Slowly she straightened, sliding the bottom drawer closed as she rose. No luck.
She stood quietly for a moment, still clutching the cell phone in her left hand. She looked down at it, thinking. Maybe she should just give Maggie a call and get herself out of here in time for dinner. Maybe she was trying too hard to solve this mystery. Maybe it would be best to bow out now, before things got worse, and let the police do their job.
Maybe.
But she felt she was so close. Wilma Mae had felt it too. I think it’s right under your nose, the elderly woman had said.
Right under my nose . . .
Again, Candy looked down. Nothing there but a cement floor. She looked left and right, along the floor on either side, her eyes shifting all the way to the walls.
Something in the far corner caught her eye.
It looked familiar.
Squinting, she took a few steps toward it, never taking her eyes off it.
It was a blue tarpaulin, just like the one Mr. Sedley had been wrapped in.
She took a few more steps toward it, crouching down as she reached out to touch it with her hand, testing its texture and thickness.
It seemed like the exact same material. In fact, it was exactly the same type of tarp.
Could this be where the first one came from—the one used to wrap up Mr. Sedley’s body?
Quickly she straightened. Her gaze shifted.
There, on the workbench nearby, she saw something else she hadn’t noticed before.
Fishing line.
The panic surged through her again. Here was the evidence she’d been looking for. Here were the clues to Mr. Sedley’s murder—and Charlotte’s.
And she was locked in!
It was time to get out.
She found Maggie’s phone number again and texted five words to her: Need help at the lighthouse. Then she flipped the phone closed, slipped it into her pocket, and looked around.
She could sure use a crowbar.
Her eyes scanned the workbenches and shelves, searching for the right tool. She finally spotted it hanging from a pegboard above the workbench. She started toward it, her gaze focused on it and on the tools hanging around it: awl, block plane, bow saw, caulking gun, crowbar . . .
Candy shook her head again in disbelief. Bob had alphabetized his tools.
The only problem was, since it came early in the alphabet, the crowbar had been hung at the top of the pegboard, out of her reach. She wondered idly how Bob, who was not a tall man, managed to get to it. He probably just climbed up on something like she’d have to, she guessed. She looked around, then bent down and noticed a wooden stool tucked underneath the workbench.
Candy pulled it out, tested it for sturdiness, and gingerly stepped up on it, reaching toward the crowbar. But it was still beyond her grasp, so she stepped right up onto the workbench itself. To steady herself, she held on to one of the side shelves as she reached toward the pegboard . . . and froze.
As she had taken hold of the shelf, she’d glanced to her left. Something thin and long, with a battered gray and red cover, had caught her eye.
It couldn’t be.
She looked down. Positioned neatly on one of the higher shelves was a black wire tray, containing a stack of neatly arranged papers. And sitting right on top of the stack of papers was an old ledger with a gray and red cover.
Right under your nose . . .
Candy felt a chill go through her.
Somehow, Wilma Mae had been right.
Hesitantly, as if in slow motion, she reached out for the ledger, half-afraid it would suddenly disappear before she could touch it. Her fingers stretched out toward it as the fog outside parted, allowing a stray beam of the late afternoon sun to stream in through the window, illuminating the shed’s interior in a beatific glow.
She closed her fingers on it, thumb on top, the rest of them on the back of the ledger, and lifted it toward her. Still standing on the workbench, feet slightly apart so she could maintain her balance, she held the ledger up and delicately opened the cover.
The Journal of James Edward Sedley, read the first line at the top of the first page. The words were written in a neat, ornate script. And underneath that, on subsequent lines, he’d written in an equally neat yet slightly less ornamented hand, Begun at Kettle Cove in Maine, on the northern coast of Saco Bay, within sight of Richmond Island and Piney Point, on this 25th day of January, in the Year of our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Forty-Six, on the cusp of a great adventure.
Candy let out a quick breath. She felt her eyes begin to water.
She’d finally found what she’d been looking for all this time.
It was Mr. Sedley’s ledger, hidden away here in Bob Bridges’s maintenance shed.
She looked up in sudden shock. Her heart thumped again in her chest, more powerfully than before. She felt her blood turn cold. She teetered unsteadily, almost tumbling from the workbench.
Someone was at the door. She could hear the padlock rattling outside. The click of the key in the lock sounded as clearly as if it’d been positioned just inches from her ear. She heard the lock slipping away from the metal door handles, heard the hinges creak as the doors were pulled open. “Who left the lights on in here?” a voice muttered as a dark figure strode into the shed.
Candy gasped.
Bob Bridges stopped in his tracks, his head swiveling toward her.
A look of complete confusion clouded his face for a few moments as he studied her, trying to figure out what he was looking at. His gaze shifted briefly to the ledger, which she still held in her hand, and then upward again as their eyes locked.
A scowl came to his face. “What are you doing in here?”
Candy couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak.
She’d been caught red-handed!
THIRTY-SEVEN
Bob Bridges took a few steps toward her, his face flush, his eyes hardened and accusing. “You shouldn’t be in here. What do you think you’re doing up there?” He leveled a finger at her. “Get down from there right now,” he said angrily.
Candy instinctively jumped and let out a yelp, but she had no intention of doing as he asked. “Stay away from me, Bob,” she said, holding out one hand toward him. Her heart thumped in her chest as she twisted her head back and forth, searching desperately for an escape. But there was only one way out—the shed’s double doors.
And right now, Bob Bridges stood between her and freedom.
As he came toward her another few steps, she moved away from him, along the top of the workbench to her left, slipping sideways like a crab, toward a back corner of the shed. She kept her eyes on Bob, not on her footing. As she moved, she knocked over a neat stack of illustrated workbooks and nearly tripped. One of the books slid off the workbench onto the floor, landing with a slam.
Bob gave her a distressed look. “Hey, don’t mess anything up!”
“Just stay away!” she yelled back at him with all the force she could muster. “Don’t come any closer. I know what you’ve been up to.”
He gave her a quizzical look. “Now what the hell does that mean?”
“You know exactly what it means.” Candy glanced back over her shoulders, looking for a weapon. She’d reached an area of the long workbench where he kept woodworking tools. She spotted a variety of blue-handled chisels, arranged according to size, hanging on the pegboard against the wall. She grabbed the longest one and brandished it like a knife. “Just back away and no one will get hurt!”
Bob stopped dead in his tracks. He held up two hands. “Hey, hey, calm down.”
Candy looked around frantically. Her gaze settled on the double doors again. If I could just get there before he does . . .
Bob had shifted his position, shadowing her as she moved along the bench toward the back of the shed. There might be a chance, she thought, if I can just slip past him.
Moving quickly before she had a chance to reconsider, she ran back along the top of the workbench towa
rd the other end. But about halfway along she sprang off, holding the ledger tightly against her chest with one hand and the chisel in the other. She angled her jump in the direction of the door, hoping it would cut her travel time to the outside. But she landed awkwardly, since she couldn’t use her hands to balance herself properly, and it took her a few moments to recover her footing.
By the time she’d regained her balance, the compact physique of Bob Bridges was blocking her path.
And he didn’t look like he was about to let her pass.
Candy pulled to a stop, her feet slipping slightly underneath her. She scrambled backwards, holding out the woodworking tool. “Just stay where you are. Remember, I have a chisel and I know how to use it.”
“I know you got a damn chisel in your hands. I can see the thing pretty clearly from here,” Bob growled, flicking his gaze from the weapon to her face and back again. “Don’t you go hurting anyone with that thing now, especially yourself. I just sharpened it the other day.”
“Well . . . that’s good then. At least you know what you’ll get if you take another step.”
Bob’s head tilted oddly, as a dog might if it heard a high-pitched sound. “Hell, I don’t know what’s got into you,” he said in a mystified tone. “You’ve been coming around here the last few days, snooping around and causing trouble, and now you’re breaking into the facilities, stealing things, and threatening me with my own damned chisel. What the heck do you want?”
“I just want to get out of here,” Candy said. She retreated a few more steps, until the workbench poked her in the back.
“Well, okay,” Bob said. “Just take it easy now. No one’s gonna hurt you.”
Candy wasn’t fooled. “Yeah, I bet that’s what you told the others, huh, Bob?”
Again, he gave her a strange look. “Others? What are you talking about?”
“I saw the tarpaulin. Or at least one exactly like it. And the fishing line. I know all about those.”
“About what?” His gaze shifted to the neatly folded tarp in the back corner, giving Candy the chance she needed to try for the door again. She scooted to her left, then her right, and dashed forward, headed around him, moving as quickly as she could. But he moved quickly too, shuffling across the floor, blocking the exit again. “Hey, you’re not getting away yet.”
She yelped again and retreated. “Stay back, Bob.”
“Look, I’m not playing games.”
“Neither am I. Let me go,” she said warily, watching him in case he charged her.
“Okay, you can go,” he said, “but you can’t take that with you.” He indicated the ledger, which she still held tightly against her. “That belongs to the museum. You’ll have to leave it here.”
“Leave it here?” Candy nearly shouted the words as anger mixed with the fear and panic inside her. “It’s not yours. You stole it!”
At this accusation, he looked more annoyed than anything else. “Quit goofing around and put it back.”
Candy clutched the ledger tighter to her chest. “I’m not goofing around. And I’m not giving it back. It doesn’t belong to you.”
“Of course it belongs to me.” Bob sounded irritated now. “You found it in my shed, didn’t you?”
“That’s right. I found it in your shed, Bob. What are you doing with it?”
“Oh hell, I don’t know.” He squinted at the object. But he couldn’t see its cover clearly, since she still held it tightly in her arm. “What the hell is it, anyway? It looks like some sort of book or something.”
“You know perfectly well what it is. It’s the ledger, Bob. The one written by Mr. Sedley.”
“Sedley?” At the mention of the name, Bob’s brow fell dramatically.
“That’s right. He gave it to Wilma Mae Wendell for safekeeping, but you stole it from her, didn’t you?”
Bob finally seemed to understand what was going on. His face went pale. “It’s Old Man Sedley’s?” he asked after a moment, as if the realization had only just hit him. He shifted his gaze to the ledger, studying it. Suddenly he straightened and walked forward, holding out his hand. “Here, let me have a look at that.”
Candy darted off to one side again, out of his reach. “Just stay back.”
“Look here now,” he said, planting his feet and putting his hands on his hips. “I’ve had just about enough of this. Maybe you should tell me what’s going on, so we both know.”
Something in his tone made the fear, panic, and anger inside Candy suddenly dissipate. She still stood warily in a combative stance, and she still held the blue-handled chisel out in front of her. But she was looking more closely at Bob now. She was starting to realize that something was not as it seemed. “You mean you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“About the ledger.” For some reason she couldn’t explain, she held it out in front of her, so he could see its cover. “This ledger. It was stolen from Wilma Mae’s house last week. You took it, didn’t you, and hid it up there on that shelf.” She pointed.
“No, I didn’t,” he retorted.
“But I found it there.”
“Well, I don’t remember putting it up there.”
“Don’t remember?” Candy was flabbergasted. “How could you not remember something like this? You obviously take really good care of things around here, Bob. You even arranged the tools alphabetically.”
“And by category and size,” Bob put in.
“Right, by category and size,” Candy repeated, though she hadn’t noticed that. “So how come you don’t remember putting this ledger up on that shelf?”
Bob’s confusion grew. He tilted his head again and scratched thoughtfully at his chin. “Well, now, that’s a darn good question.”
Now Candy was confused. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, you’re right. I know everything that’s in this shed. I know exactly where I put things. I even have a map that shows where I’ve placed every item, and a complete inventory of all the museum’s equipment. But I don’t remember ever putting a ledger up on that shelf. And I certainly don’t remember stealing it from Wilma Mae’s house.”
He paused, his face shifting, becoming more thoughtful. “But I think I know who did.” He held out a hand. “May I see it?” He paused. “Please?”
Candy held it tightly a few more moments, uncertain of what to do. But something in his tone made her trust him. He seemed more curious now than threatening. “Just remember,” she said, “I have a chisel.”
“I remember.” He still held out his hand.
Hesitantly, she extended her arm and gave him the ledger.
He took it carefully, drew it closer, and examined its cover. “If this is what I think it is . . .”
He opened to the first page and read the inscription. Grunting softly, he flipped back through a few pages. “It is Old Man Sedley’s, isn’t it?” He shook his head, deep in thought. “I can’t believe she actually did it.”
Candy knew instantly who he was talking about. “Charlotte! She took it, didn’t she?”
He looked up at her. “You know about that?”
Candy nodded. “I’ve heard things about Charlotte, yes. But honestly I don’t know what to believe. Or who to believe. So why don’t you tell me. What’s going on here, Bob?”
Suddenly he seemed very weary. He closed the cover of the ledger, looked over at his desk, and crossed to it. He flopped down heavily in the office chair, set the ledger on the desktop, and rubbed at his forehead with thick fingers. “I never should’ve got myself mixed up with her in the first place.”
“You were helping her, weren’t you? That’s why you stole the ledger for her?”
“Stole it?” Bob shook his head, his eyes hard again. “I keep telling you, but you’re not listening. I didn’t steal it.” He paused, and his face drew down into a long mask of regret. “But she wanted me to.”
“She did?” Candy took a few steps toward him. “She asked you to steal it?”
; “More than that,” Bob said. “We made a deal.”
“What kind of a deal?”
When he hesitated, she spoke again, coaxing him. “Two people are dead. You need to tell me everything you know. Then we need to go to the police.”
He placed his hands on his knees and sighed. “Well, I guess you’re right. It’s just . . .” He paused again. “Well, there are other people involved.”
“Like who?”
At that question, Bob suddenly looked ill. “Like my son Robbie.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“It’s that boy that got us into this,” Bob said, a pained expression on his face. “And those damned poker games of his.”
“Poker?” Candy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Is that what this is all about?”
“Yeah. That’s part of it at least. But there’s a lot more.”
“So why don’t you tell me all about it.”
He waved a hand at her. “I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it. Things have been moving so fast I haven’t been able to keep track of it all myself—and now, with Old Man Sedley gone, and Charlotte too, well, the whole thing has heated up to the boiling point, hasn’t it?”
“It sure has. So, did you have anything to do with either of their deaths?” Candy asked point-blank, crossing her arms.
“Me? ’Course not. Well, not directly, I guess.”
“But you were involved?”
Bob gave her a piercing gaze. “Not in the way you’re suggesting.”
“Then what about the tarp in your shed?” Candy pointed toward the corner. “It’s just like the one Mr. Sedley was wrapped up in after he was killed. And what about that fishing line on your workbench over there? Charlotte was strangled with fishing line, you know.”
Bob looked horrified. “She was?” He shook his head. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“What about it, Bob? If you didn’t kill them, who did?”
Town In a Lobster Stew Page 27