NINE
Candy was still shaking as she headed back to the parking lot. Her encounter with Wanda had not gone well, and she blamed herself for it. She’d walked right into the hornet’s nest Maggie had warned her about and got stung. She should have been more cautious. Next time, she vowed, she wouldn’t let herself get sideswiped like that.
Wanda was a forceful person, no doubt about that. And Candy took her threats seriously—at least some of them. But she also wondered what motivated Wanda. Did she have such a deep need to feel accepted around town that she was willing to do anything she could to gain recognition—and threaten those who failed to buy into her carefully cultivated reputation as a wonderful human being, when in truth she was anything but?
It was a question Candy didn’t have an answer for.
One thing was certain—Wanda, at least for now, was the key suspect in the theft of Wilma Mae’s lobster stew recipe, especially given her research of John Patrick Mulroy. But Candy had been unable to determine if Wanda had actually stolen the recipe—not that she hadn’t tried.
After Wanda’s initial threats, Candy had attempted to cool things off by steering the conversation back to more neutral ground. She was intrigued by Wanda’s research and wanted to find out what she knew about Mulroy and his tendency to build secret hiding places into the homes he designed. She also wanted to ask a few questions about Wanda’s brother, the carpenter. Was he the one who had worked on Wilma Mae’s shelving unit in the upstairs bedroom? That could be a critical piece of the puzzle.
But Wanda had been frustratingly uncooperative. She sat back in her chair, crossed her arms, and glared at Candy, refusing to say anything about her research or anything else relating to the historical society. “You won’t get any information out of me,” she’d said. “If you want to know something, you’ll have to find out yourself.”
Candy remained as polite as possible, asking about the architects who had designed some of the historical houses in town. In response, Wanda handed her a few brochures that explained the upcoming summer programs, but she was of no more help.
Candy had been tempted to ask Wanda about her visits to Wilma Mae’s house. And she wanted to ask about Wanda’s involvement with the cook-off itself. But in the end, she thought she should leave well enough alone. So she had finally shaken her head and left.
Downstairs, Charlotte had disappeared, and Captain Mike was engrossed in a mystery novel, so Candy headed out of the building without another word to anyone.
As she started up the path toward the parking lot, she felt a strange itching on the back of her neck, as if someone were watching her. She turned quickly, eyes searching, but saw nothing suspicious, no one lurking behind her. Off to the right of the Keeper’s Quarters stood a maintenance shed, and inside she saw a large, burly man with sandy-colored hair, wearing a dark green shirt and jeans, fiddling with the engine of an industrial-size lawn mower. Her gaze shifted. She spotted a few tourists lingering around the tower, but they all seemed preoccupied, staring up at the lighthouse or out toward the deep blue sea.
She looked up next, at the windows on the second floor of the Keeper’s Quarters, and thought she saw a white curtain swaying, as if someone had pulled it aside and had just let it fall back into place. But she saw nothing beyond the curtain other than dusty shadows.
Is Wanda watching me? Or Charlotte?
And if so, why? Do they have something to hide?
As she’d discovered last summer, there were plenty of people around Cape Willington with secrets they desperately wanted to keep hidden.
What kinds of secrets are hidden inside the lighthouse museum? she wondered. Or up in the historical society’s archives?
Deep in thought, she walked the rest of the way to the Jeep. Despite her clash with Wanda—or perhaps because of it—she sensed she was on the right track. The fact that Wanda was digging around the archives, researching John Patrick Mulroy and the homes he built, was an important discovery, she knew, and could indicate a definite link between Wanda and the missing recipe.
I actually might be onto something, she thought as she reached the Jeep and pulled the keys from her purse.
Before she climbed into the front seat, she pulled out her cell phone and keyed down through the list of calls she had recently received. When she found Wilma Mae’s number, she pushed the call button.
The elderly woman picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Hi, Wilma Mae, it’s Candy Holliday.”
“Oh, hello Candy dear. I didn’t expect your call so quickly. Have you found my recipe?”
“No, not yet. But I’m working on it. And I have a quick question for you. When I was at your place this morning, you mentioned you had some work done on the shelving unit in the upstairs bedroom. You said you brought in a carpenter to do some repairs to the unit. Do you remember the carpenter’s name?”
“Well, let me think. It was a local fellow, I can tell you that. A tall man. Fairly young. Good with his hands. But I’m embarrassed to say his name escapes me at the moment. Isn’t that funny? And we were just talking about him.”
“Do you have any records or receipts with his name on them? It would certainly help with the case.”
“Well, yes, there might be something like that. My Milton took very good care of all the paperwork, you know. He was wonderful at that sort of thing. Very neat and tidy.”
“That’s nice to hear, Mrs. Wendell. Could you look around and see if you could find something like that? With his name on it?”
“Of course. I’ll look today. I’ll call you right away if I find something.”
As she keyed the off button, Candy looked out toward the ocean. Maybe she should stop by Wilma Mae’s house again in the morning and help her look. But Candy quickly nixed the idea. She was scheduled to work with Herr Georg at the Black Forest Bakery for a few hours in the morning, and in the afternoon she had to run some errands before getting ready for her date with Ben.
It seemed she’d just have to wait until she heard back from Wilma Mae.
She had just pulled onto Ocean Avenue when she saw the police cars parked halfway up the street. Several of them had their lights flashing. A crowd had gathered on the street, the onlookers milling about, talking to each other, trying to figure out what was going on.
Candy approached cautiously, searching for a parking spot, until an officer of the Cape Willington Police Department waved her on.
“What’s going on?” Candy called out her rolled-down window as she drove past.
“Just keep moving, ma’am. We have to keep this area clear.”
As she passed by the commotion at a crawl, she noticed most of the attention seemed to be focused on the Stone & Milbury office. Through the front windows, Candy could see several officers inside.
She also could see Maggie talking frantically to one of the policemen, her arms waving dramatically in the air.
“Oh my heavens,” Candy said to herself as the car behind her honked its horn and the officer waved again for her to drive on past. She glanced up at her rearview mirror, giving the driver behind her a dirty look. “Okay, I’m going, I’m going.”
There were no open parking spots along Ocean Avenue, but she found one once she turned onto Main Street, across from Duffy’s Main Street Diner. She scooted into the spot, slapped the gearshift into park, pulled heavily on the emergency brake, and unlocked her seat belt, then jumped out of the Jeep, pulling her purse with her. She ran along the sidewalk on Main Street, turned left at the corner, and headed down Ocean Avenue to see if Maggie needed her help.
Halfway down the street, several officers were trying to keep the crowd back, but Candy flashed her business card. “I’m with the Cape Crier! I’m a reporter!” she told one of the officers. A moment later she realized she knew him. “Officer Martin. It’s me, Candy Holliday. You have to let me in there.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “Can’t right now, Candy, unless you have business inside.”
“My friend’s in there! Maggie! You know her!” she added frantically, pointing at Stone & Milbury’s window front. “She . . . she needs her medicine. She asked me to bring it to her.” To prove her point, she started digging into her purse. “I’ve got it right here somewhere. She really needs it.”
Officer Martin studied her for a few more moments before skeptically waving her through. “All right. But make it quick. And try not to get in the way.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you so much!” She patted him on the shoulder as she raced past and through the office’s front door.
Inside, it was strangely quiet, compared to the noisy activity on the street. Three men in dark suits stood to one side, talking softly to each other. A few employees meandered around, shocked looks on their faces. “Where’s Maggie?” Candy asked. “Is she hurt? What’s going on?”
An older male employee, wearing a white shirt and a tie, pointed to one of the interior offices. “She’s in there. She’s pretty upset.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Candy asked again, but she didn’t wait for an answer. She dashed into the office.
Maggie was sitting in an office chair, sobbing. Another man in a dark suit was sitting beside her, talking quietly to her.
Candy crossed the room. “Maggie, are you okay?”
Her best friend looked up. Her eyes were watery, and her mascara had run. She sat with her head and shoulders slumped forward, and her arms and legs folded together, as if she were a schoolkid waiting to see the principal. “Oh, Candy,” she said, her voice quavering.
“Maggie.” Candy knelt in front of her and took one of her hands. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Did something happen?”
Maggie wiped at her tears and nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Are you okay?”
Maggie shook her head and started crying again.
“For heaven’s sake, tell me what’s going on.”
Maggie blubbered, her lips trembling, but finally she got the words out. “Oh, it’s . . . it’s Mr. Milbury,” she said as she looked over at the man in the suit seated next to her.
The man gave her a questioning look. After a moment, he nodded. “All right. I’ll let you two alone for a couple of minutes. But I need your statement, Mrs. Tremont. I’ll be right over here when you’re ready to talk.” He rose and walked out of the room.
Candy dropped into his vacated seat. “Maggie, tell me what’s going on. Are you in trouble?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie wailed, the tears flowing again.
“Why, what’s happened? Please tell me.”
It took Maggie a few moments, but finally she was able to get the words out. “It’s . . . it’s Mr. Milbury,” she repeated. “They say . . . they say he was embezzling from the company. They say he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
She paused as another deep sob swept through her, and her shoulders shuddered.
“They say . . . they say they’re going to close the company down. Oh, Candy,” she blubbered as the tears started flowing again, “I’m out of a job!”
TEN
Henry “Doc” Holliday snapped the morning edition of the Bangor Daily News and expertly folded it back on itself, so he could continue reading the front-page story, which ran over to the inside.
“It’s a mess, all right,” he said with a shake of his head. “It looks like old Milbury was pocketing all the money paid to his company by individuals and companies for their insurance premiums.” He paused, his eyes running down the columns of copy in the paper. “In some cases he even issued fake policies. It’s actually a pretty clever scheme. That’s how he bought himself that boat, I guess. And made that addition to his house. And paid for all those vacations to Africa and the South Pacific.” He paused again, still reading. “They’re saying it’s a federal crime.”
“Dad, that’s terrible.” Candy stood by the stove, waiting for the last batch of pies to finish baking. She’d been up since six that morning, making pies for Melody’s Café, as she’d been doing for the better part of a year, to make extra money. So far today she’d baked four—two cherry and two pecan. In a few months, when the crops started ripening in late summer, and the trees grew heavy with fruit in the fall, she’d switch to making fresh blueberry and apple pies.
“Looks like the state and federal attorney general offices are all over it,” Doc continued, his nose still buried in the paper. “Apparently, though, it was a local postal inspector who figured out what was going on.”
Candy shook her head in amazement. “How did he ever think he’d get away with it?”
Doc folded the paper back together, tossed it on the table, and took a sip of his coffee. He was looking a little better lately, Candy thought absently as she glanced at him. His face wasn’t so thin anymore, and his eyes seemed brighter than last summer. He’d been more active lately too. He even appeared to walk with a bit of a bounce in his step on some days, his limp almost completely disappearing.
It’s the spring . . . warmer weather, Candy thought, watching him. It lifts the spirits of everyone in town.
Well . . . just about everyone.
“That’s the thing about criminals,” Doc said, leaning back in his chair and interlocking his hands behind his head, as if he were some great pontificate offering sage wisdom for the masses. “They always think about the benefits but never the consequences. Milbury’s been living high on the hog for a lot of years. Now he’s got to pay for it. He’ll go to jail for a long time.”
“And what happens to Maggie?” Candy asked, genuinely worried.
Doc shrugged. “She’ll just have to look around for another job, I guess.”
Candy grabbed a couple of pot holders and opened the oven door. “It couldn’t come at a worse time for her. Amanda graduates in a couple of weeks, property taxes are due next month, and Ed . . . well, she’s having a rough time with Ed too. I’m worried about her, Dad.”
“Yeah, I know, me too,” Doc said with a sigh. “But we’ve all got our burdens to bear. At least she doesn’t have to worry about mummy berry destroying her crops and whether the bees will disappear overnight.” He rose and looked out the kitchen window at the blueberry fields behind the house. “It’s getting tough for all of us, pumpkin. There’s a lot to worry about these days.”
“You got that right,” Candy said as she started placing the pies on cooling racks she had set out on the counter. “But we’re making it okay, Dad, aren’t we?”
He shrugged. “For now. But this gentleman-farmer thing is a bit tougher than I originally anticipated—especially at my advanced age. It’s starting to wear me out.”
“What do you mean? I thought you loved the healthy lifestyle—being outdoors and all that.”
“Yeah, I do,” Doc admitted, “but I’m not getting any younger. We both know we can’t go on like this forever. Sooner or later we’ll have to move on.”
“Dad, I wish you’d stop talking like that.”
“No, I mean it,” Doc said firmly. “I’ve been thinking maybe I should retire to a condo somewhere in Florida, something like that, start taking it easy.”
Candy laughed. “Yeah, right. I can picture you down there in Florida, drinking cocktails with little umbrellas in them and playing shuffleboard with all the old geezers.”
She closed the oven door with a knee and tossed the pot holders on the counter. “You’d go stir-crazy down there and you know it. Besides, you love this place, don’t you? It’s what you always wanted. You’d miss it if you sold it, wouldn’t you?”
Doc turned toward her. “Sure I’d miss it. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep up with it.”
“Well, you’ve got help, don’t you?”
Doc gave her a fatherly look. “Of course I do, pumpkin, and you’ve been doing all you can around here. But you’ve also been kinda busy these days, what with the newspaper job and the pies and the bakery and everything else you’ve got going on. You’ve got a life of your own to live. You’ve got things to do. You
don’t want to be stuck on this farm forever, do you?”
He gave her a serious look. “Do you?”
“Dad.” Candy let out a breath and put her hands on her hips. “We’ve had this conversation before, remember? Several times, in fact. You know how I feel about this place, and this town. I’m not going anywhere—at least not for a while. So we’ll just have to do the best we can. We got a good start with the vegetable gardens, and we’ll finish them up next week. And the fields are in pretty good shape. If we need more help, maybe we should hire someone.”
“Hire someone? Like who? And how would we pay for it?”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying. We have options. So if you’re worrying about the farm, we’ll talk about it and see what we can figure out. We’ll be fine. You’ll see. But right now,” she said, picking up her purse and car keys, which had been sitting on the kitchen table, “I have to go. I’ll be at the bakery ’til noon, then I gotta swing back by the house and pick up the pies so I can drop them off at Melody’s. After that, I’m going to stop by Maggie’s to check on her. And then I have to get ready for my date with Ben tonight.”
“How’s that going?” Doc asked as she headed for the door.
She paused halfway out. “With Ben? It’s going fine, Dad. Are you playing poker with the boys tonight?”
That made Doc brighten. “Sure am. Looking forward to it. Robbie’s sitting in with us again. That’s always fun.”
“The teenager?”
“He’s college age,” Doc corrected, “and he knows what he’s doing. He’s been playing in some high-stakes games up near Bangor but says he’s trying to hone his skills, so he sits in on our game with us old guys to see if he can pick up anything. And we’ve probably taught him a thing or two.”
Town In a Lobster Stew Page 8