Apologize to your sister for manhandlin’ her, sayin’ ugly things about her, and tryin’ to snatch the crown off her that she worked so hard on, just because you like it better than the one you made.”

“But—!”

“No buts! Apologize and mean it, or you and me’s gonna continue this discussion behind the woodshed.”

“We ain’t got no woodshed!”

“As you know, the henhouse does fine in a pinch. You sass me one more time, young lady, I’ll be takin’ you out there and introducin’ you to Miss Hickory Switch. And believe you me, you won’t like her one bit!”

Marietta weighed the pros and cons far longer than Stella would have liked.

I’m gonna have to find new ways to instill fear and trembling, or at least a smidgeon of respect, in that young’un or we’re both doomed, she thought.

Finally, Marietta mumbled a lackluster, one-syllabled “Sorry,” in her sister’s general direction.

“That was one of the puniest apologies ever uttered in the history of the world,” Stella told her. “Try again. Harder.”

“S-o-o-o-r! R-e-e-e-e!” Marietta shouted in her sister’s face. “I’m so, so, so sorry, Vidalia Reid . . . that your face looks like a skunk’s rear end!”

“That’s it!” Stella grabbed Marietta by the hand and escorted her out of the bedroom, through Stella’s own bedroom and the living room, where Savannah and Waycross watched, eyes wide and mouths open.

“Wait! Granny! Wait a cotton-pickin’ minute! Where’re you takin’ me? Are you gonna give me a beatin’?” Marietta asked when Stella pulled her out the front door and slammed it behind them.

Stella looked down at Marietta and saw traces of genuine fear in the child’s eyes. She thought of the times she had seen her daughter-in-law raise her hand to the children. Violence and cursing were the only tools in Shirley Reid’s parenting kit. They were all the children had known until the courts had removed them from their mother and placed them in Stella’s custody.

“No, child,” Stella told her granddaughter. “I would never beat you, and this time I’m not even gonna spank you, though sometimes you do stand on my last nerve and dance a jig. I’m fixin’ to sit you down over here in a place of repose.”

She led her to the large porch swing and settled her onto it.

“What’s ‘a place of repose’?” Marietta asked, flouncing about like a hen sitting on a nest made of barbed wire.

“A peaceful spot where you can rest and—”

“I ain’t tired.”

“You should be. After all that hullabaloo, you should be plumb wore to a frazzle. Rest, like I said, and compose yourself, and reconsider your ways.”

“What’s that?”

“Think about what you did wrong.”

“I didn’t do a blamed thing wrong! It’s Vi who did wrong! She’s the one you should be pushin’ down on swings. She’s too dumb to know that a queen needs a bigger crown than—”

“Hush, Marietta Reid. Just ’cause you’re reposin’ on the porch, don’t mean that marchin’ you off behind the henhouse ain’t still a consideration if you keep smarting off to me. I am your grandmother, and I won’t abide it!”

They glared at each other for what seemed, at least to Stella, a miserably long time before the child finally looked away and sighed. Her shoulders and her chin dropped a notch.

Stella had a feeling that was as much of a sign of contrition as she was likely to get this go-around.

“That’s right. You sit there and think about how you could’ve handled the last ten minutes differently and had a better out-come.”

Marietta opened her mouth to retort but seemed to think better of it and shut it.

As Stella walked back to the door, she added, “Don’t you dare lift your hind end off that swing till I come back to fetch you.”

As she walked inside the old shotgun house and closed the screen door behind her, Stella whispered a heartfelt prayer. “Lord, please fill my heart with patience for that child. Otherwise, I’m afraid that one of these days me and her’s gonna tangle, and I’m not sure who’d win.”

A few hours later, as Stella stood with the crowd on Main Street in McGill, Georgia, watching the tiny town’s annual Halloween parade go by, she couldn’t help beaming with pride at the Reid children.

Her family was well represented, if she did say so herself. Unlike many of the other costumes that had been purchased through catalogues and on out-of-town shopping expeditions, her grandchildren’s outfits were homemade. Gathering whatever they could find around the house and yard, they had used their imagination, thread, glue, and nails to transform themselves into characters they loved and admired.

The youngest, little first-grader Jesup, had chosen to be Tinkerbell for a night, in an old olive T-shirt, cut with a jagged hem. Cotton balls had been glued together to create large pom-poms that were then stuck to the tops of green flip-flops. Some coat hangers and panty hose had been transformed into translucent wings that bobbed nicely as she marched along, carrying a wand made of a broken broomstick, its tip dipped in glue, then glitter.

She was prancing down the street, dousing bystanders with her leftover “fairy dust.”

But only the females.

Stella had warned her before the parade had begun that, “Menfolk don’t cotton to gettin’ glitterfied.”

Between Jesup flinging magic here and there with wild abandon, and the two older girls’ crowns, the glitter bill alone had laid waste to Stella’s meager Halloween budget. But seeing the smile of pure happiness on little Tinkerbell’s face, Stella decided it was money well spent.

Someone squeezed closer to Stella, then poked her in the ribs with a fingertip. She turned and saw it was her next-door neighbor, Florence. As always, Stella had mixed feelings about seeing her childhood friend. Flo was a good person—when it suited her purposes. She was always happy to do a neighbor a favor and was equally passionate about reminding them and everyone else in town about it from that day forward.

“Those two granddaughters of yours look mighty pretty wearing my dresses,” Florence observed, pointing at Queen Marietta, dressed in the red chiffon number with a zillion yards of net petticoats, and Princess Vidalia, in the brilliant tropical sarong that Florence had bought last summer for a wannabe luau at Judge Patterson’s antebellum mansion.

“They do,” Stella said. “Thank you for the use of them outfits. It meant the world to the girls. They feel mighty glamorous in them.”

“Well,” Florence sniffed. “I knew the fanciest thing in your closet was your funeral dress, the one I bought for you when your Arthur passed away, all unexpected like.”

Stella winced. Good ol’ Flo had a way of finding a person’s deepest, most painful wound, sticking her finger right in the middle of it, and twisting.

Discarding the first five possible retorts that ran through her mind, Stella settled on, “Thank goodness for you and your fancy dresses, Flo. Queen Marietta woulda hightailed it to Timbuktu if I’d suggested she wear my funeral dress. It’s not exactly regal.”

“No, but you’re one of the best-dressed women at every funeral this town has, year after year.”

Stella thought, She’s leavin’ off the “Thanks to me” part. Reckon it’s just understood.

“Thanks to me,” Flo added.

Or not.

“Hey, look who’s walking over here,” Florence said, jabbing her in the ribs again. “He’s got a way of showing up wherever you are. Ever notice that?”

Stella looked around to see who Florence was referring to . . . although she had a pretty good idea. As a result of those suspicions, her pulse rate went up at least ten points.

Yes. There he was, strolling along the edge of the street, patrolling the parade, making sure no parent was too full of hard apple cider to keep their little ones out of the road and away from the floats and vehicles.

“Sheriff Gilford,” Stella said when he stopped next to her and gave her a warm smile that caused her knees to weaken. “I see you’re dressed in your usual Halloween costume.”

Manny Gilford’s celebratory attire was a running joke in the small town. Since he had joined law enforcement at the age of twenty-two, few McGillians had ever seen him in anything but his khaki uniform.

However, on major holidays he would exchange his mundane, chocolate-brown tie for some sort of colorful, outlandish monstrosity, befitting the occasion. Tonight, he was wearing one with glow-in-the-dark skeletons whose bony hands were outstretched, grasping for victims. At the bottom the word Gotcha! was dripping with “blood.”

“Your clan’s sure putting on a show,” he said, pointing to the Reid kids, marching by. “They do you proud, Miss Stella.”

“Mari and Vi are wearing my dresses,” Flo interjected. “Heaven knows, they needed something fancy to wear if they were going to be royalty.”

Stella couldn’t help but be pleased when Sheriff Gilford chose to completely ignore Florence’s declaration. In fact, she found it more deeply soul satisfying, on numerous levels, than she wanted to admit.

“Your little Alma’s a cutie in that wig,” he said. “She’s Little Orphan Annie, right?”

“Reckon so. We worked on that headpiece for ages. Took three skeins of orange yarn and a ton of curlin’ and sprayin’ with starch. The worst part was, she kept sayin’ ‘Gee whiskers’ and ‘Leapin’ lizards’ the whole time. You’d be surprised how quick hearin’ that gets old.”

He chuckled, and Stella couldn’t help being aware, as she had been for years, of what an attractive man the sheriff was—tall, tanned, strong-jawed, and muscular, with intense, gray eyes that missed nothing. Only his thick silver hair betrayed his fifty-plus years.

Stella had known him since they were both skinny, knob-kneed teenagers. He had grown more handsome with each passing decade. She wasn’t sure if she had grown more or less attractive over time, but Manny still seemed to approve of her looks. He’d had a crush on her when they were kids, and she had reason to believe, now that he was a widower and she a widow, that flame might have been rekindled.

Since her husband’s passing, Sheriff Gilford had stayed close, offering friendship, help, and protection to her and her brood of grandkids.

Stella spoke a prayer of thankfulness every night for the gift of a friend like Sheriff Manny Gilford.

He looked puzzled when he saw Cordelia pass, wearing an old white shirt that had Dr. Cordelia Reid scrawled above the pocket with a black marker. Around her neck hung an old stethoscope she had borrowed from their family physician, Dr. Hynson.

“Cordelia doesn’t look so scary,” he remarked. “Who’s she supposed to be?”

Stella grinned. “She said she just wanted to be herself, only a doctor, so she could boss everybody around and tell them what to do.”

“Now that’s a frightening thought.”

“Yes. I’m afraid she’s already known around town for bein’ a bit overbearing and opinionated.”

Florence snickered. “Runs in the family.”

“Shush, Florence Bagley,” Stella told her, “or you won’t be getting any of my Halloween carrot cake later tonight.”

Manny quirked an eyebrow, suddenly alert. “Carrot cake? I think I’ll come trick-or-treat your house.”

“You’re more’n welcome to.” Stella felt yet another jab in the ribs.

Having reached her tolerance level with Florence, she turned to her friend and whispered, “The next finger you poke me with, gal, you ain’t gettin’ back.”

“The bear and the hunter are my favorites, though,” Manny added, watching the marchers and unaware of the women’s exchange. “Your Savannah looks mighty stern, carting that BB gun on her shoulder. It’s not loaded, right?”

“Of course not. We’d run outta BBs,” Stella assured him with a smirk. “I debated the wisdom of lettin’ the child march in a parade with an empty BB gun, but I’d run plumb outta rock salt for my shotgun.”

He laughed. “Good call. Don’t worry. If he gets too outta hand, I’ll cuff him. I’ve taken worse grizzlies than that one into custody. I bled some in the process, but so did they, and the job got done.”

Stella laughed and watched her grandson’s antics as he struggled to get away from his captor. She had to admit that she might have created a monster when she’d cut up her rug and fashioned that costume for the child. He was taking his role quite seriously. She had tied a large, thick rope around his waist, and Savannah was leading him by it—or was at least trying to—the chore made more difficult by the BB rifle propped on her shoulder.

Meanwhile, the boy growled, snarled, and clawed the air as he fought against the rope that held him, and occasionally lunged at those sitting on the curb.

Some of the onlookers appeared to be genuinely afraid . . . much to the ferocious bear’s delight.

With pride, Stella noticed that her softhearted grandson didn’t unleash his ferocity on the smallest members of the audience, but saved it for their older siblings and parents.

Nodding toward Grizzly Waycross, Manny said, “The way that boy’s hamming it up, I figure he’s a shoo-in for first prize. Not only that, but he would’ve given Mr. Michael Douglas a run for his money for that ‘Best Actor’ Oscar.”

Something farther up the street caught Manny’s eye. A group of teenage boys was darting across the street. They only narrowly missed being struck by the McGill fire engine with a gigantic tarantula and webs on its hood. Astride the spider was the fire chief, wearing a Ronald Reagan mask and an enormous cowboy hat. Waving vigorously to the bystanders, he shouted, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

“Gotta go. Good luck with the judging,” the sheriff said as he hurried away to deal with the miscreants.

“That Manny’s downright sweet on you,” Florence said in her ear. “He’s carried a torch for you since third grade.”

Stella felt another sharp poke in her ribs.

Half a second later, Stella grabbed the offending finger and gave it a considerable twist.

Florence yelped and pushed away from her. “O-o-w! Dadgum, Stella May, that hurt!”

“Good. I was intendin’ for it to.” Stella pointed to Cordelia. “Go tell it to my doctor granddaughter there. She’ll listen to that finger with her stethoscope, give you a diagnosis, then offer you some good medical advice, like, ‘Don’t go pokin’ my granny no more. Next time your finger might get broke!’”

Ten minutes later, the parade had ended at the town gazebo, where the judges sat, preparing to grapple with their monumental decision: Who would win the contest for best costume in the McGill’s Chills-and-Thrills Halloween Parade?

Pastor O’Reilly, Judge Patterson, and the town librarian, Miss Rose Clingingsmith, took their duties quite seriously. Not only was the cash prize of ten dollars a considerable amount of money to a child in their small, rural town, but the bragging rights to such an honor lasted a lifetime.

It wasn’t unusual to hear people introduced or described years later with an appellation attached to their names that harkened back to their victory, as in: “Did you hear Sally Wilton’s marryin’ ol’ Harv Brown, the Chills-and-Thrills winner of 1977? Yeah, he was the Fred Flintstone that liked-to-never got that glued-on black hair stuff off his chest, arms, and legs. I heard his wife had to shave him all over and scrub him down with Ajax to set him right again.”

So, it was with a sense of apprehension and rapt attention that the townsfolk stood silently around the gazebo, straining to hear the whispered discussion between the three judges that would determine who would receive the coveted award.

Stella’s grandchildren were gathered close around her, Savannah holding her right hand, and Waycross her left. Their friends and neighbors were sending admiring, amused looks their way, particularly at Waycross, who—overheated as he was from all of his bear duties—had pulled his shaggy cap off, releasing his wild array of red curls. It was, indeed, the first sighting of a ginger grizzly in McGill history.

It seemed a done deal, this contest. Obviously, he had been the star of the show, and Stella was happy for him. Not only would the money be a major lottery hit for him, but for the first time in his short life, he seemed to be on the town’s good side.

Waycross was a bright, mischievous kid, and a few of his antics had earned him a reputation as a bit of a ra. . .