Town in a Strawberry Swirl (Candy Holliday Mystery) (19 page)

Inside, the house was like a museum, though there was evidence that a forensics team had swept the place. Some of the drawers in the kitchen were still opened, their contents looking as if they’d been riffled through, and in the living room the cushions on the sofa and chair had not been properly replaced.

“They took his computer,” Neil said, leading Candy into a small office in the back corner of the first floor, “and some of his papers and documents, but nothing really critical, as far as I can tell.”

The room was simply furnished, with an old oak desk in one corner, a wood-slatted office chair that looked like an antique, two wooden filing cabinets, and a bookcase with a few faded volumes that looked decades old. It was all dimly lit, since the shades on the two office windows were pulled down. Candy peeked out first one window, then the other. They offered magnificent views of the ocean to one side and the strawberry fields to the other. In the far distance, at the top of one of the fields, Candy could see her father standing still and straight, peering into the woods beyond.

Neil tugged at her arm. “But that’s not what I wanted to show you. This way.”

He led her out of the room, into a wood-floored hallway, and up the stairs to the second floor.

“Did they take your father’s cell phone as well?” Candy asked as she climbed the stairs behind Neil.

“Good question,” he said. “I haven’t noticed his phone anywhere, so it’s possible they did.”

“Did he use a smart phone?”

Neil stopped at the upper landing and looked back at her. “No, why?”

“Lydia said he e-mailed her yesterday morning—early, asking her to meet him out here at the farm. But at the time he supposedly sent that e-mail message to her, someone else saw him making deliveries of strawberries. I’m wondering if he could have e-mailed her using a smart phone.”

Neil shook his head. “Dad was low-tech. It took me years just to get him to buy the computer downstairs, and he had that same one for eight or nine years. It still works, so he saw no need to replace it. I showed him how to set up his e-mail account and contact list, so he could send around messages about the farm.”

“I noticed a landline in the kitchen,” Candy said as she reached the top. “A wall phone.”

“That was his primary phone,” Neil said, and he started off toward a bedroom at the back of the house. “He had a cell, but it was one of my old ones. It wasn’t a smart phone, but I wanted to make sure he had something for emergencies.”

“So he couldn’t have e-mailed Lydia on the run?”

“His phone didn’t have the capability to do that, as far as I know. The only way he could send e-mails was using the computer downstairs in his office.” He pointed with a finger. “What I wanted to show you is in here.”

The bedroom they entered was somewhat stark, like the office below, but comfortable-looking. It, too, was at the back of the house, looking out over the strawberry fields. The bed was still made, though again it had been ruffled, probably by someone who’d checked underneath it during the house search. The drawers in two bureaus looked as if they’d been opened and their contents examined as well. A few photos in frames, showing the Crawford family during happier times, sat on one of the dark bureaus. But the walls were devoid of decoration, painted an unexciting light green. The wood floor was polished, with a small patterned area rug near the bed. Candy imagined the shirts in the closet were all hung in neat rows, and the socks and underwear smartly folded in the drawers.

“Dad’s office was downstairs,” Neil said, “and that’s where he did all his daily paperwork. But he didn’t keep his important papers down there. He kept them up here, hidden away.”

Neil pointed to a gray metal security box sitting on the seat of a high-backed cane chair beside the bed. The box, which looked fairly new, was perhaps fifteen inches long, eight inches deep, and six or seven inches high. It had an electronic keypad on the front. The top was open, revealing papers and bundles of cash inside, along with other valuables.

Neil pointed at the keypad. “He used his wedding anniversary as the combination, so we’d all remember it. He told us all years ago that if anything happened to him, we should check the box first. And that’s what I did.”

Neil lifted it carefully and placed it on the bed. “This is where he kept his emergency money—I think there’s probably close to five thousand dollars in here—and all his legal documents, like birth certificates, car titles, the divorce agreement, legal papers, that sort of thing.”

Neil picked up a faded, crinkled blue ribbon, lying near the top. “He won this from 4-H when he was about eight years old. He was pretty proud of it.”

There were also a few small, monochromatic photographs of people who looked like ancestors, and several pieces of jewelry, including a school ring and a thin gold wedding band.

“And then there’s this,” Neil said, picking up a sheaf of envelopes that looked fairly new, held together by a rubber band. They’d all been slit neatly along the top, revealing the edges of folded documents inside.

“What are those?” Candy asked curiously.

“Letters. From some firm in New York City.” He looked over at Candy. “They’re offers on the farm. Someone wanted to buy the place. And they must have wanted it really bad, because they were offering him
lots
of money for it.”

He let that hang in the air a moment as he set the envelopes down and picked up something else in the box. It was round, shiny, and yellow. “And maybe this is why,” Neil said, holding up the object between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s something I’ve never seen before—at least not in my father’s possession. And I have no idea where he got it.”

“What is it?” Candy asked, her gaze zeroing in on it.

“It is,” Neil said, “an old gold coin.”

Doc stood at the far end of the strawberry fields and gazed into the thick, shadowy woods. He thought he’d heard a muffled sound—a series of sounds, deep thuds that echoed through the trees and underbrush from some indeterminate direction. He looked back and forth along the edge of the woods, seeing nothing, and turned his good ear to the trees.

Low ruffs, growls, the faint sounds of digging.

Doc looked back around him, at the fields that stretched across the slope toward the hoophouses, farmhouse, and barn in the distance.

Where was the dog?

Had he gone inside the house? The barn? One of the hoophouses?

Doc heard the sounds again, from deep in the woods.

It was the dog, he knew.

Probably just found an old bone or something he’s digging out
, Doc mused.

But that thought suddenly worried him. With all the murders they’d had around town lately, maybe he should investigate, just to make sure.

He noticed a faint trail to his left, with a few shallow footprints locked into the drying earth, leading away from the field and into the woods.

Doc glanced back a final time before following the distant sounds into the shadows of the trees.

They had thinned where they met the field but quickly closed around him as he made his way along the trail. He always carried a compass with him, on his key chain, and he was used to walking in the Maine woods, so he wasn’t too worried about getting lost. He only wished he’d brought some insect repellant with him. The bugs were buzzing in the warm air, and there was still some spring pollen hanging suspended in the thin rays of sunshine between the trees, tiny glowing motes that danced around him in slow motion. He sneezed and moved on.

The trail zigzagged around defiles and outcroppings of rock, continued along a narrow stream for a while, and then turned west again, putting the sun slightly in front of him and sometimes to his left.

He moved as quickly as he could with his limp. He had on the light boots he wore around the farm, and they worked fine for this type of terrain. He stopped at one point to pick up a long, straight, dried-out branch that had broken off a tree long ago, and used it as a walking stick after stripping off a few thin, short offshoots that held shriveled brown leaves.

He checked his watch, so he’d have a good gauge of how long he’d been walking, then looked up as he heard the dog’s ruffs and growls again. The occasional sounds of digging were more pronounced. They appeared to be coming from his left, and the trail angled off in that direction, so he continued to follow it as best he could.

The terrain steepened and he struggled up the low slope, slowing his gait. He was also treading more carefully now, making sure he didn’t slip or lose his balance. The last thing he wanted to do was to fall and break a hip out here in the middle of nowhere.

He lost track of the trail as he came across an area where the ground had hardened and turned rocky, but he knew the dog was close now. He could hear the animal just ahead, through a low screen of shrubbery, in what looked like a clearing of sorts. He could almost feel the dog’s movements through the earth as it pawed at the ground.

He whistled softly and called out, since he didn’t want to startle the dog. “Hey, Random. It’s Doc. Remember me?” he said as he came through the trees. “What are you doing way out here?”

The sounds of the dog’s digging and growling continued and grew louder. Doc finally came around a last stand of trees and saw the animal, pawing away at the foot of what looked like an old weed-covered stone foundation, though it was obvious no building had stood here in a long time.

“What’d you find there?” Doc asked, approaching the dog cautiously. Random turned and looked at him with a dirt-covered snout and soulful eyes, then jerked his head around as something popped out of the hole he’d been digging at, darted left and right, and then took a long leap, dashing off into the underbrush to their right.

It was a young rabbit.

The dog snapped his head back, let out a gruff of disbelief, steeled his haunches, and dashed after his prey like a lightning bolt, crashing around the crumbling foundation and into the brush, quickly disappearing from sight.

Doc watched the whole scene with some amusement. The dog had simply cornered a bunny. Even now, he could still hear the two of them in their frenzy, a sonic record of their life-and-death chase resounding through the woods with snaps, rustles, and an occasional playful bark.

Taking a moment to catch his breath, Doc stuck his hands in his back pockets, leaned back, and looked up. There were thickening strings of clouds passing by. He wasn’t sure he liked the look of that. He knew there was a front coming through later in the afternoon, but he hoped the worst of the weather would clear out by the morning, so they’d have a good day for picking.

He looked down and surveyed the clearing, focusing in on the foundation around him for the first time.

It looked old, he thought—perhaps a hundred years, perhaps more. He wondered what kind of place had been built out there in the woods, so far from town. A hunter’s shed, possibly, or maybe even a maple sugaring shack, something like that. It hadn’t been a large place, but there’d been a wing off the back, possibly for a cookhouse or kitchen. There were naked foundations like this all over New England, the remnants of long-abandoned properties.

But when he took a closer look, something odd caught his eye.

He stepped to a nearby section of the foundation and used his walking stick to push away some of the leaves, pine needles, and loamy dirt that clung to the top of the stones. Then he leaned over and brushed away more with the flat of his hand.

Something poked up at him from the foundation. Nothing sharp. He pulled his hand away and looked at it. Part of a wood frame, blackened, as if it were a lump of charcoal.

Bits of charred wood were lodged into the foundation at various places, he noticed. He turned and spotted them in several locations now.

He knew what it meant. The place had burned down.

He paced around it and found a cornerstone at the northwest side. He kicked away a layer of dirt and grime that covered the lower face and bent over to get a look at it. There appeared to be engraving on the stone. But no, not an engraving. Nothing as professional as that. Just a few letters chipped out with a hammer and chisel, now smoothed by age but still clearly legible:

S. SYKES.