Town In a Lobster Stew
Page 30
Despite the threatening day, Candy had the Jeep’s windows rolled all the way down, with a Fleetwood Mac song playing on the radio and her elbow hanging out the window. She loved the feeling of the wind in her face, bringing with it all the promise of summer, and she loved the freedom of being out and about today, with the sky, clouds, buildings, and landscape painting continual new images for her to enjoy.
She felt just a little guilty, though, like a kid playing hooky from school. She usually worked at the Black Forest Bakery on Tuesday mornings, and she knew Herr Georg probably needed her help, especially today. The summer tourist season had arrived, though the weather wasn’t quite cooperating yet, and she imagined the bakery was swamped with locals and vacationers clamoring for his pastries, muffins, cakes, candies, and other assorted goodies. It was a great time of year for Herr Georg, as it was for all the shopkeepers and proprietors along Main Street and Ocean Avenue, who saw their profits jump with the season. Everyone in town knew the value of this influx of revenue and pitched in wherever possible to help meet the demands of the town’s burgeoning population.
Maggie had certainly done her part. “Tell you what,” she’d told Candy over the phone late last night. “I’ll go in and work for you tomorrow.”
“You’re offering to work at the Black Forest Bakery for me?”
“Sure, what’s wrong with that?”
“I just want to make sure I heard you right. It’s the Tuesday morning after a holiday weekend, you know—and the first weekday of the first week of the tourist season. You’re aware of all that, right?”
“Well, yeah, I suppose. What’s your point?”
“The patrons will descend on you like a pack of zombies,” Candy said, greatly amused. “They’ll be totally out of control.”
“Really? They’re that bad?”
“You have no idea. They’ll try to eat you alive.”
Maggie blew a breath of air out between her lips. “Hey, you’ve never seen me at Macy’s on the day after Thanksgiving, have you? No zombie can compare to a woman clamoring for a cocktail dress on sale. They won’t bother me.”
Candy laughed. “You’re sure about this?”
“Absolutely!”
“You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into—but thanks,” Candy said, genuinely grateful. “You don’t know how much that would mean to me.”
“You deserve a day off,” Maggie told her. “After all, you worked all weekend, for both the newspaper and as a detective. You’ve got articles due to Ben. And you had to fight off a killer last night—without me, I might add! So it’s the least I can do. Besides, it’ll be fun. Maybe I’ll take Wilma Mae with me. She can help work the counter.”
“You know, that’s not a bad idea. Actually, I think you two will work great together. I’ll call Herr Georg and let him know you’re coming.”
The German baker had been gracious, as always, and concerned about Candy’s well-being, given her harrowing encounter with Roger Sykes at the lighthouse.
Ben had been equally concerned, and then some. He had called her shortly after the police arrived at the tower. Apparently the news about Roger had gotten back to him fast.
“I just can’t believe this,” he had told her, completely devastated. “Roger, of all people. I’ve known him for years. I never imagined anything like this could happen. I just don’t know what to say—except I’m glad you’re okay. You are okay, right?”
For the most part, she’d told him, yes, she was okay. A little traumatized, a little bit in shock, still shaking, but generally okay.
But that had been last night. Today the shocks and the shakes were gone, and the intrusive memories of the night before were beginning to lose their sharpness, fading into something a little less terrifying. Despite her looming deadlines, she’d worked in the garden all morning, getting dirt on her knees and under her fingernails, which had helped. So had the trip to Hatch’s Garden Center after lunch, where she’d picked up a few bags of manure, a couple bales of hay, some chicken feed, a jar of fresh blueberry honey, and a few plants, all of which she piled in the back of the Jeep.
She’d been driving in circles around the Loop ever since, unable to head home yet.
She needed to take care of some unfinished business.
As Candy gazed out over the rooftops of Pruitt Manor, she wondered idly how Helen Ross Pruitt was doing, and if the family matriarch would show up in Cape this coming week to open up the mansion. And she wondered what Mrs. Pruitt would think about everything that had happened in town over the past week, and what she’d think if she knew it all had started more than sixty years ago with a single bottle of ketchup, improperly handled. And that Mrs. Pruitt’s own father, Cornelius, had used that bottle to set in motion a string of events that had led to the deaths of two people and the arrest of a murderer.
For Roger Sykes was indeed under lock and key. He’d still been sitting up on the watch deck, his back against the tower wall, clutching his arm, when the police found him. He’d been wounded in the shoulder—serious but not critical—and he’d lost some blood. But he’d live to stand trial.
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.
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 signaled 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 nodde
d 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.”