Candy Corn Murder

by Leslie Meier

  Next morning, however, Lucy’s curiosity got the better of her. Bill was busy cooking waffles for everyone, so she took a moment to slip into the family room and call Barney Culpepper.

  “I heard they arrested Buck,” she said, then took a sip from the mug of coffee she’d carried with her.

  “Yeah,” replied Barney. “Good news for Bill, eh?”

  “Sure is. A huge relief,” admitted Lucy. “Bob told us some Country Cousins employees actually turned him in.”

  “I guess Buck didn’t inspire a lot of loyalty,” said Barney. “Too ambitious.”

  “Maybe they just felt they were getting in too deep, especially if they knew he’d killed Ev. Pot’s one thing. Murder is another,” said Lucy.

  “He denies it, of course,” said Barney. “Claims he spent the entire night Ev was killed with Corney Clark. What do you think of that?”

  “I guess I should be surprised, but I’m not,” she said, recalling how Corney had been all over Buck at the first interview. “What does Corney say? Is she sticking by her man?”

  “Not exactly,” said Barney. “So far we haven’t been able to locate Corney.”

  “Ohmigod!” exclaimed Lucy, terrified for her friend. “You don’t think he killed her, too?”

  “Hold your horses, Lucy. Corney’s a big girl. She could be anywhere. Maybe she went to visit her mom. Or snuck off to some spa somewhere.”

  Once again, Lucy’s thoughts turned to Jonah’s Pond, and she wondered what secrets it might hold. “I suppose you guys are looking for her,” said Lucy.

  “Well, you know our resources are pretty limited,” said Barney. “We did check out her place. There was no sign of any trouble there. It was neat as a pin. Truth is, Buck’s legal team is on it. They’ve hired a private investigator.”

  “So the department isn’t looking for her?” asked Lucy, appalled. “The man’s accused of murder and his girlfriend disappears, and you’re not following up?”

  “We’re following procedure,” said Barney, sounding a bit huffy.

  “Procedure,” said Lucy sarcastically. In her opinion procedure was one of those terms, like zero tolerance, that substituted all too often for clear thinking and common sense.

  “Well, it’s been nice chatting,” said Barney, “but I gotta go. Dispatch is calling.”

  “Take care, Barney,” said Lucy, ending the call. She followed the delicious smell of bacon and pumpkin waffles into the kitchen, where she joined the rest of the family at the big round table.

  “This calls for a toast,” she said, raising her glass of orange juice. “Here’s to Dad!”

  Patrick chimed in, lifting his mug of cocoa. “To Grandpa!”

  “Three cheers,” demanded Sara, and they all joined in heartily.

  “I don’t know if it’s my waffles or my innocence that you’re all cheering about,” said Bill.

  “Both,” said Lucy, pouring on the maple syrup.

  She had just finished loading the dishwasher with the breakfast dishes when Sue called. “Guess who I saw this morning?”

  “Corney Clark?” guessed Lucy, hoping she was right.

  “No. Not Corney. Marcia Miller!”

  “Of course!” said Lucy. “She’s a mama bear come to help her son. You know Buck’s accused—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Sue. “Old news. Marcia is new news.”

  Lucy had to agree. “What does she look like? She must be pretty old now?”

  “She doesn’t look old. She’s been living in France. They have ways of dealing with aging. And she has a new husband and a new name. She’s Marcia d’Aubigny now.”

  “Would I recognize her if I saw her?”

  “Absolutely. For one thing, she’s better dressed than everyone in Tinker’s Cove except me. And her color job is fantastic. And she’s quite slim. She was riding a bike when I saw her.”

  “Riding a bike?”

  “Yeah, she said it was for exercise.”

  “So you spoke to her?”

  “I did. She said she was struck by how nothing much had changed in Tinker’s Cove since she left, and she was here because of all this nonsense with Buck, which is absolutely ridiculous, since he is the sweetest, best son a woman could have, but she really wished there was a decent bakery in town, because the French bread at the IGA is not really bread at all.”

  “Interesting,” said Lucy.

  “And then she really let it rip,” continued Sue. “She kind of leaned close, like she was telling me a secret, and she said she had never wanted Buck to come back to Country Cousins, because she doesn’t think much of Tom Miller. ‘He’s the one they ought to be investigating,’ she said. ‘Everybody thinks he’s Mr. Nice Guy, but he’s not. He hides his true nature, so nobody knows what he’s really capable of.’ ”

  When Lucy heard this her eyes widened. “She really said that?”

  “She did. But I think it’s just sour grapes or jealousy. In my opinion, Tom’s a great guy with a generous heart, and it’s unfortunate he got stuck with such a horrible family.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Lucy, thinking of his missing first wife. “I think Marcia may be right. I think there’s a side to Tom Miller that we don’t know anything about.”

  “Give it up, Lucy,” said Sue. “And great news about Bill. I hope you’re celebrating today.”

  “We already did,” said Lucy, patting her full tummy. “Waffles.”

  “You wild and crazy kids,” said Sue, laughing.

  Halloween, 1979

  She felt as if her head would explode. Her vision was wonky, a kaleidoscopic assault of flashing lights and sharp angles that whirled every which way. She was flat on her back on the wood floor, rough with wear, and he was on top of her. She could feel his weight pressing on her chest and hips, and she could smell the bleach and starch Emily used on his white shirt, and his old man’s breath, foul from the pipe that was always in his mouth. She couldn’t get any air, so she tried to push him away, tried to wiggle and squirm out from under him.

  She tried to call for help, to call Tom, but could manage only a feeble croak, a mere mouse squeak of a cry.

  “You’ll never get away now,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. Then she felt his hands around her throat. He was gentle at first, stroking her neck and pressing himself rhythmically against her groin, but then his hands tightened and she heard his dentures clicking as he groaned and grunted with pleasure. The bright, jangly lights faded, coalescing into a single soft light. Like the moon on a hazy night, she thought, with a sense of wonder. Then it was gone.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tinker’s Cove Women’s Club

  Press Release

  For Immediate Release

  The Women’s Club Announces Its Annual Thanksgiving Pie Sale, to Be Held at 10:00 a.m., Wednesday, November 24, in the Community Church Fellowship Hall, Main Street. All Pies Are Homemade and Will Go Fast! Proceeds Support the Club’s Scholarship Program.

  Lucy was at work on Monday, reading the hundreds of e-mails that she had received over the weekend and deleting most of them. There were sales at the Kittery and Freeport outlets, hardly news, despite the hyperbolic prose claiming “rock bottom prices you won’t believe” and “70, 80, even 90 percent off.” Dancing Deer Baking Co. and Stonewall Kitchen had special Thanksgiving offers, which gave her pause. Thanksgiving? That meant Christmas was just around the corner. Usually a truly depressing thought, but this year it meant Toby and Molly would be coming home soon. And there were the usual announcements for the “Cove Calendar” listings of bake sales, community theater productions, club meetings, and holiday bazaars, all of which she forwarded to Phyllis. It was only by chance that she noticed that Detective Lieutenant Horowitz had sent the announcement that the state police were holding an unclaimed property auction. That meant, she realized with a sense of growing excitement, that Horowitz was back on the job, and she reached for her phone.

  “Did you have a nice vacation?” she asked when he answered her call. />
  Horowitz was not one for social niceties and ignored her polite inquiry, getting right down to business. “Lucy Stone, it seems you were busy while I was gone.” He chuckled. “And some people say there’s no God.”

  “Ha-ha,” said Lucy, who suspected that the state police lieutenant had actually grown fond of her through the years but didn’t want to admit it to her and maybe not even to himself. “If you’d been here, I’m pretty sure Bill would never have been arrested. Your colleagues Ferrick and DeGraw were awfully quick to pin Ev’s murder on him.”

  “Well, it all worked out in the end, right?”

  “There were some awfully tense moments. I wouldn’t want to go through it again,” said Lucy.

  “Do you want to file a complaint?” he asked.

  “No, no,” said Lucy, who figured that was asking for trouble. “But I do have some information. . . .”

  “Here we go again,” groaned Horowitz.

  Lucy chuckled. “This is important,” insisted Lucy. “I think you may have the wrong guy. Again.”

  Horowitz sighed. “Shoot.”

  “Well,” she began, “you know how the case against Bill hinged on that tire iron they found in his truck? Well, on Saturday morning, Tom Miller was driving around on a practically flat tire, which makes me wonder if maybe his tire iron was used for something other than changing a tire.”

  “An interesting idea, Lucy, but don’t you think somebody as rich as Tom Miller would just drive into an auto repair place and get his tire changed? Or get one of his employees to do it? It’s most probably a company vehicle, right?”

  “Not if his tire iron was missing,” insisted Lucy. “It would be bound to raise suspicion since Ev was killed with one.”

  “Lucy, why don’t you fix yourself a nice, calming cup of chamomile tea?” suggested Horowitz. “I started drinking the stuff when I was on vacation in Italy, and I found it was very relaxing.”

  Lucy was dismayed. “Aren’t you going to follow up with Tom Miller?”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Horowitz. “And in the meantime I don’t want you doing anything foolish, understand?”

  “Of course not,” said Lucy. Ted had come in, whistling cheerily, and she had to end the call.

  “What are you so chipper about?” demanded Phyllis, who was right behind him, carrying a couple of recyclable grocery bags.

  “It’s a beautiful fall day, and I’ve got a big story right here in town. . . .”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re so happy, because I’ve got a petty cash voucher right here for you to sign. . . .”

  “What is this?” he demanded, taking the slip of paper and examining it closely. “Ninety-eight dollars for coffee?”

  “Coffee’s going up, but it was buy one, get one free, so I stocked up and bought the limit, which was eight big cans. And, of course, there’s that fake creamer stuff you use, which is nothing but a lot of chemicals, but you don’t like the store brand, though how you tell the diff, I’ll never know, and then I had to get the sugar, which is going to give you diabetes. Well, it all adds up.” She dropped the bags on her desk with a clunk. “Do you want to see the receipt?”

  Ted raised his hands in surrender. “No, no, that’s okay. I’m sorry I asked.” He turned to Lucy. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m really the boss around here, you know?”

  She smiled sweetly. “Your wish is my command, master.”

  “Ah, since you’re so agreeable this morning, I wonder if you’d like to go around town and snap some photos of Country Cousins and the Millers’ house. You might even lurk a bit and see if you can catch some candids of the Millers themselves, if they happen to be out and about.”

  “Tabloid stuff?” asked Lucy, surprised by his request, and a bit repelled, too. She was still smarting from her own recent experience with the press and wasn’t comfortable about harassing Tom and Glory. “We don’t do that. Besides, everybody here in Tinker’s Cove knows what the Millers look like and where they live and what they own.”

  “So they do,” said Ted. “But this is a story with regional, even national appeal, and I can sell those photos.” He was pouring himself a mug of coffee, then stirring in the creamer that Phyllis so despised. “You could even get some video on that camera of yours, right?”

  “Okay,” agreed Lucy. While she didn’t much like the assignment, she wasn’t about to jeopardize her job. And, she had to admit, it was preferable to being stuck in the office all day and writing a boring story on the proposed new zoning regulations. She slipped on her Country Cousins barn coat, grabbed her camera, and stepped through the door, glad to be out in the sunshine and fresh air.

  She decided to begin with the Country Cousins store a few doors down on Main Street, which was closed and had yellow police tape wrapped across the porch. It was one of those pictures worth a thousand words, when you considered that Country Cousins was famously open for business 365 days a year, 366 in a leap year. She was in luck. She even got a short video interview with Dottie Halmstad, a longtime employee, who had arrived for work and realized she wasn’t needed.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Dottie, whose gray hair was styled in an easy-care cut. “In all my years the store has never been closed. Not even for blizzards and hurricanes. We always had to come in, no matter what.”

  Lucy’s next stop was the headquarters complex, where she got a photo of the state trooper who barred her entrance. She parked the car on the side of the road and walked back to the gate, where she was able to get pictures of the many police vehicles parked inside the complex, as well as a short clip of a jumpsuited crime-scene investigator carrying a paper bag out of one of the buildings and carefully stowing it in a van.

  She knew that Tom and Glory Miller’s house was just a little ways down the road, and headed there, promising herself that she would simply snap a photo of the big mansion, and would make it quick, so as not to attract any unwelcome attention from the residents. She was mentally composing the shot as she drove down the country road, picturing a scene with the huge house in the background and the mailbox bearing the Miller name in the foreground. Once again, it would be a picture that told a story. The oversize house was a symbol of achievement and success that anyone could understand, and the fancy custom-made mailbox was a far cry from the cheap, battered boxes most rural mail customers had in front of their houses. And Country Cousins was a mail-order business, to boot.

  Lucy was pretty pleased with herself as she pulled over to the side of the road and parked a car length away from the fancy mailbox. The Millers’ property wasn’t fenced, but there was a low rose hedge, now dotted with crimson hips, which she hoped would conceal her if she crouched while she snapped a few photos. She had been careful to park the SUV next to a bushy evergreen, thinking it would hide the car from anyone looking out of the house.

  It took a bit of creeping around and peeking before she had the picture she wanted in the viewfinder, and she was just about to snap it when the front door to the house opened and Marcia stepped into view.

  Just as Sue had told her, Buck’s mother, who was dressed in black leggings and a bulky designer sweater, looked as if she’d stepped right out of the pages of the French edition of Vogue. She was pulling on gloves as she crossed the white oyster-shell driveway to a Cadillac Escalade with a small Hertz sticker on the side window, stepping lightly in her ankle boots.

  She was opening the car door when the door to the house opened once again and Tom Miller came out. He stood on the porch, arms akimbo, and yelled at her. “You’re making a big mistake!” he bellowed.

  Marcia merely looked at him, then calmly proceeded to settle herself behind the wheel of her rental car.

  That angered Tom, who charged across the driveway and attempted to open the car door, but found it was locked. That infuriated him, and he grabbed one of the decorative stone blocks that edged the driveway. Marcia’s car was rolling and she was picking up speed when Tom threw the chunky block, shattering the driver-side window. The
block bounced off without hitting Marcia, but she was shocked and too stunned to drive and merely sat, clinging to the steering wheel and shaking her head.

  Lucy was dialing 911, unsure whether to remain in hiding or to risk attempting to intervene between the two. When she saw that Tom had the door open and was pulling Marcia from the car, she decided she had to act.

  “Stop! I’ve got this all on tape!” she screamed, holding up the camera.

  The camera was like a red flag to a bull, and Tom charged at her.

  “I’ve called the cops,” she yelled, stopping him in his tracks.

  “Well, call them back and tell them it’s a big mistake,” he ordered her in his CEO voice. “And, by the way, I’m tired of your snooping around. This is a private family matter, and I’ll thank you to leave us in peace.”

  Lucy looked at Marcia, who was brushing bits of glass off the complicated folds of her beautiful russet sweater. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Let the police come,” Marcia said. She was slightly out of breath, and Lucy noticed that she’d picked up a bit of a French accent. “You saw what he did to me. He wants to kill me. It is time that the truth should come out.”

  “That’s fine. Let the police come,” said Tom, resorting to negotiation. “But she,” he said, pointing at Lucy, “has to go. She’s from the newspaper. She’ll have our faces plastered on every front page from here to, to . . .”

  “To Paris?” asked Marcia, raising a dubious eyebrow.

  “You’re part of this family, too,” muttered Tom. “Maybe it’s time you started to face up to your responsibilities. You can’t run away this time. It’s your kid who’s in trouble, and maybe you ought to think about starting some damage control.” He turned to Lucy. “And, you, if you’ll just mind your own business for once . . .”

  “Mind my own business! That’s ripe,” exclaimed Lucy. “This is my business. You’re the one who put the tire iron in my husband’s truck. You tried to stick him with murder when you knew all along it was Buck!”