Town in a Lobster Stew chm-2

by B. B. Haywood

  Amidst all the chaos that had enveloped her last night on the lighthouse grounds, after she safely descended from the tower with Bob, Candy had eventually found out that it was one of Captain Mike’s friends, Francis Robichaud, who had fired the critical shot. An excellent marksman, he’d aimed to wound Roger only, to remove the threat. Still, it had been a tricky shot, Captain Mike assured her.

  “The fog, you know,” he had told her. “We had to wait for a break.”

  The first shot, behind Roger’s head, had been a miss on purpose, to reposition Roger and separate him from the other two. Only after Candy and Bob had backed away toward the railing, and he had a clear shot of the villain, had Francis fired again, this time hitting his mark.

  Everyone in Captain Mike’s entourage had been armed last night, though their weapons had conveniently disappeared before the police arrived. Candy had thanked them all personally. She’d recognized several of the faces and recalled that some of them were snowplow drivers who worked for the town — Tom Farmington and Payne Webster and Pete Barkely, in addition to Francis Robichaud. They’d all been in the Rusty Moose Tavern yesterday when she met with Captain Mike in the back booth.

  And they’d probably be there again today when she stopped in.

  She was still fretting about what she had to do, but she could think of no alternative. All night she’d tossed and turned, her mind running over the clues and events again and again, trying to see some other resolution. But she could think of none.

  So here she was, circling downtown Cape Willington, as she’d been doing for the better part of an hour, driving around the Coastal Loop, cutting across on Main Street or River Road, and back around the Loop again.

  This was the seventh time she’d passed Pruitt Manor.

  Out on the point, beyond the mansion, she could see the top of Kimball Light, one of the two lighthouses in Cape Willington. It had a different design than the English Point Lighthouse. It was a little more elegant, with a sleeker shape and a taller, more rounded glass-enclosed top. It must have been built a few decades after English Point, she surmised, probably sometime in the early nineteen hundreds. It was privately owned now, so she’d never been inside. But she thought it might be fun to take a tour of it someday, perhaps even climb to the top.

  Someday. But not for a while.

  She stopped at the red light at Ocean Avenue, glancing over at the lawn of the Lightkeeper’s Inn on her left. A little farther up the street, on the right-hand side, was the dark storefront of the Stone & Milbury Insurance Agency. The place was shut down — there’d be no more business transacted there, at least not in the near future.

  When the light turned green, she continued up along the Loop, past Town Park and the cemetery, past the Unitarian church on the left and, on the opposite side of the road, the entrance to the parking lot for the English Point Lighthouse and Museum.

  Not so strangely, she had no desire to stop in there today. She’d found out everything she’d needed to know last night.

  Now, like Roger, she just had to wrap up a few loose ends.

  She drove farther on up the Loop, past the docks on her right and the Rusty Moose Tavern on her left. She slowed, switching on her turn signal. This time, she pulled the Jeep into a parking space in front of the tavern, turned off the engine, and sat with her hands on the steering wheel as she peered up through the windshield at the wooden building’s dark brown facade and its weather-beaten sign, which swayed gently in the wind.

  “Well, Candy,” she said to herself, “are you going to do this or not?”

  She knew the answer. She was going to do it — whether she wanted to or not.

  With a determined expression on her face, she tugged on the door handle, climbed out of the Jeep, and locked the doors, leaving her purse on the floor in front of the passenger seat. She didn’t expect to be staying long, and she didn’t plan on buying anything inside.

  She just had to put the last piece of the puzzle into place.

  She’d expected the joint to be busy, but at this time of day, in the early afternoon, the tavern was sparsely populated. A few stalwart denizens clung precariously to their bar stools. Rosie, the waitress, gave her a bored wave.

  Most of the tables and booths were empty. But as Candy suspected, she saw one patron seated in his favorite spot.

  Captain Mike occupied the back booth, sitting alone, nursing a half-full mug of beer.

  He was reading a battered old copy of a mystery novel by John D. MacDonald, squinting at it in the dim barroom light. As she approached the booth he looked up, his eyes glinting. “Ah, here you are. I was wondering if I’d see you today.”

  Candy slid into the booth opposite him, giving him a guarded smile. “Hi, Captain Mike. You were expecting me?”

  He responded with his subtle maritimer’s shrug. “I had an inkling. You are, after all, a detective.”

  She tilted her head and appraised him. “People keep telling me that.”

  “Probably because it’s true.” Captain Mike folded down a corner of the paperback novel, slapped it closed, and slid it off to one side. “You proved that last night. That was a mighty brave thing you did, facing down that criminal like you did.”

  “There was nothing brave about it,” Candy confessed. “I almost got myself killed — again. And Bob Bridges too. If you and your friends hadn’t showed up when you did... well, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here today. I owe you my life, Captain Mike — which makes the reason for my visit here today much more difficult.”

  “Ahh. And why would that be?” he asked, taking a sip of his beer and squinting at her over the rim of the mug.

  “Well, there are a few small things I still haven’t been able to figure out.”

  “I see. Like what?”

  Candy shifted in her seat. “Like who moved Mr. Sedley’s body, for instance.”

  Captain Mike studied her. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “Well, parts of it don’t make sense, do they? You see, according to the police, Mr. Sedley didn’t die in the basement. He was killed somewhere else in the house, and his body was moved to the basement. So how did it get there? Did Charlotte move the body? Perhaps — but she wasn’t a big woman. In fact, she was fairly petite. Could she have moved it by herself? Possibly. Possibly not.”

  Mike shrugged. “He couldn’t have weighed that much. She could have dragged him down there.”

  Candy nodded in agreement. “She could have. But there weren’t any marks on the floor, anything to indicate the body had been dragged down the stairs or from room to room. It just doesn’t seem likely to me.”

  “So you think she had help moving the body?”

  Candy evaded the question. “Then there’s the issue of the tarp.”

  “The tarp?”

  “The one Mr. Sedley’s body was wrapped in,” Candy clarified. “According to the police, it didn’t belong to Wilma Mae. It must have been brought there by someone else — presumably the murderer. I noticed an almost identical tarp in Bob Bridges’s maintenance shed out at the lighthouse yesterday. At first I thought he was the one who had killed Mr. Sedley and wrapped up the body in a similar tarp he had stashed in the back of his truck — or something like that. But that doesn’t make sense either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, Bob didn’t kill Mr. Sedley, did he?”

  “Maybe they were working together. Maybe Bob didn’t do the actual killing. Maybe he just helped Charlotte move the body.”

  Candy shook her head. “I thought about that. But I was with Bob yesterday, in the shed and up in the tower. I looked into his eyes. I just don’t believe he was involved with anything like that.” Candy paused, leaned forward, and said in a voice barely above a whisper, “So do you want to tell me what really happened that day at Wilma Mae’s house?”

  “Me?” Much to her surprise, Captain Mike laughed. “What makes you think I had anything to do with it?” He quickly drained the rest of his beer mug and signale
d to Rosie for another. Almost as an afterthought, he flicked a finger toward Candy. “You want one too?”

  “No thanks. Anyway, it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “What does?”

  “Well, you, to be honest. You’re the most likely candidate. You volunteer at the museum, so you knew everyone out there, including Mr. Sedley.”

  “We worked different days,” Captain Mike informed her.

  “Okay, but you knew Charlotte pretty well, right? You two seemed to get along okay. You’ve probably been in Bob’s maintenance shed a few times. You had access to the tarps. And you’re a pretty big, strong guy — certainly capable of moving a body.”

  He looked her hard in the eye, and she looked right back at him.

  “I’ve been all through it, Captain Mike, backward and forward,” Candy said after a few moments. “And the way I see it, there are only two people who could have taken that tarp to the house and helped Charlotte move the body. Robbie’s one. Obviously he’s been in the maintenance shed before. He could have grabbed a tarp and taken it over to Wilma Mae’s house. And he certainly had the motivation. But I just don’t think he could have done something like that. He’s a sweet kid, although he’s got a bit of a gambling problem. But I don’t think he has it in him. On the other hand — ”

  “On the other hand,” Captain Mike finished for her, “you think I do?”

  Candy waited.

  Captain Mike considered her logic. “There’s someone else, you know. Roger Sykes could have helped her out. We know he was behind the whole thing, and we know he killed Charlotte.”

  “That’s true,” Candy agreed, “and you’re right — he could have. But he didn’t. Last night, when he was talking about framing Bob for the murders, he tossed a roll of fishing line at us. He was planting evidence in the shed. But Roger never mentioned the tarp. A similar one was sitting right there in the shed, in the back corner, but he didn’t even look at it. It was another piece of crucial evidence he could have used to frame Bob. But he didn’t. Why not? I think it’s because he didn’t know about the tarp — or at least he didn’t know it came from Bob’s maintenance shed.”

  “So that leaves me.”

  “That leaves you,” Candy confirmed. “So, I repeat my question — do you want to tell me what really happened?”

  Rosie arrived with the mug, which she set down before Captain Mike. “Enjoy it,” she told him.

  “Like it was my last one,” he replied with a wide grin. He raised the mug toward the waitress and then toward Candy, as if in salute, and took a long swig as Rosie walked off. He waited until she was back behind the counter, out of earshot, before he spoke again. “It was an accident, you know.”

  “Excuse me?” Candy said, not understanding.

  “Old Man Sedley’s death. It was an accident, pure and simple. At least, that’s what Charlotte said.”

  Candy nodded sagely. “How did it happen?”

  “Well, Sedley surprised her, you see. She couldn’t get Bob or Robbie to steal the recipe for her, so she decided to do it herself. And, of course, she botched it up — let someone see her entering the building. She had on that stupid disguise, which she thought would let her snoop around unnoticed. But Sedley caught her all right, he sure did. He must have recognized her or something, because he backed up too fast and hit his head on the banister. He went down hard, or so Charlotte said. She tried to help him up, but he thought she was attacking him. Things got out of hand — and he fell down the stairs. Broke his neck. Probably died instantly.”

  “And that’s when she called you,” Candy said.

  Captain Mike nodded. “She did.”

  “And you agreed to help her.”

  “I did. I’d borrowed one of Bob’s tarps the day before. I just took it out of the shed — never even had a chance to tell Bob I took it from him, so he wouldn’t have known. I’d planned to return it right away, but I never got the chance. When Charlotte called, well, she was pretty frantic. All worried about going to jail for the rest of her life. She begged me to help her.”

  “So you went over to the house.”

  Mike let out a brief sigh. “I did. I wanted to call the police. It was an accident, I told her. They’d understand. But she refused to let me. She said we had to hide the body.”

  “So you grabbed the tarp from your truck.”

  “I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” Captain Mike admitted. “I wanted to take the body out of the house, put it in the truck, and dump it somewhere in the woods behind Sedley’s place. Make it look like an accident. No one would have ever known what’d really happened to him. But Charlotte almost went to pieces on me. It took all our efforts just to get the body down to the basement.” He paused, and looked over at her. “She offered to pay me. She talked about a lot of money. But I told her no.”

  “Why?” Candy asked, tilting her head in surprise.

  He looked down at the table. “Well... I’d rather not say.”

  Suddenly, seeing the look in his eyes, Candy knew. “You cared for her, didn’t you?”

  He still wouldn’t look up at her. “Yup. Yup, maybe I did.”

  Candy sat back and was silent. After a few moments, she said, “Can I ask you another question?”

  Captain Mike chuckled. He finally looked up. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Well, last night. You knew I was digging around town, trying to find out what happened to Charlotte and Mr. Sedley. So why give me those clues yesterday like you did? And why help me last night? You knew I might figure out what really happened. And yet, you and your friends saved us — me and Bob.”

  “We did.”

  “Why?”

  Captain Mike eyed her again. “Well, that’s what we do in this town, Miss Holliday. We help each other out when we’re in trouble. You would have done the same thing for me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course,” Candy said, and she meant it.

  “ ’Course you would. You’re a Caper. It’s what we do around here. That’s one reason I helped Charlotte. She needed my help. I couldn’t say no to her.”

  Candy smiled. “Thanks,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For calling me a Caper.”

  He smiled too. “Well, you are, aren’t you? Might as well admit it. And I’ve read your column, you know. Yup, I’ve read it. And, well, it’s pretty damn good.”

  “Thanks, Captain Mike.”

  “Anytime, Candy.”

  “So.” She leaned forward again and crossed her arms on the table. “One last question.”

  He grinned. “Last one? Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “What happens now?”

  Captain Mike’s expression turned serious again. “I was afraid you were gonna ask me something like that. But, of course, you’re right, ain’t ya? We gotta do something about this, don’t we?”

  “We do.”

  “And I suppose you have a suggestion?”

  “I do. We have to go to the police and tell them exactly what happened.”

  “Do we now?”

  “We do.”

  “I have another suggestion,” Captain Mike said.

  “And what might that be?”

  “Well, you see,” and he pointed out the front door with a steady finger, “I have a boat moored right out there at that dock. And I’m thinking about taking her out right about now.”

  Candy thought about that for a moment. “Where would you go?”

  “Oh” — he waved a hand in a general eastward direction — “out that way somewhere.”

  “When do you think you’ll be back?” Candy asked.

  Captain Mike took a long swig of beer, smacked his lips, and shook his head. “I don’t really know.”

  Candy looked toward the tavern’s wall, and beyond it, as if she could see right through it, all the way past the buildings and the trees and the rocks, and out over the coastline to the sea beyond. “It looks
like it’s pretty rough out there today.”

  “I know,” Captain Mike said with a satisfied look on his face, “and that’s just the way I like it.”

  Forty-Three

  Four days later, on Saturday afternoon, Candy and Maggie sat at an outside table on a second-floor deck overlooking the busy wharves of the city of Portland and the Fore River beyond. They were at a popular chowder house, sipping strawberry margaritas and enjoying the unseasonably warm day. Most of the tables around them were filled with chattering guests, and Candy could hear music playing somewhere nearby. From where she sat, she could see, out on the river, an amphibious duck boat chugging upstream, giving sightseers an aquatic view of the city.

  “This is nice,” Maggie said, tilting her face back to catch the sun’s rays. “I’m glad we decided to do this.”

  “Me too,” Candy agreed.

  “Too bad Wilma Mae can’t be here to enjoy it with us.”

  “Yes, it is. But I think she’ll be happy. It’s probably for the best.”

  “True, true. Still, I’m going to miss her. She’s a sweet old lady. And we were becoming such good friends. Although she kept beating me at pinochle. I think she cheated.”

  Candy laughed. “Wilma Mae didn’t cheat.”

  “Sure she did. I think she kept a few cards stuffed up her sleeves — or maybe down her blouse.”

  They both laughed at the disjointed image of prim and proper Wilma Mae Wendell cheating at cards.

  They’d dropped Wilma Mae off at the Portland Jetport earlier in the day. The elderly woman was flying out to California to move in with her sister. A change in scenery was just the thing she needed, she’d decided a couple of days ago, right after Mr. Sedley’s funeral on Thursday morning. Wilma Mae’s sister had invited her out for a permanent visit. She’d even booked a cruise, just for the two of them. They were headed up the Pacific coast to Alaska on a fourteen-day seafaring adventure the following week, and Wilma Mae was greatly looking forward to it.