Town in a Wild Moose Chase

by B. B. Haywood

  Candy stared at the muffin and let out a sigh. “I think I’m developing a reputation around town.”

  Ben shrugged. “People are grateful. You’ve done a lot of good things lately. People like to show their appreciation.”

  “Yes,” Candy said, folding her hands on the table and leaning forward toward him so she could speak in softer tones, “but why are these things happening to me at all? Why have we had five murders in less than two years—and why have I been involved in all of them? I’m beginning to get a little”—she leaned her head even closer to his—“paranoid.”

  Ben held her eyes for the longest time, and she wondered what was going on inside his head. Finally, he said, with all seriousness, “So you think there’s a connection between all these murders.”

  It was a statement, not a question, and it caught Candy off-guard. “What? No, I… you think there’s a connection?” she asked, trying hard to hold back her astonishment.

  He calmly sliced off a thin piece of breakfast steak, swathed it across a puddle of hot sauce, and plopped it into his mouth. “Maybe not between all of them, but between some of them, yes.” He set down his knife and fork and, as he chewed, turned and reached into his briefcase, which sat on the seat beside him. He pulled out a manila folder and placed it before her. He tapped lightly at the folder’s label before he went back to eating.

  Her brow fell. After giving him a questioning look, she dropped her gaze so she could read the name of the file, hand-printed on the small tab.

  WHITEFIELD.

  She looked up at him incredulously. “You’ve kept a file on him?”

  “It’s not a him,” Ben said, allowing himself a mysterious smile. “It’s an it.”

  “A what?”

  He nodded again toward the file. “Take a look.”

  So she did. She opened it and looked at its contents. She reacted with surprise, then dug down through the top pages to an aged black-and-white photograph buried inside. She pulled it out and laid it on top of the other pages. “You’re kidding me,” she said in surprise as she studied the old image.

  Ben shook his head. “Nope, it’s true. This is part of what I’ve been doing for the past few months—looking into all this research about the town’s history, and its two wealthiest families in particular. And that’s part of it.”

  He pointed with his chin at the old photograph sitting in front of Candy.

  It was an image of a massive iron front gate and a long winding road beyond it, which led to a white pillared mansion in the distance.

  Across the top of the black gate, painted in faded white capital letters, in an elaborate script, was the word Whitefield.

  FORTY-SIX

  They started out forty-five minutes later, taking Ben’s Range Rover. Designed as a capable off-road vehicle, it sometimes had a harsher ride over payment, but on winter roads it excelled.

  They headed up the northern leg of the Coastal Loop, Route 192, just as Candy and Maggie had traveled the night before. Shortly after leaving the outskirts of town, they passed the Shangri-La Motel on the left, where Victor Templeton had met his fate.

  It looked like the area around the back motel rooms had been roped off, and Candy caught a glimpse of a warning sign, probably posted by the police department, before the place disappeared from view behind a screen of trees and shrubbery, and she turned her attention once more to the road ahead.

  As he drove, Ben explained.

  “This goes back a hundred, a hundred fifty years. Longer, really, to the earliest settlers in this area. Among them were the Sykes and the Pruitts.”

  Candy shivered. She’d met members of both clans, which had been scary enough, but who knew what might happen when the two families collided?

  It had happened before, Candy remembered. Last year she’d heard a story about a clash between Cornelius Roberts Pruitt, the then-patriarch of the Pruitt clan, and Daisy Porter-Sykes, his soon-to-be ex-mistress. They’d had a falling out at the Lodge at Moosehead Lake back in the late 1940s, with dire consequences for at least two people in present-day Cape Willington.

  The person behind the murders last year had been a member of the Sykes family, a descendant of Daisy Porter-Sykes. But there had been someone else. An older brother.

  P.S.

  Porter Sykes.

  It was a mystery that still plagued her. What had been his involvement in the deaths that had occurred in Cape Willington last May?

  Candy had hesitated to tell Ben the full story, but he had known enough about what had happened to be totally shocked by the betrayal of the Sykes brothers—which probably explained his interest now in the Sykes family history. And the reason she’d found that volume detailing the early history of the Sykes family on his desk yesterday morning.

  “This all goes back to the original patriarch in the area, Ferdinand Sykes, the lost son of Josiah, who built Whitefield in the late 1850s, right before the war,” Ben told her. “Like his father, Ferdinand was a sailor and tradesman, and by his thirties he’d amassed a fleet of ships. He’d intended Whitefield as a summer cottage, much like the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers had in New York, Maine, and Rhode Island, though the Sykeses were nowhere near those big leagues. They thought they deserved to be, though, and aspired to high society, which brought them into conflict with the far wealthier Pruitts.”

  Ben explained some of the highlights of the conflicts between the Sykeses and the Pruitts across the generations, providing details about bad blood between commanders in the Civil War, the race for wealth in the era of the robber barons, and the families’ entwinement through the first and second world wars, including the dalliance between Cornelius Roberts Pruitt and his mistress, Daisy Porter-Sykes, at a bucolic resort in the north of Maine.

  “Throughout all those years, Whitefield remained a retreat for the Sykes family. But then sometime in the early 1960s they stopped coming. They boarded up the place. A few months later it was discreetly announced that Daisy’s husband, Gideon Sykes, had passed away. Whether there was a connection or not, they’ve never said, and I haven’t been able to find one. Neither the Sykes nor the Pruitt families have released many papers, and they’re both fairly proprietary with their family records. I’ve checked available accounts at the historical society and news clippings from the period, of course, but I’ve hit a dead end.”

  He pointed out ahead of them. “That’s why I’m hoping we might find some answers at Whitefield.”

  Candy looked out through the windshield at the white and gray landscape, muted under a lowering sky. “Can we get into it?”

  Ben shrugged. “As far as I know, the place has been abandoned for decades. Why they haven’t condemned it or torn it down, I don’t know. Even though the place has gone into decline, the Sykes family still owns the mansion and surrounding acreage, and as far as I can tell they’ve had quite a few offers for the place. But they refuse to sell.”

  “I wonder why,” Candy said, partially to herself.

  Ben had no answers for her, and kept his jaw tightly clenched as they reached Route 1 and turned eastward toward Jonesboro and Machias.

  They drove for perhaps twenty or twenty-five minutes before turning south again, onto a narrow, winding road that hugged the rugged, rocky coast, until they came to a spur that cut inland to a high bluff overlooking Englishman Bay and, off to the right, Roque Island. Ben checked the GPS on his smart phone and slowed to a crawl, until he finally pointed toward a side road that looked as if it hadn’t been plowed in several days. “That way.”

  He dropped the transmission down into low gear. “Fortunately we’ve got a high ground clearance in this thing,” he told her as they turned onto the snow-swept road, plowing their way through blowing drifts that had crept across the road surface and frozen in place.

  Two miles along, they came across a tall black iron gate set between two pillars ten feet back from the road. Weathered lettering across the top of the gate announced that they had arrived at Whitefield.

  B
en slowed, pulled off to the side of the road as best he could, and pointed out past Candy through the passenger-side window. “That’s her.”

  They both looked.

  Beyond the iron gate, a snow-covered driveway wound back around a rising section of land, at the summit of which sat the mansion, facing southeastward. Candy turned back to her left. Trees blocked her view of the bay from here, but she imagined the mansion’s front porch and windows offered spectacular views of the coast and the sea beyond.

  “It’s a prime piece of land, that’s for sure,” Ben said, following her gaze. “No wonder they’ve received offers for it.”

  “Probably pretty hefty ones too,” Candy said, “despite the economy.”

  “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been out here in a while, though,” Ben observed.

  He was right. Beyond the gate, they saw no tire tracks in the snow, no footprints, nothing to indicate anyone had visited recently.

  “I’ll check the gate.” Ben put the transmission into park but left the engine and the heater running as he opened the driver’s-side door and hopped out. Despite the higher elevation, the snow wasn’t too deep, probably because a good bit of it had melted down during the warming trend of the past week and a half.

  Ben walked to the gate and peered through the iron bars, some of which were showing rust and disrepair. He reached out a gloved hand and grasped one of the bars, giving the gate a tentative shake. Its age and appearance belied its condition, for it held solid, giving no indication that it would give way or allow them to gain entrance to the property beyond.

  A heavy chain and lock wrapped around and through several bars further prevented entry.

  Ben studied it all before returning to the Range Rover. He climbed inside, and pulled the door shut behind him. “The place is locked up tight,” he said, “but I think I saw a break in the fence back over that way. We’re going to have to trudge through knee-deep snow. You up for it?”

  Candy checked her watch. In his esoteric message, Preston had said he’d meet her here at ten. It was already quarter past. Had they missed him?

  Whitefield at 10. Ben will know the way, the posting had said. Had she misread it? Had it been meant for someone else? Or was someone just leading her along?

  She opened her door and climbed out, the determination clear on her face. “Let’s check it out.”

  Ben took only a few items with him before locking up the vehicle: his 3G cell phone with GPS, which was having trouble getting a signal out here; a flashlight he’d scrounged out of the back; and a tire iron (“Just in case,” he told her). She pulled a flashlight from her tote, which she’d brought with her, but left everything else in the bag on the backseat.

  “All right,” Ben said, turning toward the mansion on the hill, “let’s see if this lady is willing to give up some of her secrets today.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  “There’s nothing here,” Ben said forty-five minutes later.

  The place was abandoned—just as it had looked from the outside.

  They’d trudged through the knee-deep snow to the mansion’s expansive front porch, then circled around the back, soaking their jeans from midthigh down in the process, until they’d found a side door curiously unlocked. It had given them entry into a narrow passageway with a few steps that led up to the main floor. “Servants’ entrance,” Ben said as he pushed his way through.

  The place smelled old, moldy, and unhealthy. Trash was strewn about. It was obvious squatters had been here, taking advantage of the old building as shelter and leaving their detritus behind. Ben and Candy had searched the place cautiously, thinking someone might still be here, but the place was empty—and without heat. The cold seemed to come out of the walls, as if the weather had seeped into the building’s very bones.

  Remembering a discovery in another old house, though one not nearly as grand as this, Candy said, “Maybe there’s a hidden room, or passage or alcove—someplace where documents might be hidden.”

  But if there was such a place in this old mansion, they did not find it this day.

  Ben looked eminently disappointed as they arrived back on the first floor after checking the upstairs bedrooms. “I was hoping we’d find something,” he said, “but if this old house is still keeping secrets, she’s not telling us.”

  Candy checked her watch again. It was just past eleven. Preston Smith—or whoever had posted that message to her—had never showed.

  As if reading Candy’s thoughts, Ben said, “You know, I did a quick Internet search on Preston Smith’s name last night, after you sent me that message. I found a few things about him, but most seemed recent—within the past six months or so.”

  Candy nodded. She’d found the same thing. “Whatever’s going on,” she said in a resigned tone, “we’re not going to find the answers here.”

  Ben made a quick turnaround, looking out through the windows in various directions. “There are a few more buildings outside. I’ll go have a look. Want to come along?”

  Candy studied the piles of snow outside and then looked down at her still-wet jeans, which had her shivering. “No thanks. I’ll check upstairs again. Just swing back and get me when you’re ready to go.”

  He told her he would, and walked back toward the rear of the building, to access the servants’ entrance through the kitchen.

  Candy was alone.

  The house creaked around her. Outside, a frozen branch banged against a window, driven by a sudden gust of wind. She thought she heard a low moan, somewhere in the bowels of the house. And then… a footstep.

  It seemed to have come from one of the rooms off to her right.

  She heard a door close somewhere behind her.

  She twisted around. “Ben?”

  “Ben seems to be occupied at the moment,” another voice said. “Which is just as well. You and I, we need to have a little talk.”

  Candy froze. She knew the voice. She’d heard it before.

  Preston Smith stepped out of the shadows near her. “Hello, Ms. Holliday. We meet again.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  “You!” Candy said in an accusatory tone. “What are you doing here? Where did you come from?”

  Preston gave her a broad grin and waved an expansive hand. “Why, I’ve been here all along.”

  “But we searched the house.”

  “You missed a few spots. It’s a big house. It’s easy to do if you’re not familiar with it.”

  That made Candy pause. She looked at him with scrutinizing eyes. “What kind of game are you playing, Preston?”

  “Hmm. Interesting choice of words.” He took a few steps toward her, and she backed away.

  “Come any closer and I’ll scream,” she warned.

  But the smile did not leave Preston’s face. “Well. We wouldn’t want that, would we? With Ben so nearby, just outside?”

  He held up a small, thin metallic object in his hand. It was a black key.

  “Unfortunately, you see, I’ve locked the servants’ door,” Preston said. “But there’s no need to panic, Ms. Holliday. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m just here to talk.”

  Candy backed away a few more steps, casting a glance out one of the nearby windows, hoping to catch sight of Ben. But she saw no sign of him.

  “The outbuildings are quite extensive,” Preston said by way of explanation. “It’ll take him a while to search them all. And as I recall, Ben Clayton is a very thorough individual. I’d say we have ten or twelve minutes, at least. That should be enough.”

  “For what?” Candy asked warily.

  “As I said. For us to talk.”

  “And what do we have to talk about?”

  “Well, a misplaced hatchet, for one thing. A hermit who encountered some sort of mysterious creature in the woods, which appeared to chase him and appropriately scared him. A mysterious donor who funded most of the ice-sculpting exhibition and lured all the participants here with visions of wealth and grandeur. An informant who’s been feeding inside inf
ormation to that wonderful Ms. Boyle for her popular blog. An unsubstantiated rumor about a sponsorship award program promoted by a certain dubious international ice-carving organization. And, oh yes, an anonymous blog poster and instant messenger who pointed certain key individuals in certain key directions—including you, I might add. And you followed the clues impeccably—just as I knew you would. Your growing reputation is well founded, you know. You have definitely lived up to the hype, and it’s been a great joy watching you work this weekend.”

  He had said all of this in a casual, lighthearted sort of way, but Candy knew there was nothing innocent about what he was telling her. She glared at him. “So you’re the one who’s behind all this.”

  “Why, yes, I am,” Preston said proudly, “although that’s one mystery you haven’t been able to quite figure out yet. So if I were to grade you for this weekend, I’m afraid I’d have to give you a B minus. Not quite award-winning territory yet, but you’ll get there. You just need a little help every once in a while. So here’s another clue for you: not everything is as it appears.”

  Something in the way he said it—a slight change in tone, a flicker in the eye, a word pronounced in a marginally different manner—made her look at him again, and this time she saw behind the persona, behind the public man who had been meandering not so aimlessly around town for the past few days. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Why, Ms. Holliday,” he said, his voice dropping and changing noticeably now, “you’ve finally found me out.”

  He reached up and tugged at the corners of his moustache. They came away with some effort. She heard a slight tearing sound as he whisked the moustache off. The glasses next. And a prosthetic nose. The wig was the last to come off.

  “You know,” he said as he dramatically removed his disguise, “I had Charlotte Depew make this little getup for me. A couple of years ago, I think it was. She was skilled at that sort of thing. I used it for a masquerade party once.”