Town in a Strawberry Swirl (Candy Holliday Mystery) (16 page)

True to his word, the chief arrived in nine and a half minutes. “I hope you don’t mind the impromptu stop-in,” he said after a brief greeting. “I thought it might be easier to meet over here. It’s quieter. Lots of phones ringing and people talking over there.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the police station.

“How’s the investigation coming?” Candy asked.

Chief Durr removed his hat and ran a hand back across his steel-colored hair. “Well, we’re making progress. I suppose you’ve heard the latest about Lydia St. Graves. I’m unable to say much about the accident at this point—and everything we talk about here today is off the record, of course—but we’re following up on a number of leads, including that shovel of yours. I appreciate the effort you and Doc made in tracking that down.” He slid into a chair and looked over at her expectantly. “So you said you had a ‘personal’ matter you wanted to discuss. Anything to do with the shovel?”

Candy cleared her throat. “Yes, well, that’s part of it.” Before she proceeded, she motioned toward the door and waggled her fingers.

The chief looked over, rose from his seat, gently slapped it closed, and resettled himself. “So what have you learned, Ms. Holliday?” he asked, his brow furrowing.

As she often did, Candy hesitated a few moments, giving herself a little extra time to collect her thoughts before she plunged on. She told the chief about her unexpected meeting with Lydia the previous evening, touching on the details of their conversation. She mentioned the e-mail Lydia allegedly received from Miles yesterday morning, requesting a meeting at the hoophouse, along with instructions to delete the message after reading it. She gave Lydia’s side of the story, explaining that Miles had been dead when Lydia arrived at the hoophouse. “Lydia claimed she was innocent,” Candy added. “She said she was framed.”

“But if that’s true, why not just contact us right away and let us sort it out?”

“Because she was scared,” Candy said, “and she felt trapped. So after she found the body, she fled.”

“And that’s when you saw her, right?” the chief asked. “When she ran you off the road? I read Molly’s report.”

“That’s right. She said she hid out at the farm until the coast was clear and then headed back toward town, which is when I saw her.”

“Sounds like she was running from the scene of a crime.”

“It does, I admit, but I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.”

The chief nodded, accepting that explanation for the moment. “What about the shovel, then?”

“Lydia says it was stolen out of her car while she was parked on the street outside the beauty shop on Main Street,” Candy explained. “Whoever stole it must have held on to it for several weeks before leaving it next to Miles’s body in an attempt to incriminate Lydia. Oh, and there’s one other thing—Lydia said she intended to make one final stop last night before heading out of town.”

The chief frowned at this bit of information. “She say where she was going?”

“Someplace ‘safe.’”

“Too bad she didn’t make it. Anything else?”

“That’s about it—for now. Mostly I wanted to let you know that Lydia stopped by the farm last night.”

The chief nodded and was silent for a long while, staring down at the floor, as if processing all that she’d told him. Finally he looked up. “Well, I wish you’d mentioned some of this earlier—last night, for instance, right after you talked to Lydia. But I appreciate the fact you’re telling me now. And—again off the record—it matches up pretty well with our assumptions. There was quite a bit of evidence at the scene. Someone, for instance, tried very hard to cover up his or her tracks, using an old broom. From what you’ve just told me, it’s possible that person was Lydia. But there were other prints out there that are more interesting to us right now. Those are the ones we’re currently tracking down. But there’s something else—something you might be able to help with.”

“Oh?” Candy’s voice rose in surprise.

The chief nodded and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, holding his hat between his hands. “You know a lot of folks around town, right?”

Candy nodded.

“Do you know of anyone with the initials
M.R.S.
?”

“M.R.S.?”
Candy repeated.
“As in Mrs.?”

“That’s just it. Could be either one,” the chief explained. “Could be Mrs. Somebody or Something-or-other. Or it could be someone with those initials. We’re not sure which. Here’s the thing—we found a few, well,
baskets
out there, near the body.”

“Baskets?”

“Yeah, you know. Like someone was going strawberry picking and brought along a few baskets from home—those wicker or straw ones with the handles on the ends.” He made a general shape with his hands. “Frankly, they looked out of place, not like something Miles would have owned—and, of course, the initials don’t match his. We swept his house and the rest of the buildings out there. He had stacks of commercial strawberry baskets in the barn—those little green plastic ones, as well as more industrial-sized containers. But he wasn’t a basket collector—not in the traditional sense.”

The chief paused, looking Candy in the eye. “These particular baskets had the initials
M.R.S.
woven into them, like they’d been made personally for someone. Maybe as a family heirloom or a Mother’s Day gift? Something like that. Since you get around town quite a bit and know a lot of the people, and you have connections in the farm community, I thought you might’ve seen something like that, or might know someone with those initials. So . . . does any of this ring any bells? Anyone jump to mind?”

He stopped and waited, giving her time to think. But Candy was still too astonished he was actually asking for her help. Usually, in the past, he’d warned her vehemently to stay out of local murder cases, giving her stern looks and speaking in gruff tones. But here he was, sharing an actual clue with her, bringing her into his confidence and giving up a valuable piece of information about the investigation. Why the change of heart?

In the end, it made no difference, because she couldn’t think of anyone who fit the bill. She ran over a list of possible names in her head and scrolled through the list of contacts on her phone, but no one jumped out.

“I’ll give it more thought, though,” she told the chief with a shake of her head. “I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.”

Chief Durr accepted her answer in stride. “I knew it was a long shot anyway,” he said with a forced grin. He rose and replaced his hat atop his head. “You did the right thing calling me. I need both you and Doc to stay in touch. I expect to hear from you again if you think of anything else that might help us out. And like I said, this is all off the record. Please keep anything we just talked about to yourself. I don’t want to see it on the front page of the paper.”

With that, he swung open the door, touched the tip of his hat, and headed back down the hall.

Candy let out a long breath as his footsteps receded toward the front door.

The meeting had actually gone better than she’d hoped. She’d envisioned another lecture, cautioning her about her involvement in a local murder case, warning her to stay out of police business. Instead, she found herself strangely gratified that he’d asked for her help.

The moment burst quickly, though, as Wanda Boyle poked her head in through the doorway. “Hey, was that Chief Durr? What was
he
doing here? What’s the scoop?”

“There’s no scoop. It’s just personal business,” Candy said vaguely, turning back to her computer and clicking open some work files. She wasn’t trying to be rude to Wanda, but she also didn’t want to encourage the woman. Wanda could be tenacious when it came to ferreting out information, and Candy has just been told to keep certain aspects of the current case to herself.

But Wanda wasn’t so easily deterred. “Personal business? What’s that mean? And since when does the chief of police visit the local newspaper editor? What’s that all about?”

“It was just a routine visit.”

“Routine? Hmm.” Wanda drummed her long, freshly painted fingernails on the wooden doorjamb. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it had something to do with the Crawford murder.”

“I really can’t say anything about it.”

“No, I suppose not,” Wanda said with a touch of sarcasm. “Fine thing, too, when a newspaper editor sits on information that could help find a criminal.”

Candy had to admit she had a point.

“Okay, you’re right, I
am
sitting on information. And
no
, I’m not going to tell you what it is—at least not yet. That’s just the way it is, so there’s no point in pursuing this conversation any longer. Besides, more than likely you’ll hear about it soon enough.”

Despite the stern words, Wanda grinned. She slipped inside the office and perched on the edge of one of the chairs. “Did he say anything about the ladies of the Heritage Protection League?”

Candy looked over at Wanda again, holding the other woman’s gaze this time. “What makes you ask that?”

“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? I’ve heard the latest scuttlebutt at the police station. Things are buzzing over there since Lydia’s death. They’re calling it ‘suspicious.’ Poison, they’re saying. If that’s true, then it could mean that Lydia didn’t kill Miles. Maybe someone else killed them both.”

“And you think the ladies of the league might have had something to do with it?”

“Don’t you?” Wanda threw her hands up into the air. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out! I could certainly see one or two of them taking a swing at Miles’s head with a shovel. Cotton Colby seems like a woman who always gets her way, and Elvira Tremble has the demeanor for such a thing. And think about it: Who has the most to gain from Miles’s death? Who’s been bugging everyone around town about the rumored sale of that berry farm? Who’s launched a secret campaign against Lydia?”

“You mean they’re the ones behind these rumors of a secret deal between Lydia and Miles?”

“It’s coming from somewhere,” Wanda said, “and it just makes sense. They always seem to have the best information, don’t they? Maybe they have another agenda. Maybe they’re starting these rumors because there’s something else they’re after.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” Wanda shrugged her big shoulders innocently as the corners of her mouth turned up. “I’m just speculating.”

“But I don’t understand. I thought they were your friends.”

Wanda made a face. “What, you’re talking about yesterday? I know how to schmooze them, yes, but I don’t sit around and drink tea with them all day and chat about the weather and who wore white after Labor Day, if that’s what you mean. I treat them the same way I treat everyone else in town. You get more bees with honey. It pays to be friendly and chatty. That’s how to get people to tell you their stories. It’s something you learn when you write a community column—but I don’t have to tell you that, do I? I learned it from you.”

This surprised Candy. “You did?”

“Of course. Everything I know about this business I learned by watching you. Of course, I put my own spin on it. Improved on it.”

Candy couldn’t help but smile faintly. “It almost sounded like there was a compliment in there somewhere.”

“Take it anyway you want,” Wanda said nonchalantly, and she rose. “Mark my words—those ladies of the Heritage Protection League are involved in this somehow. We’ve got to keep an eye on them. I’ve been tracking their whereabouts.”

“You have?”

Wanda nodded. “I’ve been keeping a chart. They tend to congregate in certain places, like the library and the historical society, and the beauty shop.”

That perked up Candy’s ears. “Freda’s place on Main Street? So do you know if they’ve had appointments there?”

“Sure do. Freda tends to stay open late on Thursday nights, so some of the ladies have appointments at around the same time on Thursday afternoon, generally from three to five. Lydia usually came in right after that.”

“At about what time?” Candy asked.

Wanda shrugged. “Five thirty, something like that. Usually the other ladies tried to be gone by the time she arrived, so they didn’t run into each other much. But last night they stayed around to see if Lydia showed up.”

“And?”

“She never did, of course.”

Candy knew why. Lydia had been hiding out somewhere in the woods, waiting for darkness to fall, so she could make her way out to Blueberry Acres without being spotted by the police.

It also meant, Candy realized, that it certainly could have been possible for one of the ladies to hang around until Lydia arrived one Thursday afternoon, wait until she entered the shop, and then take the shovel from the backseat of her BMW convertible.

“I’ll let you know if I spot any strange behavior,” Wanda said. “By the way, I
have
noticed that Elvira Tremble in particular has been spending a lot of time out at the historical society. I thought it might be because she was sweet on Miles Crawford.”

Again, Candy was surprised by this revelation. “Elvira was interested in Miles?”

“From a romantic standpoint, yes, from what I’ve heard. For a while Miles was spending a lot of time out at the lighthouse, doing some sort of research—something to do with the history of the village, from what I understand. I don’t know all the details, but I’m out there quite often myself, as you know, and I do remember seeing him there a number of times, sitting back in some dusty corner upstairs in the archives, going through piles of old ledgers. Anyway, Elvira used to hang around and wait for him to show up. But according to my sources, he never showed the slightest interest in her, and eventually he just stopped coming around. Apparently Elvira was crushed. Maybe she got peeved that he kept ignoring her and swung a shovel at his head.”