Town in a Strawberry Swirl (Candy Holliday Mystery)

by Haywood, B. B.

  “You’ll never believe what I found,” Doc said, looking energized. “We have to get to the historical society before it closes.” He checked his watch. “Three thirty. We have half an hour. Let’s get rolling.” And without another word he started across the sloping field toward the barn and parking area, moving at a good, steady clip.

  “Why, what’s up?” Candy exchanged a brief, slightly confused look with Neil before hurrying after her father. Random trotted along at her heels, and Neil brought up the rear. He made a quick stop at the farmhouse to grab the metal box and lock up the place, and all four of them climbed back into the Jeep.

  Doc provided an explanation on the way back to town.

  “I think your father found something out there in the woods,” he told Neil, who had insisted Doc ride in the front seat this time. Doc was twisted around as far as the seat belt would allow, so he could address Neil in the second row. “It looks like he was digging around out there in the woods, next to a burned-out foundation and a little cemetery. He pulled something out of the ground.”

  “Like what?” Candy asked, sounding worried. “Not a body?”

  Doc waved a hand. “No, nothing like that.”

  “Any idea what it was?” Neil asked.

  “I have a hunch,” Doc said. “That’s why we’re headed to the historical society.”

  Neil reached into his pocket and pulled out the gold coin, which he handed to Doc. “Anything to do with that?”

  Doc studied the coin for quite a long time before responding. “It might,” he said softly. “It might.”

  The Cape Willington Historical Society was located in the red-roofed Keeper’s Quarters at the English Point Lighthouse, which stood on hard black rock near the mouth of the English River, just a stone’s throw from downtown Cape Willington, at the foot of Ocean Avenue. Much of the building’s lower floor was devoted to the English Point Lighthouse Museum, which was operated and maintained by the historical society. The museum wandered through several rooms of the old lightkeeper’s cottage and included exhibits, displays of navigation equipment, clocks, uniforms, and log books, as well as a relatively authentic re-creation of a lightkeeper’s family, depicting them as they might have appeared in the late 1800s. The museum’s displays continued upstairs, where the archives for the historical society were also located, under the building’s sloping eaves.

  “The museum received an anonymous donation about a month ago,” Doc told them as they pulled into a parking spot at the lighthouse and began to climb out of the Jeep. They had to leave Random in the vehicle, but rolled the windows down so he’d have some air. “It came in by way of a member of the board of directors. She says it was delivered to her house one afternoon by courier, with a note to have it documented and examined by the museum’s staff. So she brought it in and we checked it out.” He paused. “Well, not me personally, of course, but those who are trained to do those types of things.”

  “And?” Candy prompted.

  “And,” Doc said, “I’ve seen it, and basically it’s just a small chest, made of oak about a hundred and fifty years ago, probably European in origin, judging from the wood—we think it’s English oak. Steel bands, an old heavy lock, that sort of thing. Typical for the period. But it was quite a find, wherever it came from. It needed some cleaning up—it looked like it’d been in the ground for a while. But the volunteers did a great job with it.”

  “And you don’t know who donated it?” Neil asked, suddenly interested.

  Doc shook his head. “It just came out of nowhere.”

  “You think Miles donated it, right?” Candy guessed.

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  “He dug it out of the ground at the berry farm?” Neil asked.

  “Yup, that’s my guess,” Doc said.

  “Why would he donate it anonymously?”

  “That’s a great question,” Doc said.

  “Possibly because he didn’t want anyone to know where it came from—or who had found it,” Candy surmised.

  “Exactly,” Doc said, holding up a gnarled index finger.

  “Did you open it?” Neil asked.

  “Indeed we did.”

  “And what did you find inside?”

  “That’s just it,” Doc said. “Nothing. It was empty. No treasure. No nothing.”

  Candy’s mind was working quickly now. “You think Miles might have emptied it before he donated it to the historical society?”

  “Could be,” Doc said vaguely.

  “But if that’s true,” Candy continued, “then maybe it’s connected to the murder somehow.”

  Doc nodded. “It’s possible everything’s connected.”

  “But if it’s empty, why are we going to look at it now?” Candy asked as they reached the museum’s front door.

  Doc stepped up on the stoop and opened the door to the museum for her. “I’ll show you,” he said with a wave of his hand.

  The rooms inside were dark, cool, and quiet. The place had the hushed atmosphere of a typical museum, punctuated by the occasional crash of waves on the rocky shore just outside. Doc greeted a volunteer named Doris Oaks, a silver-haired senior citizen who was working the long counter that served as the museum’s front desk. She’d brought along Roy, her pet parrot, who entertained guests from his perch on the top of a straight-backed chair. “Hello, Doris. Hello, Roy,” Doc called with a generous wave as they hurried by.

  “Ahoy, Matey!” Roy called.

  “Hi, Doc, what’re you up to today?” Doris asked, looking up from the magazine she was reading. She was dressed brightly today, in yellows and greens, mimicking Roy’s colors.

  “We’re just going to check on something upstairs. Okay if we go on up to the lab?”

  “Sure thing, Doc. Hello, Candy.”

  “Hi, Doris. How’s the toy shopping been going?” Doris had bought Roy on eBay a few months earlier, when winter boredom and cabin fever set in, and she needed some sort of companionship. Now she was continually in search of hard plastic toys for the parrot, since he could gnaw through them in seconds flat.

  “I’ve been scouring the flea markets. And there’s a new pet store up off Route 1. I’ve found a few things up there, so he’s been happy enough. Haven’t you, Roy?”

  “The sun’s over the yardarm!” the parrot replied with a click of its beak.

  Doris’s gaze shifted to the handsome young bearded man walking alongside Doc and Candy. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Oh, this is Neil,” Candy said, pausing for a moment and gesturing toward him.

  “Visiting the area?” Doris asked curiously.

  “Actually, I grew up around here,” Neil said in a conversational manner, “but I’ve been away for a while.”

  “Oh!” Doris’s head tilted down as she studied him over the top of her reading glasses, her eyes lighting up in recognition. “You’re Miles’s son, right? I knew your father. I used to see him in here quite often. He was doing some sort of research upstairs.” Her tone softened. “He was a good man.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate that,” Neil said.

  “Steer clear of the reefs ahead!” Roy cautioned as Neil nodded toward Doris and her pet parrot, and then followed Candy and Doc out of the room, headed to the second floor.

  Upstairs, Doc led them to a small, cramped workspace in one corner of the building, with eaves so low they had to keep their heads bent over. “It’s a little tight but it serves its purpose,” he said, and he walked to a large gray cabinet in one corner. It stood so tall it nearly touched the low ceiling. It was fairly deep, nearly two feet, so it jutted out into the room. Its metal doors were locked.

  “I have a key,” Doc said, and he fished out his key chain. He unlocked the doors and swung them open.

  Inside were three or four wide shelves on top, and a half-dozen drawers in the bottom half. Some were relatively shallow, but the lower ones were deeper for larger items.

  “We keep some of the more valuable items locked u
p in here,” Doc said, “anything with historical significance. But here’s what I wanted to show you.”

  He reached for a sturdy cardboard box on the top shelf and lifted it out. He set it carefully on a nearby folding table and lifted the lid.

  Inside was another box, an ancient-looking wooden one.

  Doc slipped on a pair of thin white gloves and lifted out the wooden box. “Here it is,” he said, settling it gently on the table in front of them. “Isn’t she a beaut?”

  It was, Candy thought, an attractive piece, built not only for a functional purpose but also with some aesthetics in mind. The slats that made up the box had been carefully hewn and fitted, and the iron straps showed some etchings and fine details at the corners. A craftsman somewhere, long gone, had taken some pride in this piece.

  “And look at this,” Doc said, tilting the box up on its back edge so Candy and Neil could see one of the bottom corners.

  Two initials were etched into the wood, somewhat crudely.

  S.S., they read.

  “At first,” Doc said, “before we were able to date it, we thought the box might have some connection to World War Two. The initials gave us that idea, of course—the Schutzstaffel, or SS, Hitler’s personal bodyguards and the Nazis’ enforcers. But we couldn’t find a link anywhere to verify that. So we were at a loss to explain what the initials referred to.”

  “But you figured it out,” Candy said, impressed.

  Doc nodded. “I think so. I saw a name with these same two initials just a little while ago, etched into the cornerstone of a burned-down foundation in the woods out at the berry farm. S. Sykes.”

  “S. Sykes?” Neil’s brow furrowed. “Do you have any idea who that was?”

  Doc’s gaze shifted toward the younger Crawford. “I believe I do. His full name was Silas Sykes, if I’m correct. There are a lot of legends about him in the old history books. He was a scoundrel and, some said, a con artist and thief.”

  Doc paused to point dramatically toward the old oak box. “I think this was his treasure chest. He buried it out there in the woods, near his old place, where it’s been for a hundred and fifty years. And your father found it, dug it up, and took whatever was inside.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  “Buried treasure?” Candy said skeptically. “That sounds a little crazy.”

  “As trite as it might seem, it makes pretty good sense,” Doc responded, his expression clamped down and serious. “I’ve seen a few references to a treasure supposedly left behind by Silas, though the legends are divergent. But he apparently was quite a character who lived outside the law. He started as a kid working on the steamboats that navigated these coastal waters in the 1800s, and turned that into a lucrative smuggling business by the time he was in his late teens, running contraband from the coast to Canada and back. He ran phony land speculation schemes. He played poker, and usually lost badly. He was married four times and three of his wives died mysteriously. He trusted no one. He liked to carry a long knife at his side. He was, they said, ruthless.”

  Candy had a sudden ill feeling, and became a little light-headed. She desperately needed to sit down. She settled onto a nearby wooden bench and let out a long breath. “I don’t suppose there’s any connection between Silas Sykes and the current generation with the same last name?”

  “We don’t know that for sure, at least at this time,” Doc said, “but I’m pretty positive there’s a connection somewhere.”

  “What? Wait a minute.” Neil looked with surprise from Doc to Candy and back. “You know these people?”

  Candy and Doc exchanged a glance. Then Candy said, “Yes, we do. I’ve had a few encounters with members of the Sykes family over the past few years, and Dad has given lectures about them, since they were among Cape Willington’s founding families. They still own some property around here, although they sold a big spread a few years back after an abandoned mansion located on their land burned down. They still have fingers in the community, and they still show up here every once in a while, for local events and that sort of thing.”

  “And you think one of them could have murdered my father?” Neil asked, and he pointed at the box incredulously. “Because of this treasure?”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Doc said in a calming tone, “and we’re not accusing anyone of anything at this point.”

  “We’re just collecting facts,” Candy agreed, “and we’re some making progress. But it also creates a new set of questions.”

  “Such as?” Neil said.

  Candy pursed her lips and let her gaze drop to the old wooden floor as she tried to put all the disparate pieces together in her head. When she spoke, it was almost as if she were talking to herself.

  “First, we have to figure out what your dad was up to. I’ve heard a few people say he was a frequent visitor to the museum over the past few months. Doris just mentioned it downstairs. So what was he doing here? What was he looking for?”

  “You think he was researching something?” Doc said, catching her point.

  “That’s what it sounds like to me. Maybe there’s a tie-in to this treasure box. I’ll have to check it out. Next, when did he find the box?”

  “I can answer that, at least in a general sense,” Doc said. “From the condition of the hole he dug, I’d say anywhere from a few weeks to a few months ago.”

  Candy nodded, and looked back up at her dad. “That fits in with the overall scenario.”

  “What scenario?” Neil asked, not quite following her.

  Candy turned toward him. “Well, look at the timeline. Your father discovers this ‘buried treasure,’ as Dad calls it, and around the same time he decides to put the farm up for sale, after refusing to sell it for years.”

  “You think the two are related?”

  “Sure, it makes sense,” Doc said, nodding. “There were a bunch of holes dug all around that pit out in the woods. Miles was looking for something out there—maybe he’d been looking for it for a while. Maybe that’s why he refused to sell all those times Lydia approached him. Maybe that’s why he came here to the historical society—he was trying to find out where Silas buried that treasure. And when he finally figured it out and dug it up, well, there wasn’t any reason to hold on to the place any longer. He’d found what he was looking for. So he decided to put it up for sale.”

  “What about those offers from that firm in New York City?” Neil asked. “Why didn’t he just sell the place to their client, if he was so eager to get rid of it? Especially since they seemed to want it so badly, and were offering him a lot of money for it.”

  “That’s a great question,” Candy said, “and it could be the key to this whole thing. For whatever reason, it sounds like your father didn’t want to sell to them. So instead he hired Lydia to sell the place. Maybe that’s why he decided to keep the sale a secret, so this firm—Wyborne, Whittle, and Kingsbury, I think it was—wouldn’t find out about it.” She paused. “Which brings us to the final point.”

  “Which is?” Doc asked.

  Candy nodded at the box. “What was inside that thing? What were its contents? Why did Silas bury it out there at the berry farm more than a hundred years ago? Why was Miles looking for it? Why did he dig it up?”

  She turned back toward Neil. “And most importantly, what did your dad do with whatever he found inside?”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  In the silence that followed, as the three of them pondered these latest questions and developments, they could hear Roy chattering away downstairs. “Splice the mainbrace!” the parrot cried, accompanied by a high-pitched squawk. “Who’s got the rum? Who’s got the rum?”

  As he thought through everything he’d just heard, Neil smoothed his beard and turned his gaze toward a small window that looked out over the dark blue ocean just beyond the rocks, while Doc put a hand to his side, scratched the back of his head, and muttered to himself for a while before saying out aloud, “Well, that’s a whole lot to process, pumpkin, but I think you’re rig
ht on the money. We’ve got a bunch of things to figure out here, that’s for sure—and I know a quick way to get an answer to at least one of those questions.”

  He held up a finger. “I’ll be right back.”

  He ducked out of the room, and they could hear him tromping down the stairs to the first floor. Voices rumbled distantly through the building, intermingled with a few wolf whistles from Roy. Less than a minute later, Doc was back, with Doris in tow. He ushered her into the small, cramped room that served as the museum’s lab and workroom, and followed her in.

  “Now, Doris,” he said to her, “as I mentioned downstairs, we’re trying to help Neil here”—Doc flicked a finger in the younger man’s direction—“figure out what happened to his father, and we thought you might be able to help us out.”

  “Sure, Doc, I’d be glad to if I can,” Doris said with a little hesitation in her voice. “What do you need to know?”

  “Well, when we came in just a little while ago, you said you’d seen Miles here a bunch of times recently. You said he was doing research?”

  “That’s right,” Doris said, nodding. “For a while there he was stopping by pretty often.”

  “For a while?” Candy said. “So he stopped coming in?”

  “He did,” Doris confirmed, holding her hands entwined before her, as if she were giving a testimony. “He first started showing up here, oh, sometime last fall, I’d say, and then he was here once a week or so, all through the winter and right into the spring. But his visits tapered off quite a bit over the past month or two, and finally we stopped seeing him altogether. I didn’t really realize it, though, until Elvira Tremble pointed it out to me one day.”

  “Who’s Elvira Tremble?” Neil asked.

  “One of our local ladies, and a member of the Cape Willington Historical Protection League,” Candy explained, not particularly shocked to hear of this latest development. “From what I understand, she had an eye out for Miles.” Candy glanced diplomatically at Doris. “If you know what I mean.”