I bolted upright to a frenzy of dog barking. My heart threatened to pound free. Someone banged on the door of my apartment. I blinked rapidly to rid my eyes of sleep.
With a groan, I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. Eight a.m.! I jumped to my feet and raced to answer the door, snagging my robe off the end of the bed and shoving my arms through the sleeves as I went. Linda was going to kill me. She’d only promised to help me under a lot of persuasion, and here I am sleeping in when she had a job to do. So much for being the responsible one who set an alarm.
“I’m so sorry!” I yanked the door open and found myself greeted by a whiff of burning leaves and the frowning face of Mrs. Henderson, the resident of apartment 106.
“What is going on here?” Her frown deepened, and she crossed her arms.
“I’m sorry?”
“Can’t you smell that?”
I sniffed. “Burning leaves and crisp autumn air?” I could see my breath when I exhaled, and for one blissful second, standing there half-asleep in my doorway, everything about the morning felt perfect. Then I remembered I was the manager of this complex, and perfect mornings were rarely part of the job description.
“Exactly. What do you intend to do about it?” The woman wrinkled her nose as if the whole neighborhood had personally offended her.
“Uh…” I glanced toward the parking lot where red and gold leaves skittered across the pavement. Above the smell of burning leaves, I caught a whiff of freshly baked cinnamon buns, which seemed deeply unfair. Somewhere, someone was having a lovely morning. “About what, Mrs. Henderson?” I blocked the dogs’ retreat with my foot and closed the door solidly behind me before my three miniature dachshunds could escape. Minnie, the oldest, at four, continued to bark, muffled now behind the door but no less determined about it.
“For crying out loud, Crystal. Are you dense?” I didn’t think it possible for Betty Henderson’s frown to deepen, but it did. “Stop the burning. It’s affecting my quality of breathing.”
“Oh.” I glanced to where the landscape crew raked leaves into a burning pile, sending up a thin gray column that curled lazily toward the sky. “I’ll talk to them.”
“See that you do more than talk.” The woman stormed away, apparently satisfied that she’d ruined someone’s morning before eight-fifteen, which I suspected was some kind of personal record for her.
Refusing to let anyone’s foul mood spoil the joy of decorating for Halloween, I set off for the storage room where I’d set aside several boxes the day before. Boxes Linda, my best friend and local dog walker, was supposed to help me with. Not to mention, she promised to bring coffee and donuts, and I intended to hold her to that promise the moment I found her.
I made a beeline to ask the landscapers to bag the leaves rather than burn them. They looked at me as if I’d grown a third eye, nodded, and continued with their work, which I decided to interpret as agreement rather than the polite dismissal it almost certainly was. Well, I’d done as promised. They’d be finished soon, and Mrs. Henderson could move on to something else to gripe about. Given her track record, I estimated I had roughly two hours of peace before her next complaint.
By the time I reached the storage room, a group of volunteers, including Linda with coffee, donuts, and a black lab, waited. I accepted a glazed donut and a cup of coffee gratefully, silently forgiving her for existing at a normal hour while I’d overslept like a teenager on summer break. “Everyone sure of their appointed roles?”
Heads nodded.
“I’m doing the pumpkin carving,” Mrs. Harper said. “All Jack-O-Lanterns will face east because it’s luckier. We don’t want bad luck on Halloween.” She said it with the flat certainty of someone quoting scripture, and nobody argued.
“I’ve brought an inflatable ghost.” Mr. Collins hefted a saggy eight-foot ghost over his shoulder, the fabric drooping in a way that made it look less spectral and more like it had given up on the afterlife entirely. “I have some trouble keeping it upright, but I’ll figure it out eventually.” He limped away.
“We have a fog machine for the party on Halloween night,” someone else shouted out, to a smattering of enthusiastic applause, as if fog machines were a rare and precious commodity rather than something you could buy at any party store.
“I’ve been busy painting wooden tombstones,” a retired teacher said, holding one up for inspection. The epitaph read HERE LIES YOUR SOCIAL LIFE, which struck me as either very funny or a little too pointed, depending on the day. “And I’ve found some scary plaster skulls and other assorted bones.”
I nodded, starting to feel overwhelmed by the sheer scope of everyone’s enthusiasm. Managing a building full of retirees with time on their hands and a shared love of pageantry was equal parts delightful and exhausting. “Okay… uh, skeletons go in the grassy area near the pool. Set up a graveyard there. The blow-up ghost can go by the entrance along with the carved pumpkins.”
I shot a look at a grinning Linda. “What?”
“I’m waiting for my assignment.” She arched a brow. “Shall I dress up as a witch and scare the children?”
“Only at the party. You can help me hang spiders and webs around the complex.” I really wanted things as fun and eerie as possible, something residents would talk about long after the candy ran out. Since I could still hear Minnie barking somewhere behind me, I hurried to let the dogs out, knowing they’d stay close by. My three might not always mind, but staying on the property was one thing I could count on. Mostly.
By the time I returned with the three dachshunds running around my feet, the residents scampered around the property like caffeinated squirrels, hauling boxes and arguing cheerfully about pumpkin orientation. I shrugged. If things weren’t set up to my liking, I’d simply change them to the way I liked when no one was looking. It was a management philosophy that had served me well so far.
Minnie immediately made a beeline to a plastic skeleton and carried an arm around like a trophy, prancing past Mrs. Harper’s carefully positioned pumpkins with the swagger of a dog who knew she’d won something. Daisy dove into a pile of leaves yet to be burned and emerged covered in fake spider webs someone had dropped, looking like she’d lost a fight with a Halloween store. Bella decided one of the pumpkins belonged somewhere else and pushed it along the sidewalk with her nose, inch by determined inch, as though she had a very specific vision for the entryway that none of us had been consulted on. I sighed, realizing I’d have more work cut out for me than I’d thought.
Linda laughed. “I think the dachshunds are in the decorating spirit. I’ve got to collect some other dogs. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“They’re messing everything up.” I planted my fists on my hips and watched helplessly as Bella ran off with a twelve-inch scarecrow, Daisy kept knocking over boxes of decorations, and Minnie kept busy piling skeleton bones into a pile like some kind of tiny, determined archaeologist. I frowned when I caught Mrs. Henderson slipping the dogs treats. “Are you encouraging them?” The woman was out to sabotage my decorating efforts; I was almost certain of it.
“Of course not. They’re working hard and deserve a treat.” She grinned and strolled away, looking entirely too pleased with herself for someone who’d complained about smoke less than an hour ago.
Linda returned with a Bassett hound and a Yorkie along with the black lab she’d already had, the leashes tangling around her legs in a way that looked one wrong step from disaster. “I need to find a place to put these three or they’ll join your girls in the decorating.”
“The decorations never stood a chance.”
Bella quickly forgot about the decorations and ran circles around Linda in an effort to get the Yorkie to play with her. Minnie stared at the retriever and growled low in her throat, all four-year-old dignity and none of the size to back it up. Daisy ignored everything and decided to take a break to sunbathe, spider webs and all, sprawled across the sidewalk like she owned it.
“We could lock the dogs in the dog run.” I’d had one built a few months ago to cut down on the amount of doggie business left around the complex. “We might actually get some work done that way.”
I caught sight of someone standing across the street watching the commotion at Riverside Towers, a still figure among the general chaos of the morning. “Do you know who that is?”
“No.” Linda shook her head, following my gaze for only a second before a Yorkie yanked her attention back down. “Minnie has disappeared, but I’ll herd the other dogs into the doggie area so I can help you finish.”
When I glanced back, the person across the street was gone, and Minnie returned to add another bone to the bone pile, entirely unbothered by having wandered off in the first place. I picked her up and deposited her in the dog area with the others, made sure they all had water, and latched the gate, giving it an extra tug for good measure. I’d learned the hard way that a loose latch and three determined dachshunds was a recipe for an afternoon of chasing.
By mid-afternoon, Riverside glowed with purple and orange lights strung along the eaves and through the bushes, throwing long shadows even before the sun had properly started to set. A pile of bones lay next to the fake graveyard, a blow-up ghost bent over at the waist near the entrance as if sniffing the pumpkins, which had finally been arranged to Mrs. Harper’s exacting eastward specifications. Hay bales, corn stalks, and black cats finished the decorations. Residents strolled through the common area and admired everyone’s hard work, pausing to take pictures and compliment the tombstones. With the help of friends and residents, I’d done a good job with my first holiday as manager of the complex. Now, on to planning the Halloween night Masquerade party, and hoping I had enough energy left in me to pull that off too.
“Looks great.” Lance, my boyfriend and Riverside detective, snuck up behind me and planted a kiss on the back of my neck.
I turned and smiled. “Thank you.” I cupped his cheek. “You look tired.”
“It’s been a long day. This close to Halloween makes teens think it’s okay to run amok in the cemetery.” He put an arm around my waist. “Show me what all you’ve accomplished today.”
We strolled down the sidewalk, his arm slipping so he could take my hand in his. We stopped at the pile of bones. “What’s this?”
“Minnie’s contribution. We gave up on trying to keep the skeletons in one piece.” I shrugged. “This still works.”
“I suppose it does.” He laughed and bent to take a tattered witch’s hat away from Bella, who relinquished it with far less resistance than I expected. He plopped it on my head, and we continued walking. Daisy pranced toward us with an orange ribbon draped around her like a beauty queen’s sash, clearly proud of her new accessory. “The girls have been busy.”
“They’re supposed to be in the dog area.” I frowned at a freshly dug hole under the fence, already calculating how long it would take to fill and how many treats it would cost me to convince them not to redo it tomorrow. “There’s no keeping those three locked up anywhere. They’ve redecorated half the courtyard.”
My stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t had anything to eat since the donut that morning. I called Bella away from the flowerbed where she dug as if trying to reach China. “Stop that.” I’d have to fill the hole tomorrow, right after I dealt with whatever fresh complaint Mrs. Henderson had waiting for me.
I turned to find Lance standing by the pile of bones, his cell phone to his ear, his easy smile gone entirely.
“What’s wrong?” I rushed to his side.
“One of these bones is not plastic.”
- Publisher : Winged Publications
- Publication date : September 7, 2026
- Language : English
- Print length : 220 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1972624261
- ISBN-13 : 978-1972624265