Town in a Pumpkin Bash (14 page)

So Candy explained it all from the beginning, how she’d seen the file labeled
Emma
on the front seat of Sebastian’s car, and how she’d remembered a similarly labeled
folder in Sapphire Vine’s old files, and how she’d found the old black-and-white photo
of Emma’s gravestone and the photocopy of the index card from the Pruitt Library,
with the notation about the missing volume of Pruitt history. And how Sapphire Vine
had allegedly stolen a diary written by Abigail Pruitt from Pruitt Manor.

When she finished, Maggie looked at her, impressed. “You found all that out all by
yourself in just a few hours?”

“I’ve been busy,” Candy admitted, “and I even had time for lunch at Pruitt Manor.”

“Oh, really? I’m so jealous.”

“We had salad with sunflower seeds and grapes, and after that, broiled lamb chops
with this wonderful rosemary-mint sauce.”

“I love lamb chops,” Maggie said.

“And we had those little roasted potatoes, and some lovely sprigs of asparagus.”

“You’re starting to make me hungry. Don’t rub it in.”

Candy was silent for a moment, then added quietly, “Pumpkin pie for dessert.”

“With whipped cream on top?”

“Homemade,” Candy confirmed.

“Hmm.” Maggie sighed. “Maybe someday I’ll get a chance to go out there again with
you. So…why don’t we start at the top of the house and work our way down? And remind
me again how this works…we’re looking for
two
missing books?”

Sapphire’s secret lair at the top of the house turned up nothing interesting, since
they’d already gone through everything up there years ago, when they’d first discovered
it. The closets on the second floor held a few dusty boxes of knickknacks and books,
but none were the missing volumes they sought—neither the Pruitt history nor Abigail’s
missing leather-bound diary.

As they worked, Candy thought back over everything she’d learned today, searching
in her mind for clues and connections. She realized, once she’d thought about it,
that she’d forgotten to ask Mrs. Pruitt about the missing volume of history, which
supposedly had disappeared from the public library, prompting the return of the rest
of the collection to Pruitt Manor’s private library at the request of
Mrs. A.P
.—obviously Abigail Pruitt.

Also, Candy realized, she had neglected to ask Mrs. Pruitt if she’d ever heard of
someone named Emma.

I’ll have to go back and follow-up,
she thought, running a series of additional questions through her head.

But she realized a few moments later that most of those questions might be moot if
one or both of the books she sought turned up right here at Sapphire’s house.

Did she get a per diem for an hour’s worth of work?

However, after searching for a couple of hours, they found nothing resembling either
the history volume or the diary.

Only when they were back down in the kitchen, taking a break, did Candy dash out to
the Jeep and grab her tote bag from the front passenger seat, where she’d left it.
Once she was back in the kitchen, brushing raindrops from her honey-colored hair,
she plopped the tote on the table and pulled out the photocopy of the index card.
Maggie had switched on the overhead light but it wasn’t very bright, and Candy squinted
as she studied the black-and-white image.

After a few moments, she threw up her hands. “Well, darn,” she said.

“What?” Maggie had put a kettle of hot water on the old gas stove and scrounged up
a few mugs in the cupboard, as well as a couple of tea bags. The tea would help warm
them against the chilling house.

“I got this completely mixed up,” Candy said, sounding frustrated. “There’s no way
Sapphire could have stolen the volume of Pruitt history from the library.”

“Why not?”

Candy held up the photocopy. “It went missing in the early seventies. Sapphire didn’t
show up in town until the late nineties. So she couldn’t have taken it.”

“What’s that mean? Are we back to square one?”

Candy turned toward the rear window to think, let out a breath—and nearly jumped out
of her skin, yelping at the top of her lungs.

Maggie screamed as well, and dropped the tea kettle she was just lifting off the stove.
It clanked noisily back down onto the burner. “What! What!”

“Did you see that?”

“See what?” Maggie spun around frantically.

“That! I just saw a face in the window!”

“A what?”

Candy was out of her chair, scooting back so she’d be closer to Maggie. “A face! I
just saw someone’s face in the window!”

“Whose face was it?” Maggie asked, turning toward the back window.

“I don’t know,” Candy said, shivering with sudden fright, “but it looked like…a skeleton!”

At that moment a heavy gust of wind tossed itself at Sapphire Vine’s old house, rattling
the shutters and knocking tree limbs against its south side, and the few lights they’d
turned on flickered once, twice, and went out. In fright, both of them screaming in
terror, they threw themselves into each other’s arms.

Henry “Doc” Holliday had a good laugh at that—the first in some time, as it happened.

Doc had been out in the fields behind the farmhouse at Blueberry Acres all day, mowing.
It was an annual fall ritual, initiated by the region’s Native Americans long before
the first European settlers arrived, and followed by wild blueberry farmers ever since.
Wild blueberries were low-bush plants, and left unpruned, their yield would decrease
each year, until they reached an unproductive low point. But cutting the plants down
to near ground level every other year caused them to send out new, stronger stems,
which produced more blueberries per stem, increasing overall yield.

There were two ways to prune the wild blueberries—to simply mow the fields, which
reddened in the autumn, looking like seas of fire, or to mow and burn them—literally
putting them to fire. Using a tractor attachment called a flail mower, and working
over the past couple of weeks, Doc and
Candy had pruned down some of the berry bushes to about one-half inch from ground
level, which was adequate. Those areas of the fields would now lay dormant for a year
as the plants responded to the pruning by generating new underground rootstocks, called
rhizomes, which in turn produced new shoots and stems. Because it took a full year
and more for the plants to regenerate, wild blueberry farmers pruned only half their
crop each year.

The flail mower method was quick and efficient, but they could use it only in areas
that were relatively flat and rock-free. In rocky areas or through rougher terrain,
they used another attachment called a bushhog, a large rotary mower pulled behind
the tractor. But because it was higher off the ground, it couldn’t prune the bushes
down to the required height. So the areas they’d mowed with the bushhog would have
to be burned in the coming weeks. They’d start as soon as all the mowing was finished
and burn through November and into December, until either they were finished or the
first snow came.

Doc had been far out in the back field with the bushhog since midmorning, mowing until
the oncoming rain drove him indoors. He’d spent another hour fiddling around in the
barn and talking to the chickens until, dusty and hungry, he’d finally wandered into
the house and checked the messages on his cell phone after he’d grabbed a cold one
from the fridge.

He frowned right away. There were seven messages waiting for him, all from his “posse”—his
close-knit group of buddies, including William “Bumpy” Brigham, Artie Groves, and
Finn Woodbury. Finn had a secret source inside the Cape Willington Police Department,
and usually had the inside scoop when something dirty went down in town.

There were four messages from Finn alone.
They’ve fingerprinted Maggie,
the most recent one read.

Doc hightailed it out of there without even looking at the rest. He headed straight
for the diner, calling Candy on the
way over. “Where are you?” he asked gruffly. “What’s going on?”

“You mean you haven’t heard?”

“No. What the hell’s happened this time?”

At that point, he heard someone talking in the background and recognized the voice.
“Is Maggie there?” he asked, sounding increasingly concerned. “Where are you?”

More background talking. Finally Candy said into the phone, “We’re at Sapphire Vine’s
old place, and we’ve just had the scare of our lives.”

“You need help? Want me to come over there?” Doc tried not to sound too worried, but
in truth he
was
worried. He had all the regular worries for a man approaching his late sixties—health,
money, health, his daughter, health, the farm—and, of course, his health.

But other than health issues, his daughter had been in his thoughts a lot lately.
Candy had been living with him out at Blueberry Acres for more than four years now,
and he loved every minute of having her there. She was more help, and better company,
than he’d ever hoped for when he’d bought the place. He had planned on running the
farm himself postretirement, but he had to admit, it had proved to be more work than
he’d expected, and the place had gotten out of his control fairly quickly. If Candy
hadn’t come along…

But she did, and they’d lived and worked well together over the past few years. However,
in time, her presence at the farm had given rise to new concerns for Doc—most prominently,
what the future held for the both of them.

He knew he wasn’t getting any younger, and he didn’t know how much longer he could
continue to work the farm, even with Candy’s help. But he worried more about Candy
herself—that she wasn’t moving on with her life, that she’d become too dependent on
him as a friend and companion, that her love life seemed stagnant….

Today, however, he’d been focused on something more
immediate. Candy’s fortieth birthday was just a few days away, and as always, Doc
wasn’t as prepared as he’d hoped to be. He’d wanted to throw her a big party, but
Doc wasn’t the party-planning type. That had always been the forte of his wife, Holly.
She’d been a master at it. So despite his best intentions, he hadn’t taken the time
or effort required to pull it together, and now it was almost too late.

So out in the barn that afternoon, after pondering it all day, he’d decided to contact
his buddy Finn and see if he could help pull something together. Finn was pretty good
at organizing that sort of thing, and the other boys would pitch in and help, Doc
knew. Working together, maybe the four of them could put something memorable together
in a short amount of time.

So he’d headed inside the house with this plan on his mind, intent on giving Finn
a call, only to find the seven messages waiting for him.

And he’d immediately started worrying that it was all happening again—that his daughter
was once again being drawn into some dark mystery in town, one that would put her
life in danger.

“No, Dad, we’re okay,” Candy said over the phone. “We’ve just lost the electricity.
We’re getting out of here fast.”

“Meet me at the diner in ten minutes,” he instructed her, anxious to find out what
was happening around town.

But once they’d entered the warm, familiar buzz of Duffy’s Main Street Diner, settling
into the cozy corner booth that had been the posse’s home on weekday mornings for
years, sandwiched in between folks they knew and loved, all their concerns had eased
somewhat.

Still, Doc listened, grim-faced, as his daughter, accompanied by input from Maggie,
with additional commentary courtesy of Finn, Artie, and Bumpy, told him the news of
the day. He shook his head in disbelief when he heard the story of the unearthing
of Sebastian’s body, right there in the middle of the pumpkin patch, and what had
followed.

When they’d finished, he looked over at Maggie. “And your fingerprints?”

She explained that as well.

He was about to ask Candy another question when his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize
the number on the readout screen, but it was a local call. When he found out who it
was, he stepped away from the table so he could talk in private in a quieter location,
back along the hallway leading to the bathrooms in the rear.

It was Tristan Pruitt calling him.

A few minutes later, his spirits lifted measurably, Doc returned to the table, which
was when Candy told him about the skeleton face in the window—which had prompted him
to throw back his head and laugh, caught up in the moment.

But when he looked around the table, they were all staring at him like he was an idiot.