She left the house at nine thirty, first heading northward up the Coastal Loop to Route 1, then turning west to Ellsworth, and finally swinging south toward Mount Desert Island and Northeast Harbor, a thousand things on her mind.
THIRTY-FIVE
After loading up with passengers and freight, the mail boat left the Northeast Harbor dock at precisely eleven A.M., pushing off with a chug of engines, scattered calls and waves from those onshore and on the boat, and a few toots of the horn. Candy had to steady herself as the deck vibrated violently for a few moments, and she caught a whiff of gas fumes hanging in the air. Seagulls whirled hungrily overhead, and the swish and slaps of the waves grew more frenetic as the captain turned the boat about and pushed the throttle forward.
Candy plopped down on a bench seat that ran along the middle of the rear deck and watched the dock slide away behind them. The sky was overcast, and the brisk, damp air carried the smell of the sea. She put her face into it, enjoying the way it slipped around her cheeks and across her skin, tugging her hair out behind her.
It was a small mail boat, capable of carrying no more than a dozen passengers, not like the larger car-hauling ferries that crossed Lake Champlain in Vermont or toured the islands of Casco Bay off Portland. Before they’d left the dock, the captain had come around to collect the twenty-five-dollar round-trip fare, and Candy had asked him about stopping at Wren Island.
“That’s privately owned,” he’d told her, “although there are a few unrelated families living there. You know someone on the island?”
“I’m going to do research,” Candy answered, “at the cemeteries.” And she explained that she was a reporter from Cape Willington.
He gave her an appraising look and finally nodded. “It’ll be our first stop then,” he said. “I’ll let you know when to jump off.” And he started off toward the other passengers
“Will you be able to pick me up?” Candy called after him.
He stopped and turned back toward her. “Ayuh, but it’ll be about three hours. That’s how long it takes me to make the circuit, with stops.”
“That’s fine.”
“No restaurants on the island,” he added, “and no public bathrooms. Just so you know.”
“How long ’til we get there?”
“Twenty minutes.”
Once away from the harbor they headed almost due south, slipping through the short, narrow channel between forested banks that were golden brown in color before chugging into the cold blue waters of the Atlantic. The overcast day unleashed a few heavy droplets on them, and the wind whipped the sea into a mild chop, tossing up light spray that occasionally fanned at them. But the mail boat cut through it gleefully as the passengers settled in for the trip.
Candy eventually found a spot out of the weather, inside the small passenger cabin, at the end of a bench. She set her daypack beside her and stared out the opposite window. She loved being out on the ocean. The air smelled sharp and full, as if it had been infused by the sea, and she took several deep breaths as she studied the vistas around her. There was a fair amount of marine activity going on around the islands today—she saw lobster boats, personal motor craft, and several sailboats, plus a good-sized yacht headed north toward the sound. Cruise ships often came past here on their way from Portland to Bar Harbor, which was just up around the coastline to the northeast, before heading to points farther east—though she saw none of the larger ships today. And a catamaran made daily trips up along the coast to Nova Scotia, also with a stop at Bar Harbor.
As she took in the landscape, her mind drifted, and she found herself thinking about her conversations last night, as well as the one this morning with Finn, which provided a solid link between Sapphire Vine and the woman now known as Emma Smith.
On the drive down, she’d decided that something must have happened at the mental institution in Portland during the early nineties, when the two women had both been residents. More than likely Emma had told Sapphire a choice bit of news—possibly something about the Pruitts, which Sapphire tucked away in her devious brain.
But what had Emma told her? Why had Emma gone to Cape Willington in the first place? What had she been doing in that pumpkin patch when she died?
And what had Sapphire been after? Why steal Abigail’s diary? And where had she hidden it?
It was possible, Candy thought, that it could be secreted away at the newspaper office, where Sapphire had worked before she died. Maybe it was stuck in some forgotten cubby-hole or ditched on a shelf in the back of a closet. Ben had cleaned out some of Sapphire’s papers after her death, Candy recalled, and the police had taken some of her files as well, though they’d eventually been returned. Candy had been through much of it years ago. But could she have missed something—a lost file, a forgotten shoe box filled with Sapphire’s mementoes, or a book passed on to a colleague but never returned?
She’d asked Ben about it, in a roundabout way, when he called the night before, but he seemed to barely register the question. “Possibly,” he’d allowed only as a passing statement before he moved quickly to the topic that had been the point of his call. His interview on the West Coast had been delayed again—until late today, Tuesday, or possibly even until tomorrow morning. “I’m still not sure when I’m going to get out of here,” he’d told her, sounding frustrated. “If we finish by ten P.M. I still might make it to the airport to catch the red-eye. If not, I won’t be back until late Wednesday. But I promise I’ll be there in time to wish you a happy birthday in person….”
Her birthday. She hadn’t quite forgotten about it—though in truth she’d kind of tried. This is my last day in my thirties, she realized ruefully as she looked around the cabin at the other passengers, and here I am on a mail boat, headed out to a mysterious island with a bunch of strangers, chasing a murderer.
Her gaze scanned the passengers. Most of them wore rain slickers or hooded sweatshirts against the uncertain day. Many of the men wore ball caps, and some of the women did as well. A few might be tourists, Candy thought, but most simply looked like working folk and islanders.
She had to admit that the sudden shift in the investigation was almost surreal in nature. Just yesterday afternoon she’d been searching for a tombstone in a forgotten cemetery with Wanda Boyle, and now here she was, headed out to a private island in an attempt to uncover the secrets of a woman she’d never known. In fact, so much had happened over the past few days, starting with the discovery of Sebastian’s body, that she’d barely had time to think about it, to process it all.
Another dead body, she thought, and that made her feel even more melancholy. She shook her head and let out a sigh.
Who shot Sebastian J. Quinn? And why?
And what was he doing in that pumpkin patch?
Something else bothered her, something Wanda had confirmed—a general feeling going on around town that something else was going on below the surface—something none of them had yet guessed. Was Wanda right? Were all these murders, or at least some of them, connected?
And if so, what was the connection?
After Candy thought about it a few moments, she knew at least one connection—everything, in one way or another, led back to the Pruitts.
The wealthy family seemed to have a link to just about every murder in town over the past few years. Twice now Candy had talked to Mrs. Pruitt on two different murder investigations. But there was still something she was missing—still an important piece of the puzzle she had yet to discover.
But what?
Tristan had called her around ten last night, just to check on her, he’d said, to make sure she was okay—and to make sure she was still going to the masquerade ball on Halloween night.
She’d almost backed out when he’d asked her about it, almost given her regrets and begged off. Better to sit at home alone on the night of her fortieth birthday, she thought, than to entangle herself in another possible relationship she wasn’t sure she wanted.
But she hadn’t been able
to speak the words she’d been thinking, and she’d realized that, in truth, she found herself feeling a little hurt. No one had said much about her upcoming birthday, and the milestone that it was for her. Sure, Maggie and Doc had mentioned it in passing, but no one seemed to be paying it much mind.
Maybe, she thought, that’s the way they thought she wanted it. Maybe that’s what she was projecting.
But not to Tristan, who had waited patiently on the phone for her answer.
She knew inherently that if she tried to beg off, he’d somehow convince her to change her mind. He seemed to care about her, and sensed that she didn’t really want to be alone. And why should she? Once she’d thought about it from a different angle, she realized that maybe a masquerade ball was the perfect way to spend her fortieth birthday.
At the very least, it would be memorable.
So she’d told him yes, she’d be there—though again, she found herself being asked out to a formal event with no idea in the world of what she was going to wear.
The last time this had happened, at the Moose Fest Ball back in January, she’d worn a little black dress Maggie had found for her. It had indeed looked beautiful on Candy, but due to an intentional mix-up, she’d wound up being mortified. Fortunately, everything had eventually worked out in the end. A week or two after the ball, Maggie had come clean and explained to the dress’s owner what had happened. She’d also offered to make amends, but an alternative arrangement had been struck, and one day Maggie had presented the sleeveless Givenchy number to her best friend as a gift for all Candy had been through. “We both thought it looked better on you anyway,” Maggie had told her friend, referring to the dress’s previous owner. “She thought you should have it. It’s yours to keep.”
“But how did you arrange that?” Candy asked, truly surprised and grateful as she admired the dress again.
“I used my charm, of course.” But that was all Maggie would say about it. The dress was still hanging in Candy’s closet.
She couldn’t wear it tomorrow night to the masquerade ball though. She’d have to come up with something else. A costume.
Maybe she’d ask Maggie for help again…if she dared.
They’d angled west out of the harbor, and after fifteen minutes of traveling at a good clip over the open water, Candy could see the first island approaching up ahead, off the port side. The captain brought them around the headland and toward a small, protected cove on the west side, where a single pier stretched out from the rocky shore. The captain guided them toward it, spun the wheel, and laid the boat in neatly alongside the dock. A young deckhand hopped over to tie them off.
Grabbing her daypack, Candy walked out of the cabin and across the rear deck, where she waited. Once the boat had settled, the captain leaned out of the wheelhouse door and called to her, loud enough to be heard over the low chug of the engines. “Be out here on the dock at two fifteen this afternoon. If I don’t see you I won’t stop, but I’ll look for you again on the last run of the day. That’d be around quarter to five. After that, you’re on your own.”
Candy nodded her understanding. She hesitated for a moment as she was about to step over the side onto the pier, but someone else beat her to it.
A craggy-faced woman, perhaps in her early seventies, wearing a long raincoat and carrying a green canvas bag filled with groceries and a few magazines and books, unapologetically angled in front of her, stepped expertly over the side, and started up the pier without saying a word. Candy had barely noticed she was aboard. The elderly woman walked briskly toward the rocky shore with a determined gait.
The young deckhand, a dark-haired boy of high school age, nodded after her. “Have a good afternoon, Mrs. Trotter.”
He received no response.
Candy watched the woman curiously before adjusting the daypack on her shoulder. Then she, too, stepped over the side onto the dock.
With a touch to the brim of his ball cap, the deckhand loosened the lines, tossed them back aboard, and hopped over. The captain powered up the boat’s engines again, and expertly guided the craft away, water churning up behind it.
A few moments later the boat was gone, and Candy was left standing on the dock, alone.
THIRTY-SIX
As she started toward the shore, she surveyed her surroundings. Ahead of her, a few old sheds with weathered gray-shingled sides cluttered on the hard-packed earth just beyond the end of the pier, but they all looked deserted and locked up. Lobster buoys had been tacked up on the sides of some of the buildings, though Candy sensed they were more for decoration than for an actual fishing operation. A dirt lane that started where the pier ended twisted off into the dense woods at the center of the island, and footpaths meandered away from the sheds to the left and right, along the coastline in both directions. The elderly woman who had disembarked with Candy had disappeared along the footpath to the left, following the rocky curve of the island until it cut through a thick stand of trees and shrubbery that crept down to a rocky point. Anything beyond that was lost in a hazy mist that hugged the north side of the island.
Candy turned back the other direction, scanning the tree- and rock-strewn shore that angled southeastward. She could see a few shingled cottages, aged by the elements, dotted around the edge of the island in that direction, but other than the gulls, she saw no signs of life—no one else out walking, no bikers, no one tending to boats, no one else like her visiting the island for the day, hiking its narrow paths and exploring its nooks and crannies.
It was as if she were entirely alone here, and she felt strangely out of place, even a little ill at ease. To make matters worse, the sky was lowering, the day growing more gray as visibility lessened with the encroaching mists.
Better check what you came here to check and get back on the mainland, she encouraged herself as she reached the end of the pier. She stopped for a few moments, surveying the path to her left, wondering what had become of the elderly woman she’d seen headed off in that direction. Next she turned to the right, running her gaze along the southward path again, until she let out a breath and continued straight ahead, following the dirt lane toward the center of the island.
She recalled the layout of the island in her head, and knew the first place she wanted to look for a cemetery was at the opposite end of the island, where a fairly large house stood—or, at least, that’s the way it had looked to her on Google maps the night before.
After a few hundred feet, the foliage began to close in around her, and as she continued on, toward the island’s center, the wind died out and the day grew eerily hushed. She was walking through woods made up of both deciduous and pine trees, and they seemed to insulate her from outside sounds. She could hear birds calling high in the branches above her, and occasionally a distant slosh as a strong wave pushed against a rocky shore somewhere nearby. But other than that, she could hear very little of the world beyond this forested patch on this small island—no human voices, no music, not even the sounds of motorboats out on the water.
The forest floor, she saw, was rich and dark, peppered with swaths of decaying pine and spruce needles under a covering of fallen leaves, creating a carpet of dark browns and rusts, grays and yellows. Leaves lay scattered across the path as well, so thick in some places they reached her calves as she waded through them.
Farther in, the quietness intensified and became its own sound, a soft, underlying murmur, disturbed only by the crunch of her sneakers on the pebble- and leaf-strewn lane. And then another sound—gentle plops falling from the tops of the trees, down through the remaining leaves and denuded branches. One or two struck her face as she looked up.
Raindrops.
Up ahead, a rocky formation rose up from the ground, monolith-like, blocking her way, but the lane simply curved around it, and she followed. Once on the other side, she could see patches of blue through the trees, and the sound of the ocean became more constant.
The woods opened up again, and after another few dozen steps, she emerged fr
om the forest to find herself at the edge of a grassy meadow, which sloped down to a rocky shoreline, providing her with a panoramic view across a wide expanse of the water, from the mainland on the left, with its whale-humped hills arcing away to the northeast, out to open water straight ahead, and off to the south, where she saw another island a short distance away.
She had reached the end of the lane and the far side of the island—in a less than ten-minute walk.
Unfortunately, it looked as if she couldn’t go much farther in this direction, since between her and the shoreline, neatly bisecting the meadow, stood a seven-foot-tall wrought-iron fence, with an arched double gate directly in front of her, closed and blocking her path. The fence extended all the way to the left and right, deep into the trees and shrubbery, until it disappeared from view. Candy assumed it went all the way to the shoreline in either direction, cordoning off the island’s eastern tip.
Beyond the fence, framed by a sparse grove of tall-trunked pines that dotted a flat piece of ground stretching right to land’s end, stood a majestic house, a stone and chocolate-shingled affair with a steep, weathered roof, multiple stories, two gables, overhangs, and at one end, a three-story tower with windows all around at the very top—a sort of widow’s walk, Candy imagined. The views must be spectacular from up there, she thought as she gazed at it. She also saw two stone chimneys, one at either end of the house, and part of a porch on the building’s seaward side. And beyond the porch, a pier that led out to a platform twenty feet from the shore.
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