She grinned, holding her black purse in front of herself. “How about a quarter of a pound? I’d like to get more, but my doctor wouldn’t approve of my finishing off a pound of fudge by myself.”
“You got it.” I picked up a cute white paper bag decorated with jack-o’-lanterns and headed to the kitchen. “I’ll be right back.”
Mom looked up at me as I entered the kitchen. “Everything all right out there, Mia?”
“Everything’s great. Mary Jones came in and asked about pumpkin spice fudge. I told her I could sell her some as long as she didn’t tell anyone she got it early.”
Mom chuckled and kept stirring the fudge she was making. “I hope she can keep a secret.”
I cut a piece of pumpkin spice fudge that looked to be the right size, then wrapped it, put it into the paper bag, and headed back out front.
“Here we are,” I said and went behind the counter.
“Lovely. And why don’t you give me some of those strawberry bonbons? Two of them, please.”
“You got it.”
I got her candy, and she paid for it and left. Christy came out of the break room, glancing at the wrought-iron clock on the wall above the door.
“I’m glad we’re almost done here. I’m tired. What are you going to be tomorrow?”
“Well, I'm not going to wear anything with a cape. I learned my lesson last year. I’m going to stick with costumes that aren’t very heavy.” During Pumpkin Hollow Days, nearly everyone in town dressed up in costumes. I had made the mistake of wearing a little red riding hood costume last summer, and I had regretted it. The cape was far too heavy for summer. “I think I might be a female Waldo from Where’s Waldo.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“And it’s easy,” I said. “All I had to buy was a striped shirt.”
Mom came out of the kitchen, untying her apron. “I think I’m about done for the day, girls. Oh, I meant to stop by Pumpkin Center Park and check on where our booth is located. I requested it to be beneath one of the trees to help keep the candy from melting, but I forgot to stop by to see if we got one there for sure.”
“We can stop by on our way home,” I offered. I had picked Christy up for work when her car didn’t start, and the park wasn’t too far out of the way.
“Would you? Today has been a long one for me. I meant to leave for home earlier, but I got sidetracked with the pumpkin spice fudge.”
“It’s no problem,” I said.
***
I pulled into the parking lot at the park, and Christy and I got out. Mom had said we had booth number twenty-six. We headed down the sidewalk that meandered through the center of the park and glanced at the numbers on the tables.
“Looks like we must be someplace toward the back,” Christy said.
I looked across the park. The park had been doing some construction, adding new park benches, playground equipment, and new covering for the grounds. There was still a backhoe parked near the swing set, and an area was taped off with yellow caution tape. I frowned.
“I hope they move that backhoe before tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t look great. Maybe someone will move it in the morning.”
We kept walking and found our booth not far from the playground. Thankfully, it was beneath a big cottonwood tree that provided shade past the edge of the booth.
“Looks good,” I said, coming around the back of the booth to inspect it.
“Yeah,” she said absently. “But I hate that we’re so close to this end of the park. People are going to be parking at the other end.”
“Yeah, but I bet it won’t matter. They’ll want to see everything, and they’ll come all the way down here to see all the booths.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, probably so.”
There were another dozen booths on the other side of the playground. We were going to have a big turn out with local businesses, and some from out of town. It would bring some much needed revenue to the town, and I was excited about that.
“Hey, Mia,” Christy said.
“Yeah?” I answered, looking at her over my shoulder. She was looking in the direction of the backhoe.
“What’s that?”
I turned around and looked in the direction she was looking.
“What’s what?”
“That,” she said, pointing.
I wasn’t sure what she was looking at. “What—” and then I saw it. We were both quiet.
“Doesn’t that look odd?”
I nodded. It did look odd. Right in front of the backhoe was a suspicious-looking mound of dirt. Something about its shape gave me the chills. “Yeah, that is odd.”
“Let’s go see,” Christy said, and started walking toward it.
I followed after her. “It’s probably where they dug up the ground for the new playground equipment.”
The city had been working on making improvements all over town in anticipation of the Halloween season, and there was some concern that the park wouldn’t be finished before Pumpkin Hollow Days began, but it looked like they just needed to do a little touch-up work and they would be done.
“Yeah, probably.”
We stood in front of the mound of dirt. Someone had tried to smooth it out, but its surface was still more than six inches above the rest of the ground.
“What do you think?” she asked me.
“I don’t know.”
I shrugged and stepped closer, then crouched down. There was something wrong about this mound of dirt.
“Mia?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s that?”
I glanced at her and followed her gaze. There was something
