by Nicholas A. Levack

Created on: April 23, 2008   Last Updated: June 11, 2008

Jack-o-Lantern Mayhem

Section I: The Suspects

Sally Gardson
Richard Brett
Mr. McDouglas
Suzie Lynn

Suspect II: The Crime

Children laughed and ran about the streets, their shadows dancing upon the cold pavement in the dim twilight. Leaves withered and fell amongst the piles of their deceased brethren, as the bitter cold of autumn slowly bit away at their liveliness. Though most people were celebrating the dark holiday of treats and tricks, one family's Halloween hardly lived to their expectations.

When the Lynn family woke up to a chilly Halloween day, they had already formulated their plans: they would rise early to finish up the decorations on the house, and prepare the spooky set-up in the front with which to scare the trick-or-treaters. It was nothing more than a wooden entrance, painted to look like the gates to a graveyard, set in front of their doorway with a fog machine and black lights. But when they had stepped through the door for the first time all day when the trick-or-treating had begun, they saw that the fruits of their labor had gone to waste.

The set-up, the jack-o-lanterns, the fake zombies that sat up from their graves, the newspaper-stuffed ghosts and ghouls, the dangling plastic skeletons that chimed in the wind, and the paper witches frozen in time on their brooms were all trashed and torn to pieces. Amongst all of the broken property, to everyone's surprise, were two children of the neighborhood: Sally Gardson and Richard Brett, along with another man who had stumbled across the scene with his daughter - they were also the next door neighbors of the Lynn family - Mr. McDouglas.

Before anyone could say anything, Mrs. Lynn ran into the house to call the police, and hours later the group stood in the front yard examining the damage, with a police officer standing at the head. No immediate admission of guilt came from any of the three people found at the scene.

"I bet it was your daughter," accused Mr. McDouglas, to everyone's surprise. "She talked to my daughter earlier, and told me how she hated all the 'spooky' decorations."

"What?" said Suzie, surprised. "Why would I destroy my family's decorations?"

"Why would 'I' destroy your family's decorations, Suzie?" asked Sally Gardson.

Suzie rubbed her chin. "Maybe because of the fight we had at school."

Mrs. Lynn, surprised at the news that her eleven-year-old daughter had been in a fight with one of her classmates, looked as if she was about to explode. But before she could, Richard, also a classmate, said,

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