Death of a Blueberry Tart

by Lee Hollis

  Bruce didn’t wait for her to come back. He picked his gray T-shirt up off the floor and wrapped it around his hand to use as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

  Hayley rubbed his back with her hand. “I’m so sorry, Bruce . . .”

  Bruce opened his mouth to say something, but he just erupted into a violent, loud sneeze.

  “Oh no . . .” Hayley whispered.

  He sneezed again.

  And then again.

  He reached over to his own nightstand, grabbed a handful of tissues out of a box of Kleenex, and started blowing his nose.

  And then he sneezed again.

  “That’s it, Hayley. I’ve had enough . . .”

  “Enough of what? My mother?”

  “No, that cat! My nose is stuffed up all the time, I’m in constant misery, I live in fear of waking up to find it sitting on my face. I can’t take it anymore!”

  “Oh, Bruce—”

  “I thought when we got married and I moved in here, some Benadryl would do the trick, or those allergy shots I tried for a month. At one point I was hoping my immune system would just naturally adjust to living with a cat, but it hasn’t! I can’t live like this anymore! It’s too much!”

  “I’m sorry, Bruce, I’m not sure what we can do about it,” Hayley said, feeling bad for her husband but at a complete loss.

  “Well, you’re going to have to do something, because either Blueberry goes or I do!”

  Hayley almost laughed. She thought it was a joke at first. But as she looked into her husband’s eyes, she suddenly realized his ultimatum this time was for real. He was being dead serious.

  One of them was going to have to go.

  Chapter 29

  “Miss Hendricks, our English teacher, absolutely hated both Caskie and Regina because they used to make fun of her weight,” Sheila said over pancakes at Side Street Cafe with Hayley. “One time Miss Hendricks wore this bright yellow dress and was walking down the hall, and when she passed by Caskie and Regina, who were standing by their lockers, Caskie yelled, ‘Taxi!’”

  “That’s horrible!” Hayley said, staring at a black-and-white photo of Miss Hendricks—who had short white hair and wore small rectangular glasses that didn’t quite fit her chubby face—in the last yearbook ever put out by Bar Harbor High School in the spring of 1968.

  “Miss Hendricks pretended she didn’t hear them, but she got her revenge when she caught them plagiarizing their book reports on Silas Marner by George Eliot and flunked them both!” Sheila declared with more than a hint of satisfaction. “Regina’s parents were so upset they forced her to quit cheerleading and focus on her studies.”

  “Is Miss Hendricks still around?”

  “No, she died in the late nineties, as did Mr. Peterman, who also had it out for them,” Sheila said with a sigh.

  “The janitor?”

  Hayley stared at a picture of Ralph Peterman, smiling but with one front tooth missing, his complexion pockmarked, just a few wisps of gray hair sprouting on top of his weirdly curved head.

  Sheila nodded. “He used to stutter and they would constantly make fun of him. One day Caskie purposely dropped her food tray in the cafeteria so he’d have to come and clean it up. She was just awful.”

  “Was there anyone in high school who didn’t hate Caskie and Regina?”

  “They had their followers, the girls who thought they should be just like them because they were pretty and had nice bodies and were cheerleaders, and of course a lot of the boys in school paid attention to them because they had hormones, but most decent people knew exactly how stuck-up they were,” Sheila said.

  “Do you remember anyone who was at the reunion recently who might have had a particular hatred of them?”

  “You mean besides me, Celeste, and Jane? Well, yes, Cammie Metcalf once threatened to run them down in the school parking lot with her father’s Dodge Charger after they drew a nasty caricature of her and posted it in the gym, but she’s in a wheelchair now with MS and physically incapable of harming anyone.”

  “There must be someone we’re missing,” Hayley wondered as she poured syrup on top of her stack of blueberry pancakes at her kitchen table. After cutting some with her fork and knife and shoveling them in her mouth, Hayley resumed flipping through the pages of her mother’s yearbook. She stopped on a page and looked at the picture of a striking young man in a football uniform. “My, he’s handsome.”

  “You don’t recognize him? That’s Carl Flippen,” Sheila said with a smile.

  “Wow, he was a real stud back in the day,” Hayley marveled.

  “He still is, if you ask me,” Sheila said. “I’m so happy we reconnected.”

  “What was his relationship with Caskie and Regina back in high school?”

  “I honestly don’t remember. I mean he certainly knew them, it was before the schools merged to form Mount Desert Island High School, so we had a very small class, but I don’t think he dated either of them, at least as far as I can recall. But let’s face it. Carl Flippen had discerning taste. His wife, Bev, was such a treasure. He would never have lowered his standards to go out with Caskie or Regina.”

  Hayley turned a few more pages, settling on a collage of photos from the prom, which was held in the gym. She zeroed in on one photo of Caskie and Regina, in beady, puffy dresses, posing together.

  Sheila turned up her nose. “I actually remember those awful dresses. The only saving grace is that the photo is in black and white, because those dresses were even worse in color. Definitely not pretty in pink. Caskie looked like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.”

  Hayley noticed a kid in an ill-fitting suit, one much too big for him, hovering in the background, gawking at them. “Who’s that?”

  “Who?”

  Hayley pointed at the boy. “Him.”

  “I think that’s Rupert Stiles.”

  “Rupert? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, he was the smallest kid in our class. There were a few bullies who picked on him and called him the runt of the litter. Look how small he is. Yes, I’m positive that’s Rupert.”

  “Did he have a crush on Caskie? He seems to be staring longingly at her.”

  “Not Caskie. He’s looking at Regina. See? If you follow his line of sight, he is focused on her,” Sheila said, tracing her finger from Rupert to Regina.

  “Do you remember anything about that?” Hayley asked.

  Sheila thought about it, and after taking a sip of her coffee, said, “I heard something about it. There was some incident where Regina caught some Peeping Tom gawking at her while she was showering in the girls’ locker room, and there was a rumor going around that it had been Rupert. But she didn’t get a good enough look to be certain it was him. And there was another story where I heard Rupert paid Kenny Epstein, who had the desk directly behind Regina in Chemistry because we were seated alphabetically and Regina’s maiden name was Eisenhower, to switch seats with him so he could sit behind her and smell her hair. Miss D’Agostino made him switch back because he made Regina feel uncomfortable. But all of that was over fifty years ago, Hayley, so I could be wrong about some of the details.”

  “So his crush was unrequited?”

  “As far as I know. After graduation, Regina played the field and dated lots of men until she met Albert, who arrived in town while on summer break from Colby College. It was love at first sight and they got married a few months later and have been together ever since.”

  Hayley couldn’t take her eyes off the picture of the awkward-looking Rupert Stiles in the old yearbook photo. Mostly because upon closer inspection, the look on Rupert’s face was not one of adoration. It looked more like unbridled rage.

  “Hayley, you can’t possibly think Rupert, after all these years, still harbors resentment toward Regina for rejecting him, do you?”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “But you heard Sergio. He has an alibi. He couldn’t have done it.”

  “Rupert has an alibi for Caskie’s murder. But what about
Regina’s?”

  Sheila bolted upright, suddenly intrigued.

  Had the reunion at Drinks Like a Fish possibly reignited long forgotten feelings and painful old wounds?

  Had Regina’s past finally come back to haunt her?

  Just because Rupert Stiles had been officially cleared of one murder didn’t necessarily mean he was innocent of another.

  Chapter 30

  Later that afternoon, Hayley took a sip of her Jack and Coke as she sat atop a bar stool in her brother Randy’s bar. She listened as Rupert Stiles, nursing a bottle of beer, and nervously scratching his beard, kept his eyes glued to the floor as he spoke in a tired, scratchy voice. “Yes, truth be told, Hayley, I did have a big crush on Regina back in high school, but as you know that was a long time ago . . .” He looked up at her and his bloodshot eyes were watering. “I can’t believe she’s gone. She was a good woman who didn’t deserve to die the way she did . . .”

  Hayley reached into her bag and pulled out her mother’s yearbook. She flipped through it to the page where she had seen the photograph of Rupert looking angry as he stared at Regina. She gently set it down in front of him. “Do you recall that picture being taken?”

  Rupert shook his head. “Like I said, it was a long time ago and a lot has happened in the world since then . . .”

  “It’s just that I know the picture is a little blurry, but if you look really close, you can see the expression on your face, and to be blunt, you seem very angry,” Hayley said calmly.

  Rupert bent over to get a better look at the picture. He grunted and then took a sip of his beer. “Guess I was.”

  “Do you remember why?”

  Rupert pointed at a poster on a wall behind them promoting senior prom, which was coming up soon. “Must have been around May of 1968 when that photo was taken. I remember . . .” His voice trailed off as the memories came flooding back. “I remember I was head over heels in love with Regina around that time . . . there’s no denying it . . . ask anybody who still has a clear memory of high school and they’ll tell you the same thing . . .”

  “Do you remember what she did to upset you?”

  Rupert hemmed and hawed a bit, but then put his beer down on the bar and turned to face Hayley, his eyes full of sadness. “I sure do . . . Deep down I knew I was out of her league. She was real popular with the boys at that time, but I figured I’d always regret it if I didn’t at least try, so I asked her to be my date for prom. And she laughed. Right in my face. She turned and told her friends what had just happened, that I actually asked her to go to the prom with me, and they all laughed too. I knew right then and there she would never be interested in someone like me, and so I just walked away and never really spoke to her again. I gotta say though, even though I was mad as hell, and you can see it right there in that picture, I still couldn’t shake my feelings for her, not for a few years. Finally, about the time she met Albert, I was able to move on.” Rupert paused. “Mostly.”

  “So where were you last Saturday when Regina was killed?”

  “At my apartment, like I am most Saturdays, watching a Red Sox game.”

  “Alone?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Did anybody call or drop by?”

  “Nope. I don’t have many visitors, and the only calls I usually get are those annoying telemarketers trying to sell me something. I was home, Hayley, all day. And I’ll tell you where I wasn’t. Anywhere near the park or any blueberry patch.”

  He studied Hayley’s face to determine whether she believed him or not. He seemed unable to come to any kind of conclusion and so he added, “Besides, it couldn’t have been me who killed Regina.”

  Hayley arched an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “You said the police suspect that maybe someone moved a beehive over to where Regina was known to pick blueberries, right?”

  “Yes, that’s the theory, at least for now . . .”

  “Well, Regina and I may have been totally opposite of one another but we did share one thing . . .”

  “And what’s what?”

  “We’re both allergic to bees.”

  Hayley sat upright, surprised. “You too?”

  “Don’t take my word for it, ask anyone who knows me. Got stung once in my early twenties and blew up like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day float.”

  “I can see why you would want to avoid bees.”

  “You could put me in one of them hazmat suits and I still wouldn’t get near anything that has those damn things buzzing around it! I may have a few problems, but I sure ain’t suicidical.”

  Hayley put a hand on Rupert’s arm. “Thank you, Rupert.”

  She finished her Jack and Coke and flashed him an appreciative smile, and then got up to leave, waving goodbye to Randy, who was at the other end of the bar chatting with a few of his customers. She wasn’t sure what to make of anything at this point. If Rupert was at a bar in Ellsworth during Caskie’s murder and at home watching sports all day when Regina was killed, then who was it who looked just like him and used Rupert’s credit card to pay for the room Caskie was found in? If he was truly innocent, then someone had to definitely be setting him up.

  Hayley was halfway out the door when she ran into Liddy, who clutched her Gucci handbag, harried and in a rush. She practically pushed Hayley back inside the bar. “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” Hayley said.

  “Not yet. I need to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “I need a cosmo first. It’s been one of those days.” Liddy moaned.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Liddy grabbed Hayley’s hand and led her back over to the bar. They sat a few stools away from Rupert so he was out of earshot. Liddy raised her hand to signal Randy that she was in desperate need of a refreshment, and Randy got to work making her usual cocktail. Liddy glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping before leaning in close to Hayley. “I sold the Hinkley place down on Derby Lane.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I was hoping for a bidding war, the house is a dream, but the Hinkleys wanted a fast sale, so I had to settle for the first offer that came in, a couple from New Jersey, the wife’s a scientist who’s moving here to work at the Jackson Lab.”

  Hayley waited to hear the rest of her story, but Liddy was already more interested in how long Randy was taking to make her cosmo. He had stopped to chat with a young fisherman who had just strolled into the bar.

  Hayley cleared her throat. “Is that your big news?”

  “No, Hayley, I sell houses practically every day, that’s not the headline, I’m just setting the table.”

  “Sorry, go on.”

  “I had to mail some signing documents to the couple in Jersey and so I stopped by the post office to send them off, and while I was waiting in line, I could hear Ginny O’Conner, the loudmouth who works there, gossiping with another mail carrier as they were sorting through this big basket of letters and packages, and that’s when I heard her mention Regina Knoxville.”

  “Everyone in town is talking about Regina Knoxville.”

  Liddy glared at Hayley, not happy that she was questioning the scope and dramatic impact of her news. “Is everyone talking about the extramarital affair Regina was supposedly having?”

  “She was cheating on Albert?”

  Liddy nodded excitedly. “Apparently Ginny was out delivering mail on her route last week, and when she walked up to the mail slot of a house down on Ash Street, she happened to see through the living room window Regina kissing the man who lives there. And it wasn’t the kind of kiss you give your brother or an old friend.”

  “Ash Street? Who lives on Ash Street?” Hayley’s mind was racing. “Mr. Foley?”

  “He’s literally a hundred years old, Hayley!”

  “But he’s still in great shape. I heard all the old women fall all over themselves to sit next to him on bingo night at the senior center.”

  “It wasn’t Mr. Foley! It was next door to Mr.
Foley!”

  “Let me think. Who lives next door to Mr. Foley?” Hayley thought a few seconds and then suddenly gasped. “Julio? The hairdresser?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “But Julio’s married!”

  “Duh,” Liddy cried, slapping her forehead. “So is Regina! That’s why they call affairs extramarital!”

  “Where was Julio’s wife?”

  “Jeanette . . .”

  “Right, Jeanette . . . Why wasn’t she around?”

  “Because she volunteers three days a week up in Bangor at a children’s hospital.”

  Hayley’s head was spinning.

  This was potentially big news.

  Especially when it came to the circumstances surrounding Regina Knoxville’s untimely death.

  Randy finally delivered Liddy’s cosmo. She grabbed the glass by the stem and downed it. “I so deserve this!”

  “What are you two talking about?” Randy asked, curious because they both looked like cats who swallowed a couple of canaries.

  “Nothing!” they both exclaimed.

  Randy eyed them suspiciously for a moment but then gave up and walked back to his customers seated at the other end of the bar.

  Hayley noticed Liddy grimacing. “What’s the matter?”

  “I just can’t believe it . . .”

  “I know. Regina and Albert seemed so happy. And so did Julio and Jeanette . . .”

  “It’s not that! Of course we’ve heard all the rumors over the years about Julio’s secret dalliances, but come on! He’s so handsome and manly and muscular! He could have any woman he wants. Why Regina Knoxville? I mean, she looks good, but she’s ancient! If he was going to step out on his wife, why wouldn’t he pick somebody younger and more alluring like . . .”

  “Like you?”

  “Well, yes!”

  “I’m going to pretend you did not just say that!”

  “I’m just saying, Hayley, if someone is going to be ‘the other woman,’ I’m a much more logical choice!”

  As much as Hayley wanted to scold Liddy for even considering having an affair with a married man, she knew Liddy wasn’t alone. There were a number of single women, not to mention a few married ones, who would have gleefully welcomed the opportunity to embark on an illicit affair with a sexy stud such as Julio.