Town in a Pumpkin Bash (22 page)

“A Bentley?” Mrs. Pruitt stiffened her back noticeably. “
Our
Bentley?”

“Who else owns a Bentley around here?” Tristan asked pointedly.

Several moments passed in which no one spoke. Mrs. Pruitt suddenly looked very frail.
She carefully considered the ramifications of this latest, possibly incriminating
piece of evidence before she finally responded in a barely perceptible voice. “You
don’t suspect
me
? Or”—she gasped as her eyes widened—“
Hobbins
?”

“We don’t suspect anyone,” Tristan said easily. He’d risen and crossed to the fireplace,
where he began to lay out a bed of kindling with practiced hands, snapping twigs and
branches to the proper size, then arranging them on the grate as he went. “Candy has
simply unearthed some intriguing information that seems to indicate our family’s implication—perhaps
in some small way, perhaps in a larger manner—in a twenty-year-old mystery, which
is in a roundabout way linked to some of the more recent murders in town.”

“So why are you here,” Mrs. Pruitt demanded of her nephew, “searching through these
histories?”

He shrugged. “We’re simply trying to discover who might have been in residence here
at Pruitt Manor during that time period.”

“When was this again?” Mrs. Pruitt asked, her head swiveling back toward Candy.

“Twenty years ago, at around this time of year,” Candy said, then added, “That would
have been in the fall of 1992.”

Mrs. Pruitt nodded and pursed her thin, pale lips as she thought. “Mother had passed
away by then,” she confirmed. “Of course, if it was around Halloween, other members
of the family might have been in residence. But I can’t imagine anyone would…certainly
Hobbins wouldn’t…” She broke off, her expression falling into confusion.

“Let’s not get dramatic just yet,” Tristan said evenly. “We’re just trying to figure
it out.”

Gently, Candy asked, “How long has Hobbins worked here at Pruitt Manor?”

Mrs. Pruitt frowned and looked affronted. “How would I know such a thing?”

“Well, you’d have to think back,” Tristan said helpfully, coaxing his aunt along.
“Was Hobbins working here when Abigail was still alive? Or did he start after she’d
passed on?”

Mrs. Pruitt thought about that for quite a while. Finally she spoke softly and hesitantly,
as if under interrogation. “His father—Hobbins Senior, we came to call him—was hired
by my father, Cornelius. He devoted his life to our family and worked for us for decades,
although his health worsened considerably toward the end of his life. I can’t recall
exactly when Hobbins the son took over his father’s responsibilities—possibly around
the same time Mother fell ill. At the end of her life, she would have relied increasingly
on the son…Gerald,” she confirmed. “Of course, we never called him by his first name
when he was professionally engaged at the manor. He was always just Hobbins, like
his father.”

“And that was long after you’d left the house, of course, to attend college, marry,
and start your own family,” Tristan said.

“Of course.”

“So Abigail died in, what, 1987? So we can accurately guess that the younger Hobbins
has been working here for, what, twenty-five or thirty years, something like that?”

“Something like that,” Mrs. Pruitt agreed. “I don’t keep track of those types of things.”
She turned back toward Candy. “Do you really think he could have had something to
do with this…other death?” the elderly woman asked directly.

“It’s possible,” Candy replied. “That’s why I’m here.” She hesitated, considering
her next words carefully. “There is one other thing: Tristan told me about a locked
drawer in Abigail’s writing desk.” He had mentioned it to her at dinner, when he’d
been describing some of Abigail’s eccentricities.

Mrs. Pruitt stiffened perceptibly at the remark but, true to her breeding, responded
in a controlled manner, although she shot a questioning look at her nephew. “So you’ve
learned of that as well?”

“It all could be connected,” Tristan interjected. “I’ve said so for years. You have
your suspicions as well. You might as well come clean and tell Candy the whole story.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Mrs. Pruitt said firmly, folding her hands in her lap.
“It has nothing to do with whatever else is going on in town, I’m sure of it. My mother’s
writing desk is an antique. It’s been in the family for generations, and it’s quite
valuable. And yes, a small document drawer containing, we believe, some of Mother’s
most personal items has remained locked since her death. We haven’t been able to open
it for fear of damaging it.”

“Because we’ve never found the key,” Tristan pointed out.

“It wasn’t among Mother’s belongings or keepsakes,” Mrs. Pruitt confirmed with a nod
of her head, “or in any of the safe-deposit boxes, or any other secure place we can
think of to look.”

“So there’s a locked drawer, and a missing key as well,” Candy said thoughtfully,
biting her lip. “This just keeps getting more and more confusing. But there has to
be some
link between all of these items—the drawer, the key, the diary, the missing volume
of history, and the tombstone. Find one,” she said, her gaze drifting to the shelf
that held Abigail Pruitt’s diaries, “and the rest might just fall right into our laps.”

Tristan lit a fire and, as it caught and began to warm the room, they freshened their
tea and talked about the mysteries swirling around them. Candy settled briefly into
a stiff-backed chair near Mrs. Pruitt but felt too restless to sit for long, so she
finally rose and walked back to the shelves, where she closely examined several volumes
of Pruitt history. They had finely tooled leather covers, thick linen paper, and lines
upon lines of small black text that would take days, if not weeks, to read through.
She delicately flipped through several volumes but her mind wasn’t focusing on the
words before her.

Instead, she was thinking about the missing history volume—the one Sapphire had been
looking for. What had happened to it? Had it simply been lost—misplaced by some innocent
library patron? Or, like Abigail Pruitt’s missing diary, had it been purposely taken
by someone? If so, for what purpose? And could the dates encompassed by the volume—the
1940s—have any significance?

The index card she’d pulled out from the lower shelf was simply a placeholder, containing
no information, other than an alert that the volume was missing from the series. So
she replaced it and stepped back, studying the collection as an entirety.

What’s the link,
she wondered,
between all these seemingly unconnected pieces of information?
What was the thread that wove through them?

But even as she asked herself the question, one name stood out from the others in
her mind.

Emma…

Could she have taken the volume from the library all those years ago? How old would
she have been then? How old had she been when she died? Candy had no way of knowing,
since the dates of Emma’s birth and death weren’t displayed on her tombstone.

But why not?

Who
was
this ghost person, buried somewhere in an unidentified graveyard?

Emma was at the center of this mystery, Candy felt.
Find Emma’s grave,
she thought,
and you find the answers to everything else
.

But where was Emma buried?

Candy resolved to continue her search the following day.

She might even have to enlist Wanda Boyle’s help.

As their conversation wound down, Tristan rose and told Candy he’d drive her back
home. But before she left Pruitt Manor, Mrs. Pruitt insisted on showing her Abigail
Pruitt’s bedroom. “It just might help you in your investigation,” the elderly woman
told her.

So with Mrs. Pruitt leading the way, and Tristan bringing up the rear, Candy climbed
the main staircase to the manor’s second floor.

“Mother chose a small bedroom for herself in the Lavender Wing,” Mrs. Pruitt said,
pointing left as they reached the top of the stairs. “She slept there most nights
as we
children were growing up. But her primary bedroom was next to Father’s in the South
Wing.” She pointed to her right and gathered her robe about her. “This way.”

The upper hallway was carpeted and dark, lit only by a single table lamp set into
an alcove halfway along. They passed by several closed doors before Mrs. Pruitt opened
the last one on the left. She pointed to a final door at the end of the hall. “Father’s
room is there, overlooking the sea. Mother usually slept in here.”

Mrs. Pruitt entered the dark room and flicked on a light. “We’ve preserved it almost
exactly as it was when my mother was alive,” she told Candy. “We’ve moved a few of
her belongings into the attic for safekeeping, since there are times we do use this
room when my granddaughters are visiting—we allow them to stay in here on special
occasions—and of course I have a few of Mother’s most personal items in my own bedroom,
but many of her other belongings are still here.”

The place was tastefully decorated in muted shades of rose and gray, which had faded
over the years. A large window, framed by heavy burgundy brocade curtains, looked
out over a dark landscape. Candy imagined that in the daytime, one could look out
that window and see part of the rear lawn and the sea off to the right. Around the
room she saw touches of Victorian decoration here and there, and even a bit of whimsy
in the arrangement of keepsakes and items Abigail obviously cherished. Her canopied
bed stood against the right wall, opposite a small marble fireplace. Next to the bed,
a cleverly disguised door led to an adjoining room, presumably that of Cornelius Pruitt,
Abigail’s husband.

The writing desk was positioned against the outside wall to the right of the window.
It, too, was of Victorian design, made of a dark wood—mahogany, Candy guessed—with
numerous drawers and distinctive brass hardware. Two raised rear structures, also
with various drawers and shelves, were connected on top by a galleried centerpiece.

Walking around the bed to the desk, Mrs. Pruitt pointed to a narrow drawer on the
desk’s right side, under the writing surface. Candy followed her, focusing on the
drawer. She’d seen something like this before. A document drawer, Mrs. Pruitt had
called it. It was small, and would hold only folded documents and letters, not larger
files or books. A small brass lock with a flat vertical keyhole held it tightly shut.

Candy studied the lock for a few moments, trying to imagine what its key might look
like and how large it might be. She was tempted to reach out and tug on the drawer’s
single brass handle, just to verify that it indeed was locked. But she held herself
back. She could see, though, that the desk itself was well built. She could see no
way to break into the drawer without damaging the desk.

She noticed that the desk’s worn leather writing surface had faded to a pale green,
and that sheets of cream-colored writing paper, embossed in black with the initials
AWP, still filled a small tray that sat off to one side, as if awaiting Abigail’s
hand. A silver oval frame, containing a black-and-white photo of Abigail as a young
woman, sat on one ledge.

Mrs. Pruitt allowed Candy a few more moments to look around, but she saw nothing else
that might help her solve the mysteries at hand. So a short time later, they headed
downstairs, and after bidding farewell to Mrs. Pruitt, she climbed back into the Jaguar,
and Tristan drove her home.

“I don’t know if we actually learned much tonight,” he told her as they angled around
the shoreline, following the dark, damp Coastal Loop, the Jaguar’s headlamps cutting
through sea mist and trails of fog. They were the only car on the road.

Candy had her shawl pulled tightly around her, though the heated seat beneath her
kept her warm. She thought a few moments before she responded. “Well, we learned that
the volume of Pruitt history is still missing, and I found out about a missing key
to a drawer in Abigail’s room. And we
learned that Hobbins was probably working at Pruitt Manor when a dead woman showed
up in that pumpkin patch twenty years ago, and so he
could
have been driving that Bentley when it was spotted with its lights out.”

“Hmm, that’s troubling,” Tristan admitted, and he fell silent, lost in his thoughts.

Doc had left the porch light on at Blueberry Acres. Tristan pulled up in front of
the house, pulled on the emergency brake, and let the motor run as again he dashed
out around the front of the car to open her door.

“Listen, thank you for having dinner with me tonight,” he said when she’d climbed
out, and he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek before she could react. “I had
a wonderful time.”

“Me too,” she admitted with a smile.

He had one more question for her as he walked her to the front porch. “What are you
doing Wednesday night?”

“Wednesday?” The question caught her off-guard, and she had to think about it for
a moment. “Well, that’s Halloween, isn’t it?”