Town In a Lobster Stew

by B. B. Haywood

  “With you?”

  “Sure! I’ve got plenty of room, and I’m not busy right now. Amanda’s away camping with Cameron and the Zimmermans, and Ed’s—well, Ed’s gone, isn’t he? The house has been kind of lonely lately. It wouldn’t be so bad to have someone around for a few days. And I think it’d be good for Wilma Mae too. I can help keep her mind off things. We’ll drink a few cups of tea, or maybe a few glasses of wine. Watch some TV. Make some popcorn. You know, normal stuff.”

  Candy nodded her approval. “That might be just the thing she needs.”

  She turned at the sound of footsteps again. Chief Daryl Durr walked out onto the porch.

  He nodded at Maggie. “She’s asking for you,” he said.

  Maggie put her hands on her knees and rose. “Guess I should get back. I’ll help her pack,” she said to the two of them. To Chief Durr, she added, “I’m going to take her home with me for a few days.”

  “That’s a good idea. Thanks.”

  He waited until Maggie had disappeared into the house, then dropped down beside Candy, sitting next to her on the porch steps. “So,” he began slowly, staring out toward the fading sun, “how come every time there’s a murder in this town, you seem to be stuck right in the middle of it?”

  Candy didn’t answer. She couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious, so she thought it best not to say anything.

  He leaned back, turning his head to eye her, squinting slightly as he did so. “So you want to tell me what happened?”

  He waited patiently, his gaze focused on the trees over the rooftops, while Candy explained how Wilma Mae had fainted at the cook-off, and how Maggie had driven the elderly woman back to her home, and about the call from Maggie, and how she and Maggie had found the body in the basement. She stuck to the facts but left out details about the missing recipe and her suspicions about Wanda Boyle.

  When she was done, Chief Durr turned his appraising gaze back toward her. “Sounds good so far. Anything else you’d like to tell me?”

  Candy looked at him, giving him her best uncomprehending look. “Like what?”

  He sighed. “Why do I have this strange suspicion you know more than you’re telling me—again?”

  Candy gulped, but she kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t ready to say anything else—not yet, anyway.

  Daryl Durr swiped at the knees of his sharply pressed khaki trousers, as if brushing away a layer of dust, and rose to his feet. He stepped down off the steps onto the pathway and turned to look her in the eye. “I would like to remind you, Ms. Holliday, that any information you have must be shared with us. Withholding information of any kind is a serious crime.”

  Candy brushed absently at her hair and squinted back at him. “What makes you think I’m withholding information?”

  “I’m not making any insinuations. I’m just letting you know.”

  “I called the station yesterday afternoon,” Candy said, surprised to hear an edge of anger in her voice. “I told the person I talked to that Mr. Sedley was missing. I did my best to notify you and your staff yesterday that something was wrong. Oliver LaForce said he called you too.”

  Chief Durr seemed taken aback by that bit of information. “The innkeeper?”

  “He said he called the station this morning.”

  The police chief thought about that a moment. “I don’t seem to remember hearing anything about that, but I’ll check on it when I get back to the station. Now, again, just to make my point clear. We’re the town police. You’re not. When you first suspected the body might be in the house, that’s when you should have called us.”

  “I was going to, but I had to check it out first. I was just being thorough.”

  The chief nodded his head. “I understand that, Ms. Holliday. And fortunately, we think we were able to get what we needed from the scene. The crime lab van from Augusta will be here shortly, and they’ll follow up. But by disturbing the body like you did, you could have destroyed crucial evidence. You need to learn to leave the detecting to the detectives. Amateur sleuthing is frowned upon in this town. Besides, I thought you learned your lesson after the last time something like this happened. You could have gotten both yourself and your friend killed. Next time, call us first.”

  Feeling he had made himself perfectly clear, he nodded sharply and started up the steps, heading back into the house.

  But as he passed her, Candy looked up at him. “Next time?”

  The chief stopped and stared down at her for a moment. He gave her a pained smile, not completely unlike something she’d see from Doc. “Somehow I get the impression you’re not going to listen to me and that this won’t be the last time you and I meet like this. Isn’t that right, Ms. Holliday?”

  Candy batted her eyes and smiled sweetly at him. “Why, Chief Durr, I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

  NINETEEN

  Whoever stole the lobster stew recipe must have murdered Mr. Sedley.

  Candy couldn’t get that thought out of her head. It was the one crucial point she kept coming back to, when everything else that had happened over the past few days still seemed fuzzy. There was so much she couldn’t figure out—and most of it had to do with Wanda.

  Had she really cooked the stew with the cinnamon in it, as the list on Robbie’s clipboard seemed to indicate? And if she had, did that mean she’d also stolen the recipe from Wilma Mae’s house?

  Did it mean—and this was the point that kept sticking in Candy’s mind—Wanda murdered Mr. Sedley?

  Or did the black X on Robbie’s clipboard indicate the list was not to be believed? In which case, maybe Wanda hadn’t stolen the recipe. Maybe she hadn’t made the cinnamon-flavored lobster stew.

  And maybe she hadn’t murdered Mr. Sedley.

  Candy knew that was why she’d kept certain bits of information to herself yesterday when she talked to Chief Durr on the front porch steps of Wilma Mae’s house. She worried about it afterwards, wondering if she’d done the right thing. But after thinking it through, she was convinced she had. She didn’t have a firm enough grasp on all the facts yet, and she didn’t want to go around incriminating folks in town—even Wanda Boyle—if she didn’t know the truth herself.

  Whoever stole the lobster stew recipe must have murdered Mr. Sedley.

  But who had it been? That was the most confusing part. Candy could think of a bunch of people who might have wanted that recipe, starting with the eleven cook-off contestants. Certainly someone like Burt Ramsay would have coveted the recipe for his business. The same could be said for Melody Barnes. And what about Juanita? Candy recalled Wilma Mae telling her that, years ago, Mr. Duffy, who ran the diner back then, had offered to buy the recipe from Mr. Sedley. Juanita had worked at the diner for years. Could she be mixed up in the recipe’s theft?

  But it didn’t make any sense. The cinnamon-flavored recipe had been at the top of Candy’s list, but not Roger’s. Juanita had won with a different recipe.

  Whoever stole the lobster stew recipe must have murdered Mr. Sedley.

  No matter how hard she tried, Candy couldn’t get that thought out of her head.

  It was Sunday morning, and Candy was working in the vegetable garden with Doc, planting carrots, cucumber, pumpkin, squash, and sunflower seeds, and putting in green pepper and tomato plants she’d bought at Hatch’s Garden Center and Farm Stand a few miles up the Coastal Loop. After the wet spring, the soil in the garden was moist and rich underneath and slightly dry on top. They’d been putting compost, straw, and even grass clippings on the garden patches for years to build up the nutrients. The dirt dug easily with a shovel now, airy and as dark as used coffee grinds—which Candy admitted she also occasionally threw on the garden, though she knew they worked better if she tossed them into the composter along with eggshells, potato skins, and other kitchen detritus.

  They got most of the seeds and all of the plants in before they decided to take a break late in the morning. Doc’s leg was acting up again, and he was comp
laining about his back as well. He wore a white cotton shirt, opened several buttons at the neck, and beat-up khaki pants he used only for gardening and working in the fields—and occasionally for running to the hardware store. They were torn at the knees and threadbare in the rear, and the shirt was as thin as onion skin at the elbows, but he refused to toss the old clothes out. “They’ve still got plenty of good years in them,” he told her when she pointed out his sartorial shortcomings.

  He also wore a floppy Australian-style hat, aviator-style sunglasses, and his scuffed Timberland boots, which he’d had for as long as she could remember. Add a pipe, Candy thought, and he might have looked like some nineteenth-century explorer or an archaeologist overseeing a dig in Egypt.

  As she watched him work, she wondered, not for the first time, if he ever thought of getting married again. He seemed comfortable enough with the bachelor life, but she detected moments of loneliness in him, when he thought she wasn’t watching him and let his guard down. Whenever she asked him about it, he would just wave his hand, give her an indulgent smile, and tell her not to worry about him.

  “But I do worry about you, Dad,” she would say.

  “And I worry about you too, pumpkin,” he’d reply. “But for the most part, we’re both doing okay, right? So what else is there to worry about?”

  And, strangely enough, when he put it like that, she had trouble arguing with him. Ten years ago, she’d never envisioned herself here, living with her father on a blueberry farm in Downeast Maine, and she couldn’t say it was exactly where she’d hoped to be at this stage of her life, at her age. But she also couldn’t say it bothered her too much. She had, she knew, learned to simply accept it. Life was what it was, she’d decided one day. The harder you pushed against it, the harder it pushed back. So all you could do was learn to live with it, make the best you could of it, and try to be happy.

  Until something happened that shook your life in a way you’d never expected.

  That had happened to her several times before. Now it was happening again.

  Whoever stole the lobster stew recipe must have murdered Mr. Sedley.

  She went inside around noon, showered, and changed. It was her third hot shower since discovering Mr. Sedley’s body the previous day. Most of the smell was gone from her hair and body, but it still seemed to linger in her nostrils and on her fingertips. She had hoped the garden dirt would erase some of that smell, and it had. The remnants were faint now, but the images still lurked in her mind.

  Doc had had the TV on that morning when she awoke, and news of the murder was being reported on all the local channels. But she did her best to ignore watching it. Sensing her distress, Doc had flicked off the TV as they drank their coffee before heading outside.

  Now, feeling fresh and strangely cleansed by the earth, she called Maggie to see how Wilma Mae was doing and then settled herself in a chair on the front porch with the sun in her face, her notebooks within easy reach, and her laptop balanced on her knees. It was time to write.

  She’d planned to work on her column and an article for the paper, but half an hour later she found herself staring at a blank screen, wondering where her mind had gone.

  She’d been thinking about the body in the basement again. And the missing recipe. And the secret drawer in the front bedroom. And the cook-off, and the contestants. And Judicious’s odd comment: Just remember to keep a close eye on everything that happens today. And the sheet of paper with the X through it. And the booths she hadn’t visited, where the answers she sought might have been found.

  Whoever stole—and made—the lobster stew recipe must have murdered Mr. Sedley.

  Candy’s thoughts returned again to the cook-off contestants, for they were the most likely suspects in Mr. Sedley’s murder. Who could have done it? she wondered. Wanda? Quite possibly. Burt Ramsay? Again, possibly yes. But who else?

  As Candy thought about it, she realized there were some contestants she could eliminate. Melody Barnes for one—Candy had been at her booth and knew the woman well. She had no real motive for stealing the recipe, as far as Candy could tell. She had come in third in the competition using her grandmother’s recipe. So why would she need Mr. Sedley’s? Plus, Melody had used tomatoes in her stew, which had been absent from the cinnamon-flavored one.

  And she thought she could probably eliminate Bumpy Brigham. Bumpy, Candy decided, just didn’t have murder in him. Besides, she knew his secret stew ingredients. He had told her. So she could tick him off the list.

  Who else?

  Tillie Shaw? Doubtful. The woman didn’t seem to have a mean bone in her. Anita Weller? Delilah Daggerstone? Charlotte Depew? Lyra Graveton? Walter Gruthers?

  Juanita Perez?

  Candy shook her head. None of them seemed like murderers to her. Mr. Sedley was just a kindly old gentleman. She found it difficult to imagine any of them doing to him what she’d witnessed in the basement.

  How had he wound up down there, rolled up in the tarpaulin like that? she wondered. Who put him there?

  Again, she asked herself, Who?

  She kept coming back to two names: Wanda Boyle and Burt Ramsay.

  She had walked by Burt’s booth yesterday morning at the cook-off. Had she seen a bottle of cinnamon among his supplies? She couldn’t remember—she hadn’t looked that closely.

  If only she had had the time to visit Wanda’s booth and taste her stew. That would’ve given her the answers she needed.

  Doc passed right by her, whistling and blocking the sun for an instant as he headed toward the barn, and on the spur of the moment she asked him, “Dad, how many stews did you sample yesterday at the cook-off?”

  “Huh? Stews?” He stopped, looking at her with a slight grin, and thought about it for a moment. “Four, maybe five. Why?”

  “Which ones? Which were your favorites?”

  “Well, let’s see. I tried Bumpy’s, of course, which wasn’t too bad. I walked over and had some of Melody’s. And Burt Ramsay’s . . .”

  “What did you think of his stew?” she cut in.

  “It was okay—a pretty typical lobster stew. About what I expected. Kind of a thick, almost gritty texture. Why?”

  “Did you taste any cinnamon in it?”

  Doc gave her a funny look. “Cinnamon?”

  She waited.

  His grin twitched as he considered the question. “I don’t know. I can’t say it jumped out at me. Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  He sharpened his gaze on her. “Are you on the case?”

  Candy shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve been politely warned off by Chief Durr.”

  “And it’s a good thing,” Doc said, his voice suddenly turning stern. “These aren’t games being played out there, pumpkin. People are getting themselves killed. Look what happened last summer with you and Maggie up on that widow’s walk. These are dangerous times. It’s best to just walk away and leave the investigations to the police.”

  Candy made a face at him. “You sound like Chief Durr.”

  “Well, I guess we think alike. We’re just trying to keep you out of trouble.”

  “Trouble,” Candy insisted as her cell phone rang, “seems to keep finding me.”

  She glanced at the name on the phone’s readout, then flipped it open. “Hi, Ben.”

  “Hello, Candy. I just called to see how you’re doing. I heard what happened yesterday. That must have been quite a shock for you.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty awful. But I’m glad we found him when we did. The poor old guy.”

  “You got that right. It’s a real shame. Do they know what happened to him yet?”

  “If they do, they haven’t told me.”

  “Look,” Ben said, and she could almost hear him leaning forward, as he did sometimes when he was moving to a more intense topic of conversation. He was probably also rubbing his forehead in a thoughtful way. “You have some connections over at the police department, right?”

  “Connections?” Candy ha
d to think about that. “You mean Finn?”

  “Yeah. He knows someone inside, right?”

  “I guess so—at least, that’s what he’s said.”

  “Do you think you could give him a call, see if you can find out what’s going on with this murder?”

  Candy was surprised. “Me?”

  “Well, sure. On behalf of the newspaper, I mean.”

  She sat up straighter in her chair. “But, Ben, I’m not a news reporter. I’m the community correspondent.”

  “You’ve just been promoted,” Ben told her. “I’m putting you in charge of this story.”

  “You’re putting me in charge?” she said in disbelief.

  “Sure, you’re the best person to write this story. Think about it, Candy. You’re already inside—you’ve been talking to Wilma Mae, and you discovered the body. You’ve practically got a front-row seat for this whole deal.”

  He actually sounded excited about this idea, she realized, as she felt her heart suddenly tighten in her chest.

  “I think you’re ready for something meatier than the typical community story,” he told her.

  “Meatier?”

  “Candy,” Ben said, his voice controlled yet burgeoning, “people have won Pulitzers for this type of reporting.”

  “Pulitzers?” The word came out as a sort of croak. Candy had momentarily lost her voice.

  “This could be big. And it’s fallen right into your lap.”

  “But . . . but I’m not a crime reporter,” Candy repeated, finding her voice again. “I don’t know . . . the jargon or the writing style or how any of those crime things work. I certainly don’t know all the people over at the police station.”

  “You know the chief, right? You’ve talked to some of the officers. Besides, there’s not a lot of heavy lifting involved. You make a few phone calls, talk to the chief, maybe interview a few people. Who knows what you’ll come across.”

  Candy blinked several times.

  “Think about it,” Ben coaxed.

  So Candy thought about it. She wanted to hate the idea. She wanted to hate the idea that he wanted her to do it. And she wanted to hate the fact that, right now, it sounded like he wanted a story a lot more than he wanted her.