The Missing Prize Pumpkin

The pumpkin had been placed at the rear of the shed, well clear of the entrance. Nothing should have blocked the door.

She lifted the lantern and peered through the narrow opening. Light spilled across the floorboards, catching a coil of rope, a stack of empty baskets, and a scatter of straw. The far end remained in darkness.

“Mara?”

She turned so quickly that the lantern flame jumped.

Jonas Pike stood at the mouth of the lane, one hand raised against the rain. His wool cap sagged over one ear, and his bicycle leaned against the wall beside him.

“What are you doing here?” Mara asked.

“Looking for you. Mrs. Vale sent me.” He squinted at the shed. “You said you’d only be five minutes.”

“I am being five minutes. The door’s jammed.”

“Then leave it until morning.”

“I can’t leave it like this.”

Jonas glanced toward the village hall. “The committee will be there at seven. They’ll want the pumpkin brought round before the judging table is dressed.”

“I know.”

“Then they can open it.”

Mara heard the edge in his voice. Jonas had helped paint the fair signs, mend the bunting, and stack the trestle tables, but he had never forgiven her for choosing the shed over his suggestion of the hall pantry. He had called the pantry warmer, drier, and easier to watch. Mara had called it crowded.

“I locked this shed myself,” she said. “I’m not going to leave it half-open in the rain.”

Jonas came closer, his boots sucking at the mud. “You’re worried about a pumpkin?”

“The pumpkin.”

He gave a short laugh. “It’s a vegetable, Mara.”

“It’s the prize vegetable.”

The words came out sharper than she meant. The pumpkin belonged to Mr. Abel Crowe, who had grown it from a seed brought back from a county competition. He had spent the summer measuring it with a tailor’s tape and speaking to it more gently than he spoke to most people. The blue-and-gold prize ribbon was already waiting in the hall office.

Mara had promised him the pumpkin would be exactly where he left it.

She set down the lantern and crouched beside the gap. The lower edge of the door was caught against something solid. A narrow piece of wood showed beneath it, darkened by rain.

“Help me push,” she said.

Jonas sighed. “Mara - ”

“Please.”

He put his shoulder beside hers. Together they shoved. The door groaned. The obstruction scraped across the floor, then rolled free with a hollow clatter.

The door flew inward.

Mara stumbled into the shed, catching herself against the frame. The lantern light swung wildly over the walls. Shelves. Baskets. The old potting bench. A torn sack of straw.

And an empty patch of floor.

For a moment, the room made no sense. Mara stared at the straw flattened into a broad, round hollow. A pale smear of mud marked the boards. The pumpkin’s wooden crate lay on its side near the back wall, one slat split cleanly down the middle.

Jonas stepped in behind her.

“Where is it?” he said.

Mara did not answer.

The shed seemed suddenly too small. The rain on the roof became a roar. She moved toward the hollow, lantern held low, and knelt. The boards were damp beneath her glove. A thick orange smear clung to one splinter, bright as fresh paint.

“No,” she said.

Jonas looked from the empty floor to her face. “Mara.”

“It was here.”

“Are you sure?”

She turned on him. “I locked the door.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“It was here.” She pointed at the flattened straw. “I checked it at six. I checked the chain. I checked the roof. I checked the pumpkin.”

Jonas’s gaze went to the broken crate. “Then someone moved it.”

Mara rose too quickly and struck her elbow against the shelf. Tin cups rattled above her.

“No one could move it without opening the door.”

“Clearly someone opened the door.”

“The lock was still on.”

He went to the doorway and lifted the padlock from the chain. It swung in the lantern light, wet and shining.

“Unless you forgot to lock it.”

Mara felt the accusation land harder than the rain. “I did not forget.”

Jonas examined the hasp. “The lock’s not broken.”

“Because whoever took it locked the door again.”

Neither of them spoke.

Beyond the shed, the village slept beneath its wet roofs. The fair banners sagged over the green. A string of lanterns along the hall wall flickered in the wind, making the empty lane appear and vanish in pieces.

Jonas lowered his voice. “We should tell Mrs. Vale.”

“Not yet.”

“Mara - ”

“If the committee hears before we know what happened, everyone will know by midnight.” She pictured Mrs. Vale’s face, pinched with worry; Mr. Crowe’s hands trembling over his walking stick; the fair volunteers whispering beside the cake stall. “They’ll call the police. They’ll close the fair. Mr. Crowe will think I lost it.”

“Someone stole it.”

“I know what it looks like.”

“Then let’s follow them.”

Mara looked down at the muddy smear on the floor. The thief had dragged or rolled the pumpkin through the shed, leaving a dark trail toward the entrance. She lifted the lantern and stepped outside.

The mud began beneath the threshold.

At first it was only a broad, uneven mark, as though the pumpkin’s weight had pressed through the soft ground. Then came a series of deep tracks, half boot prints and half furrows, leading down the lane.

Jonas whistled under his breath. “That’s not a handcart.”

“No.”

“Could be a wheelbarrow.”

“Not with those marks.”

Mara followed the trail, holding her lantern ahead. Rainwater filled the prints almost as soon as they appeared. The lane narrowed beside the hall wall, forcing her sideways. Brambles caught at her sleeve. Twice her boot slid, and once she grabbed the stone wall hard enough to scrape her palm.

Jonas caught her arm. “Slow down.”

“We have until dawn.”

“We have until dawn to find a three-hundred-pound pumpkin in a village where every dog will bark if we breathe too loudly.”

“Then stop talking and look.”

He released her with a mutter.

At the end of the lane, the trail crossed the strip of grass behind the hall and ran toward the village green. Mara’s lantern picked out crushed daisies, a broken twig, and a smear of orange on the white-painted rail.

Then the marks thinned.

A gust of rain swept across the green. Water shivered over the cobbles, washing mud into the gutters. The trail wandered past the empty bandstand, around the maypole, and toward the dark row of cottages.

Mara hurried after it.

At the green, the marks disappeared.

She stopped beside the bandstand steps. The mud ended in a ragged fan, as if the pumpkin had been lifted from the ground. Beyond it, the rain had erased every sign.

Jonas came up beside her, breathing hard. “Well?”

Mara crouched and touched the last print. The mud was cold and smooth beneath her glove. She searched the grass, the cobbles, the shadows beneath the benches.

Nothing.

“Someone carried it from here,” Jonas said.

“Three hundred pounds?”

“Two people, then.”

“Where would they take it?”

He looked toward the cottages. “Anywhere with a shed.”

Mara straightened. The village green stretched around them, empty and glistening. The fair stalls waited beneath their canvas covers. At the far end, the hall windows glowed faintly with the security light.

She thought of the shed door, the unbroken lock, and the pumpkin gone from its crate. This was no careless prank. Whoever had taken it had known where it was kept. They had known how to leave the lock fastened. They might even have known Mara would come to check before morning.

A flash of blue caught beneath the hall’s rear lantern.

Mara turned.

“Jonas, the shed.”

They ran back through the rain.

The lantern still stood on the step, its flame guttering behind the glass. Mara reached the door first and seized the latch. Something tugged against it.

A strip of blue ribbon had caught beneath the iron loop.

She held it up. It was satin, darkened by rain, torn at one end. A single thread shone gold along the edge.

Jonas leaned close. “The prize ribbon?”

Mara shook her head. “Mr. Crowe’s ribbon is blue and gold.”

“Then the thief dropped it.”

“Or someone wants us to think that.”

She turned the strip between her fingers. It was not from the ribbon in the hall office; that one had a printed seal woven into its center. This piece was narrower, plain blue, with a frayed gold thread that might have come from a decoration, a parcel, or a volunteer’s sash.

Still, it was the first thing they had found that belonged to a person rather than a pumpkin.

Mara folded it carefully and slipped it into her coat pocket.

Jonas watched her. “You’re going to investigate this yourself?”

“I’m going to find the pumpkin before the committee arrives.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Mara looked past him to the rain-slick lane and the vanished trail beyond it. The village green offered no answer. The shed stood open behind them, its empty floor bright in the lantern light.

“At dawn,” she said, “we tell the committee.”

“And tonight?”

She closed the shed door, though it no longer had anything to protect.

“Tonight,” Mara said, “we find out who wears blue ribbon.”

The church clock began to strike midnight. She counted the first bell, then the second, while the torn strip lay cold against her palm inside her pocket.

By morning, the fair would open.

And the prize pumpkin would still be gone.

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters and about 10,242 words in the full book.