Town in a Wild Moose Chase

by B. B. Haywood

  TWENTY-ONE

  After Ben headed back to his own office, she spent another forty-five minutes digging around online, searching I.C.I.C.L.E.’s website for any additional clues and trolling through a number of other blogs and websites, especially those for chain-saw companies and tool manufacturers. But she found nothing else about the sponsorship program or spokesperson gig, nor did she find out much more about I.C.I.C.L.E. itself. There were a few obscure postings, more comments on blogs, remnants from press releases, that sort of thing. But curiously, nothing went back more than a few months.

  She finally checked her watch. It was a quarter to eleven. Doc was scheduled to give his presentation in fifteen minutes at the inn, and she wanted to be there to show her support. After that, she planned on heading over to Town Park to watch the brief awards presentation and maybe grill Preston Smith about his organization, if she could get a few words with him.

  Shutting down the computer, she grabbed her tote bag, switched off the light in her office, and walked back down the hall to talk to Ben. But he was gone, though his computer was still on. It looked like he’d just stepped away briefly.

  As she turned away, her gaze swept across his desk, seeing everything in a glance but nothing in particular. Several steps down the hall, however, she stopped, turned around curiously, and on an impulse returned to Ben’s office.

  It was an old volume that had caught her eye. Heavily bookmarked, it sat to one side of his desk, the gold lettering rubbed off of its battered, dark purple cover, its ragged-edged pages thick and brown with age. She’d never seen it before, which is probably why it jumped out at her.

  She hesitated at the door only briefly before she took a few steps into his office and lifted the small, thick volume.

  She tried to read the title printed on the spine, but it too was partially rubbed away, so she opened the cover and turned to the title page, taking extra care with the fragile, spotted pages.

  The volume was titled A History of the Early Families of Cape Willington, Maine: 1735 to 1900. With Diagrams and an Introduction by Jeremiah Sykes.

  Jeremiah Sykes.

  Candy shivered, and wondered if there was a connection.

  She’d had a frightening encounter with a contemporary member of the Sykes family just last summer, one that had left her shaken and anxious. It had taken her months to recover mentally and emotionally from the encounter, given what she’d learned when she thought the episode was all over.

  Again, she recalled an inscription she’d seen printed in the upper left corner of that set of blueprints, laid out early last summer on a table in Doc’s office at home.

  The inscription, written in cursive, and apparently scribbled quickly, had read: Here are the plans. PS Make sure no one else sees this.

  PS. At first she had thought the letters referred to postscript, which made perfect sense. But she soon realized they meant something else.

  They were initials.

  She’d figured it out while reading a newspaper article about a developer named Porter Sykes, who was in the process of building a hotel and convention complex along Portland’s waterfront. The project had stalled up over the past couple of years because of the economy, but she’d seen Porter Sykes’s name in the papers a few times over the past nine months, assuring the citizens of Portland that he planned to make good on his promise to give the city everything it deserved.

  But why would Ben have a book about the Sykes family?

  Then it came to her.

  The Sykes brothers had been Ben’s best friends in college. They had betrayed him—or, at least, one of them had—and even tried to frame him for murder. So now he was researching their family tree, probably trying to learn more about them.

  But why?

  She put the book back where she’d found it and left his office with more questions than answers.

  Across the street, the dry cleaner’s was surprisingly busy, with an elderly couple talking to Maggie at the counter and another five or six other people standing in line, talking softly to one another or shuffling restlessly. Candy made her apologies as she hurried past them and leaned across the counter.

  “I’m sorry, but this is an emergency,” she said as pleasantly as possible to the elderly couple. To Maggie, she added, “I’m desperate, and I need your help. I have to find a dress for the Moose Fest Ball this evening. Everything I have is either out of date, decades old, or the wrong size. You wouldn’t happen to have a little number at home you could lend me, would you?”

  Maggie was about to answer when she stopped herself. “Wait a minute—you’re going to the ball? When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Just now, and I am. Ben bought tickets for us a couple of weeks ago but he forgot to tell me about it until a few minutes ago.” She waved a hand impatiently. “Anyway, that’s not important. What’s important right now is, I need a dress! Can you help?”

  “Let me think,” Maggie said, regaining her composure and speaking quickly as she punched a bunch of keys on an old cash register. “To answer your question, yes, I happen to have a whole lot of cute little numbers in my closet, including that red spaghetti-strap cocktail dress I bought went we went shopping at the outlet malls. Remember? But the problem is, they’re all about three or four sizes too big for you. Too bad we didn’t know about this a few weeks ago. We could have picked something up.”

  “I know but that doesn’t help me now. Isn’t there something hanging in the back of your closet, or an evening dress Amanda left behind?” Candy gave her friend a pleading look.

  The cash drawer rang and slid open. Maggie handed the elderly couple their change and their dry cleaning. She thanked them for their patronage before looking back over at Candy. “We’ll figure something out. I close here in an hour. Stop by my place this afternoon and we’ll dig through everything I have. We’ll make it work.”

  Candy flashed her a grateful smile. “You’re the best,” she said, and flicked her scarf back around her neck as she dashed out of the store.

  Doc was just getting started as she slipped into the small conference room at the Lightkeeper’s Inn. She gave him a quick, supportive wave when he flicked his gaze toward her, took a seat by the door, and looked around. The place, with its aged oak wainscotting and dark green walls, sat about twenty or twenty-five people. A majority of the seats were filled, which obviously thrilled Doc, though he didn’t show it. He looked good, dressed in a white shirt and sport jacket—the same outfit he’d worn through all his years of teaching. He stood at a podium with his notes in front of him, though he rarely glanced at them as he spoke.

  “The French, led by Samuel de Champlain, were credited with the so-called European discovery of Maine and many parts of New England,” Doc was telling his audience, which consisted of a good mix of generations. “They tried to establish an early settlement on Mount Desert Island but were driven off by the British. And although the British were the earliest landholders in this region, the Scotch-Irish and Germans were among the earliest European settlers here. The Scotch-Irish in particular founded a number of villages along the coast in the early to mid-seventeen hundreds, including Boothbay, which was originally called Townsend, and Belfast, named after the town in Ireland. The Germans followed and settled places like Waldoboro, which was originally called Broad Bay and initially populated by fifteen hundred German immigrant families from the Rhineland. Cape Willington, of course, started as an early British settlement, and saw activity before and during the Revolutionary War, after which it became a small fishing village for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.…”

  He continued on like that for the better part of an hour, as Candy politely listened, though her mind began to drift after a while, picking apart all the little factoids she’d gathered over the past day or two.

  A few things stuck in her mind.

  One of the most prominent was a recent development: Why was Preston Smith avoiding certain people in town—like the police… a
nd Ben?

  She’d seen it happen right in front of her, on the first day she met Preston, but she hadn’t suspected it was a deliberate move until recently.

  Two: Why the hush-hush about the sponsorship program and the naming of a new spokesperson?

  The point of anything like that was to promote a specific product or company. She knew. She’d worked in marketing for more than ten years in Boston. So why bury a press release about a high-priced spokesperson you’re about to spend tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to promote your product or organization?

  Third point: What was up with Liam?

  The other ice sculptors seemed to be avoiding him and were reluctant to talk about him. Why?

  There were other questions on her mind as well, but she was startled when she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She’d put it on vibrate during the lecture (um, presentation, she reminded herself), and it was going off.

  As surreptitiously as possible, she slipped it out of her pocket and glanced down at the phone number on the screen.

  It was a text message. When she flipped open her phone, she saw it was from an unknown sender: Important an-nouncement coming soon, it read. Please stand by your cell phones.

  Candy tilted her head as she read the message again. Obviously it was some sort of mistake—an ill-directed text meant for someone else, more than likely.

  “…the Sykes family originally came here as seafarers,” Doc was saying. “Captain Josiah Sykes managed to purchase his own ship, a one-hundred-fifty-ton merchantman, which he called, ironically enough, The Tempest. It would become a metaphor for his life, and if you’re familiar with Shakespeare’s play, you’ll see the parallels. Josiah ran timber and salted fish from New England, cloth and fine whiskey from Britain, and sugar and molasses from the West Indies, which was turned into rum in the colonies. Unfortunately, when times got tough, he also followed the Middle Passage, running slaves from Africa. It was on one of these runs that he lost his ship, breaking it on the rocky point just south of Shipwreck Cove, after dropping off his human cargo in the West Indies, and loading up on other goods in Boston. His wife, Annie, was killed during the wreck, and he thought he’d lost a daughter, Miranda, and a son, Ferdinand. But both survived, unbeknownst to him. Thinking he’d lost everything, Josiah reportedly went mad.…”

  Candy’s cell phone buzzed again.

  She scowled. Who kept disturbing her in the middle of Doc’s speech?

  Again she fished out her phone and checked the screen.

  It was another text message from the same unknown sender. She flipped open the phone and read the message.

  Just ten minutes until an important announcement at the noon hour, brought to you by ICICLE!

  Candy sat up in her chair.

  It must be from Preston Smith.

  She quickly texted back, asking for more information and an interview, but whether it made its way to the unknown sender, she didn’t know.

  She held her cell phone in her hand as she waited for an answer. Doc had moved on.

  “The Pruitts came to the area in the 1730s, when they built the first mill on the cape, under a contract with the Massachusetts Bay Company. Pruitts from Maine fought in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and steadily acquired land in the region between those two conflicts.…”

  The phone in her hand buzzed again.

  The official announcement of our sponsorship program award winner is now only moments away, the text message read.

  “The ancestors of our current Pruitts,” Doc continued, “who still have sizable landholdings in and around Cape Willington, invested heavily in the region, especially in timber, and by the mid-eighteen hundreds had joined the ranks of the wealthiest families in New England.…”

  Candy checked her watch. Five minutes to twelve.

  “That should give you a brief idea about some of Cape Willington’s earliest families,” Doc said, wrapping up. “I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have individually, and I can recommend several books if you’d like to learn more about this fascinating material. Please see me after the presentation. Thanks very much for coming, and enjoy the day.”

  As a smattering of applause and chattering voices rose around her, Candy jumped up out of her chair, gave another quick wave and a thumbs-up to her father, and headed out of the inn. She thought that Preston might make his an-nouncement along with Oliver LaForce in Town Park. But a few minutes later, as she walked down toward the ice sculptures, she saw only the innkeeper and Chef Colin, standing in front of a microphone stand and small speaker. Oliver was reading a bunch of names off a list and offering his heartfelt congratulations. Chef Colin was handing out certificates of achievement and small awards. Moms and dads applauded their talented little sculptors. The crowd was in a generally jovial mood.

  But no Preston Smith.

  Or Gina Templeton, Candy noticed as she scanned the crowd. Or Liam Yates. Or Felicia Gaspar.

  Only Duncan Leggmeyer and Baxter Bryant were sculpting at the moment, giving demonstrations to the curious onlookers.

  Her cell phone buzzed again. She flipped open her phone and read a new message.

  The winner and new spokesperson is…, it teased.

  She checked her watch and waited. It was twelve noon on the dot.

  A final buzz.

  …Liam Yates!!!

  There was a final message a few seconds later.

  Sorry, Victor. Better luck next time.

  Candy looked at the message in disbelief. What the heck did that mean?

  Her phone buzzed again, vibrating in her hand, and at first she thought it was another text message. But she realized she was getting a phone call.

  It was from Finn Woodbury.

  “I tried calling Doc,” he told her, “but he’s not answering his cell phone.”

  “He probably has it turned off,” Candy said. “He’s just finishing up his presentation.”

  “Oh! How was it?” Finn asked.

  “Informative,” Candy answered.

  “Tell him I’m sorry I missed it. But it’s seventy-nine degrees in Florida today. Light breeze out of the northwest. Not a cloud in the sky.”

  “Don’t rub it in, Finn, or I’ll have to come down there and give you a piece of my mind.”

  He chuckled. “You’re welcome anytime, Candy. It’d be a nice break for you and Doc. Think about it. Anyway, I have some details for you about that body they found. They finally ID’d it. Are you ready for this?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Well, it was this ice sculptor guy who disappeared a few days ago. His name was Victor Templeton.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Candy had to admit she wasn’t surprised. It just confirmed what she’d already suspected.

  But it also opened up a whole new set of questions, adding to the ones she already had.

  Was the body found by the road, now officially identified as Victor Templeton, the same one Solomon Hatch had allegedly seen in the woods? If so, how did it get from the woods to the road, where Francis Robichaud found it? Bodies didn’t walk. It was a proven scientific fact—unless you read one of those zombie novels she’d seen at Pine Cone Books in town. So if it was the same body, someone must have dragged or carried it to its new location. And if it wasn’t the same body, then who had Solomon found in the woods?

  And where, she still wondered, was Solomon himself?

  And what about Gina Templeton? Victor’s death explained why the Templetons had been absent at the ice-sculpting exhibition that morning. But did Gina know more than she was telling about her husband’s absence over the past few days? She had seemed distracted yesterday when Candy had talked to her. Was she hiding something?

  Candy let out a breath as she folded up her phone and slipped it into her coat pocket. But it rang again almost at once.

  “I should just have the darn thing implanted in my head,” she grumbled as she fished it out of her pocket and checked the number on the readou
t.

  This time she recognized it. She’d seen it yesterday. It was Annabel Foxwell.

  The Psychic Sisters were paging her.

  She flipped open the phone. “Hello, this is Candy Holliday.”

  “Miss Holliday, it’s Annabel Foxwell.”

  After they’d exchanged brief pleasantries, Candy asked, “How can I help you, Miss Foxwell?”

  “Well,” Annabel said, her voice sounding a little shaky, “it’s Elizabeth. She’s had another one of her premonitions. This time she says she has a message for you.”

  “What kind of message?”

  “We don’t know. She’ll have to tell you that herself. I know it sounds rather odd, but she insists on seeing you in person. I wonder if you would be available to stop by the house for a visit sometime today?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose I could do that.”

  “Wonderful. What time would you be able to come by? If it’s not too much of an inconvenience.”

  “Not at all. I’m actually free at the moment. I could stop by in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  “That would be perfect. I’ll let Elizabeth know you’re coming. We’ll see you shortly then,” Annabel said, and hung up the phone.

  “Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser,” Candy said to herself as she returned the cell phone to her pocket.

  Before she left Town Park, she scanned the crowd one last time, looking for someone who could answer a few questions for her about Victor and Gina. Finally her eyebrows lifted. She’d spotted someone who might be able to help.

  Felicia Gaspar stood off to her left, perhaps twenty-five feet away, wrapped in a long hooded cape, with the top of the hood pulled so far down over her head it almost covered her eyes. Her long, straight black hair was tucked inside, although a few strands tumbled out, partially obscuring her face. Her dark eyes, half hidden beneath the hood, swept the crowd repeatedly, as if she were in a state of constant vigilance.

  Candy rubbed her hands together to warm them and, as casually as possible, started toward the dark-haired woman, moving in a wide, indirect arc around the crowd, staying on the outskirts of the activities.