Money and Murder in Narrow Creek

By Patsy Pridgen

It’s October in small-town Narrow Creek, North Carolina, and Dee Ann Bulluck is set for a fun morning of picking pumpkins when five-year-old Heather discovers a lady “taking a nap” in Elmer’s Pumpkin Patch. The attractive, well-dressed woman in stiletto heels isn’t asleep—she’s dead—and amateur detective Dee Ann wonders about the identity of this stranger and who strangled her.

As usual, husband Joe advises her to stay out of police business. Chief McSwain doesn’t want her meddling in his investigation either. But Dee Ann has a mind of her own and suspects to pursue. Who lured this woman to town and killed her? Was it a plotting boyfriend or a double-crossing drug dealer? Or maybe the body of the mystery woman was randomly dumped off the nearby interstate?

It’s almost more than a working mama who’s also trying to renovate an old Victorian home has time to investigate, especially when Dee Ann is asked to tail one of her suspects to an out-of-town location. Husband-wife feuds and wife-mistress confrontations offer clues, or do they?

Will Dee Ann discover the killer's identity ? Or will she become the next victim when she gets too close to the truth?

Set in 1984, this third cozy mystery in the Narrow Creek Series again features feisty, opinionated Dee Ann Bulluck along with many of the quirky Southern characters readers have come to know in Ms. Dee Ann Meets Murder and Life and Death in Narrow Creek.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Nov 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662932878

Book preview

Chapter 1

H eather, stop and wait for us, I called.

Beside me, my friend and fellow teacher Elizabeth Tucker chuckled. Oh, Dee Ann, let her go. How can she get hurt in a pumpkin patch? Elizabeth was making no effort to rein in Macy and Mack, her two preschoolers and Heather’s partners in crime, who were tearing across acres of field in hot pursuit of my child. As usual, I was being the worrywart mom while Elizabeth was all smiles and let kids be kids.

I want to keep her in sight. There could be snakes.

Or lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Elizabeth teased.

I glanced at the grin on her plump, good-natured face and smiled in return. Well, there was a wicked witch after Dorothy, and it is getting close to Halloween.

Soon followed by Election Day, 1984, thank you Lord, Elizabeth said, raking her fingers through her curly brown hair. I’m so tired of turning on the television and hearing all those same old political ads, especially for the Democrats. As if anything will help Walter Mondale, bless his heart. I don’t know a soul who’s planning to vote for him.

I knew someone—me. I was excited that a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, was running on his ticket for vice-president. And I still thought having that Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan in the White House was a little ridiculous. I kept mum, though. It was too nice a day to discuss politics.

Evidently Elizabeth thought so too. Isn’t this weather beautiful? She looked about her in satisfaction. Not a cloud in the skies and a cool, crisp temperature. I can’t believe we’re the only people out here.

I could. Elizabeth, a morning person, had insisted we come right after breakfast, while everyone is fresh. I got up at the crack of dawn Monday through Friday to teach eight o’clock classes, so I would have preferred a later start.

But I’d gulped my two cups of coffee so I could be civil, thrown on my Saturday jeans, and skipped using hot rollers to tame my permed hair, opting instead for a fast ponytail.

I love fall, she declared. Just look at those leaves.

I surveyed the gold and red foliage of the maple and oak trees in the woods across the road from Elmer’s Pumpkin Patch. Bringing the children out to a field at the edge of town to select a few pumpkins on this brilliant Saturday morning was a good idea, despite the early hour. My husband Joe would be gone all day deer hunting, his annual fall activity, and Heather and I needed to have some fun ourselves.

Don’t pick anything until we catch up, I yelled to Heather. Along with Macy and Mack, she’d skidded to a stop at the end of a row. I could see her head of blonde curls bent over several large orange pumpkins. Her chubby arms were wrapped around first one, then another. I had hoped kindergarten would help Heather learn to mind better and calm down, but her mischievous, hyperactive streak showed no sign of abating. Joe says she gets her high-strung nature—just like her blonde hair—from me. Maybe so. I haven’t mentioned it to him yet, but her tendency to chubbiness comes from his genes. I’ve never seen a plump day in my thirty years, currently carrying one hundred and eighteen pounds on a five-foot, six-inch frame.

Elizabeth and I quickened our pace just as the children stood up, turned left, and darted away, disappearing behind several rows of cedar trees planted in the middle of the patch. After the pumpkin season, Elizabeth had told me, Elmer sold these evergreens as cut-your-own Christmas trees.

For crying out loud, I heard her mutter. I didn’t intend for this outing to become a game of chase. Elizabeth’s good nature evidently had its limits when it came to exercise. Despite the cool weather, I noticed a faint sheen of sweat on her brow. She’d long ago put away her Jane Fonda workout tapes, declaring it too much trouble to get in shape. Women are just meant to weigh more as they get older, she’d declared, especially after having babies. She’d given me an envious look. Well, most women.

Actually, Elizabeth had given birth to only Mack. Macy had been adopted when Elizabeth thought she and her husband Thomas couldn’t have children. Lo and behold, as it sometimes happens, the nursery was scarcely set up for Macy when Elizabeth found out she was expecting Mack. She’d wound up with two babies within a year. Double blessings, she always said.

Macy! Mack! she called as the two of us emerged on the other side of the cedars and caught sight of our children. Quit running or we won’t get a pumpkin! I had a moment of secret satisfaction as the normally calm Elizabeth adopted my frazzled parenting style, complete with empty threats.

Two little dark-haired heads turned briefly at the sound of Elizabeth’s voice and, just as quickly, swiveled back. Two skinny sets of legs, dressed in matching OshKosh jeans, took off again, following, I’m ashamed to say, my child, the ringleader.

Heather Ann Bulluck, I bellowed. Stop right this minute! To my surprise, she did. In fact, she froze. Macy and Mack weren’t moving either. All three were examining something on the ground.

Beside me, I could feel Elizabeth studying the children. What do you suppose they’re looking at? she wheezed, out of breath.

I don’t know, but I hope it’s a snail or a frog rather than a snake. Suddenly, all three bolted, running in our direction.

Mommy, there’s a lady taking a nap over there, Heather reported, pointing in the direction she’d fled from, but she doesn’t have a blanket or a pillow. Macy’s eyes looked like saucers, and Mack’s thumb was in his mouth. This was not one of Heather’s imaginary tales.

Elizabeth knelt and wrapped her arms around Macy and Mack.

I’ll go look, I said. Heather, stay here with Miss Elizabeth.

I trotted away, thankful that, for once, Heather minded. Did we have homeless people, women, no less, in Narrow Creek, North Carolina? True, there were lots of poor people in this small town my husband had moved me to five years before when he’d accepted a bottom-of-the-rung position at Narrow Creek Bank. I’d met quite a few needy students getting government assistance to attend the technical college where I taught English and Elizabeth taught math.

Anybody who rode through this town of five thousand could see the ramshackle houses with peeling paint and sagging porches in certain neighborhoods. Still, most had four walls, windows, and a roof. I’d not seen anyone panhandling on the street or sleeping under a bridge. That kind of activity happened in New York City, not Narrow Creek.

My glimpse of red in an orange pumpkin patch confirmed something was amiss. Drawing closer, I saw it was the back of a woman’s blouse, accessorized by a floral-patterned scarf. She was lying facedown in the dry dirt in a shallow trench between the rows. The red blouse was partially tucked into a pair of tailored black slacks. The woman was slender, her auburn hair half-secured in a tortoiseshell clip. Red toenails peeked out of a pair of black stilettos splayed sideways. A large emerald stone twinkled on the ring finger of her left hand. This was no homeless person.

Ma’am, ma’am, are you okay? There was no movement. Can you hear me? My voice sounded high and desperate. I reached out and, with effort, turned her over. Wide-open, lifeless brown eyes stared at me from a chalk-white face.

Lions and tigers and bears, indeed.

Chapter 2

Thinking of the children, I stifled the impulse to scream. Still, I jumped a mile. This was the second dead body I’d encountered in my five years of living in Narrow Creek. At least seeing the first, though, had been more civilized, if you can call anyone’s death that. My landlord had died sitting in his Barcalounger, not out in a pumpkin patch, for heaven’s sake.

What is it, Dee Ann? I heard Elizabeth call. I glanced back and saw Heather running in my direction. I stumbled away from the body to head her off.

Did she wake up? I wanna see. Heather’s mouth was set in that determined expression I knew meant trouble.

The nice lady doesn’t want to be disturbed right now, I managed to say. Heather gave me a skeptical look, but before she could argue, I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back to where Elizabeth stood, firmly holding the hands of Macy and Mack.

We need to go for help. There’s a woman over there, and I’m fairly sure she’s…, I switched to spelling, D-E-A-D.

Merciful Lord, should we try CPR? Elizabeth gasped. We can’t just leave her.

D-E-A-D, Heather spelled behind me. She started sounding out the word.

Elizabeth, she’s dead, I said one step ahead of Heather. I take back the ‘fairly sure.’ And I don’t know who or what killed her, but that who or what might still be around. We need to get out of here and call for help.

That did it. I may have been thirty pounds skinnier than Elizabeth and slowed down by only one child to her two, but she outpaced me the entire half-mile back to the wooden stand that served as the checkout at Elmer’s Pumpkin Patch. We were greeted by a hand-lettered sign hanging on a post behind his table: Back in Ten Minutes.

Although I’d often passed by this pumpkin patch on Highway 11, I’d met Elmer for the first time only a half hour earlier. A middle-aged man dressed in an orange T-shirt and a pair of well-worn denim overalls, he’d seemed harmless enough as he passed out suckers to the children and told us his prices. Large pumpkins were a dollar each; medium, seventy-five cents; and small, fifty cents. We could judge the sizes. Elizabeth and I had laughed.

Paranoia shot through me. Who was this Elmer? I knew a lot of people in Narrow Creek, but until Elizabeth had hauled me out to this pumpkin patch at the edge of town, Elmer Whoever hadn’t blipped on my radar. He could be a serial killer, waiting for his next victims, us, somewhere on the premises.

Let’s get out of here, I said. Bob’s Esso Station is right down the road. We can call the police from there.

I want pumpkins, Heather protested. You said we could pick some. No worries there about whether she’d been traumatized by finding a dead woman in a pumpkin patch.

We want pumpkins, Macy and Mack chimed in. Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins. Heather joined the chant.

Help me, Jesus! Elmer could be waiting with an axe somewhere, ready to spring out and slaughter us all, with or without pumpkins.

Quiet! We’re going to the car right now. We have to get help for the lady, and then we’ll come back for pumpkins, I lied. There was no help for this lady, and there was no way I was ever setting foot in Elmer’s Pumpkin Patch again.

Elizabeth and I threw the children in the back seat of her 1980 Volvo station wagon, jumped in the front, and locked the doors. Step on it, girl, I said. Elizabeth accelerated so quickly the children were slammed into the back of their seat, which helped to finally stifle the pumpkin chant. Slinging gravel down the path, she reached the main highway in a couple of minutes.

I glanced back at the children, who seemed stunned by Elizabeth’s race-car driving.

Squalling tires, Elizabeth pulled into Bob’s Esso, a squat concrete structure with two gas pumps in front. I’ll stay with the kids, she said. I jumped out and sprinted across the gravel lot. Pushing open a rickety screen door, I sped inside looking for help.

A middle-aged man in an orange T-shirt and denim overalls turned around as I ran past the rack of snack cakes and candy bars.

Already through with your pumpkin pickin’? I thought I had time to come get me a Coca-Cola, Elmer said. But you can pay me right here. You ain’t got to go back.

Are you okay, Dee Ann? asked Bob Hayes, the proprietor and a fellow church member. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Sit down a minute, and I’ll get you a Coca-Cola too.

Bob, have you got a telephone? We need to call Chief McSwain. There’s a body in the pumpkin patch.

My pumpkin patch? Elmer’s eyes bulged.

What kind of body? Bob asked at the same time.

A dead body. A woman. Heather found her between two rows near the back of the patch. My voice was reaching a hysterical pitch. Now can you please call Chief McSwain?

Even though I’ve never been held up, I know the number by heart, Bob said as he reached for his black desk phone and started dialing. I learned it a long time ago.

This is gonna be bad for business, Elmer complained, looking at me as if I were responsible for the whole sorry affair. I’d better get back to the patch.

Roger, I heard Bob address the Narrow Creek chief of police, I got Dee Ann Bulluck here at the gas station, and she says her little girl found some woman’s dead body in Elmer’s Pumpkin Patch. There was a pause before he added, Yeah, I believe her. She’s right shook up.

Why in heaven’s name would anyone make up finding a dead body? True, Chief Roger McSwain and I had not always been on the best of terms. Somehow I’d found myself involved in two high profile cases since moving to Narrow Creek, and both times, I’d learned what happened before the Chief. He hadn’t always appreciated my suggestions about how he should conduct his investigations. Still, did he think I was pulling an early Halloween prank?

I’ll tell her, but Elmer was here, and he flew out the door once he heard the news. Bob hung up the phone and turned to me. Roger says to wait for him at the pumpkin patch, but don’t touch a thing. He doesn’t want anybody messing up possible evidence.

Bob followed me to the door. Lord, you got Elizabeth and the young’uns with you, too. Why don’t you ask her to go on home and take Heather with her? I can drive you back to the pumpkin patch to wait for Roger and then take you home later. I’ll just close up the station for a while, he said, while flipping the Open sign to the Closed side.

I would appreciate that, I said, before remembering I’d decided only minutes earlier that I’d never go near Elmer’s Pumpkin Patch again.

Chapter 3

Flashing blue lights announced the arrival of Roger McSwain, Narrow Creek’s chief of police. In his late fifties with salt and pepper hair and a Burt Reynolds mustache, the Chief packed a few extra pounds along with his pistol. I was surprised to see he was minus his usual sidekick, Sergeant Andy Jones, a Barney Fife lookalike. Maybe Andy had Saturdays off.

Bob had left me sitting in Elmer’s yellow plastic outdoor chair behind the table in the pumpkin stand. I got to find Elmer and tell him not to touch anything before Roger gets here, he’d said. He could be compromising a crime scene. Tell me exactly where in this field you found that woman.

This was now the same question posed by the Chief as he fixed me with a stern gaze. She’s on the other side of the cedar trees, I reported for the second time. Bob and Elmer are both over there.

I told Bob on the telephone not to go near the scene, the Chief exploded. We don’t know what’s happened. Could be somebody just fell out while pickin’ pumpkins. Or it could be police business. Come with me, little missy. I’ll find them faster if you show me the way. Besides, you don’t need to be here by yourself if this turns out to be a crime scene.

I weighed my reluctance to revisit the resting place of the corpse, especially with someone who addressed me as little missy, against my fear of being alone in case there was a killer lurking about. Reluctantly, I got to my feet, and the Chief followed.

What makes you think this woman is dead? the Chief barked as we made our way to the back of the pumpkin patch.

She wasn’t moving, and when I turned her over, her eyes were wide open, just staring. I shuddered at the recollection.

You touched the body! Dagnabbit, Dee Ann, what’d you do that for?

She was lying face down. I didn’t know she was dead when I turned her over. I thought maybe she’d fainted, and I could help.

You’re determined to get in the middle of every bit of police business in this town, the Chief fumed. I might as well make you an honorary officer.

The nerve of the man! It wasn’t my fault that I just happened to be around when the usual peace and quiet of Narrow Creek was disturbed by unexplained deaths. I thought of giving the Chief a piece of my mind but was so close to tears I didn’t trust myself to speak.

We reached the other side of the cedars, and I could see Bob and Elmer. Like the children only a half hour earlier, they were staring intently at what I now knew was the well-dressed body of a dead, auburn-haired woman.

Stand back, boys, the Chief growled as we approached. Let me get a look at what we got here. Bob and Elmer barely parted, giving the Chief just enough room to stand between them. A white lady, the Chief pronounced. Fairly young and attractive. No blood that I can see. Looks right peaceful except for them staring eyes.

Not exactly the kind of official police description of the deceased I’d heard on Miami Vice, but from what I knew of the man, typical of Chief McSwain. I was spared further details when a matter-of-fact voice came over the Chief’s walkie talkie.

Chief McSwain, we’re en route to Elmer’s Pumpkin Patch. I need your exact 10-20 there in the field. Over. Thank goodness someone sounded professional. Evidently the rescue squad was on its way.

We’re to the right on the other side of the cedars, the Chief spat out. The trees are so high you can’t see us from the road or the path. Over.

Roger that, Chief. ETA, two minutes. Over and out.

The Chief placed his walkie talkie back in its holster and strode over to where I was standing several feet away. I don’t have time for a statement right now, but I’ll need you to come down to the station and tell me in detail exactly how you and this woman came to be in the same pumpkin patch this morning.

For heaven’s sake! I opened my mouth to tell him I had no idea how someone had happened to jump on the glory train in a pumpkin patch, that all I’d been intending to do was what normal