Town in a Strawberry Swirl (Candy Holliday Mystery)

by Haywood, B. B.

  Candy took another step back, and up. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, I hope I’m in the right place,” Mrs. Fairweather said. “I’m looking for the newspaper office.”

  “Well, yes, this is the right place, but—”

  “I have an appointment. For a meeting. At two o’clock,” Mrs. Fairweather said. “I’m supposed to meet with Wanda Boyle, the editor. You see, I’m the secretary for the Cape Willington Heritage Protection League. I’m not late, am I?”

  EIGHTEEN

  “No, you’re not late,” Candy told the elderly woman a few minutes later, when they were back upstairs in her office. She set the boxes down on top of the desk and motioned Mrs. Fairweather to a chair. “At least, not for a two o’clock meeting.” Candy checked her watch. “In fact, you’d be about ten minutes early. The only problem is, the meeting was scheduled for one o’clock. I’m afraid the other ladies have been here and gone.”

  Mrs. Fairweather looked deflated. “Does that mean I’ve missed it again?”

  Candy nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Oh dear. I seem to keep missing these meetings. What will the other ladies think of me?”

  “Actually,” Candy said, “you’re in luck. They relocated with Wanda Boyle to the tea shop downstairs, and might still be there. Why don’t I walk down with you and we’ll see if we can find your friends?”

  Mrs. Fairweather’s face lit up. “Oh, that would be wonderful!” She looked down at the plate, which she’d set down on her lap. “Oh yes, I almost forgot this. It’s the most important part.” She handed the plate over to Candy. It held something under a covering of tinfoil.

  Candy lifted an edge and peeked inside, but the aroma gave it away almost at once. “Strawberry pie?” she asked.

  “Fresh out of the oven,” Mrs. Fairweather confirmed. “I brought two big slices for you. I made it myself this morning. The crust comes from an old family recipe. I’ve heard you worked at the bakery for a while. Let me know what you think of it.”

  “I will,” Candy said, “and it certainly smells wonderful.” She set the plate down on her desktop, saving it for later.

  “I’m quite a cook, you know,” Mrs. Fairweather said as she rose. “I’m making bean soup this afternoon. You really should stop by and try some later today or tomorrow. It’s from an old family recipe.”

  Her expression grew serious as she looked at Candy with melancholy gray eyes. “This morning, when you visited me at the house, I hadn’t yet heard about what happened out at the berry farm,” she said softly. “But after you left, I got a call from a friend of mine, who told me what happened to Mr. Crawford. I’ve been on the phone ever since. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  “I imagine they are,” Candy said. “Word gets around town pretty fast these days.”

  Mrs. Fairweather took a few steps toward the door. “I suppose that’s why I mixed up the time about the meeting this afternoon. It has me in a bit of a tizzy, I’m afraid. I didn’t know him very well, but everyone agrees his death is a great loss for this town.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Candy said, rising as well.

  “You know,” Mrs. Fairweather continued, “that property has been a berry farm for as long as I can remember. It was a dairy farm before that, and a homestead before that. My mother used to go out there when she was a little girl for eggs and milk, fresh from the farm. I’ve taken my own children and grandchildren there for berry picking since before they could walk.” She sighed and shook her head. “I’ve heard the rumors around town just like everyone else—that Mr. Crawford was going to sell the place, and somehow that horrid real estate woman was involved in the whole thing. I heard they were going to tear up the strawberry fields and turn it into a big resort. Can you imagine that? We can’t allow things like that to happen around here, can we? We can’t lose our special places. We must protect them.” She said these last words quite emphatically for an eighty-five-year-old woman. “So that’s why I joined the Heritage Protection League. I’d hoped we might convince Mr. Crawford to change his mind. We had a meeting scheduled with him for next week, you know, just to tell him how we all felt about his place. But now he’s gone and, well, that changes everything, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose it does,” Candy acknowledged.

  “But what will happen to his place now?” Mrs. Fairweather asked worriedly. “Will it stay a berry farm—or will they change it into something else?”

  Candy shook her head. “I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess. Come on, I’ll walk you to the tea shop.”

  Halfway down the stairs, Mrs. Fairweather paused, looked back up at Candy, and said, “I don’t suppose your visit this morning had anything to do with that terrible business out at the berry farm?”

  Candy sidestepped the question, as she had before. “We were just trying to find out what happened to that old shovel of ours.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Good! I’m glad you found it. Your father is a very nice man, by the way. How’s everything going out at the blueberry farm?”

  They chatted pleasantly as they walked the rest of the way down the stairs, out the door, and up the street to the tea shop.

  They found the reserved table easily enough. Some of the league ladies, as well as Wanda, had already departed, but a few remained. Candy stopped in only briefly to reunite Mrs. Fairweather with her friends, and then she was out the door and headed across the street to the Pruitt Opera House for her two o’clock meeting with the town council chairman, Mason Flint.

  Located halfway down Ocean Avenue, the opera house not only served as the town’s most prestigious and historic entertainment venue, but it also housed the town offices in the basement. Named for its principal benefactor, Horace Roberts Pruitt, it dated back to 1881 and featured a controversial but picturesque widow’s walk at its peak.

  Candy hurried up the granite steps and in through the large, heavy front doors into the building’s atrium. She was a frequent visitor to the opera house, so she knew her way around. Once inside the front doors she turned right, heading past the closed ticket window and information desk, toward a staircase at one end of the room, which led down to the basement. But before could start down the stairs, she came face-to-face with Mason Flint, who was headed up.

  A lean, elderly gentleman with a full head of white hair, the town council chairman was accompanied by a small entourage, and looked like he was on his way somewhere in a hurry. But he spotted Candy as he reached the top of the stairs and beckoned her over with a crook of his finger.

  “I had someone call your office but you must have been out,” he told her without preamble, giving her a grim look. “I’m afraid I have to postpone our meeting this afternoon. I suppose you’ve heard what’s happened out at the Crawford place.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “I’m headed out there right now.” He looked over his shoulder at his companions, who had bunched up on the stairs behind him. “I’ll be right with you,” he told them, and motioned Candy aside. “Can we have a few words in private?”

  Candy reacted with mild surprise. “Of course.”

  Mason led her to an alcove, where they were more or less out of earshot of the others. He lowered his voice as he spoke, just to make sure. “What’s this I’ve heard from the chief about a shovel?” Mason asked. “From Blueberry Acres? What’s that all about?”

  Briefly, Candy explained how a shovel with the initials B.A. on the handle, found in the hoophouse near Miles Crawford’s body, had made its way from Blueberry Acres to Sally Ann Longfellow’s place, and eventually into the hands of Lydia St. Graves. “Doc’s over at the police station right now, explaining it all,” Candy finished. “It seems to confirm our suspicions that Lydia was involved in some way with the murder. I suppose they’ll bring her in for questioning and go from there.”

  “So all those rumors about her and the Crawford place are true?” Mason asked,
his brow furrowing.

  Candy agreed there appeared to be some truth to them.

  “Well, that just takes the cake,” Mason said, not trying to hide his irritation. He gave Candy a hard look. “Do you think she did it?”

  Candy shrugged. “That’s for the police to decide.”

  Mason nodded and glanced at the members of his entourage, who were cooling their heels near the large front doors, checking their phones and shuffling around impatiently as they waited. “I’ve got my folks looking into it right now,” he told her. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this thing as quickly as possible. I want to find out what’s going on with this real estate deal, and I want to know who’s behind it, if it exists at all. Those league ladies have been pestering me about it, you know.”

  “They have?”

  “Met with them earlier in the week,” Mason said with a nod. “They’re all worked up about that berry farm. They’re trying to get me to intervene and stop the deal—but I haven’t been able to confirm any sort of deal exists. There’s nothing on paper, as far as I can tell. It’s just smoke and mirrors at this point. That’s why I want you to help me out.”

  “Me? How?”

  Mason’s gaze narrowed on her. “By doing what you do.” He made a downward twirling motion with his finger, as if he were stirring a pot. “You have some experience with these sorts of things, right? Ask a few questions. Check in with your sources. Do a little research. Stir things up a little—and find out who or what’s behind all these rumors. I want to know if they’re true or not. If Lydia and Miles really were involved in some sort of secret deal, I want to know what it was. Then let’s end this thing once and for all. Tourist season’s upon us, and I don’t want to ruin it with any more problems. So what do you say—can you do me this favor?”

  Candy nodded quickly. “Of course. I’ll check around and see what I can find out.”

  “Good!” Mason seemed pleased by her response. “I made a promise to bring stability to this town, and that’s what I intend to do. We haven’t let any of these murders stop us so far—and we’re not going to let them now.”

  He nodded sharply. “You have my number. Call me if you find out anything. If not, I’ll see you Saturday at the Fair.” He gave her a toothy grin. “I’m really looking forward to having some strawberry shortcake, aren’t you?”

  Then he spun on his heels and was off.

  NINETEEN

  Candy moved the last couple of boxes down to the Jeep and spent the rest of the afternoon working in her office. People drifted in and out. Betty Lynn came and went several times. A volunteer or two stopped by, said hello, worked for a while, and left. Candy had missed lunch, so she ate a slice of the strawberry pie Mrs. Fairweather had dropped off as she proofed some of the pages Jesse had laid out. Then she wrote several photo captions, did quick edits on a couple of articles, checked the calendar items for the next issue of the paper, and assembled a short news brief section to fill an open quarter-page.

  With those tasks complete and everything else out of the way for a few minutes, she opened a new file on her desktop and starting keying in some notes about the morning’s events, while they were still fresh in her mind. She’d have to put together an article for the front page, but she hadn’t decided yet what she’d include in the next issue, and what she’d leave out. It all depended on what happened over the next day or two. But at least she’d start a record of the sequence of events so far, and some descriptions of what she’d seen and heard. She’d update and add to it as the story unfolded. And maybe the process would give her some insight into the murder of Miles Crawford.

  As she wrote, she began to realize there were big gaps in the story. When she visualized the events, questions began popping into her mind. Not just about the shovel, but about bigger issues, such as motivation and timing.

  Why would someone want to kill Miles Crawford? she wondered. He’d been a berry farmer for thirty years, a hard worker, and a bit of a loner. So why would someone hit him over the head with a shovel?

  As she considered the possibilities, the words of Mason Flint echoed in her mind: If Lydia and Miles really were involved in some sort of secret deal, I want to know what it is.

  A secret deal. That was what the rumors said. But was it a reality—or a fantasy?

  So far she’d mostly discounted the rumors surrounding the berry farm as typical small-town chatter. Somebody was always upset about something around town, she’d learned after working at the paper for a few years. Gossip and rumors circulated all the time. It was just the way people were. In fact, Candy thought, that was why local newspapers existed in the first place—to sort the truth from the fiction and tell people what was happening with their neighbors.

  So she always discounted rumors until they were backed up by facts. But what if the stories about the Crawford place were true?

  In fact, now that she thought about it, the rumors probably were true. Candy had seen Lydia coming from the direction of the farm. She must have been out there this morning. That seemed to confirm she’d been talking to Miles, and leant credence to everything Candy had heard over the past month or two about a deal between the two.

  But if all that was true, why would Lydia kill Miles? What could she hope to gain? Certainly the berry farm was a coveted property. Any deal for its sale would involve a lot of money—money that could become a motivation for murder. Had something gone wrong with their arrangement? Did they have a falling out? Had Miles tried to back out of the deal?

  Or had it been something else?

  And if Lydia did kill Miles, why would she leave the murder weapon at the scene of the crime—a shovel she must have known could be traced back to her?

  That was the point that nagged at Candy the most.

  She heard Mason Flint’s voice again in her head: We have to get to the bottom of this thing as quickly as possible. Ask a few questions. Check your sources. Do a little research. . . .

  Maybe he was right.

  Since she’d left Judicious’s place and parted ways with her father earlier in the day, she hadn’t had much time to consider what all their earlier discoveries might mean. Obviously Lydia was the likeliest suspect in Miles’s death, based on her appearance on the road this morning. Once they’d found out how the shovel got into her hands, Candy had left it at that, deciding it was an issue for the police to handle.

  But maybe she’d been too hasty.

  Maybe, she thought, she was seeing what someone wanted her to see, rather than what was really there.

  So what was real, and what wasn’t?

  Ask a few questions. Check your sources. Do a little research. . . .

  If she wanted the latest inside information on all the rumors floating around town, the best place to start, she knew, was with Wanda Boyle. Wanda always had her ears to the ground, and had been following the story about the secret real estate deal for several weeks. If anyone knew the real scoop, it would be her.

  But Candy wasn’t ready to drag the red-haired community columnist into her confidence right now. Wanda would ask too many questions, and demand to know answers. She could make things uncomfortable for everyone. In a delicate investigation like this, she’d be more of a hindrance than a help.

  So instead, Candy turned to her computer screen, called up archived files of the past several issues, and dropped her chin into an upturned palm as she started reading through Wanda’s old columns.

  Ten minutes later she closed the last of the files. They weren’t as informative as she’d hoped. Facts were nonexistent, and details were sketchy at best. Wanda had started a few weeks earlier with several teasers about the rumors, but she’d never progressed much beyond that. There just wasn’t much to go on.

  Still, maybe Wanda knew more than she was telling. Or maybe she’d uncovered something more recent that hadn’t yet made it into a column.

  A quick call could resolve the issue, Candy knew. But again she hesitated.

  Maybe there was another way.
Maybe Wanda kept something at her desk—a notepad or file that might contain some helpful information. Candy could easily slip down the hall and take a quick peek.

  But she nixed the idea almost immediately. She wasn’t about to start snooping around like Sapphire Vine—at least not yet.

  Besides, how could she look for answers when she didn’t really know what all the questions were?

  So instead she pulled a legal pad from a nearby shelf, took up a pen, and started making a list of key questions to help her direct her thoughts. As she did so, the whole situation became clearer:

  At what time did Miles Crawford die? This could help establish exactly who had the ability and capability to kill him. Alibis could become important. As a side note, she wrote, “Establish a timeline.”

  Where was Lydia St. Graves going when she ran Candy off the road out by the berry farm? Had she been fleeing the scene of a crime?

  Did the alleged secret real estate deal have anything to do with Miles’s murder? Why? Who was behind the deal? Who was Lydia working for? Surely she must have been representing a client of some sort.

  Most importantly, if Lydia killed Miles, why leave the shovel—the alleged murder weapon—right there beside the body? Why not just take it with her and dispose of it someplace where it wouldn’t be found? For that matter, why use the shovel from Blueberry Acres? Why not just use a shovel or another farm implement lying around the berry farm? Surely Miles had sledgehammers and axes in the barn. Why a shovel at all?

  Candy paused a moment and read back through her list. It seemed like a good start—but she still felt she was making an unproven assumption about Lydia’s guilt. So she added a few more questions at the bottom:

  Did Lydia St. Graves really kill Miles Crawford? Or had she been set up in some way? If so, by whom?