Town In a Lobster Stew (22 page)

They got most of the seeds and all of the plants in before they decided to take a break late in the morning. Doc’s leg was acting up again, and he was complaining about his back as well. He wore a white cotton shirt, opened several buttons at the neck, and beat-up khaki pants he used only for gardening and working in the fields—and occasionally for running to the hardware store. They were torn at the knees and threadbare in the rear, and the shirt was as thin as onion skin at the elbows, but he refused to toss the old clothes out. “They’ve still got plenty of good years in them,” he told her when she pointed out his sartorial shortcomings.

He also wore a floppy Australian-style hat, aviator-style sunglasses, and his scuffed Timberland boots, which he’d had for as long as she could remember. Add a pipe, Candy thought, and he might have looked like some nineteenth-century explorer or an archaeologist overseeing a dig in Egypt.

As she watched him work, she wondered, not for the first time, if he ever thought of getting married again. He seemed comfortable enough with the bachelor life, but she detected moments of loneliness in him, when he thought she wasn’t watching him and let his guard down. Whenever she asked him about it, he would just wave his hand, give her an indulgent smile, and tell her not to worry about him.

“But I do worry about you, Dad,” she would say.

“And I worry about you too, pumpkin,” he’d reply. “But for the most part, we’re both doing okay, right? So what else is there to worry about?”

And, strangely enough, when he put it like that, she had trouble arguing with him. Ten years ago, she’d never envisioned herself here, living with her father on a blueberry farm in Downeast Maine, and she couldn’t say it was exactly where she’d hoped to be at this stage of her life, at her age. But she also couldn’t say it bothered her too much. She had, she knew, learned to simply accept it. Life was what it was, she’d decided one day. The harder you pushed against it, the harder it pushed back. So all you could do was learn to live with it, make the best you could of it, and try to be happy.

Until something happened that shook your life in a way you’d never expected.

That had happened to her several times before. Now it was happening again.

She went inside around noon, showered, and changed. It was her third hot shower since discovering Mr. Sedley’s body the previous day. Most of the smell was gone from her hair and body, but it still seemed to linger in her nostrils and on her fingertips. She had hoped the garden dirt would erase some of that smell, and it had. The remnants were faint now, but the images still lurked in her mind.

Doc had had the TV on that morning when she awoke, and news of the murder was being reported on all the local channels. But she did her best to ignore watching it. Sensing her distress, Doc had flicked off the TV as they drank their coffee before heading outside.

Now, feeling fresh and strangely cleansed by the earth, she called Maggie to see how Wilma Mae was doing and then settled herself in a chair on the front porch with the sun in her face, her notebooks within easy reach, and her laptop balanced on her knees. It was time to write.

She’d planned to work on her column and an article for the paper, but half an hour later she found herself staring at a blank screen, wondering where her mind had gone.

She’d been thinking about the body in the basement again. And the missing recipe. And the secret drawer in the front bedroom. And the cook-off, and the contestants. And Judicious’s odd comment:
Just remember to keep a close eye on everything that happens today.
And the sheet of paper with the
X
through it. And the booths she hadn’t visited, where the answers she sought might have been found.

Candy’s thoughts returned again to the cook-off contestants, for they were the most likely suspects in Mr. Sedley’s murder. Who could have done it? she wondered. Wanda? Quite possibly. Burt Ramsay? Again, possibly yes. But who else?

As Candy thought about it, she realized there were some contestants she could eliminate. Melody Barnes for one—Candy had been at her booth and knew the woman well. She had no real motive for stealing the recipe, as far as Candy could tell. She had come in third in the competition using her grandmother’s recipe. So why would she need Mr. Sedley’s? Plus, Melody had used tomatoes in her stew, which had been absent from the cinnamon-flavored one.

And she thought she could probably eliminate Bumpy Brigham. Bumpy, Candy decided, just didn’t have murder in him. Besides, she knew his secret stew ingredients. He had told her. So she could tick him off the list.

Who else?

Tillie Shaw? Doubtful. The woman didn’t seem to have a mean bone in her. Anita Weller? Delilah Daggerstone? Charlotte Depew? Lyra Graveton? Walter Gruthers?

Juanita Perez?

Candy shook her head. None of them seemed like murderers to her. Mr. Sedley was just a kindly old gentleman. She found it difficult to imagine any of them doing to him what she’d witnessed in the basement.

How had he wound up down there, rolled up in the tarpaulin like that
? she wondered.
Who put him there?

Again, she asked herself,
Who?

She kept coming back to two names: Wanda Boyle and Burt Ramsay.

She had walked by Burt’s booth yesterday morning at the cook-off. Had she seen a bottle of cinnamon among his supplies? She couldn’t remember—she hadn’t looked that closely.

If only she had had the time to visit Wanda’s booth and taste her stew. That would’ve given her the answers she needed.

Doc passed right by her, whistling and blocking the sun for an instant as he headed toward the barn, and on the spur of the moment she asked him, “Dad, how many stews did you sample yesterday at the cook-off?”

“Huh? Stews?” He stopped, looking at her with a slight grin, and thought about it for a moment. “Four, maybe five. Why?”

“Which ones? Which were your favorites?”

“Well, let’s see. I tried Bumpy’s, of course, which wasn’t too bad. I walked over and had some of Melody’s. And Burt Ramsay’s . . .”

“What did you think of his stew?” she cut in.

“It was okay—a pretty typical lobster stew. About what I expected. Kind of a thick, almost gritty texture. Why?”

“Did you taste any cinnamon in it?”

Doc gave her a funny look. “Cinnamon?”

She waited.

His grin twitched as he considered the question. “I don’t know. I can’t say it jumped out at me. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

He sharpened his gaze on her. “Are you on the case?”

Candy shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve been politely warned off by Chief Durr.”

“And it’s a good thing,” Doc said, his voice suddenly turning stern. “These aren’t games being played out there, pumpkin. People are getting themselves killed. Look what happened last summer with you and Maggie up on that widow’s walk. These are dangerous times. It’s best to just walk away and leave the investigations to the police.”

Candy made a face at him. “You sound like Chief Durr.”

“Well, I guess we think alike. We’re just trying to keep you out of trouble.”

“Trouble,” Candy insisted as her cell phone rang, “seems to keep finding me.”

She glanced at the name on the phone’s readout, then flipped it open. “Hi, Ben.”

“Hello, Candy. I just called to see how you’re doing. I heard what happened yesterday. That must have been quite a shock for you.”

“Yeah, it was pretty awful. But I’m glad we found him when we did. The poor old guy.”

“You got that right. It’s a real shame. Do they know what happened to him yet?”

“If they do, they haven’t told me.”

“Look,” Ben said, and she could almost hear him leaning forward, as he did sometimes when he was moving to a more intense topic of conversation. He was probably also rubbing his forehead in a thoughtful way. “You have some connections over at the police department, right?”

“Connections?” Candy had to think about that. “You mean Finn?”

“Yeah. He knows someone inside, right?”

“I guess so—at least, that’s what he’s said.”

“Do you think you could give him a call, see if you can find out what’s going on with this murder?”

Candy was surprised. “Me?”

“Well, sure. On behalf of the newspaper, I mean.”

She sat up straighter in her chair. “But, Ben, I’m not a news reporter. I’m the community correspondent.”

“You’ve just been promoted,” Ben told her. “I’m putting you in charge of this story.”

“You’re putting me in charge?” she said in disbelief.

“Sure, you’re the best person to write this story. Think about it, Candy. You’re already inside—you’ve been talking to Wilma Mae, and you discovered the body. You’ve practically got a front-row seat for this whole deal.”

He actually sounded excited about this idea, she realized, as she felt her heart suddenly tighten in her chest.

“I think you’re ready for something meatier than the typical community story,” he told her.

“Meatier?”

“Candy,” Ben said, his voice controlled yet burgeoning, “people have won Pulitzers for this type of reporting.”

“Pulitzers?” The word came out as a sort of croak. Candy had momentarily lost her voice.

“This could be big. And it’s fallen right into your lap.”

“But . . . but I’m not a crime reporter,” Candy repeated, finding her voice again. “I don’t know . . . the jargon or the writing style or how any of those crime things work. I certainly don’t know all the people over at the police station.”

“You know the chief, right? You’ve talked to some of the officers. Besides, there’s not a lot of heavy lifting involved. You make a few phone calls, talk to the chief, maybe interview a few people. Who knows what you’ll come across.”

Candy blinked several times.

“Think about it,” Ben coaxed.

So Candy thought about it. She wanted to hate the idea. She wanted to hate the idea that he wanted her to do it. And she wanted to hate the fact that, right now, it sounded like he wanted a story a lot more than he wanted her.

But strange as it sounded, and much to her surprise, she realized she actually agreed with him.

She was sitting on a pretty big story. So why not make the best of it?

My God
, she thought.
I’m starting to think like a reporter.

She cleared her throat. “Well . . . I suppose I could do that—make a few phone calls, see what I can find out.”

“Super. I know you’ll do a great job. By the way, I need the story by Tuesday afternoon.”

“Tuesday?” She couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice.

Ben must have noticed her concern. “If it helps, I’ll give you an extra day for your community column. You can turn it in on Wednesday. But no later than noon. I need to get this issue on the street by Friday, okay? This is a big one for us.”

Candy blew out a breath. It sounded like a lot of work, but something in her didn’t want to let Ben down. She knew this was important to him. And she still cared about the guy. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Great. Oh, there’s one other thing. I received a really strange e-mail this morning. It came into the office’s account, but it was addressed to you. Something like, ‘For Candy Holliday’s eyes only.’ It just looks like another complaint—something about the cook-off probably—but I forwarded it to your home account. Did you get it?”

Candy looked down at the laptop’s screen. She used the touchpad to move the cursor to her e-mail account’s icon. “I haven’t opened it yet, but I’m doing it now.” She waited a few moments while the program launched, then checked her new e-mails. She saw the one forwarded by Ben. “Yeah, I got it.”

“Okay. Just let me know if you need anything else. Are you going to the parade tomorrow?”

“I think so.”

“Good. At least one of us will be there.”

“You’re not going?”

“I’m not sure yet. Roger and I are talking about going fishing. But we’ll see.”

“Did you guys have fun yesterday? I heard the Red Sox won.”

“Yeah, it was okay.”

“By the way,” Candy said, her mind already working ahead, “you wouldn’t happen to have Roger’s phone number, would you?”

“Roger? Sure. Why?”

“Just in case I have any questions for him about the cook-off.” As he gave it to her, she wrote it down in her notebook, so she could key it into her cell phone’s contact list. “How long is he going to be in town?” she asked, setting the notebook aside.

“He’s here for the rest of this coming week. We’re supposed to have dinner together tomorrow night. Want to come along?”

Candy thought about that. “I don’t know yet. I have a lot of work to do. I have this tough editor who just called me out of the blue, put me on a criminal case, assigned a news story, and told me he needs it in two days. I mean, the
nerve
of some people.”

Ben laughed. “Yeah, you’ve got to watch out for guys like that. Let me know, okay?”

“I will.” She hit the end button and quickly keyed Roger’s number into her cell phone’s contact list.

Maybe it was time to give him a call to see what he remembered about the stews he had sampled yesterday.

It was a good idea, she thought, and she planned to do just that—as soon as she read the presumably nasty e-mail Ben had forwarded to her. She might as well get the bad news out of the way first.