Death of a Blueberry Tart

by Lee Hollis

  “Good morning, Owen,” Hayley chirped, a big smile on her face.

  Owen dropped one of the seasonings in his cart and threw the other back on the shelf, did an about-face, and hurriedly pushed his cart in the opposite direction. Hayley chased after him as he disappeared around the corner and down the cereal aisle.

  “Owen! Owen!” Hayley shouted, to no avail. He had no intention of stopping to talk to her.

  This was ridiculous. She couldn’t just follow him up and down every aisle like their grocery carts were in the Indy 500, but it was becoming quite clear Owen was determined to remain elusive. And so she whirled her cart around and headed back up toward the front of the store. She cut across the wine section, her eyes briefly falling on a tasty pinot noir that had recently been marked down for a two-for-one sale. She made a mental note to come back later for it.

  Hayley finally made it to the produce section and pushed her cart, with its rubber wheels swiveling, past the romaine lettuce and grape tomatoes until she was right in front of a giant basket of yellow onions. She stopped and waited, knowing Owen would soon be turning the corner from the dairy products. Sure enough, within seconds, she spotted his cart careening toward hers. Owen’s head was twisted around, looking to see if Hayley was still in hot pursuit, having no clue she was right in front of him. And that’s when their carts collided and Owen nearly did a flip over the metal bar his hands were gripping so tightly. He whipped his head around and his eyes popped open at the sight of Hayley.

  “Good morning, Owen,” Hayley said sweetly, as if it was the most unexpected development in the world that they were now face-to-face.

  “What do you want?” Owen hollered, discombobulated as he rubbed his elbow, which he had banged upon impact when he crashed into Hayley’s cart.

  “Blueberries,” Hayley said, searching the produce section. “Ever since poor Caskie Lemon-Hogg passed away, I haven’t been able to find fresh blueberries, so I’m hoping they have some here.”

  He glared at her suspiciously. He knew she was up to something and so he remained guarded.

  Hayley plowed ahead, still smiling sweetly. “Of course, Caskie’s prices had gotten so ridiculously high, if you ask me. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  He didn’t answer her, just stared at her glumly.

  “I can’t imagine buying from her in bulk like you did. I mean, how are you supposed to make a profit with Caskie jacking up the prices and you relying on her to supply you with your cakes and pies?”

  “I know what you’re doing, Hayley. Your mother saw what was in my freezer, didn’t she? She told you and now you want to blackmail me too!”

  Hayley arched an eyebrow. “Too? For the record, Owen, I have no intention or interest in blackmailing you for anything, but apparently someone did . . .”

  Owen looked around the produce section to make sure there were no curious ears around, but as it was still early, they were pretty much alone except for a stock boy listening to music through his earbuds as he sprayed some spinach and kale with a small water hose.

  Owen sighed, resigned to the fact that he was never going to physically escape Hayley’s never-ending nosiness. “All right, all right, fine! You’re right! Yes, Caskie was blackmailing me!”

  Hayley leaned in, eyes widening, curious to hear more.

  “She came into my restaurant a few weeks back and told me she was raising the price of her blueberries and I told her where she could go! Well, I couldn’t find anybody else to sell me the amount of blueberries I needed, you know how fast they sell out here at the Shop ’n Save, so I was in a bind. I needed at least thirty boxes of blueberries a day, and I’m working at The Shack ten, twelve hours a day, so it’s not like I can go pick them myself. She’s the biggest supplier in town and so I got desperate! I was running low and every morning I was having an overflow of customers, so I bit the bullet and started buying frozen blueberry pies just to keep up with the demand. Nobody seemed to notice the difference except for that damn Caskie, who showed up for lunch one day, took one bite, and just looked at me with this knowing smile. She confronted me about it in the kitchen, and threatened to make a big fuss, and I didn’t know what I was going to do . . .” His voice trailed off and he shook his head. “I pride myself on making sure every item on my menu is fresh and homemade and she was going to expose me as some kind of fraud . . . But I swear, it was just going to be a temporary fix, until I could figure out how to get a new supply . . .”

  Before Hayley had the chance to ask, Owen grabbed her by the arm and got up close, staring straight into her eyes. “But I didn’t kill her, Hayley! If I’m being completely honest, I would have to say I sure wanted to, but I didn’t! I just don’t have it in me to do anything like that!”

  “She was at your restaurant on the day she was killed . . .”

  “Yes, she came by to tell me she wanted me to pay for her silence . . . she was asking for way more than the hiked-up cost of her blueberries. In hindsight, I should have just shut up and kept buying those stupid berries from her. I never would have ended up in this ugly mess with people suspecting I had something to do with her death!”

  Hayley pulled her arm out of his grip and nodded. “Okay, Owen, if you didn’t kill Caskie, do you have any idea who might have?”

  Owen shrugged. “Truthfully, I thought it was your mother.”

  This was not what Hayley wanted to hear.

  She needed to find some answers soon before the whole population of Bar Harbor, including the summer tourists, was of the opinion that her mother, Sheila, was a cold-blooded killer.

  Chapter 24

  When Hayley received word via text from Mona that Sergio was releasing Rupert Stiles, she raced down to the police station right after work to find out exactly what was going on. When Hayley pulled into the parking lot, she spotted Mona standing by her white pickup truck helping Rupert Stiles into the passenger seat. He was struggling with the seat belt and she had to reach over to assist him.

  Hayley jumped out of her Kia and scurried over to where Mona was buckling in Rupert. His eyes were droopy and his hands were shaking.

  “Mona, what’s happening? Where are you taking Rupert?”

  “I’m taking him home to his apartment!” Mona howled. “The poor old codger has suffered through enough already! He deserves to have a good night’s sleep in his own bed tonight instead of that lumpy cot in that god-forsaken jail cell!”

  “I don’t understand,” Hayley said. “Why has he been released?”

  “Because he didn’t kill anybody, that’s why!” Mona snapped. “And thanks to my deadbeat husband, Rupert was arrested for no good reason!”

  “Wait, what does Dennis have to do with any of this?”

  Mona patted the old man on the back of the head. “You comfortable, Rupert?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mona,” Rupert whispered hoarsely.

  “Would you mind dropping me off at Drinks Like a Fish? I wouldn’t mind partaking in a nightcap before going home to bed.”

  “I most certainly will not!” Mona roared. “Your drinking is what got you caught up in this mess in the first place!” Mona slammed the car door shut. “Now stay put while I talk to Hayley.”

  Hayley threw her hands up, at a loss. “Mona . . .”

  “My idiot husband fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down! It took him all this time to stop staring at ESPN long enough to tell me that he picked up Rupert hitchhiking and gave him a ride to Ellsworth on the day your mother found Caskie’s body at the B and B!”

  “Dennis gave Rupert an alibi?”

  “Can you believe that? I can never get him off the damn couch to fix a running toilet, let alone actually leave the house for a breath of fresh air! But apparently on that particular day he took my truck while I was working at the lobster shop and decided to drive up to Darling’s Auto Mall in Ellsworth to test drive a new Dodge Grand Caravan! He saw Rupert by the roadside with his thumb out around three in the afternoon at the top of West Street
on his way out of town and pulled over to pick him up.”

  “Where did he drop him off?”

  “Some bar on High Street in Ellsworth, I forget the name,” Mona said. “I asked him why he’d go all the way to Ellsworth to a bar when he could’ve just gone to your brother’s place, and he got all quiet and shy and wouldn’t give me a straight answer until I finally guessed it had something to do with a pretty cocktail waitress up there he has his eye on and, well, let’s just say he didn’t deny it!”

  Hayley leaned to the side so she could see past Mona to Rupert, sitting quietly in Mona’s truck. “You got a girlfriend in Ellsworth, Rupert?”

  His face reddened and he shrugged. “Maybe . . .”

  “Rupert, if you were at a bar in Ellsworth and there was a girl who could back up your alibi, why didn’t you tell the chief when he arrested you?” Hayley asked.

  Rupert shrugged again. “Didn’t want to drag her name into any of this mess. Besides, if she found out I was in jail, she might lose respect for me . . .”

  “Respect?” Mona howled. “Rupert, you’ve been arrested for public intoxication more times than—”

  Hayley cut her off. “Mona!” She turned back to Rupert. “Well, I’m happy you’re finally free!”

  Mona nodded. “The chief didn’t have much choice after he called the bar and got both the waitress and the bartender to confirm that Rupert was there drinking from around four in the afternoon until after ten o’clock!”

  “Mona! I’m awfully thirsty!” Rupert wailed from inside the truck.

  “Hold your horses, old man! I’m talking to my friend here!” Mona bellowed.

  “Is Sergio inside?” Hayley asked.

  Mona nodded again. “Back to square one. He’s not happy about it either.”

  “Thanks, Mona!” Hayley dashed up the stone steps into the police station. She heard Mona shout at Rupert as she got into the driver’s seat of her pickup truck, “I’ll buy you a soda at the Big Apple, but you are not consuming alcohol on my watch!”

  It was quiet in the station, and Officer Earl, who was reading some kind of Walking Dead type graphic novel behind the reception desk, barely bothered to look up at her as she breezed past him.

  “I just need to speak to Sergio for a second, Earl. It won’t take long!” Hayley chirped.

  “Even if I said he was in a meeting, it wouldn’t matter because you never listen anyway!” Earl growled before returning his attention back to his comic book.

  Hayley marched down the hall to Sergio’s office. The door was open and he was at his desk, scribbling notes on a pad of paper. She rapped on the door frame. “Knock, knock . . .”

  He looked up and sighed. “I suppose you heard . . .”

  “Yes. His alibi checked out . . .”

  “Rupert’s been hitching rides up to the Blue Parrot bar in Ellsworth for a few weeks now because he’s got a crush on a cocktail waitress named Betty who he met on the town pier when she was down here one weekend last month. She’s about thirty years his junior and has zero romantic interest, but I guess he’s an eternal optimologist.”

  “Optimist,” Hayley politely corrected.

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  “No, not really,” Hayley said quietly.

  English was Sergio’s second language and occasionally he mixed up his words.

  “The owner even provided a video from his surveillance camera of Rupert arriving at four and staggering out drunk around ten thirty. A cab driver picked him up outside the bar and dropped him off at his place around eleven. Apparently Rupert was passed out in the back seat when they got to his place, and the driver had to half carry, half drag Rupert inside and put him to bed.”

  “Eleven o’clock? That’s well after my mother discovered Caskie Lemon-Hogg’s body.”

  “Which puts him in the clear,” Sergio said.

  “Then somebody must have stolen or found Rupert’s credit card and used it to pay for the room at the B and B. But who?”

  “I talked to the cabbie and he said Rupert had him stop at an ATM once they got to town so he could get some cash to pay the fare because Rupert told him that he had lost his credit card a few days earlier.”

  Hayley folded her arms. “So did someone deliberately lift Rupert’s credit card so they could set him up for the murder?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine at this point.” Sergio sighed, frustrated.

  Chapter 25

  The last thing Hayley ever thought she would be witnessing on this sunny, breezy Saturday afternoon in the Bear Brook Picnic Area, located on the Park Loop Road just east of Sieur de Monts Spring in Acadia National Park, was her mother lip-locked with her old high school beau Carl Flippen. But that’s exactly what she was looking at while quietly picking at a fried clam roll that she had just taken from the picnic basket on top of the wooden table. Bruce kept averting his eyes, chugging down a canned soda, clearly wishing he was anywhere else.

  The day had started out innocently enough. Sheila had been up at the crack of dawn, brewing a pot of coffee for Hayley and Bruce. She had repeatedly promised to finally leave the whole Caskie Lemon-Hogg murder to the police and not get involved any more. Hayley had told her mother that she was grateful that Sheila was finally being reasonable, while neglecting to mention she had been knee-deep in her own freelance investigation. The fact was, Sheila had been too preoccupied getting, in her own words, “reacquainted” with Carl, who had turned up on Hayley’s doorstep the night before, shyly asking if Sheila was home like some lovestruck teenage boy with his hormones racing, eager to ask the prettiest girl in high school out on a date. Sheila, eager to start something new after her last relationship had gone bust, was only too happy to invite him in for a glass of wine. They had talked well into the night, and Carl, ever the gentleman, finally took his leave around twelve thirty, departing quite satisfied with a sweet albeit brief kiss on the cheek from Sheila. Before he left, however, a plan was set to meet the next day for a romantic picnic in the park.

  After he left, Sheila had kept Hayley and Bruce up another hour and a half, until nearly two in the morning, obsessing over whether or not Carl might be some kind of rebound relationship. Perhaps her judgment was clouded after Lenny had so unceremoniously dumped her and this was a way for her not to feel so empty and alone. When Hayley calmly suggested that her mother might be overthinking it, Sheila snapped back that she had had to listen to Hayley prattle on about dating again after her own divorce from Danny, so she might want to indulge her own emotionally bruised and battered mother for at least a few minutes. That shut Hayley up, and she was a pillar of support from that moment forward.

  Bruce was less inclined to offer advice or even stick around while the two of them hashed it all out ad nauseam, but he knew if he tried to bolt he would never hear the end of it from both his wife and mother-in-law, and so he worked hard to suppress his yawns and pretend he was interested in the topic of Sheila’s love life.

  Finally, when both Hayley and Bruce were fighting to stay awake and Sheila had run out of reasons why she should not date Carl, she finally had decided to just see where the relationship went and mercifully stood up and announced it was probably time for them all to go to bed.

  Hayley and Bruce had just about made a clean getaway when Sheila called up after them as they were halfway up the stairs, and told them that she would feel more comfortable if they came with her and Carl on their picnic, make it like a double date. Hayley had started to protest that serving as chaperones might cramp her mother’s style, not to mention Carl’s, but Sheila would hear none of her arguments and remained steadfastly insistent. As she wore Hayley down, who eventually had agreed she and Bruce would come along, Hayley couldn’t help but notice the defeated look on Bruce’s face as whatever plans he had been looking forward to doing on his day off slowly fell by the wayside.

  When Carl had shown up to pick up Sheila around noon, he made an admirable attempt to hide his surprise and disappointment that he was not goi
ng to have Sheila all to himself. Bruce had just smiled at him apologetically, as if trying to signal to him that he had had nothing to do with this, that if it had been up to him, he would not be tagging along. Hayley had made an effort to be upbeat and chatty, as if double dating with her mother was the most natural thing in the world.

  The foursome had made their way into Acadia National Park, with Carl behind the wheel of his Buick LaCrosse. Sheila had excitedly remarked about how impressed she was with all the car’s technological details like the heated front seats and rear park-assist features. Carl had nodded in agreement as Sheila swiveled her head around to wink at Hayley and Bruce, who both sat quietly in the back seat. It was as if she was signaling her acknowledgment that Carl Flippen, like his choice of automobile, was a real winner.

  Despite the awkwardness, Hayley actually had found herself enjoying the picnic. Bruce had loosened up a bit once he was eating and was now cracking a few of his lame jokes, which both Carl and Sheila astonishingly found hilarious. Bruce had savored the attention and so he was no longer wishing he was anywhere else. But of course that had lasted only through the first couple of beers. Once Carl himself had felt more relaxed, the easier it was for him to flirt with Sheila, subtly at first, once squeezing her bare shoulder with his beefy hand, another time stroking the back of her hair and complimenting her on how pretty she looked today. Pretty soon he had gotten bolder and more obvious and Sheila, for her part, eagerly lapped it up until finally neither of them could control themselves any longer. As the undeniable chemistry between them was exploding, the two retirees could hardly keep their hands off each other. And without any further thought as to just how agonizing it had to be for their two picnic companions to watch, Sheila and Carl were now quite literally sucking face.

  Bruce was now looking straight up at the sky, anywhere except what was right in front of him at the moment. “It sure is a beautiful day.”