Town In a Lobster Stew (21 page)

Daryl Durr, Cape Willington’s chief of police, had showed up half an hour ago, shortly after she had called the station and reported the finding of Mr. Sedley. He had talked to her briefly before he headed down into the basement, sending her outside to recover. “Stay close, though,” he told her gruffly. “I want to talk to you.”

And so Candy sat on the porch as the afternoon light died, trying to keep the scene in her head from playing over and over.

When Mr. Sedley’s body had rolled out onto the basement floor, Candy and Maggie had both screamed. It had been a surreal, terrifying moment, though in their hearts they both had known what was coming. But that hadn’t lessened the shock of seeing poor Mr. Sedley so absolutely, completely, unbelievably dead.

Once past the initial shock, Candy had reluctantly taken a step toward the body to check for a pulse but decided there was no need. The body had started to bloat and the eyes bulged. The sickening smell permeated everything. There was no doubt Mr. Sedley had been dead several days.

Ignoring Maggie’s stifled sobs, Candy had quickly scanned the body. The hair was slicked and matted, as if he’d been bleeding from a head wound, though the blood had congealed into a misshapen reddish black mass. Candy had also noticed dark bruising on his forehead and neck. She’d seen no evidence, though, of a more violent death—no blood on his clothes, nothing that looked like a stab or bullet wound.

He wore a light gray sweater, rumpled brown pants, and black shoes.

What was he doing here?
she’d asked herself.
What happened to him?

She’d considered wrapping the body back up in the tarpaulin but decided against it almost immediately. She’d already contaminated a crime scene, and she thought it best to leave the rest for the experts.

They hadn’t lingered any longer. Back upstairs, Maggie leaned against a wall, held a hand to her chest, and coughed uncontrollably, trying to get the smell out of her nose and the images out of mind. Candy was coughing as well and her eyes were watering, though whether from the air in the basement or for other reasons, she didn’t know.

“Who did that to him?” Maggie asked as she waved a hand rapidly in front of her face, trying to clear the air. “Who would wrap him up like that? Did he suffocate? Was it an accident?”

“It was no accident,” Candy assured her, though she had no other answers.

“How long do you think he’s been down there?”

“I don’t know,” Candy said thoughtfully. “But we can’t worry about him anymore. We have someone else to worry about.”

“Who?”

“Wilma Mae. What are we going to tell her?”

As it turned out, neither had the heart to say anything to her right away, so while Candy hovered in the living room, waiting for the police to arrive, Maggie agreed to go up and sit with Wilma Mae while she slept.

Now a half dozen police officers quietly but diligently searched the house, while a photographer took pictures down in the basement and the EMTs waited to remove the body. Most of them wore face masks because of the smell, and they talked in low voices.

Sitting on the porch, Candy could hear them speaking to each other inside, though their words were indistinct. But she didn’t have to hear them clearly to know what they were talking about. Despite what had happened the previous summer, murder was rare in Cape Willington, as it was in most of Maine’s rural villages and towns. Any time it happened, it caused shock and surprise.

That, Candy thought, was probably the best description of how she felt, and more. She was devastated. She hadn’t known Mr. Sedley, except through what Wilma Mae had told her, but she felt as if she had lost a close friend. She couldn’t even begin to grasp what Wilma Mae must be feeling.

She heard footsteps behind her and turned to look back at the house. Maggie walked out onto the porch and sat down beside her.

“How’s Wilma Mae?” Candy asked, propping up one side of her head with the palm of her hand, to steady herself while she talked.

Maggie shrugged. “She took it surprisingly well. I expected tears. I got denial.”

“Did Chief Durr explain everything to her?”

Maggie nodded. “He did. He was very professional and very personable.”

“Does she understand?”

Maggie considered that a few moments, then nodded again. “I think so. She heard him. She’s just not ready to acknowledge it yet.”

Candy nodded. “That makes sense, I guess. We all have to handle things in our own way.”

Maggie shrugged. “I guess. She’s dealing with it as best she can. But right now I think she’d rather just not talk about it. She’s worried about one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“She doesn’t know where she’s going to sleep tonight. She doesn’t want to stay in her house anymore.”

“Yeah, that would be kinda tough to do. Does she have any friends around town? Relatives?”

“I think she has a sister out in California. And maybe a nephew or something like that up in Machias.”

Candy said, “Hmm,” and stared out at the lawn for a few long moments. Finally she looked back at her friend. “She can always stay with me and Doc. We’ve got plenty of room out at the farm. She might like hanging around Blueberry Acres for a few days.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Maggie said, her eyes twinkling, “but I have a better idea.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, she can stay with me.”

“With you?”

“Sure! I’ve got plenty of room, and I’m not busy right now. Amanda’s away camping with Cameron and the Zimmermans, and Ed’s—well, Ed’s gone, isn’t he? The house has been kind of lonely lately. It wouldn’t be so bad to have someone around for a few days. And I think it’d be good for Wilma Mae too. I can help keep her mind off things. We’ll drink a few cups of tea, or maybe a few glasses of wine. Watch some TV. Make some popcorn. You know, normal stuff.”

Candy nodded her approval. “That might be just the thing she needs.”

She turned at the sound of footsteps again. Chief Daryl Durr walked out onto the porch.

He nodded at Maggie. “She’s asking for you,” he said.

Maggie put her hands on her knees and rose. “Guess I should get back. I’ll help her pack,” she said to the two of them. To Chief Durr, she added, “I’m going to take her home with me for a few days.”

“That’s a good idea. Thanks.”

He waited until Maggie had disappeared into the house, then dropped down beside Candy, sitting next to her on the porch steps. “So,” he began slowly, staring out toward the fading sun, “how come every time there’s a murder in this town, you seem to be stuck right in the middle of it?”

Candy didn’t answer. She couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious, so she thought it best not to say anything.

He leaned back, turning his head to eye her, squinting slightly as he did so. “So you want to tell me what happened?”

He waited patiently, his gaze focused on the trees over the rooftops, while Candy explained how Wilma Mae had fainted at the cook-off, and how Maggie had driven the elderly woman back to her home, and about the call from Maggie, and how she and Maggie had found the body in the basement. She stuck to the facts but left out details about the missing recipe and her suspicions about Wanda Boyle.

When she was done, Chief Durr turned his appraising gaze back toward her. “Sounds good so far. Anything else you’d like to tell me?”

Candy looked at him, giving him her best uncomprehending look. “Like what?”

He sighed. “Why do I have this strange suspicion you know more than you’re telling me—again?”

Candy gulped, but she kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t ready to say anything else—not yet, anyway.

Daryl Durr swiped at the knees of his sharply pressed khaki trousers, as if brushing away a layer of dust, and rose to his feet. He stepped down off the steps onto the pathway and turned to look her in the eye. “I would like to remind you, Ms. Holliday, that any information you have must be shared with us. Withholding information of any kind is a serious crime.”

Candy brushed absently at her hair and squinted back at him. “What makes you think I’m withholding information?”

“I’m not making any insinuations. I’m just letting you know.”

“I called the station yesterday afternoon,” Candy said, surprised to hear an edge of anger in her voice. “I told the person I talked to that Mr. Sedley was missing. I did my best to notify you and your staff yesterday that something was wrong. Oliver LaForce said he called you too.”

Chief Durr seemed taken aback by that bit of information. “The innkeeper?”

“He said he called the station this morning.”

The police chief thought about that a moment. “I don’t seem to remember hearing anything about that, but I’ll check on it when I get back to the station. Now, again, just to make my point clear. We’re the town police. You’re not. When you first suspected the body might be in the house, that’s when you should have called us.”

“I was going to, but I had to check it out first. I was just being thorough.”

The chief nodded his head. “I understand that, Ms. Holliday. And fortunately, we think we were able to get what we needed from the scene. The crime lab van from Augusta will be here shortly, and they’ll follow up. But by disturbing the body like you did, you could have destroyed crucial evidence. You need to learn to leave the detecting to the detectives. Amateur sleuthing is frowned upon in this town. Besides, I thought you learned your lesson after the last time something like this happened. You could have gotten both yourself and your friend killed. Next time, call us first.”

Feeling he had made himself perfectly clear, he nodded sharply and started up the steps, heading back into the house.

But as he passed her, Candy looked up at him. “Next time?”

The chief stopped and stared down at her for a moment. He gave her a pained smile, not completely unlike something she’d see from Doc. “Somehow I get the impression you’re not going to listen to me and that this won’t be the last time you and I meet like this. Isn’t that right, Ms. Holliday?”

Candy batted her eyes and smiled sweetly at him. “Why, Chief Durr, I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

Candy couldn’t get that thought out of her head. It was the one crucial point she kept coming back to, when everything else that had happened over the past few days still seemed fuzzy. There was so much she couldn’t figure out—and most of it had to do with Wanda.

Had she really cooked the stew with the cinnamon in it, as the list on Robbie’s clipboard seemed to indicate? And if she had, did that mean she’d also stolen the recipe from Wilma Mae’s house?

Did it mean—and this was the point that kept sticking in Candy’s mind—Wanda murdered Mr. Sedley?

Or did the black
X
on Robbie’s clipboard indicate the list was not to be believed? In which case, maybe Wanda
hadn’t
stolen the recipe. Maybe she
hadn’t
made the cinnamon-flavored lobster stew.

And maybe she
hadn’t
murdered Mr. Sedley.

Candy knew that was why she’d kept certain bits of information to herself yesterday when she talked to Chief Durr on the front porch steps of Wilma Mae’s house. She worried about it afterwards, wondering if she’d done the right thing. But after thinking it through, she was convinced she had. She didn’t have a firm enough grasp on all the facts yet, and she didn’t want to go around incriminating folks in town—even Wanda Boyle—if she didn’t know the truth herself.

But who had it been? That was the most confusing part. Candy could think of a bunch of people who might have wanted that recipe, starting with the eleven cook-off contestants. Certainly someone like Burt Ramsay would have coveted the recipe for his business. The same could be said for Melody Barnes. And what about Juanita? Candy recalled Wilma Mae telling her that, years ago, Mr. Duffy, who ran the diner back then, had offered to buy the recipe from Mr. Sedley. Juanita had worked at the diner for years. Could she be mixed up in the recipe’s theft?

But it didn’t make any sense. The cinnamon-flavored recipe had been at the top of Candy’s list, but not Roger’s. Juanita had won with a different recipe.

No matter how hard she tried, Candy couldn’t get that thought out of her head.

It was Sunday morning, and Candy was working in the vegetable garden with Doc, planting carrots, cucumber, pumpkin, squash, and sunflower seeds, and putting in green pepper and tomato plants she’d bought at Hatch’s Garden Center and Farm Stand a few miles up the Coastal Loop. After the wet spring, the soil in the garden was moist and rich underneath and slightly dry on top. They’d been putting compost, straw, and even grass clippings on the garden patches for years to build up the nutrients. The dirt dug easily with a shovel now, airy and as dark as used coffee grinds—which Candy admitted she also occasionally threw on the garden, though she knew they worked better if she tossed them into the composter along with eggshells, potato skins, and other kitchen detritus.