Town in a Pumpkin Bash (34 page)

“I’ll explain later.” He pointed at the German breakfast pastry he’d set down in front
of his daughter and grinned. “So?”

She turned her attention back to the heavenly confection. “Well, it’s an
apfeltasche
, isn’t it? Like a sort of strudel, with a fruit filling?” She studied it more closely.
“Looks like apples and blueberries, with some cinnamon, judging from the aroma.”

It was delicately brown, a crisp, flaky pocket pastry stuffed with a warm fruit filling
that literally burst out of it in a passion of color—mostly purplish blues and cinnamon
golds—and topped with a delicate framework of icing. Candy lifted the fork Doc had
also laid on the table for her and used it to test the pastry’s flakiness, then cut
off a corner and sampled it. For the next few moments, she savored the mixture of
flavors and textures. “Mmm, that’s amazing,” she said when she’d finished. “There’s
only one person I know who makes pastry like that. Is Herr Georg in town?”

Doc smiled slyly. “Like I said, I’ll explain later. Once you’ve finished your little
snack and opened your present, I’ll warm up the truck and we’ll head to the diner
for the next course.”

Candy arched an eyebrow. “The next course?”

Half an hour later, as they slid into the corner booth at Duffy’s Main Street Diner,
Candy received a round of birthday wishes and even a few scattered cheers and applause,
not only from Bumpy, Artie, and Finn, but also from the diner’s staff, including Juanita
and Dolores, the two waitresses, and even a few of the regular patrons. Juanita rushed
over with a second cup of coffee and a stack of warm blueberry pancakes dripping in
butter and fresh maple syrup.

“Happy birthday, Candy!” the waitress said, giving her a hug. “And what’s this?” Juanita
asked, admiring Candy’s latest piece of jewelry.

“Doc gave it to me this morning.” Candy held out her wrist. “It’s a handmade blueberry
bracelet. See, the blueberries are actually blue coral, but don’t they look amazingly
like real blueberries? And these little blueberry leaves are bronze with a hand-painted
patina. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“It is,” Juanita said admiringly. “Which reminds me, I have a gift for you too.”

She dashed away again but was back in an instant with a neatly wrapped package, topped
with a red bow. Inside was an autumn-colored scarf with matching hat and gloves. “The
snow will be flying before we know it!” Juanita said cheerfully as she hurried off
to tend to her other customers.

There were birthday gifts from the boys as well. Bumpy presented her with a Vermont
Teddy Bear dressed like a farmer, Artie gave her a first-edition Stephen King novel
he’d bought on eBay, and Finn bestowed upon her an expensive-looking bottle of French
wine. Then Maggie burst through the diner’s front door and made for their table, a
large flower-and-balloon bouquet in hand, just as Juanita and Dolores came out of
the back with a freshly baked blueberry muffin topped by a single candle. Candy was
genuinely touched as everyone in the diner sang “Happy Birthday”—and the muffin wasn’t
too bad either. Because she’d just had some of a mysterious baker’s
apfeltasche
, however, she sliced the muffin in half. She took one half for herself and offered
the other to Maggie, who had slid in beside her.

“I wasn’t going to worry too much about what I ate today, since it
is
my fortieth birthday, you know, and I’m allowed to party a little,” Candy said to
her friend. “But if I’m not careful, I’ll gain ten pounds today.”

“Tell me about it. Luckily for you, I’m here to help out.” Maggie broke off a chunk
of her half and popped it into her
mouth. “After all, what are friends for? And just so you know, I have a feeling this
isn’t the last celebration you’ll be experiencing today, so better get used to it—and
maybe sign up for a gym membership.”

“Thanks for the warning. I’ll try to moderate myself—though I have a feeling that
will be difficult to do.”

“Honey, look at you—you’re forty and you have the body of a thirty-eight-year-old!
That’s a cause for celebration. Live a little!”

“You know, you’re right,” and Candy defiantly broke off another piece of the muffin
for herself.

Later, they climbed into Maggie’s Subaru station wagon and drove out to the pumpkin
patch for their last few hours of operation. They planned to close the patch down
for the season at noon, and then head over to Town Park to take in some of the Pumpkin
Bash events.

The morning hours whirled by as Wanda’s bus tour came and went a few times, and each
time the crowds swelled, with many carrying away multiple pumpkins for the day’s upcoming
events. Over the past few days, Doc and the boys had consolidated the piles of pumpkins,
moving them closer to the front of the patch, and had cut the last few remaining pumpkins
from thick vines. Now even those last few piles were dwindling.

Around eleven, Doc and the boys showed up to help, but there wasn’t much left to do.
Candy and Maggie made their last few sales, the last few customers trickled away,
and everyone helped close the place down.

“We’ll take the tractor and hay wagon back to Mr. Gumm’s other farm over the weekend,”
Candy told Doc after they’d cleared away and packed up the last few crates and stands.
“And who knows, maybe we’ll give all this another shot next year.”

“Maybe we will,” Maggie said, draping her arm around her friend’s shoulder. “We worked
pretty hard, that’s for darn sure. And we did pretty good. Only next time, it would
be great if we could do it without the dead body buried under the pile of pumpkins.”

“You got that right.”

As the morning had progressed, whenever they’d had a spare moment, Candy had told
her friend all that had happened over the previous day or two, and Maggie had listened
with interest. And like Candy, she’d hadn’t been totally surprised to hear that the
Sykes family was somehow involved. “I wondered if that name might turn up again,”
she’d told her friend. She’d come to Candy’s aid during a run-in with a Sykes once.

“You don’t know the half of it. If you asked me, I’d say there was some sort of conspiracy
going on. Of course, other than the inscription on the tombstone, there’s no real
proof that they had anything to do with this, including Sebastian’s murder. Or anything
else that’s been going on in town.”

“So what’s the next step?” Maggie had asked.

“Well, I’ve been giving that some thought. One way or another, we have to find Abigail’s
stolen diary. That might contain the clue we’re missing.”

“And which clue is that?” Maggie had asked, becoming slightly overwhelmed at the sheer
amount of information she’d had to process in a short span of time.

Candy had then told her about the note she’d found in the volume of Pruitt history,
adding even another layer to the mystery. But before they’d had a chance to discuss
this latest discovery any further, they’d both been drawn away with customers, and
it was a while before they had a chance to talk again. But as Candy hurried around
the field, carrying pumpkins and taking customers’ money, a certain phrase kept buzzing
through her head.

To find the key, search that which binds.

Binds what?

She’d been pondering that question ever since she found the note, and the answer had
finally come to her.

A bookbinding.

The binding of Abigail’s diary.

It all made sense, she realized—and explained why Sapphire stole the diary in the
first place.

She’d been searching for a key, too, hidden in the binding of the diary.

Had she told Sebastian about it? Was that what he’d been looking for as well?

It all seemed to make sense, and was worth checking out—if they could find the missing
diary.

“It must still be in that haunted house of Sapphire’s,” Candy had told her friend
just before Doc and the boys showed up. “We’re going to have to go back there this
afternoon and search the place one last time. It
has
to be there somewhere. That
has
to be what Sebastian was after when he rented the place.”

But first, she had a festival to cover for the newspaper—even though she’d have to
do it the old-fashioned way, with a pen and notepad, since her digital recorder and
camera had been stolen with the daypack.

So once they’d loaded the last few items into the back of Maggie’s wagon, and put
out signs announcing that the patch was closed for the season, they all headed downtown
to the Pumpkin Bash.

The end of October was upon them, signaling the close of the annual leaf-peeping season,
yet a sizable crowd—a good mixture of locals and tourists—turned out to enjoy the
day-long celebration. Cape Willington’s two intersecting streets, which represented
the village’s business district, were aswarm with people. As the town had done for
previous events like the Blueberry Festival, held every August, they’d blocked off
Main Street and Ocean Avenue, allowing only pedestrian traffic to wander the thoroughfares.
Crews had worked for the past few days setting up booths, tables, viewing areas, and
display stands for the thousands of pumpkins they expected to light at dusk. Folding
tables located throughout Town Park were laden with mature pumpkins of all shapes
and sizes, some carved and ready for display, while others awaited the artist’s touch.
Children, parents, seniors, teens, and anyone else who could lend a hand were helping
out with the carving, and finished pumpkins were being shepherded by wagon or wheelbarrow
to the waiting displays up and down the street.
Cape Willington’s pumpkin event wouldn’t be as big as the one in Keene, New Hampshire,
where they regularly displayed more than twenty-five thousand pumpkins, or a record-breaking
Boston event, where a little over thirty thousand were carved and lighted on Halloween
night. But the citizens of Cape Willington planned to put several thousand carved
and lighted pumpkins on display—and to achieve even that number, everyone in town
had to pitch in and help.

Candy and Maggie, along with Doc and the boys, were ready to do their part. So after
spending a few minutes watching the pumpkin weigh-in—the results of which would be
announced at two
P.M
.—they found places at the carving tables and set to work.

An hour and a half later, Candy blew away a few strands of hair that had fallen over
her face and let out a long, deep breath. “Boy, these things sure have a lot of guts
in them,” she said, pulling her hand out of a particularly plump pumpkin and withdrawing
a clump of pale orange plant goop consisting of damp, stringy clumps and clots of
seeds. She looked over at Maggie. “How many have you carved so far?”

Maggie held up her plastic-gloved hands, coated with the same organic material, and
wiped an arm across her forehead. “I think I’m working on my sixth or seventh. Something
like that. I’ve lost count.”

“I’ve done about the same,” Candy said. “My arms are getting tired.”

“Mine too. Why don’t we take a break after we’re done with these and see what else
is going on around town?”

“Sounds like a brilliant idea.”

But a little later on, as they toured the craft booths and food tables, checked out
the other carving stations, and watched volunteers shuffling back and forth with their
wagons and wheelbarrows, Candy felt at a sudden loss. “I don’t have my camera,” she
said, somewhat morosely, “or my recorder. I feel empty-handed.”

“You still have your phone,” Maggie said helpfully as she
eyed a beautifully decorated, ruby red candy apple that was calling her name from
a shelf in a nearby food booth. “That looks so delicious but I absolutely, positively
know I shouldn’t.”

“What? Oh, here.” When Candy saw what her friend was indicating, she fished a few
dollars out of her pocket. “It’s my birthday. I’ll splurge and we’ll both take a few
bites.”

Maggie flashed a smile. “Well, if you insist. And don’t worry, honey—we’ll figure
out a way to get your stuff back. And if we don’t, we’ll just buy you all new stuff.
That actually might be fun, you know. And the newspaper will spring for some of it,
won’t they? Or they’ll have something they can loan you until you get a chance to
replace it, right?”

Candy thought about that as she took a bite of the apple. “Now that you mention it,
you’re exactly right. I think I have some extra notebooks in my office, and maybe
I can borrow a little digital camera from Jesse, if he’s around.” Jesse Kidder, a
rail-thin twenty-five-year-old, was the newspaper’s graphic designer and on-call photographer
who had a second-floor office near Candy’s. “Come to think of it, I’ll text him right
now and see if he has something he can lend me.”

Taking alternate bites of the apple until they’d eaten it to the core, they swung
by the pumpkin weigh-in station to find out who won, and following Maggie’s suggestion,
Candy took a few quick photos of the winners with her smart phone, and entered the
winning names in a note-taking app. After that, they walked out of Town Park and up
the gently sloping Ocean Avenue toward the newspaper’s second-floor offices. By the
time they reached the wood-and-glass door to 21B, Jesse had texted her back and told
her where she could find a point-and-click digital camera in his office. She could
borrow it for as long as she needed it.